{"id":23616,"date":"2024-07-22T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-22T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=23616"},"modified":"2024-07-21T20:08:22","modified_gmt":"2024-07-22T03:08:22","slug":"the-delayed-revolution-of-risky-business-in-teen-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/the-delayed-revolution-of-risky-business-in-teen-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"The Delayed Revolution of Risky Business in Teen Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Every so often, The Criterion Collection turns heads by selecting a mainstream 1980s American comedy to enter its hallowed ranks. The Breakfast Club<\/em> and Bergman flying under the same banner proves a little much for some to swallow. Admittedly, the intellectual legacy of Risky Business<\/em>, which enters the collection this month, <\/em>has not been well-served by a parade of pants-free parties in honor of Tom Cruise\u2019s star-making strut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet Paul Brickman\u2019s 1983 film represents more than just a rare gem that happened to get past the goalie during the changing of the guard from New Hollywood to an era of corporate consolidation. Risky Business<\/em> marks the fulfillment and reinvention of the teen movie genre. Though an instant hit with fans and critics, the true meaning of its impact would take another generation to come into focus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brickman ran a decade ahead of James Carville in recognizing an organizing principle of American life so fundamental that it trickled down to the country\u2019s kids: \u201cIt\u2019s the economy, stupid.\u201d While few alive can remember otherwise, teenagers in a state of personal purgatory like Tom Cruise\u2019s Joel Goodson have not always been recognized as occupying a major life stage. Teens were not born; they were economically constructed. Only in the wake of post-World War II prosperity could the recognition of a distinct passage between childhood and adult labor force participation come into being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cohort became a major consumer target for industries like Hollywood, both as a subject of their stories and as a market for them. The genre often wears these tensions on its sleeve as it sells a vision of idealized, ecstatic youth while also reflecting an older generation\u2019s fears that any sign of adolescent indolence was a social problem. As he frets about his collegiate future, Cruise\u2019s Joel exists at the intersection of teen sex fantasies like Porky\u2019s<\/em> and very adult economic anxieties like Wall Street<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Joel\u2019s impotent fantasy that serves as the film\u2019s prologue, this privileged denizen of Chicago\u2019s lakeside suburbs gets into trouble trying to distinguish business from pleasure. The budding young capitalist overlearns the dogmatic instruction he receives in the Future Enterprisers club, so internalizing notions of meritocracy and the market that he sees any pursuit of his desire as inherently destructive. Joel\u2019s journey toward success (at least as the Reagan Era stood to grant it) comes from learning that sexuality does not need to be suppressed \u2013 merely sublimated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following a rendezvous with Rebecca De Mornay\u2019s escort Lana that unshackles Joel from his virginity, he spots an opportunity to bring a professional-class mindset to the world\u2019s oldest profession. In a pinch to raise some cash following some costly hedonistic hijinks, Joel takes advantage of being home alone to run a one-night-only pop-up brothel for his pals. By letting impulses from below the belt override the instincts of his logical mind, he finds the entrepreneurial product that eludes him in a sterile incubator setting: \u201chuman fulfillment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In multiple moments where the scheme appears at risk of collapsing to seal Joel\u2019s doom, the world slyly greets him with rewards rather than rebukes. With equal parts satirical humor and straight-faced social commentary, Paul Brickman\u2019s script positions his lawless and lascivious behavior as the true embodiment of a sick system. It\u2019s not values and virtue that pay off in Risky Business<\/em>. Confidently occupying space as a white male willing to treat any person as a profit machine counts for more than most academic achievements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Risky Business<\/em> turns the lens back on the capitalistic creation of teenagers. Brickman shows how even their horniness can never be fully extricated from America\u2019s all-consuming commoditization. With a pair of black wayfarers and a shit-eating grin, Joel makes visible the invisible hand of market logic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Brickman advances beyond a mere reflection of Morning in America\u2019s dawning early light. Unlike The Graduate<\/em>, a film he cites as a thematic inspiration on the commentary track, his impressionable protagonist does more than just ingest the lessons of enterprising elders on how to get ahead. Joel imitates and iterates on them further by reconstructing how he views their morally bankrupt system in the image of his own entrepreneurial ambition. To understand the health of an economy, Risky Business<\/em> posits, is to see how young people enact it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This quiet revolution within the teen genre went largely unfulfilled as the very opulence Risky Business<\/em> critiqued began to overwhelm American culture. Class consciousness was common even in the roughly contemporaneous works of John Hughes, but an institutional awareness of economic arrangements faded from subject to setting as affluence became a national expectation. While sex comedies such as 2004\u2019s The Girl Next Door<\/em> riffed on its premise, they never delivered on the full promise of Risky Business<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leave it to the 2008 financial crisis to revive flagging interest in centering enterprise within teen narratives. This epochal event for millennials forever altered their perceptions of the economy, be it in the perpetual scarcity of employment opportunities or the collapse of the housing market. That heightened awareness of how market forces interact with daily life became so inescapable that they once again reared their head in popular entertainment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An entire subgenre of teen movies from the last 15 years feels indebted to the existence of Risky Business<\/em>. 2010\u2019s Easy A<\/em> dips its toes in the waters of selling sex, too, but also uses satire to show the perverse value of commoditizing information in the early days of social media. 2013\u2019s The Bling<\/em> Ring<\/em> refracts Occupy-tinged anxieties as would-be Robin Hoods attempt to steal a lifestyle as well as goods when executing a string of celebrity home burglaries. 2018\u2019s Hot Summer Nights<\/em> projects a contemporary class consciousness onto the urban legend of a \u201890s drug dealer who weaponized his ostracism from high society Cape Cod to make a windfall off selling them pot. Even 2024\u2019s Snack Shack<\/em>, a largely innocuous coming-of-age tale about two teen scammers who stumble ass-backward into an entrepreneurial venture, resonates as an expression of Gen Z\u2019s economic angst. If looking for a job is pointless and their future professional outlook feels hopeless, grifting sure looks appealing by comparison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the inspiration taken from these aforementioned films speaks to the enduring influence of Risky Business<\/em>, a more surprising successor shows how Brickman\u2019s model can evolve further: 2010\u2019s landmark drama The Social Network<\/em>. While Aaron Sorkin\u2019s Oscar-winning script resembles a Faustian tragedy more than a youthful romp, the film takes a similarly bottom-up view of how the Silicon Valley ethos developed from collegiate iconoclasm before it upended the American economy altogether. David Fincher\u2019s direction more openly embraces and incorporates tropes from \u201880s teen movies, and the filmmaker even cites Risky Business<\/em> as both a sonic and spiritual influence<\/a> on his tale of emerging entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This contemporary advancement of Brickman\u2019s ideas illuminates his real genius in retrospect. Risky Business<\/em>\u2019s appropriation of the teen film is akin to how Pauline Kael described The Godfather<\/em>\u2019s relationship to the gangster film: \u201can obscene symbolic extension of free enterprise and government policy.\u201d Quibble with a Coppola comparison, but this tale of carnal capitalism most certainly earns its Criterion canonization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Risky Business” is out tomorrow on 4K and Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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