For the first time, John Hughes film was less about entertainment and more about making a statement of some sort. I had never noticed it before, but now I realized that Hughes was actually trying to communicate with his audience. His movie was entertaining, to be sure, but it definitely had something on its mind. We looked for opportunities to emulate Judd Nelson s rude and perverted character, John, especially quoting his sexually loaded lines. In short, we totally missed John Hughes point that all teenagers can relate through their struggles, and got caught up in the moral ambiguity, gross caricatures and lame sexual suggestions that were so titillating to us as ninth-graders.
Conventional wisdom says movies are made for entertainment.
Armageddon was made so we could be excited and then cry, Stepmom was made so we could laugh and then cry, and Hope Floats was made so we could just cry. An avid filmgoer, I admit that I m often interested only in escape and diversion. There is little as entertaining as having your emotions relentlessly pushed, pulled and tugged for a couple of hours, and no medium creates those effects as deftly as film. In ways both subtle and overt, movies teach audiences about life, love, religion, relationships, etc. In the absence of critical viewing, movies have the power to persuade the viewer, over time, to embrace a substantially different way of thinking and living.