A Love Letter To "Pretty In Pink" (1986)
The Impact Of A John Hughes Masterpiece
Image by L.E. Wilson from RedBubble based on work by Margrith Barille, and Brigitte Werner on Pixabay
After watching hundreds of movies, the character that I relate to most is Andie from Pretty in Pink (1986). Andie Walsh (Molly Ringwald) is a teenage girl from the poor side of town who makes her own prom dress so she can attend her high school’s dance. As a college student, I once made a dress for New Year’s out of a blue polkadot bedsheet, and with limited sewing skills, it was basically a hand-stitched body wrap. But it worked as a dress. No one ever noticed it as unusual (perhaps dim lights and alcohol consumption helped), and I got to go to a party, dine at a French restaurant (Au Pied De Cochon) after midnight, stay up until dawn, and have a memorable experience because of it.
Pretty in Pink (1986) is a drama directed by Howard Deutch and written/produced by John Hughes about Andie Walsh (Molly Ringwald), an independent, essentially parent-less, teenager from the poor side of town who is caught in a love triangle that forces her to rise above peer pressure and class discrimination.
Life Lesson: “Feel the fear and do it anyway.” – Susan Jeffers
🍿Movie Scene Link (movie quote)
The spirit of Andie, of facing the fear and doing it anyway, carried me through it. Without that drive I would have missed out on so much. This is the power and the potential of movies, which can model inspiring, beneficial, and constructive behavior that can positively affect audiences. Through movies we can be exposed to different values and get a glimpse of the consequences and benefits of being guided by various principles or beliefs. In Pretty in Pink, we see someone who demonstrates the courage of her convictions, is self-reliant, outspoken, and resilient. It’s an education in character, in every sense of the word. What better Life Lesson is there?
There is a brilliant and moving scene in the movie that shows all these characteristics playing out at once. Andie is standing outside, pacing, hesitating, about entering the dance and facing her classmates, some of whom are quite mean-spirited. Seeing the discomfort, the fear, the pep talk she gives herself, and the courage it takes for Andie to go through with it is quite impactful. Yes, at times it is a bit uncomfortable to watch, but this scene explains why of all the characters that I’ve met in movies, Andie remains the one that feels like being forced to look in a mirror and cringe at the truth revealed. And isn’t art supposed to hold a mirror to society and illuminate our inner workings so that we can challenge ourselves?
This truth of ourselves that we wish we could hide, or wish weren’t true, is painful indeed. For me, the scene that makes me cringe the most in Pretty in Pink is when Andie is trying to hide where she lives from her date. She wants to hide her poverty, her shame. But her date, a rich guy—bless his heart—is so confused at her request to drop her off somewhere else that he keeps insisting on taking her home because being ashamed of where he lives has never—ever—occurred to him. It’s an amazingly intense scene.
Growing up fluctuating between rich kids and poor kids, I understand something about the pain of both. But from my experience, rich kids don’t typically feel that terrible shame about all the mundane stuff that is around us. Poor kids, meanwhile, can feel a real depth of embarrassment about their families, about their clothes, about their homes, and all other material possessions that many rich kids don’t even notice. There is a scene in Pretty in Pink where Andie is driving through the wealthy neighborhood looking at the grand homes and says, “That one’s my favorite. The house! I wonder what it’s like inside. You know what the really sad thing is, though? I bet the people that live there don’t think it’s half as pretty as I do.” I think there is a lot of truth in that.
Something else I noticed about the rich kids that I interacted with growing up is how carefree they were. They didn’t have to worry much about grades, so the social life, parties, extracurricular activities etc., were more important than studying, although they did do well in school. They didn’t care about the material stuff, so they didn’t look after their cars or expensive clothes or toys the way poorer kids did with the things they considered valuable. Everything was pretty disposable to a lot of well off kids because everything was easily replaceable. So the rich kids in my life matched some of the traits of the rich kids as portrayed in Pretty in Pink, who trash their homes at parties because, as Andie’s nemesis Steff (James Spader) says, “Come on, look around. Would I treat my parents’ house like this if money was any kind of issue?”
And of course I was not a rich kid. I was Andie, studying all the time, even at parties. I brought notecards with me to flip through with equations I needed to memorize. When Andie’s friend Jena (Alexa Kenin) asks her, “Why do you study so much? It makes me ill. I just don’t see the point.” She responds, “You don’t? —I don’t want to work in a record store my whole life.” What a straightforward way to describe this powerful motivation to improve one’s condition, a self-driving force that rich kids can never truly experience.
But the carefree attitude is really the gift of being well-off, while being forced to struggle with the limitations of poverty is as angst riddled as it gets. It’s very hard, I think, for someone who had a privileged upbringing to understand the feelings of shame of someone who has struggled financially. That’s why this movie is so good. We get both sides. Although the poor girl and the rich guy have difficulty communicating with each other, literally because they come from different worlds, they learn to overcome their differences and bridge the gap that is between them with the power of love. Isn’t that a fantastic story?
