From the age of eleven to about the age of sixteen, my favourite movie was The Breakfast Club.
I think a lot of people that age go through a period of loving that movie, or at least one John Hughes film. Despite the various flaws across those movies that become more apparent as the years go by, I think he did have a knack of tapping into the heads of teenagers and expressing their fears and dreams and experiences on screen. Even at eleven, still a few years off from becoming a teenager, The Breakfast Club spoke to me. I wasn’t cool and I didn’t know who I wanted to be, and I saw parts of myself reflected in various characters in that movie. It became a comfort film for me, something I’d pull out at sleepovers or watch when I was sad, and my best friend even gifted me a homemade shirt with the iconic essay written on it for my fifteenth birthday.
With the exception of seeing myself in the characters, and my repressed baby lesbian crush on Molly Ringwald, I think what made me love the movie was that, in parts, it was about love. The kind of brief, fleeting, and not necessarily romantic but nevertheless impactful love that you feel at that age. When you’re sixteen, it’s easy to know someone for a day and bond with them and confide in them and fall in love with them, just a little bit. It doesn’t have to be forever — and, often, it isn’t — but it still matters and it still changes you. The Breakfast Club, like all coming of age movies and most John Hughes films, is somewhat of a love story.
I no longer consider The Breakfast Club my favourite movie, but there’s a line from it that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. It’s when Allison (also known as the basket case, played by Ally Sheedy,) professes that, “when you grow up, your heart dies.”
I’ll admit, I’m not very grown up. I’m 22, so I pay bills and do my taxes and vote and buy alcohol, but I’m still quite young in the grand scheme of things. Yet, my fears about who I’ve become and who I will become, my concerns that I’m going to lose what light and optimism I have the older I get, are sticking with me more and more. And, as I have often done whenever confronted with harsh questions and analysing my future, I’ve turned to media to comfort me and give me something to reflect on.
And, controlled by my fears of my heart dying and fuelled by conversations with my friends, I’ve come to a realisation: I’ve become tired of good television and film.
Or, rather, I’ve become tired of what kind of things are defined as good television and film. Most of these things, I’ve noticed, are things that are miserable. They’re sad dramas or gritty political thrillers or bloody clashes for power. Love doesn’t last, people can’t be trusted, nobody gets a happy ending, nearly everyone dies. These things are praised for being realistic and interesting and having complex characters, as if suffering and pain are the only things that can make humans layered, are the only things that drive us, are the only experiences we’re allowed to have.
And while I don’t hate all of these pieces of media (there’s many that I do love,) I do wonder when we decided that happy endings made for a bad movie, or characters had to go through hell to become believable and likeable, or falling in love always has to end in heartbreak or death, or friends can’t be counted on, or families are either dead or terrible, and so on. These shows and movies make us feel things, but they’re rarely good feelings. And we should like them because of this. If you don’t like them (or at the very least, you can’t discuss them), or if, even worse, you haven’t seen them, then you can’t be taken seriously and you don’t have taste. Or, your taste is bad and predictable and cheesy.
But why is there something wrong with things being cheesy?
We shouldn’t have to feel shame for liking convoluted romantic comedies or predictable 2000s Disney Channel Original Movies. We shouldn’t have to justify our enjoyment for a stupid sitcom or ridiculous teen drama. Why should we have to use the term “guilty pleasure” for movies that make us feel happiness and love?
I guess, to me, in my life right now, my best attempt to stop my heart dying as I grow older, is to watch things because they put love in my heart, not because people tell me they’re “good.” And to create things that put love in people’s hearts, to tell love stories, to make the people around me feel joy and love and hope.
Media can and should challenge you, confront you, make you reconsider things and make you look at the world you live in. And not all media can be comforting. But I don’t think that the label of “good” should only be applied to hard-hitting stories that bring more pain than joy. As if happiness isn’t as worthy of an emotion as anger or sadness, or that drama is the only genre that makes us think. Media seems to be inherently devalued if it’s about good things and good people and good feelings and a happy ending, and it leaves such a sour taste in my mouth.
I’m not saying that the Oscars should start recognising movies based on love as opposed to quality (although, acknowledging that comedy is a worthwhile genre would be nice,) but I do think we need to stop feeling bad for having “guilty pleasure” movies or for liking “bad television.”
And I do think that love is the most important thing in the world. Love, in all it’s varying forms, can save us and can change us. Love can be a temporary bandage on a wound or it can stitch us up and heal us entirely. And we shouldn’t have to feel bad for enjoying media that we love.
If something makes you happy, gives you something to share with friends, cheers you up on bad days, and puts love in your heart, then it’s good. At the end of the day, I think it’s important to build stories of love, and share stories of love, with the people you love. Because otherwise, why are we all here?
After all, you are what you love.
