The Death of the '80's

It is a sad day for many of us who went through our teenage years during the 1980's. A director that help to give a voice to our generation has passed away. I absolutely loved John Hughes movies and connected with many of them. It was especially awesome to see "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" on your freakin' Senior year! He gave us the dream of what the perfect skip day would look like.

Of all the movies he directed, I believe that it was "The Breakfast Club" that so many of us could relate to. It was much more than a Molly Ringwald film although I love Molly. "The Breakfast Club" looked at several personalities, both guys and girls, of which just about everyone could relate to at least one of them. His take on parents and teachers were something we could relate to as we struggled to find our own identity. We wrestled with previous generations who did not fully appreciate who we were becoming. While many Baby Boomer authors would waste time writing books about Generation-X which mostly turned out to be one big negative rant against the younger generation, John Hughes tapped into the things that help to give us a voice against the negative images we constantly received from print and news media. As many Baby Boomers tried to recreate the concept of family apart from their parents the grand experiment was not full-proof. Divorce, neglect, abuse, and abortion took its toll on my generation. As the teen culture developed, a lot of other issues came with it: teen angst, insecurity, self-identity, consumerism focusing on the teen culture instead of the older generations, materialism, teen sexuality, and finding a place in life to just fitting in.

Thank you John Hughes for understanding us and giving us so much to smile about. I will always cherish those films that came out in the 80's that helped us to understand a little bit about what was going on around us and letting us know we weren't all that crazy. In fact, there was a lot to celebrate with Generation X. We really didn't turn out all that bad.