Today the kids were out of school so I pulled up on Netflix the great movie from my teenage years, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It was one of the most important movies of my younger days, and even today it still holds up, though it wouldn't be nearly as hard to get Sloan out of school and Principal Rooney would simply GPS track Ferris' cell phone. Technology ruins movies!
But today I recruited my son, who will turn nine next month, to watch this movie with me. It's the first time I had seen this movie in awhile, and while I still enjoyed it (and he enjoyed it, too), I think I now see it more through the eyes of a parent. Not only was I thinking throughout the movie that I'm likely giving my son some bad ideas that will germinate when he gets into high school (or even junior high), but I also started realizing that the heroes were likely people who had been traumatized to a dangerous level (Cameron, who not only hated his father for his abusive upbringing but also had found somebody in Ferris who was just as bad and just as controlling as his father) or who were really just kinda jerky.
I mean, Sloan is great, and remains the pure center of the movie. Sloan may be the reason most guys loved this movie. She's hot, she's up for anything, and she even likes his nerdy friend.
But Ferris? Here's a kid who has been pegged correctly by both Cameron and his sister...he always wins, he always gets what he wants, he always flies through life on his charm. Most of us knew somebody like Ferris, and he might have been well-known by every social clique at the school, but likely he wasn't well-liked in reality. Here's a guy who lets people raise money for his imaginary kidney condition, who skips school Nine Times a semester just because he doesn't like to go, and who twists his parents around his finger through his lies and deceptions. When finally stood up to by the heroic principal, he destroys that man's life. I mean, the question we ought to ask should be, is Ferris really just a jerk?
Yep, we all know guys like Ferris Bueller. They skate through life and treat people as disposable objects even as most people try to play fair. Maybe we shouldn't celebrate people like him, but turn him into a cautionary tale of what a wasted life really looks like.
OK, this was mostly sarcasm. But not all of it...
