I’m disappointed with Gen X. A generation who spent most of their twenties labeling this band or that author as a “sell out” has seemed to embrace the biggest selling out of one of our cultural icons, Ferris Bueller.
If you haven’t seen it yet, Honda has a Superbowl commercial that’s a take off on the iconic 80s movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” You know the movie, who doesn’t know the movie? It’s the one where Ferris skips school and tools around Chicago with his hypochondriac best friend Cameron and his girlfriend, Sloane. They go to a baseball game, eat at a fancy restaurant, sing in a parade, and go swimming. All the while, Ferris is being chased by principal Ed Rooney who has had enough of Ferris’ school-skipping shenanigans. In the pantheon of 80s teen movies “Ferris” sits right up there with “The Breakfast Club” and “Sixteen Candles” as generation-defining movies.
But now, our Ferris, is being used to shill SUVs to people who probably don’t need an SUV. First, a point of a clarification. Yes, I realize in the commercial that it’s Matthew Broderick just doing Ferris-like activities, they call him Matthew and not Ferris. But come on.
TOTAL SELL OUT. Yes, we have a character who once spouted:
“Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism’s in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself.I quote John Lennon, “I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.” Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I’d still have to bum rides off people.”
Apparently capitalism is the one -ism Ferris can get behind. Or maybe it’s just that all his ideals have melted away once he has to stop bumming rides off people.
I call bullshit. And, like I said, I’m totally disappointed in a generation who at one point in their lives seemed totally obsessed with the genuineness of their “art” and their cultural icons and how nothing should be tainted by money or the need for acceptance by the greater population.
Now, twenty years later we’re all fine and dandy, and even a little excited that Ferris Bueller is selling cars? What has become of us Gen X? Our flannel-clad, Doc Marten-wearing twentysomething versions of ourselves would come here and kick our asses if they saw us today.
Ferris Bueller, man, selling cars! Our anti-establishment, fuck the Baby Boomer grownups and their rules is selling cars. SUVs at that.
We have totally sold out.
And that is why I refuse to watch the commercial. Sa proud Gen Xer, I hate the fact that they are taking one of the best characters ever and using it to for selling something. Ferris would never have approved of that type of commercialism ( and wouldn’t b4 caught dead driving an SUV).
I thought it was genius and had no problems with it. All day I’ve had that song in my head, and it makes me think of the movie, not the car. So that’s a win for Ferris, not Honda 🙂
@Moe, I think it’s a weird personal contradiction. I’m bothered by the fictional character (though ostensibly it’s supposed to be Matthew) selling stuff. I had the same sort of “ugh” reaction when Puss in Boots from Shrek was selling Meow Mix.
Everybody sells out. Everybody.
Middle age hits and we realize how stupidly idealistic we all were and just give in because, really, it’s not worth it to be pissed off and “anti” everything all the time.
If MB wants to shill for slave child labor corporate puppy mills, more power to him.
@NBFB, I don’t care so much that MB is selling out, it’s that he’s selling Ferris out in the process.
1) Wow, Broderick has not aged well.
2) No Cameron?!?
Dear Chromy,
Alas, it was an actor making money in the first instance and again, an actor making money now. Why should one be held sacred and other selling out?
By the way, Matthew Broderick is a hair’s breath away from 50 and the movie was shot in 1986 (26 years ago). The dude was already 24 when he made the movie. But we are really talking about John Hughes vision here and he was 36 at the time. Hughes high school years were long past.
IMDB reports Hughes had a terrible time at high school. Who likes to remember the bad times? Would it not be better to think of what could be? Therefore, Ferris Bueller is a mix nostalgia and fantasy rolled together.
Can someone take a character out of context to hawk mini-vans? Sell out? Maybe. But the original movie was not made for free nor was it a box office dud. That is part of the reason you saw it on TV in the first place–it was successful in the theater. So the movie was a sell out in the first place, wasn’t it?
Just some thoughts.