10 Comedies that Screwed Up Gen X

All different kinds of 80s trauma

My main argument here is that Gen X should not have seen these movies as little kids. The rest of the ethical arguments I’m not getting into. Some people are appalled by these movies, and some people are entertained. We can all agree, though, that kids under the age of 10 shouldn’t be watching them, right?

It’s not just that we saw these movies, these movies were marketed to us! Seven out of ten of the movies on this list are about high school students. Porky’s is about high school kids trying to lose their virginity. Grease is about high school students having sex, smoking, and drinking. Risky Business is about a 17-year-old having sex with a twentysomething prostitute and running a brothel out of his house. Who came up with this stuff? Who marketed it directly to kids?

I know these are beloved comedies, and I hear your laments. Today’s movies are too sanitized! Kids should be exposed to some of these things. I think sometimes Gen X is trauma bonded to the movies we grew up with. It’s one thing to watch The Matrix or Die Hard, a movie that is, I don’t know, almost hyper-realistic yet could never happen. A lot of kids get and understand that. A fifth grader doesn’t know that the kids in Porky’s are supposed to be outlandish. Some think that’s what you’re supposed to act like when you grow up.

Gen X, this did happen to us. Hollywood took the gloves off and would do anything at the box office to earn a buck. As kids, we were exposed to these movies way too young. Most of them are rated R, and no one cared. We have to sit with that.

Please know that I know some of these movies are classics. Just because I’m pointing out social problems with them doesn’t mean I think they should be burned or banned. I just think young kids shouldn’t watch them , but if you’re an adult, well-adjusted or traumatized by the 80s, knock yourself out.

1. Porky’s (1982) — Directed by Bob Clark — R

Man, talk about a mind job. How about we market a sex movie to high school kids and then tell them they are not allowed to see it under any circumstances. Think they will go to great lengths to watch this movie? Turns out that formula works pretty well. On a four million dollar budget, Porky’s made over 100 million dollars total. It has had sequels.

I was talking to my brother-in-law this weekend, and he was telling me the lengths he went to to see Porky’s. The school in our town was having a bake sale. He told his parents he was going to the bake sale with a friend, and then they rode their bikes about 30 miles to see this movie. They rode to the next town, to the mall, and bought tickets for On Golden Pond, then just walked into Porky’s. It was a popular trick in the 80s. I saw Jason Takes Manhattan that way. My poor brother-in-law rode his bike round trip 60 miles, bought a ticket for On Golden Pond, and then saw Porky’s. When they got home they were in so much trouble because the bake sale was over and everyone he knew, his parents, aunts, uncles, school, everyone was looking for the two boys. They had greatly underestimated the time it would take to ride to the movie theater, watch the movie, and return. Plus they took the extended route to avoid the highway on their BMXs. Being Gen X, I rolled on the floor laughing at this story.

For him and his friend, two 13-year-olds, it was a massive win. They got to tell their friends at school about it. “Oh my god, you guys rode your bikes all that way to the mall?” They were heroes! Middle school was going to be easy sailing for a month. Anytime you did something that was extraordinarily defiant in the 80s, as a kid, you were a hero. It was kids versus adults and the kids never seemed to win.

Porky’s was the highest grossing Canadian film of all time at the time because they convinced young Gen X kids, from the age of 12 to 18, that they had to defy even their parents, risk life and limb, ride 60 miles, anything, anything to see this movie. It wasn’t even that good!

2. Revenge of the Nerds (1984) — Directed by Jeff Kanew — R

This movie did so much damage to kids. Anytime you watched a movie as a kid you wanted to emulate it. I can remember some very nerdy kids in my elementary school trying to team up and beat the jocks because they had nerd power. I remember some kid yelling that on the playground as he got beat up. “Nerd power, umph.”

Revenge of the Nerds was about a fraternity of nerds who took on a popular fraternity of jocks in college to get the hot girl and make their fraternity established and recognized on campus. Lewis Skolnick (Robert Carradine, RIP) and Gilbert Lowe (Anthony Edwards) were the two nerds, and they were nerdy, but they triumphed and became cool in the movie. It was completely unrealistic though, because the jocks in real life would have just beaten them until they couldn’t walk. That would have ended their triumph.

