Molly Ringwald was the queen of the big screen in the 1980s, starring in hit movies like Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club to name a few.
And while she admits that those projects were the catalyst for her decades-long career in Hollywood, she has some issues with the way they were made. “Molly Ringwald has now spent most of her adult life, as far as I can tell, bashing [her] movies,” Megyn said. “She came out at and and talked about John Hughes and how the movies were too misogynistic and #MeToo-y.” And now the actress is saying the films would need more diversity if they were remade today because they are “very white.”
On Thursday’s show, Megyn was joined by Andrew Klavan, host of The Daily Wire’s Andrew Klavan Show, to discuss Ringwald’s racially charged remarks and why she should “just be quiet.”
‘Really, Very White’
Ringwald featured prominently in several of director John Hughes’ coming-of-age “brat pack” movies in the 1980s, but she doesn’t think they have aged well. During an appearance at the Miami Film Festival over the weekend to accept Variety’s Creative Vanguard Award, she claimed the films “don’t really represent what it is to be a teenager” today.
RINGWALD: Those movies, the movies that I am so well known for, they were very much of the time. And if you were to remake that now, I think it would have to be much more diverse. And it would have to be, you know, you couldn’t make a movie that white now. Those movies are really, really, very white. And they don’t really represent what it is to be a teenager in a school in America today, I don’t think. But I think they were really great and of that time, but they were his experience — John Hughes’s experience. He was writing to his own personal experience.
This is not the first time Ringwald has spoken out about her most famous work. At the height of the #MeToo movement, she wrote an essay for The New Yorker about her character in The Breakfast Club, Claire Standish. “I can see now, Bender sexually harasses Claire throughout the film. When he’s not sexualizing her, he takes out his rage on her with vicious contempt, calling her ‘pathetic,’ mocking her as ‘Queenie,'” she wrote.
She blamed the film for reinforcing stereotypes. “If attitudes toward female subjugation are systemic, and I believe that they are, it stands to reason that the art we consume and sanction plays some part in reinforcing those same attitudes,” Ringwald added.
And she did not mince words when talking about Hughes as a screenwriter and person. “Back then, I was only vaguely aware of how inappropriate much of John’s writing was, given my limited experience and what was considered normal at the time,” she wrote. “I was well into my thirties before I stopped considering verbally abusive men more interesting than the nice ones.”
‘Just Be Quiet’
While Ringwald may have gotten applause from the adoring crowd, Megyn was less than impressed. “I’m so sick of this nonsense – so, what? You’re sorry that you were in a film where white people are the dominant characters,” she asked. “Just be quiet. Let your art speak for itself. We enjoyed it, and you’re making us enjoy it less with your political commentary.”
As a screenwriter and author, Klavan is acutely familiar with the kind of “preachment” going on in Hollywood. “Everything you watch is an act of preachment where they’re telling you not just what the world is like – which is what art is supposed to do – they’re telling you what they believe the world should be,” he explained. “And if you don’t like it, there’s something wrong with you.”
For instance, Klavan noted “there is no such thing as a white person married to another white person” or “a male hero” in movies and TV shows today. “It becomes kind of offensive after a while because I don’t care if you want to make a woman a hero, I don’t care about who you are, what color the person is,” he said. “I care about being preached to by people I happen to know are some of the worst people in America.”
He believes Ringwald is preaching to the same choir Katie Couric was when she claimed Donald Trump’s popularity is driven by “anti-intellectualism” and resentment. “She is essentially just kowtowing to an elite cabal of mostly white people who are imposing this,” Klavan added.
Ultimately, he said Ringwald’s remarks are a reminder of why ‘new’ media and entertainment platforms are so important. “The only right way for us to go now is to build a parallel media,” Klavan concluded, “where the people who tell the truth, the people who whose predictions turn out to be true, and the people whose ideas are found in reality and, therefore, make reality better are going to attract a larger audience.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Klavan by tuning in to episode 769 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.