Problematic Movies of the 80s | Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
Recently, on a night when I simply couldn’t sleep, I turned my iPad on to Netflix and searched for something to watch. You know, something to just play until my eyes finally weighed like lead and I crashed. I landed upon the 1998 Samuel L. Jackson vehicle The Negotiator. In addition to being a fun potboiler, I was reminded how goddamned good Kevin Spacey is as an actor. I realized that in this particular case, I was not bothered by his real life sexual proclivities and simply enjoyed the movie.
I’m frequently stuck in mental overload trying to weigh the artist’s real life from his or her art. Say what you will but Altas Shrugged has its merits. Ayn Rand doesn’t, and if you, like me, read the book before knowing anything about her awful politics, you might’ve been able to separate the two. I still love Woody Allen’s earlier films, although Manhattan now gives me a bit of the skeeves. I also recently got sucked into a conversation about the dark toxicity in play in the (apparently) no longer funny, twisted morality tale known as Caddyshack.
Then Kavanaugh referenced some classic comedies of the ’80s in his bizarre, angry, hyper-partisan defense. He claimed his yearbook was attempting to emulate “Animal House, Caddyshack and Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” Again, it got me thinking: are these touchstones of my (and his) youth to be discarded on a pile of old VHS copies to be set ablaze? Are they really that problematic? And wouldn’t it be fun (and maybe a little depressing) to rewatch them as much through the lens of 2018?
I set up some rules for myself: they had to be comedies, they had to be made in the ’80s (my coming of age) and they had to be movies I could recall loving at the time.
Here we go.
First up:
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Written by Cameron Crowe; directed by Amy Heckerling
Released in 1982.
First of all Rat, you never let on how much you like a girl. Oh, Debbie.
Two, you always call the shots. Kiss me. You won't regret it.
Now three, act like wherever you are, that's the place to be. Isn't this great?
Four, when ordering food, you find out what she wants, then order for the both of you. It's a classy move. Now, the lady will have the linguini and white clam sauce, and a Coke with no ice.
And five, now this is the most important, Rat. When it comes down to making out, whenever possible, put on side one of Led Zeppelin IV.
Fast Times began as a Rolling Stone story by Cameron Crowe. He spent a year secretly embedded at Clairemont High School in San Diego, California under an assumed name (and in cooperation with the school’s administration) to gather stories for a non-fiction book with the same title. It feels like it, too. Unlike the spoofs of teens in high school and despite that fact only Nicholas Cage (credited as Nicholas Coppola in his first on screen appearance) was the youngest actor on set at age eighteen, it has an authenticity lacking in so many films about high school (in the 80’s or otherwise).
I was sixteen years old when this hit the theaters. What I remember of this movie was that I liked it, thought it was funny and mostly loved the character of Brad (played by a young Judge Reinhold.) The Spicoli character, played with stoner perfection by Sean Penn loomed large and the fact that I got to see Phoebe Cates’s tits was a big plus. Viewed in the theater only once, it left a good impression upon my teenage brain. It felt authentic in many ways to my own high school experience as it was unfolding.
Upon rewatching it to see how problematic the thing was, here are some takeaways:
Problematic Moments & Themes
In the first two minutes of the film, we see a high school guy tape a sign on the back of another guy that says “I Am A Homo” and later, Spicoli, in a dream sequence, as he has won the big surfing competition, calls his competitors “Fags.”
There are only two black characters in this thing: Charles Jefferson (Forest Whittaker) and his brother (known only in the credits as “Jefferson’s Brother”) This film is overwhelmingly white.
In the first twenty minutes, Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a fifteen year old mall worker, has sex in an abandoned baseball dugout with a twenty-six year old dude. She subsequently has sex with Damone in her parents’ pool room, gets pregnant, has an abortion by herself, and hides it all from her parents.
There is, of course, the Phoebe Cates fantasy sequence where Brad is caught masturbating to his mental image of her slo-mo coming out of the pool and pulling off her bikini top.
So we have nods to anti-LGTBQ+ aspects, racism by omission, underage sex and abortion. Definitely a few moments that are no longer acceptable in modern society.
Does It Hold Up?
For me, yes.
First, while the film contains two instances of anti-gay language, there is no malice contained in the Spicoli comment. The first (the “Homo” sign) is an example of simple assholery and is in no way central to the plot of characters in the intwining stories. No question that it gives pause (if it were the n-word, the offense would be worse which says more about our acceptance of gay slurs than our apathy towards them) but the reality is that the movie taken as a whole, is not in the least homophobic.
Second, the fact that there are no black characters is troubling but there were and are high schools with few POC students. In the 80’s my high school had exactly four black students in the entire student body. This was a result of geography (middle of nowhere, Kansas) as well as decades of segregation in most areas in the country. The fact is that in the 1980’s the only high schools in America with more diverse populations were urban rather than suburban or rural.
Perhaps, because I am white and I went to an all-white high school (not even a single black or brown teacher), it simply didn’t seem out of the ordinary in this case. Despite this glaring absence of color, no racial animus is present in the film and Jefferson’s brother (unfortunate that the character was not given a name) is a stoner friend of Spicoli’s in several scenes. While it’s a low bar to clear, at least the two black characters weren’t presented as criminals.
If there is a problematic theme present, it is the pursuit of teenage sex and the fact that most conversations in the film are about it. That is, on the other hand (the one NOT stroking Brad’s johnson), fundamentally high school. Sex education during the 80’s was steeped in abstinence rhetoric and generally poor science behind it so horny kids (which, let’s be honest, most kids are horny as soon as the they are thrown into the soup of hormonal primacy) thought about sex all the time.
A fifteen year old girl having sex with a twenty-six year old dude is troubling until you see that, in every case, it is the women in the film who are calling the shots, who have the most agency in the interactions. Stacy makes a decision to have sex without coercion.
STACY
He gave me his card. (lovingly)
'Ron Johnson, Audio Consultant.'
LINDA
Should we buy a frame for that?
STACY
Come on, Linda, I haven't had a boyfriend all summer. You promised when I started working at the mall that my life would change... Do you think he'll call this week?
LINDA
Listen, Stace, you want to know about guys? I'll tell you. They're mostly chicken. Before I met Doug I chased after every guy I thought was cute. I thought if I gave out a vibe they'd get the message and call me up. Well, guess what? They don't call.
STACY
So what did you do?
LINDA
I called them. If I was sitting next to a guy and I wanted to sit closer, I'd sit closer. If I wanted to kiss him, I'd just do it. You want Ron Johnson? Grab him.
The girls are as sexually interested as any dude and the boys are all fumbling idiots when it comes to the girls. Long before the term ‘agency’ became popular, the girls had it, owned it, and were never victims. These are young women who are feminist without the need to be political about it.
The boys chase sex the way a camp kid ventures forth seeking the fictional Snipe. Lots of mystical nonsense and when they find it, they don’t quite know what to do with it. Even Damone, the faux Alpha Male advising the confused Rat, is a complete moron when it comes to finally sealing the deal with Stacy.
He is, however, totally correct about Side One of Led Zeppelin IV.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
GRADE: A-
Next Up
The Cannonball Run (1981)