In the 80s you knew to avoid the term nerd. Once you were in the nerd zone you were stuck there. It was a word that could drop you off a cliff socially. One day you’re just a quiet kid in the back enjoying your Star Wars thermos full of Kool-Aid, the next day even the kid who was always getting made fun of for wearing highwaters was scoring points teasing you. It wasn’t called bullying in the 80s. Bullies were everywhere, even some family members were bullies, they were just “teasing” you. I was bullied often. I once got a cherry bump on a teeter-totter that busted my lip badly for being a nerd. It drove my tooth into my upper lip and busted my nose. I flopped over on my back, blood all over my face. The kid came running up to me, kicked me in the leg, looked down at me and said, “Nerd, don’t get me in trouble,” and ran away. The teacher came over and sent me to the drinking fountain to wash off the blood and sent me back outside. I was too afraid to point out who did it to me. My mother later threw a fit at the school for not calling her, because I probably needed a stitch but didn’t get one.

I watched Revenge of the Nerds when I was probably 11 years old. I knew better than to even attempt standing up for myself. Those nerds were fantasy, fairytale. The scene where they are on the water beds and he was wearing a Darth Vader-like outfit confused me to no end. It wasn’t until years later when I rewatched it that I realized that Lewis (Robert Carradine) actually tricks a girl into having sex with him by pretending to be her boyfriend and wearing his costume. This is played off as comedy and presented as acceptable in the movie, but I’m pretty sure this is rape. Right? No one thinks it’s funny, and I remember on my rewatch how shocking this was.

In the 1990s nerds did end up becoming cool. They became rich on computer stocks. In the 80s people would have kicked the crap out of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but in the 90s they were heroes, saved us with technology, and became the richest men in the world. Oh how the times changed in just a single decade.

3. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) — Directed by Amy Heckerling — R

It’s about high school kids having sex and getting high. It’s the mall culture of the 80s and high school culture. Everyone loves the Phoebe Cates moment of her coming out of the pool. She is a high school student. She does get taken advantage of by an old man, all seemingly acceptable in the 1980s. The movie is full of drugs and sex and rebellion, but it was not meant for nine-year-olds to watch. By the time I was 10 I had seen Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Everyone had. I don’t know anyone now or then who hasn’t seen this movie.

There are a ton of problems with that. One would be Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn). Jeff is a great character. He’s a surfer and a stoner and talks like he is from California. Gnarly, dude. He orders a pizza to his high school Social Studies class. He is a “pothead,” or what we would have called a “burnout,” and he’s funny. Do you know how many guys in my high school wanted to be and emulated Jeff Spicoli?

The bigger problem with this is that it does not deal with reality. Teachers in the 80s were not like Mr. Hand (Ray Walston). My first day of elementary school, first grade, they brought us all into the gym, sat us on the floor, and the principal came out with a paddle about three feet long. It had holes drilled in it. He paddled kids at will with that thing. It was brutal!

In high school I was friends with many guys like Jeff Spicoli. One was from the south and to protect him, we will call him Jerry. Jerry was a big guy, 250 or so, 6’3”, and he had a southern accent. So picture a large Sean Penn going “Ok, dude,” with a southern drawl. We hung out a little bit. He was a junior, I was a freshman at the time. One day, coming out of school, a wrestler pushed Jerry in the back. Jerry turned around and told him to f#$% off. The kid threw a punch. The kid was dumb, and small, but big-headed because he was a wrestler. Jerry kicked the crap out of him and put him in a choke hold and told him to apologize. A teacher, the wrestling coach, came running out of the school, grabbed Jerry, picked him up by his neck, and pinned him against the side of the school and yelled at him for two minutes while Jerry turned ten shades of red. Another teacher stopped it after a couple of minutes and Jerry got expelled for fighting and assaulting a teacher. I guess his neck hurt the hands of the teacher choking him. Jerry never ever returned to our school.

I saw a lot of teachers assault kids in my elementary and high school. Jeff Spicolis, the ones that were brash, did not last long. They were smacked, hit, or just straight kicked out of school, quietly. No one ever knew what happened to them, unless you saw it with your own eyes.

4. The Breakfast Club (1985) — Directed by John Hughes — R

The movie was loved by so many who idealized all the factions of 80s high school life coming together peacefully, smoking pot in Saturday school and living happily ever after. Give me a break. The “brain” Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall) would have gotten his ass kicked by The Criminal John Bender (Judd Nelson) and The Athlete Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez). One day of hanging out together would not have mended fences. I went to high school with kids I knew from kindergarten. Knowing them my whole life did not make us friends. I spent more time with them in classes through elementary school than their parents did, and many of them wouldn’t spit on me. If you were locked in that room on a Saturday with them, you’d keep your mouth shut or they would beat you up, or have all their friends make fun of you on Monday.

It’s a great movie, but completely unrealistic, and you all know that! We like it for the idea of this happening, but do you know how many kids were inspired by The Breakfast Club to just be friends with an “Athlete,” only to have that athlete kick the crap out of them? I think I saw The Breakfast Club when I was maybe 10 years old, and I knew at that time, never going to happen. My friends laughed at this movie.

