Film is an expansive and complex medium, filled with memorable characters and timeless pieces of art that have stood the test of time. Among these titans, apostles, and elder gods of the cinematographic arts, John Hughes remains the resident lord of teen dramady film. Hughes is a rare sort who is recognized by film buffs and laymen alike, even if the average filmgoer might not know him by name. The work of Hughes has left behind an enormous wake, in which imitators and homages run rampant. In this sea of consumption and referential media, we find the most unlikely of audiences for films made by a straight man in the eighties: queer people. Before we discuss the themes present in his work that has been attracting LGBTQIA+ audiences since Reagan was in office, let’s talk about the man himself. John Hughes, Michigan native and Chicago transplant, was a copywriter, National Lampoon contributor, and screenwriter well known for his ability to write in convincing teen vernacular (with teenage angst to boot) while maintaining a high degree of quality. This came to a fine frothy head with Hughes’s directorial debut, Sixteen Candles, in 1984, and his follow-up in the following year that defined the teen film landscape for decades, The Breakfast Club. He completed this tour de force with another four films in the back half of the eighties, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty in Pink, and Some Kind of Wonderful, making it a sextet of classics that are still beloved to this day. While Hughes branched out to making comedies outside the teen film genre, with his biggest hit Home Alone defining the early nineties like his earlier films did the eighties, said early work resonated (and continues to resonate) with teens to such a degree that they’ve become some of the most referenced work in western film canon.
"I think John Hughes himself was a fish out of water and that's what resonated... this level of authenticity the dialogue didn't feel like it was something that was untrue." -Dr. Pirooz Kalayeh
What makes Hughes’s films pop like that? Well, his aforementioned skill at writing teens for publications like Lampoon certainly helped, but it’s his ability to give those characters both cathartic storylines and time to breath within the script and shots that creates that heart-to-heart moment with the audience. Breakfast Club in particular makes use of this, with a near singular setting for the characters to reflect off each other in a naturalistic (if stylized) fashion that allows them to communicate a significant amount of depth and relatability within its reasonable hour and thirty-two minutes. This efficiency of characterization and dialogue can be traced back to Hughes’s time with Lampoon, constructing scenarios and scenes for the publication that were mandated to be relatively short compared to other mediums. Aside from that, his films are shot in his stomping grounds: the washed-out suburbs and lengthy stretches of somber road that make up the greater Chicagoland area and other such Midwestern teenage wastelands. His cinematography has a masterful use of everyday space within these settings, letting his characters experience the trials of life in the foreground juxtaposed to the dreamlike haze of the suburban sprawls, malls, stages, and schools that make up their existence.
"Hughes modernized the "teen" film and evolved them from being a misunderstood threat (in the "Rebel Without a Cause" sense) to sympathetic characters with complex lives that handled their problems best through comedy. He also picked up where John Landis left off with The Blues Brothers - that films could be set and shot in Illinois." -B.J. Wilson
So how does any of that relate to queer communities? How have films about predominantly straight cisgender teens in the eighties connect so deeply to LGBT people for the past forty years? Well, it’s more on an “in the closet” type of connection. Characters in Hughes’s filmography are not explicitly queer due to all sorts of industry regulation and rules (unspoken or otherwise) that we do not have the time nor words to discuss, but there is a piece of connective tissue that Hughes makes quite clear: the consistent themes in his early work of being misrepresented and othered. Hughes created his works to speak to all audiences, to connect with anyone who might have those similar feelings of isolation or misrepresentation.
Being an outsider is a core theme to much of Hughes’s work, most prevalent in Breakfast Club. With the main conceit of the film centered around the trials and tribulations of pigeonholed youths it’s no wonder why closeted teens across four decades have related to them so significantly. As mentioned previously, Breakfast Club is the centerpiece of these queer fixations, but Candles and Pink share a sizable portion of the attention. It’s the focus on identity, however, that puts Club above the rest at the LGBT screenings. Hughes depicts a realistic group that queer viewers relate to; a collection of disparate people, forced together by circumstance and allowed to connect with one another through their shared othering.
"I think it’s Hughes’ ability to create characters and relationships that feel extremely real, along with exceptional casting and deeply human themes, that allows him to stand out. Almost every one of his films centers around commentary about family and social dynamics… basically the fabric of everyday life." - Max Brudvig
With films set in the realm of the majority population and centered on the lost and the misunderstood outsiders, it’s no wonder that Hughes’s early catalog became so popular among the then-underground subculture of queer teens, now queer twenty to fifty somethings. Their mainstream appeal hasn’t faded either, with visual references, parody, and homage coming to the film and television audiences as recently as the premiere of the recent seasons of shows like Stranger Things and Ms. Marvel.
The enduring legacy of Hughes goes beyond simple references. The man changed the way Hollywood spoke to teenagers for decades, with the very bones of his style still kicking in projects being produced over fifteen years after the influential director’s passing. Some see his films how they want to see them: in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. They’re family films, farce, or even teen comedies. That’s not the whole of it. It’s far from the whole picture.