(Note: I don’t think this is actually a very good paper. However, I received an A for it, so what do I know?)
by Paul Mikesell
John Hughes’ 1986 comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is essentially two different films when placing it as an “urban text.” A portrayal of the suburbs is presented at the beginning and the end of the film, and a portrayal of the city is shown in between. Both portrayals can be utilized in completing an analysis of Ferris Bueller as an urban text.
The term “urban text” refers to a genre that any text can fit into. It is important to note at this point that “urban” does not simply refer to the city in an urban text. The same techniques can be used to analyze a text that is set within the suburbs. As this film takes place in both locations, I will analyze both the city and the suburbs and their relation to the urban text.
There are certain expectations of a text once the reader knows and understands which genre(s) it fits into. The primary expectation of an urban text is it having the theme of the individual versus society. In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, this theme is presented through the title character’s drive to skip school and spend the beautiful day on his own terms. In a broader sense even, the theme is reflected through the dichotomy between inside and outside. In an urban text, society is often represented through the inside, while the individual is at odds with this by being outside. One can view Ferris as the ultimate individual as he spends his day outside in Chicago, as opposed to inside a classroom at school.
In depicting the city in an urban text, there are four central pillars to look at. First, is the city presented as being the urban frontier, in a set of chaos, or is it under law and order? Next, is there the potential for love in the city? If there is, then the city is a place of law and order. After that, how is authority depicted? If there is a positive depiction of authority figures in the city, then it is shown that law and order are prevailing. However, if it is a negative portrayal of authority, then the city is part of the urban frontier and the individual is winning against society. Finally, is class warfare presented in the city?
To properly analyze any text, it is essential to have a proper grasp upon the historical context of the timeframe of the text’s release. When looking at the audience for a film like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off upon it’s release in 1986, one has to be aware of the rise of cable television and MTV. If the film industry had been worried about the increasing success of television in the 1950s, they had to be worried about the increase in the audience for cable television. After all, if someone had access to dozens of different choices for programming, including channels like HBO and Showtime that primarily showed movies, why would they want to go to a theater? However, at the same time home entertainment options were opening up new revenue streams for the movie studios. Cable channels would have to pay for the rights to show the films. Additional, the home video market was in the process of developing to a point where there was a lot of money to be made off of video sales. Films like Ferris Bueller were big success on cable and on video because they appealed to a young audience who had the disposable income to purchase videotapes. The other important aspect of cable television was the advent of MTV. MTV was such a landscape changing addition to the television lineup. As soon as Ferris’ parents leave for work, he flips on MTV. The channel not only changed how young people were exposed to music, but also how they were exposed to movies. A soundtrack with a hit song and accompanying hit video was almost always a surefire way to a successful film. The music video essentially served as a free commercial for the movie. In 1985, the year before the release of Ferris Bueller, John Hughes’ film The Breakfast Club epitomized this with its use of the song “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds. It is interesting to note, though, that despite the great use of music in Ferris Bueller, there was never an official soundtrack released for the film.
1986 was also towards the end of the Reagan era in politics. One can find a few links between the character of Ferris Bueller and Ronald Reagan. Both were charismatic individuals (maybe this is why they were both movie stars). More importantly, both presented a viewpoint that more accurately represented “White America” than anything else. Reagan’s idea of “trickle-down economics” was something that really only would benefit those at the top of the economic heap, i.e. white Americans. Ferris Bueller’s entire situation is something that is only possible in white America in 1986. Like most John Hughes films, there are very few characters of color in the film. Ferris gets by on his charm, and more importantly, on what the success of his parents has bought him. He hacks into the school’s attendance records with the expensive computer that his parents have bought him. He’s going to attend a good college next year, which he can do because his parents can afford it and have had the money to live in a suburban area with a good school, so he is essentially allowed to goof off now whenever he wants to.