In the 6th grade, I can’t believe I am going to tell this story, it’s really embarrassing. I had a crush on a girl. She would have been “out of my league.” I would have been The Nerd? The half-basketcase maybe going to be a criminal? A lot of kids didn’t fit those molds. Anyway, yes, partially inspired by The Breakfast Club (eyeroll), I had a crush on who I thought of as a Princess. All girls were princesses to me at the time, what did I know. Anyway, I left her poems and gifts in her locker. I would sneak them in. She was in the locker next to mine, and anytime she would come and open it I would just, I don’t know, sneakily put them in her locker. Anyway, this went on for six months! I was in love with this girl! She was amazing. The week before, I had put a cute stuffed duck in her locker, pulled it off without her seeing. This week I had another poem and stuffed animal. I would put them in brown paper bags. It was a big operation. So I was waiting there, buying time, waiting for her to open her locker. Oh crap, she’s with her mean friend! I kind of tucked my head in my locker, and I could hear them talking. Her friend said, “Man, that guy next to your locker is so weird!” and then it was muffled and something like “kinda scum,” damn all the slamming lockers, and I heard the girl I was in love with say, “I know.” At that moment I hated The Breakfast Club and everything it ever stood for. It took me some years to get over this, and I still blame it partially on Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy.

5. Sixteen Candles (1984) — Directed by John Hughes — PG

This movie didn’t really age well. It was rated PG even though the entire movie seems to revolve around sex and parties, and I was so confused by people laughing at Long Duck Dong. I was too young to get the joke when I watched this movie. It turns out it wasn’t funny. To me this movie was always confusing and just, I don’t know, bad. Samantha (Molly Ringwald) is crazy for this guy Jake (Michael Schoeffling) who has never even noticed her before. I can relate!

I watched this one with my girl cousins and they loved it and thought it was so hilarious, and I remember just thinking over and over, when is the funny part coming. Most 80s movies that have a girl or guy longing after a stuck-up preppy, the person doing the longing ends up with the friend. Like in Teen Wolf, the Wolf ends up with the girl who has coached him through all his problems. Not Sixteen Candles. Not only does the guy grace the girl by liking her, but he also hands off his drunken girlfriend to another guy. She is so drunk she can’t remember if she slept with nerdy Ted (Anthony Michael Hall) or not! Was that funny? What a knight in shining armor this Jake is. He makes Samantha’s birthday special by noticing her! .

Sixteen Candles was bad for many reasons, but the worst was that it was rated PG. I might have been 10 the first time I saw this movie. I was encouraged to watch it! Mindbender for sure. High school looked like a big drunken confusing party. Again, my female cousins just so loved Jake and thought he could do no wrong. What chance did a nerdy little kid like me have in high school when compared to the arrogant and brash Jake? Apparently he could just have his pick of the best girls and it was ok. I’m still confused by the jokes and the core of this movie.

6. Weird Science (1985) — Directed by John Hughes — PG-13

A PG-13 movie full of drugs and half-dressed fully grown women dating teenagers! Fantastic! What is going on in my life right now? Everyone freaked out over Mrs. Robinson, but two geeky guys making a woman on their computer and dating and presumably having sex with her was ok? Yes, the movie is hilarious, but did anyone stop and look at this movie before it hit the screen? Now I love Weird Science as a joke of a movie as an adult. As a child it’s all kinds of confusing even at 13. The messages in this movie have probably outdated themselves, but they were always problematic if we are honest.

Weird Science, for the very few who have never seen it, is about Gary Wallace (Anthony Michael Hall) and Wyatt Donnelly (Ilan Mitchell-Smith), two very nerdy kids playing around with Wyatt’s computer one night. They do some sort of “weird science” with the computer, and in a Frankenstein-like storm they create a woman, Lisa (Kelly LeBrock). She says she is theirs, like they own her and can do whatever they want with her. She is much older. In the movie it does not say her age, but in real life Kelly LeBrock was 24. Wyatt and Gary were supposed to be 15 in the movie, and they were 16 in real life. Today this movie would never be made, of course, but put that next to the fact of how tremendously popular it was. It only made 24 million at the box office against movies like Back to the Future, which was a hit making three times its budget, but where Weird Science became insanely popular was on cable TV and in the rental market. Everyone, and I mean everyone, had seen Weird Science. They even created a tv show based on this movie.

The idea that you could date an older woman as a high school student was a dream of many boys in the 1980s. The thing that was so shocking in The Graduate became a kind of given in the 80s. Weird Science wasn’t even a controversial movie!