So there are all of these scenes where I see myself in Andie. I also had a classmate who tried to persuade me to be his girlfriend, as Andie’s friend Phil “Duckie” Dale (Jon Cryer) does to her in the movie. But like Andie, I was not interested in him no matter what he did or said to try to impress me. I hope I was kind, but it can get pretty annoying when someone keeps insisting on trying to form a romantic relationship when the feelings aren’t there. It’s such a vital and important lesson to learn to respect someone else’s wishes even if you really hope the other person would come around. In the movie, Andie’s pursuer eventually learns to accept rejection because he broadens his mind and sees things from her perspective. Specifically, Duckie sees that the guy Andie has fallen in love with, Blane McDonough (Andrew McCarthy), is a good person, although his previous bias against the wealthy prevented him from seeing it.
And there is one more reason, the most painful of all, that I identify with Andie. She is an essentially parentless teenager, which was my case as well. In the movie Andie’s mother has left them, and her father has not recovered and may be an alcoholic. Mine is more typical, in a sense. My parents divorced when I was around four years old and most of my childhood was spent living with different relatives, mainly my maternal grandparents, and even with friends and their families. The void and pain of not having two parents reliably at home is tremendous. It’s very discombobulating and unnerving, with long-lasting effects. But there aren’t too many movies that portray this need and want by teenagers to have at least one caring, loving, capable parent at home. And there is an argument to be made that the teen years are when children need the most parental attention, but too many people see teens as “young adults” who can take care of themselves, when the truth is they need a tremendous amount of guidance during this key developmental stage.
Andie has a pseudo mother in the movie, Iona (Annie Potts), her avant-garde boss at the record store she works at, whom she confides in and is the one who gives her the material that Andie uses to make her prom dress. I had two middle school teachers whom I went to talk to about my problems, even when I was in high school. I would drop in after school and just chat with them. I’m so lucky I had them, and they were so kind to counsel me. (Thank you Ms Tilney Wickersham and Mrs Clemontene Rountree.) I guess we look for what we need, and I needed these pseudo mothers a great deal. I actually believed my third grade teacher was my mother in disguise. I thought she was a secret agent who couldn’t live with us or be with us most of the time except covertly for a few hours at school. When I moved up to fourth grade, I was really confused as to why she stayed behind. Even as you grow past being a little kid into a brooding teenager and an adult, the desire to want to be taken care of by parents doesn’t disappear. I understood Andie’s pain, and the loss of not having your real mother there to guide you or comfort you in the way that only mothers can for their children.
So it’s such a gift to watch a beautiful movie represent your lived experience, your internal pain, and offer a brave and empowering way to handle the angst and the shame and the anger. Why don’t they make movies like this anymore?
The most instructive and valuable aspect of Pretty in Pink to me is that Andie is never portrayed as a victim. She is a hero in the truest sense of the word. She is a warrior who takes her life in her own hands and works to improve her situation. She is smart, she is confident, she is self assured, she is crafty. And in the end she finds happiness, no—she fights for her happiness—as did I, and I truly wonder how much this character became a role model for me and what impact this movie had in my eventual success, particularly when I was vacillating between being a good kid and being quite irresponsible.
I can’t know for sure, but I suspect that Pretty in Pink helped me a lot, and at the very least it is one of the movies that inspired me to create “moviewise: Life Lessons From Movies.” In a sense, this site became another way to parent myself, to find the advice and counsel from movies that I didn’t get from my biological parents, and it’s definitely helped me develop better, healthier, insights and coping mechanisms, which I hope is also true for readers.
Pretty in Pink, by the way, also has the best soundtrack of any movie I’ve ever seen, with many of the songs specifically written or re-recorded for the film. It is one of the most acclaimed musical compilations in modern cinema, and in 2013 was ranked #11 in Rolling Stone’s list of greatest soundtracks. The music, especially combined with the scenes, is so perfect, so beautiful, so touching.
Oh, and Pretty in Pink is very funny too. It has great dialogue and hilarious antics, particularly by the very talented Jon Cryer and comedian Andrew Dice Clay. There is so much of life in this movie! What a masterpiece it is. Thank you writer/producer John Hughes and director Howard Deutch, sincerely and from the bottom of my heart, for making this jewel.
Please, please, go see it for yourself.
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What a wonderful review! And thank you for sharing your own experiences with us 😊 Pretty in Pink is by far my favorite Molly Ringwald movie. Her portrayal of Andie was sympathetic and powerful. I agree about the music too -- such a great soundtrack! 💜
This movie came out when I was in 6th grade! It was huge, I have probably seen it so many times I should be embarrassed. In the book, Andie ends up with Ducky. I always felt it was one of those movies where the girl has to pick between two guys, neither a good match for her. Like Reality Bites. I always wished she would have chosen to stay single and not settle.