All of John Hughes’ films from the 1980s share a similar aesthetic and mindset. His early films that he wrote and directed all fit into the “teen comedy” genre, such as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. All of these films take place in the same fictional suburb of Chicago known as Shermer, Illinois. Shermer is sort of the epitome of 1980s suburbia. All of the families are relatively well off. It is only in 1986’s Pretty in Pink, which Hughes only wrote, that any characters from the “wrong side of the tracks” are introduced. Some critics have claimed that Hughes’ representation of suburbia is one that is whitewashed, but it can be argued that Hughes is just representing the area that he knew from growing up in the non-fictional suburbs of Chicago.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is unique in the early John Hughes’ catalogue, in that it takes place both in the suburbs and the city. There is an interesting dichotomy presented between the depictions of Shermer and Chicago. Using the four criteria discussed earlier (the urban frontier versus law and order, the potential for love, the depiction of authority, and the existence of class warfare), one can come to certain conclusions about the city and the suburbs and their places within the urban text.
One of the primary characteristics of an urban text is having a character arrive or return to the city. This is featured in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with Ferris, Cameron, and Sloan’s arrival into the city as outsiders. The overarching theme of the individual versus society is represented by Ferris’ drive to do what he wants, instead of conforming to the expectations of his school and his parents (and even at some points, his friends).
When looking at the portrayal of the suburbs, especially with the focus on the character of Ferris Bueller, it appears that law and order are not prevailing, that it is the “suburban frontier.” Ferris essentially is allowed to do whatever he wants. He’s supposed to go to school, yet he’s missed nine days in the semester. To make things even more chaotic, no one except for his sister, Jeanie, and the Dean, Ed Rooney, seems to notice that Ferris is pulling a fast one. In this aspect, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off resembles No Down Payment. That film also presented the suburban frontier, with the dysfunction found in each of the families, from alcoholism to rape, largely unregulated and ignored. However, in comparison to the image of the suburbs shown in No Down Payment, one that is largely negative, Ferris Bueller’s land of chaos is still a relatively nice place to live. In Shermer, you can get around the system, but it doesn’t cause any real problems for anyone else. No one else is suffering when Ferris skips school. Rooney might think he is, but it doesn’t compare to the troubles of No Down Payment’s characters.
When Ferris and his friends head into the city, however, they are exposed to a place of law and order. An argument can be made that chaos still exists in the city, as seen by Ferris faking his way into the fancy restaurant by claiming to be the “Sausage King of Chicago” or when he works his way up onto the float in the Von Steuben Day Parade, or even when he narrowly avoids running into his father, but I feel that those events are more based upon luck than any skill on Ferris’ part. Compare those events to the chaos in the suburbs. Ferris creates an elaborate scheme to avoid going to school and to prevent getting caught. Even his best laid plans in the city almost fall apart, as seen best when he says, “Four thousand restaurants in the downtown area, I pick the one my father goes to.”
Similarly, question of, “Is there the potential for love?” is spilt by city and suburbs again. The most obvious case against it in the suburbs is shown by Ferris mentioning that Cameron has never been in love, “at least, nobody’s ever been in love with him.” Technically, one could still argue that there is the potential for love in the suburbs as Ferris and Sloane have had a happy relationship. But, as Ferris mentions towards the end of the film, he doesn’t know what the future will bring for them as he goes off to college and she finishes her last year of high school. This is in contrast to their time spent in the city, where Ferris (maybe) jokingly asks if Sloane wants to marry him. They spend their day not worrying about the future. The city is shown as a place where there is the potential for love. A comparison could be made to Blackboard Jungle, where the potential for love also exists in the city, but only in the nice parts of the city. Notably, these are the only parts that Ferris, Sloane, and Cameron visit on their day-trip.
When looking at the depictions of authority in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the easiest target is that of the Dean of Students, Ed Rooney. Rooney operates entirely in the suburbs, so it is easy to generalize about this question looking solely at his character. Rooney’s primary goal in the film is to catch Ferris Bueller skipping school. He argues to his secretary that Ferris gives “good kids bad ideas.” It is a righteous motivation, but his execution is anything but successful. Rooney is continually embarrassed and made to look like a fool, be it from approaching a Ferris Bueller looking girl in a teenager hangout joint or being kicked in the face by Jeanie Bueller. It is not a depiction of an effective authority figure. Even the police in Shermer are not shown as being effective. They treat Jeanie’s phone call reporting an intruder in her house as being a joke.