7. Beverly Hills Cop (1984) — Directed by Martin Brest — R

Beverly Hills Cop was rated R for strong language, violence, nudity, and drug references. It was also the highest grossing movie of 1984. It made 314 million dollars, beating out Ghostbusters, Gremlins, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Think about that. Movies that make that much money generally have to have a kids’ audience. Eddie Murphy was coming off of Delirious, his outrageous comedy show. I saw this too, and I would have been like 8 years old.

Beverly Hills Cop is a great movie, but it’s full of drugs, cursing, and some nudity. There is no way I’m letting my 8-year-old watch this movie. The movie deals with race and stereotyping, gay jokes, nudity and strip clubs, and a lot of violence. Great for a nice family outing. I’m not sure how this movie muddied the waters on any of these subjects for kids. Eddie Murphy was breaking barriers and challenging the status quo of what people thought of as the hero of a movie. Plus he was ridiculously funny, but not for kids.

There are things in this movie that could not make it to film today. Racism and prejudice were fine if they were jokes, right? Many of these movies suffer from this, and this is part of my point about comedies in the 80s. If you were joking you could say anything. Beverly Hills Cop made Eddie Murphy the hero though, and that might be the first time that a Black man was the hero of a movie with white supporting actors. It’s groundbreaking for that.

I’m not going to go into all the controversies. I’ll only say that for me, the biggest problem I had was watching my older nephew Todd try to put a banana in the tailpipe of his dad’s 1979 Oldsmobile Monte Carlo, burning the crap out of his hand and sending the banana shooting out of the back like a rocket. You cannot do this gag if the car is running.

8. Bachelor Party (1984) — Directed by Neal Israel — R

I don’t even know what to say about this movie. I think I saw this the first time when I was probably 12. The movie should probably be rated X. It’s mind-blowing how many bad situations are in this movie. I feel like people would go to jail for making this movie today, and I’m pretty sure my parents would go to jail for letting me watch it at 12 years old.

Bachelor Party (1984) stars Tom Hanks as Rick Gassko, a fun-loving school bus driver (yes bus driver) who gets engaged to Debbie (Tawny Kitaen) despite the disapproval of her uptight, wealthy parents. His friends throw him a wild bachelor party at a hotel that quickly spirals completely out of control with drugs, prostitutes, and general mayhem. They bring a donkey to the party, and the donkey eats a bowl of drugs and dies. They had to figure out how to get rid of the body.

That’s not even close to the bad part. Picture this: I’m sitting in the living room with two of my aunts, my mom, and maybe two of my sisters. The men in my family didn’t watch a lot of movies at get-togethers like this. They played cards, Euchre, all the time, until one or two in the morning. The only time they got up was to rotate partners and use the restroom.

I’m in the living room with my sisters and aunts. My sisters are older and dying at this movie. It comes to the part at the strip club with the ladies there, and the male stripper puts his junk in a hot dog bun and one of the ladies tries to pull it off the plate, but of course it’s attached. My aunts went 20 shades of red and my sisters are dying laughing. I am ridiculously traumatized at this point. How do I get out of this room and never watch this movie again? My cousins were there, older than me, and they were laughing their heads off. You know that moment when something embarrassing happens like that, and you just want to sneak out of a room but you don’t want anyone to notice? Yep, that was me. I knew my cousins would call me out, so I was frozen, turning shades of red with the tops of my ears on fire. God help me.

9. Risky Business (1983) — Directed by Paul Brickman — R

Are you kidding me? A 17-year-old opens a brothel in his apartment and gets rewarded in the end by being accepted to Princeton? Tom Cruise plays Joel Goodson, a 17-year-old high school senior living in the wealthy Chicago North Shore suburb of Glencoe. His father wants him to attend Princeton. When his parents go away on a two-week vacation, his dad’s Porsche gets damaged and Joel opens a brothel in his house for a night to pay for the damages. This movie is wild. Rebecca De Mornay plays Lana, the prostitute. Not only does Joel use women and profit from it, he is rewarded over and over for it. Lana is used throughout the whole movie and is seemingly okay with it. This isn’t Pretty Woman. This is a twenty-something prostitute with a 17-year-old boy. She makes money for him and herself with his friends, then she does wish fulfillment sex on a train with him for being a great guy, I guess, and there is zero, zip, zilch, no romance in this movie. Joel goes off to Princeton, and Lana goes back to the street. Wham, bam, thanks so much, ma’am.

