Why 'Sixteen Candles' is still lit at 40

Footloose. Sixteen Candles. Gremlins. Ghostbusters. What do all of these movies have in common? They turn 40 this year.

Age aside though, there’s something else they all share – the ability to conjure nostalgia. And that’s a powerful thing, says Media, Film and Communications senior lecturer Dr Rosemary Overell.

The etymology of nostalgia is about longing for a place that has been lost, Rosemary says.

“We often attach that affect or feeling to cultural objects or experiences that are linked to our early life, like our original home, life when we were growing up with our family.”

Dr Overell is a Xennial, someone born between 1977 and 1984, preceded by Gen X and followed by Millennials, then Gen Z.

These movies – Footloose, Sixteen Candles, Gremlins and Ghostbusters - continue to be popular, re-watched and talked about because they make people nostalgic.

Xennials wouldn’t have been old enough to enjoy these films at the cinema but would have likely rented the VHS version of it from their local video store and played it on the TV in their family lounge.

“In wanting to watch these films again it can make people long for their early life,” Rosemary says.

“We have that sense of wanting to go back to that experience, perhaps as we hit points within our lives which are marked out culturally and socially, and key points such as hitting middle age, as one is turning 40.”

Nostalgia can take many forms and be used to market items in a way so that they appeal to multiple generations at once.

Gen X, Xennials and Millennials are lucrative key markets that media producers and distributors target by putting films and cultural objects “back in our view”, she says. A recently released documentary, Brats, about the 1980s Brat Pack has been getting a bit of hype.

“That [documentary] will also take us back to wanting to re-watch the films, too. So those films are going to get extra traction and rewatches, re-releases on streaming sites or even remakes.”

Nostalgia can be generated for a generation who never experienced watching a VHS at home but targeted by the affect offered by the object, Rosemary says. Gen Z never sat through the “dreadful tracking” or tuning of a VHS but they can choose to experience this by applying a glitchy aesthetic or blurry VHS-like quality to images via apps on cellphones, she says.

“A popular film such as Sixteen Candles would have been rented many times and over time the images would distort as the tape wore out.”

The impact of these teen movies continues to be felt. Teen films existed during the 1950s but were primarily teen exploitation films, Rosemary says.

“The teen films of the ’80s shifted away from a cheesy tone to something a bit more serious.”

John Huges was big at the time, directing Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club.

“There’s a sort of knowingness, a kind of wink at the audience, which some would say was post-modern – where there’s this idea that the audience isn’t just passively consuming it but wants to be in on a more sophisticated media product.”

Characters in ’80s teen films were rebellious types, doing drugs and living fast, Rosemary says.

These traits were then mapped onto popular celebrities like those in the Brat Pack starring in these films and who were themselves living fast lives during that period of decadence right before the AIDs epidemic hit and the 1988 recession.

In spite of these events, movies starring rebellious teens stuck around

“So that kind of set a tone that I would say bled into the 90s, and then is kind of again re-done with things like Scream and Final Destination.”

Those horror movies were very post-modern, she says.

“Scream is a horror movie about horror movies, and it’s winking at the audience saying we’re taking off the schlocky ’80s horror movie by putting all these tropes in and having, in fact, the villain be the one who is a huge horror movie fan.”

Nostalgia is present not just in films but in shows which are now streamed on the likes of Netflix, such as Stranger Things.

“Stranger Things is kind of a horror supernatural show that also has ’80s elements,” Rosemary says.

Winona Ryder, known for starring in late ’80s and early ’90s films such as Heathers, Beetlejuice and Mermaids, plays mum to one of the characters of Stranger Things, making the show appeal to multiple markets and generations.

“It’s sort of exotic, it’s sort of throw-back stuff, it’s prior to social media, some world [Gen Z has] never experienced.

“But I suppose with nostalgia you’ve got to be careful that you don’t fall into the trap of going too romantic, because the ’80s was also a dreadful time.”

Both America and Aotearoa New Zealand had conservative governments, and both countries saw the rise of neoliberalism and lot of people out of work, she says.

“These films certainly repress and paper over this, they’re very middle class, and always with a happy ending.”

The nostalgia can be enjoyed but people aren’t completely seduced by it, she says.

“It becomes something you dip in and out of.”

Netflix show Riverdale is another good example of a show using nostalgia to appeal to more than one generation. The series features characters that appeared in Archie comics from the ’50s and ’60s but Riverdale reboots them in a modern-day, darker way, while starring actors who are well-known from the ’1980s and ’1990s – Molly Ringwald and the late Luke Perry.

Another show that seemingly blends decades is Twin Peaks. It was made in the ’90s by an amateur film director, and it had a “weird temporality”.

“They’re doing cocaine, and obviously it’s got the mod cons, television and everything, while it has this weird ’50s vibe to it.”

Director David Lynch produced a sequel in the past five years, which led to everyone who watched it the first time round wanting to re-watch it, while bringing in a new, younger audience.

Rosemary says the soundtrack had a ’50s style to it, featuring jazzy, croony music and beat poetry.

“That’s the thing with nostalgia, it sort of floats in a time which means it can kind of attach to multiple, different eras and sometimes run those eras in present.

“And it’s such a powerful feeling.”

Nostalgia can also be used in a negative way. Rosemary highlights conservative political parties saying they want to go back to a nostalgic time when New Zealanders “knew our place and were a Dominion”, for example.

Nostalgia can be used to underpin some pretty reactionary causes, she says.

“Trump sort of does that too.

“It’s compelling.”

Kōrero by internal communications adviser Koren Allpress