Social Justice Warrior’s have a new target: Generation X and the movies they love.
New York Post film critic Sara Stewart claimed in her op-ed on Nov. 24 that the classic Gen-X coming-of-age movie Sixteen Candles should be retired because it is “sexist and racist.”
Piggybacking on fellow NY Post writer’s call to ban Gone With the Wind, Stewart says Sixteen Candles repulsed her for their celebration of “racism and date rape” as well as the lack of understanding for the geeky character played by Anthony Michael Hall.
Stewart claims that the film’s racism centers around the character of Chinese foreign exchange student Long Duk Dong.
“The racism and sexism in Hughes’ movie is so over the top, I have to hope any teens watching it today would view it as a shocking, old-timey artifact,” Stewart wrote in her op-ed. “Perhaps most glaringly, there’s Long Duk Dong (Gedde Watanabe), the Chinese foreign exchange student whose every mention is accompanied by the sound of a gong.”
The NY Post writer was also put off by the “pervasive racism” when Molly Ringwald’s character has an off-handed joke that she prefers white guys to black guys. Didn’t they have trigger warnings back in the 80’s?!
Other than racism and mistreating high school nerds, Sixteen Candles also “plays out like Date Rape 101 — and both of its male leads, supposedly the heroes, are actually terrible, terrible people.”
Who could imagine a world where high school jocks could be rude and obsessed with sex?
In the movie, the “perfect guy” discusses how he needs to leave his high school girlfriend because she parties too much and gets drunk too often. “I could violate her 10 different ways if I wanted to,” to which Hall’s character responds “what are you waiting for?”
Mr. Right asks Hall’s character to drive his drunk high school girlfriend home, and Hall get’s her more drunk and takes pictures of them with their clothes on. The patriarchy strikes again!
“Sixteen Candles should now be filed under Cautionary Tales of ’80s Cinema: Gather round, kiddies, and check out how rape and racism used to be hilarious punch lines,” The NY Post writer concluded in her op-ed.
It seems that Stewart’s high school was more like the show Glee where the paraplegic kid got to be on the football team, the heavy set girl and gay boy sang and danced in the hallway, and football player leaves his cheerleader girlfriend for the unfunny, socially conscious, musical geek.
This review should read more like a warning to millennials: SJW will stop at nothing to find something offensive. It’s only a matter of times before Mean Girls, American Pie, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, 10 Things I Hate About You, and Boyhood are deemed too politically incorrect for viewing.