Just the message of this movie I think messed people up. It was also probably the most parodied movie in history for about 40 years. A kid sliding around his house in his sunglasses, button-up shirt, underwear, and socks was done in hundreds of commercials, TV shows, cartoons, and even other movies. It is iconic. It made Tom Cruise a star, but the premise of the movie is eye-poppingly bad.

The scene I remember, again while watching with my parents, is the train sex scene. I don’t know why they would show this to a little kid. To be honest, this was one of those movies where I was too young and just sort of playing with my toys while it was on. I didn’t understand much of this movie the first time I saw it. I just have almost a still-frame memory of them on the train. I’m not saying the movie is traumatic, but if you were a guy who wanted to emulate this kind of “success” in your life, wouldn’t you turn into a douche? Explains a lot about some 80s muscle car-driving twenty-year-olds, when you think about it. I say some here because many, many guys in the 80s knew better. I had some bad role models and I had some very good ones. But this movie didn’t help.

10. Grease (1978) — Directed by Randal Kleiser — PG

Ok, now I’m taking on the big one! The highest grossing movie of 1978. The movie is still beloved by many women of Gen X. I know I’m putting myself in danger here. It’s ok though, I live on the edge! Tell me more, tell me more how this movie is bad. Well, the messaging in this film is over the top bad. On top of that, every girl in America saw it. Not only did they see it, they had the tape on repeat, and when the VHS came out, they had that VCR playing it until the tracking wore out. I’m talking girls, 8,9,10 year olds. This was the Frozen of 1978, think of it that way.

The movie is about teenagers drinking and smoking and having sex and maybe abortions, kinda. Basically, Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) and Danny (John Travolta) have a summer romance on the beach, then unexpectedly end up at the same high school, where Danny ignores her in front of his friends because she cramps his cool. He shuns her and tells lies about what they did together sexually. At one point there is a scene where one of the boys basically tries to force himself on a girl at the drive-in, forcefully kissing her until she says no. Completely acceptable behavior in 1978 I guess.

Rizzo (Stockard Channing) is the tough, sharp-tongued leader of the Pink Ladies. She’s Kenickie’s (Jeff Conaway) on-again, off-again girlfriend. They have sex in a car with a condom that breaks and they continue anyway. They break up. Being that this is rated PG, I watched this with my cousins at like 9 years old. My female cousins loved this movie! I did not.

The kicker, of course, is that Sandy is a nice, wholesome girl. Danny is the head of a leather-jacketed rebellious bad boys gang. We don’t have to talk about the merits of how much gangs were romanticized in the 70s and early 80s, then demonized in the 90s. Sandy is a good girl. Danny is a bad boy. By the end, Sandy comes out completely changed. She is wearing leather and is now one of the girls Danny’s boys won’t make fun of him for being with. Girl power! Yeah, just what every girl wants, to become whatever the guy wants her to be, right? Changing yourself to fit in is a big message in this movie, alongside all the drinking, smoking, sex, and rebellion. School is not cool, but being in a gang in love is all you need!

Finish Him!

So I’ll be open here. These movies shaped me in a lot of ways. There were times, if I’m honest, I thought this was how guys were supposed to behave. There were times I didn’t think it was funny, but everyone seemed to be laughing, even the adults. Most of these moments were very confusing or embarrassing for me. That’s just being honest. I knew this isn’t the way I wanted to be, but really thought that’s what everyone wanted guys, and girls to be.

No, kids shouldn’t watch them, but they are very obviously marketed directly at kids. These are teens, right? As I said, seven out of ten of these movies were about high school teens. They were marketed to teens. Why did adults want to see this? Why would adults want to see teens having sex, doing drugs, drinking and acting like this? That’s a question I’m not sure anyone wants to answer.

I am betting there are a lot of Gen Xers out there who felt the same way I did watching these movies. I’m sure the setting and experience were different, but the feelings of confusion and embarrassment were the same. I’m not sure what to do with that. These are classic films from that era. I don’t think they should be banned, locked away, or never seen, but I don’t think kids should be watching them either. I also certainly don’t think we should let our children ride their bikes thirty miles away, not knowing where they are, while they buy a ticket for On Golden Pond and sneak into Porky’s. I don’t think we should be telling our young girls that if they dress in leather and go along with whatever the guy wants, they’ll be happiest they have ever been. As adults, we can process these as jokes, maybe, even though many of the jokes are not funny, some are not even jokes, but as kids, they are just confusing and embarrassing, I think.

I am anticipating some people being upset with me for this. Yes I am being humorous, but I certainly understand when movies come to mean something to you. It’s a personal thing, and it doesn’t matter how bad they are or what the message is. If you want to leave a rebuttal in the comments I listen and respond to everyone.

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