It is a little more difficult to assess the authority figures in the city. Ferris and his friends seem to run around the city largely ignorant of any large authority. The best example of the depiction of authority figures in the city is during the Von Steuben Day Parade, police officers pull Sloane and Cameron away from the float that Ferris has snuck upon. It is a relatively positive depiction of authority, as they are doing their jobs, even if they are unaware that Ferris should not be up on the float either.
Finally, to look at class warfare within Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, one first has to find any kind of distinction between classes. In the suburbs, there seems to be a difference between Rooney and the other characters. Both of Ferris’ parents, and most likely most of the other parents of the people at his school, are white-collar employees. While it is not low rent by any means, Rooney’s job at a public school isn’t quite at the same level. Ferris and his friends are essentially allowed to get away with whatever they want because they belong to a privileged class. Rooney does not succeed because he lacks some of the privileges that Ferris has. The comparison to this is the only example of lower class people in the city scenes of the parking garage attendants. The main attendant is already looked down upon by Ferris when they arrive, by Ferris asking him the condescending question of if he speaks English or not. However, once the attendant reveals that he does and can be of assistance to Ferris, his status rises in the eyes of the kids. When they steal the car to go for a joy ride, the attendants are representing the individual winning against society. Whereas for the rest of the film, Ferris Bueller is representative of the individual in this conflict, when he is opposed to the attendants, his character becomes “society.” The attendants taking out the car for a joy ride and not really getting caught with it is just another example of the individual winning out against society in this film.
For lack of a better term, Ferris, Sloane, and Cameron are running around the city causing trouble. But compared to the kids in Dead End or Angels With Dirty Faces who are hooligans and troublemakers, Ferris and his friends are doing nothing wrong. The kids in Dead End and Angels need to be saved from their environment. Ferris isn’t being corrupted by his surroundings. Rooney’s view of Ferris, however, is similar to those troubled kids from the gangster films. He sees Ferris as a “bad apple” that will corrupt the other kids in the school. The film’s view, though, is that the rest of the school looks up to Ferris, but they’re not necessarily all going to start skipping school like he is, unlike in Angels With Dirty Faces where the Jerry, the priest, is rightly worried that the city’s kids are going to be inspired by the deceitful actions of the gangster Rocky.
Overall, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off presents a rather positive portrayal of the city, not unlike Breakfast At Tiffany’s. In that film, law and order prevails, even more so than in Ferris Bueller, and there is the potential of love. The city of New York is clean and safe, not unlike Ferris Bueller’s Chicago. An interesting point to make is that the locations featured in Ferris Bueller in the city are all rather touristy places, such as the Sear’s Tower, Wrigley Field, and the Art Institute. Of course the city is going to come out looking good if you only focus on what the city wants people from out of town to see. Some may view this portrayal of Chicago as being an inaccurate one, but as some one who grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, Ferris and his friends go to see the only places that anyone I knew would ever go. Even though the locations are so close together, the city is essentially treated as being far away from the suburbs and an exotic place. Finally, in its portrayal of the city, Ferris Bueller also presents it as simply a place where people go to work. The city may be lots of fun, but once the day is over, it is time to head back into the suburbs to be with your family. This falls right in line with many of the other depictions of the suburbs in the media. It is a place for family. The city exists simply for people to take advantage off. They use it for what they need, be it money from work or just a day out, and then they leave.
Ultimately, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off presents the central theme of Ferris Bueller, the individual, versus his parents, his Dean, and their expectations for his life, society. Ferris and the individual win. Even at the end of the film when Rooney catches Ferris, he squeezes his way out of it thanks to the help of his sister. Ferris gets away with all of his schemes for two reasons; he has the charm and the skills to pull it off. These are traits that are enhanced by his standing (or at least his parents’) as a part of the upper class. Ferris gets whatever he wants, but he does that to live his life to its fullest, not to impose harm upon others. It is an ultimate expression of individuality and of him defeating whatever expectations society is trying to impose upon him.
