There's been chatter online about the new documentary on Hulu called Brats led by 1980s teen heartthrob Andrew McCarthy. Centered around his time in Hollywood amongst a group of young thespians called the Brat Pack with members including Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald and pretty much anyone you can remember in a John Hughes' film, the documentary is a wayward look at a bygone era and lots of navel-gazing. Despite mixed reviews, I decided to have a go at watching Brats and didn't find the show as lacking as others stated online, but it's not like we're talking about Steinbeck, you know?
Here's the thing, I was one of the pimply teenagers those films were made for, though I wasn't quite in the Sixteen Candles era, my time was more like the latter Pretty in Pink timeframe. Things really did change that fast--fashion, speech, makeup, hair, books, music . . . those subtle yet serious changes did not fly past my own scrutiny behind ugly, plastic, prescription frames. I knew very well that what was being shown on the big screen wasn't exactly real-to-life, only a small percentage of it. Growing up in a small town meant that we were behind on everything, so often the styles in a movie or popular magazine didn't appear for another year at least, but I also knew that most of society was behind as well. I knew that a movie was meant to show a style or thought process as an idea, and that the themes of the character's miserable existence could never exactly match the full truth.
My truth.
I saw Pretty in Pink at a local mall with a group of various aqua-netted puerile angst-ridden primordials and enjoyed it. When Andy, played by Molly Ringwald, walks into a shabby bungalow and chats with her scruffy alcoholic father, it was to make me feel sympathy, I knew. But I didn't. I didn't want that style, it was too close of a look at what my life was. No. I just wanted her cool vintage earrings and thrift-store room with no older sister bitching at me all while my catholic mother was downstairs in a depression over the divorce. Andy was supposed to be "poor" a "loser." But she was cool. And had her own room.
She was . . . a brat. I knew it, we all knew it.
The job she had was cool--the boy she liked was cool. I'd had a crush on Andrew McCarthy ever since tearfully begging my mother to rent St Elmo's Fire from the local Kroger at age 13. Those big, sometimes crazy, mostly intense and deep eyes of his made the film watchable. That hair, and sweet twisted smile . . . we rented it a second time on my babysitting cash.
After seeing Pretty in Pink at the mall, I went out and had my auburn hair cut like Molly Ringwald's--once again, at the mall--our colosseum of expression and hot gummy bears. Leaving the salon with earlobe-length red locks, bangs teased like Albert Einstein with too much hairspray, I decided it was NOT a good idea to look like Molly Ringwald after all. Andrew McCarthy would never go out with me, even if James Spader stuck a million dollars of blow up his left nostril.
But still, a girl could dream.
I mean, like Andy, I lived in a single-parent house due to divorce and had a cult-church loser father who loved to hit us in the name of Satan. Got Andy one-upped on that one for sympathy. But still, it made me an instant outsider. So I did understand her plight. What I didn't get yet desperately wanted was how all the boys loved and fought over her. Let's face it, that part was pure Disney mixed with Twilight.
Those movies were the salve of our teenage, dysfunctional American dream. And we loved them exactly for that.
So, they can pontificate all day about how shitty it was to be so cut down and squared by being called a "Brat"--but wasn't that what they were selling after all? They were brats. Hey, Andrew McCarthy, you guys were brats.
Life is hard, kids. Unlike those characters in the films we absorbed throughout the decade like buttered popcorn, we just had to ignore it and act cool. No ripping posters off walls, no lip sinking Otis Redding to our doomed romance. We just grabbed our Trapper Keeper, put a chin up against the cheap waft of fake Georgio Armani body spray and slicked on another layer of Lip Smackers.
The 80s weren't a particularly deep period of time. It was shallow as heck, but the music was cool. We had Friday Night Videos, neon tank tops and jelly bracelets in every color. But we didn't think too much. Nope.
That was the 90s.
