Final Essay

Heidi Ault

Final Essay

    Films today are all about action, sex and drama. We see them rise through the box offices and release on DVD with rave reviews, then eventually those same movies that we once loved are replaced by the next up-in-coming film. Two movies that I have recently watched, including Sixteen Candles and Napoleon Dynamite have remained timeless favorites. These movies have not been replaced due to the coming of age themes throughout the movies. Both movies show a sense of “growing up” in their own ways. They also show the different cliques throughout the high school scene. Such as the jocks, nerds and preps. We can all relate to this because these cliques tend to follow us throughout life whether we realize it or not. Another reason these movies have seemed to stay so popular is because of their hidden moral. While continuing to entertain you these movies display a hidden message that, things may not always work out the way you intended, but thing tend to work out in the end. This tends to resonate with each of us as we have most likely been in a similar situation ourselves and we find it interesting to see how others deal with the problems that you have also been faced with and overcome.

    The coming of age theme seem to rule constantly through both movies. A popular subject in both seemed to be boobs, between girls and boys. In Sixteen Candles boobs are first discussed when they see Caroline Mulford in the shower who happens to be going with Jake Ryan (Sam's crush). She is jealous because she thinks that Jake will never be into her because she does not have the body that Caroline does. Also in Sixteen Candles, when Sam came home from school on her birthday, she walked into a house filled with Grandparents because of her sister's upcoming wedding. When greeted by her second set of Grandparents, they were commenting on how big she had grown and that she had finally, “gotten her boobies.” The scene then cuts out and you see her laying in bed frustrated saying, “I just got felt up by my Grandmother.” In Napoleon Dynamite you see the topic of boobs when Uncle Rico gets in the door-to-door salesman business and he begins selling supplements for, “Bust Must Plus” which advertised that it made your breast size ridiculously larger. Another coming of age topic in both movies was self image. You see this first in Sixteen Candles in the opening scene where Sam is looking into the mirror at herself on the morning of her sixteenth birthday and expecting some major change to her body, or at least to feel a major change in it. You see this in Napoleon Dynamite  first when Napoleon is showing Pedro to his locker on his first day of school and he is making himself seem popular saying that there were several gangs in the school and that a couple of them had asked him to join their because of his “skills.” There is also relationship triangles in the area of coming of age. In Sixteen Candles it is seen when Sam begins crushing on Jake Ryan when he is already dating Caroline, and when “the geek” gets with Jake’s girlfriend after he had him take her home the night of the party when she was very drunk. In Napoleon Dynamite you see relationship triangles when Pedro asks Deb out when really, Napoleon likes her, also when Pedro asks Summer Wheatley out to the dance when she was already with

We see popularity or cliques represented in both of these movies through friendships, relationships, clothing, and language. Cliques we typically see in high school such as the jocks,

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popular people and the nerds as they have come to be referred to. These cliques seem to separate themselves from others and form their own tight-knit group of friends who typically do not allow outsiders to associate with them. In Sixteen Candles in the first 6 minutes there is a representation of cliques where there are a line of teenagers wearing the same sunglasses which tells us that that would be in the popular group, and at the end of the line is a kid with space-aged looking sunglasses which tell me he is part of the nerd or geek group as they would say. Another example of cliques in Sixteen candles is when Sam and her friend get on the bus to go home and you can see all of the different “groups” of people and the diversity of them when they are all sitting so close to each other and the interactions that they make with each other. Then, when “the geek” convinces Sam to let him borrow her panties to show his “Dipshits” and other “geeks” that he “scored.” An example of cliques in Napoleon Dynamite also happened within the first 6 minutes of the movie when all of the kids were in gym class and separated themselves into groups, and Napoleon himself was playing alone. You also see a harsh example of cliques when you see Napoleon and another student bullied several times in the hallways all throughout the movie. Also when, Pedro asks Summer Wheatly to go to the dance with him by baking her a cake. She then rejected him simply because he was not considered cool.

    In movies you are almost always introduced to some sort of hidden message or moral. In these two movies, they happen to be the same. That things may not always go as planned, but everything tends to work out in the end. You see this in Napoleon Dynamite when Summer Wheatley and Pedro Sanchez present their speech for class President. Summer's speech appealed to mainly what would be considered the popular group because she wanted to change lunches and get new cheer leading uniforms. Pedro on the other hand, thought the odd were all against him because she offered good changes and her skit was very popular and went along with a very popular song. Despite his odds, Pedro went out and made his speech with point about supporting local clubs and ensuring that if they were to vote for him, “All of their wildest dream would come true.” To his surprise, Napoleon went out on stage and poured his heart out in a hilarious dance that ended up winning the crowd over. Also, when the movie ended and Napoleon seemed to be with Deb. In Sixteen Candles, this is shown when Sam walked out of the church after getting her sister’s veil and being disappointed that she did not get to see her off, and Jake is sitting behind a crowd of people waiting for her, then he takes her to his house and has a birthday cake for her to show her that even though she didn't think that he knew she existed, he still knew about her birthday and had her make a wish, but her dream was to be with him and that had already come true.

     As you can see there are many reasons that these movies have been dubbed timeless favorites and have remained so popular through the years. They both share common characteristics of the struggles and the lifestyles as we grow up which we can all relate to or will relate to at some time in our lives, all while keeping us entertained. That is another aspect of why these movies are so popular, because they draw us in with the comedy and the romance all while leaving us with a lesson and allowing us to have that fuzzy feeling that no matter how hard things seem to be, all will go well in the end if you do not give up.

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Sources

Napoleon Dynamite. Dir. Jared Hess. Perf. Jon Heder, Efran Ramirez, Jon Gries. Fox Searchlight, 2004. DVD.

Sixteen Candles. Dir. John Hughes. Perf. Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael-Hall. Universal Pictures, 1984. DVD.

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