SSRP Proposal

Film Studies: SSRP Proposal

For my Small Scale Research Project, I will be focusing on the Writer/Director John Hughes as an auteur. The three of his films that I have selected are “The Breakfast Club” (1985) “Pretty in Pink” (1986) and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (1986) and exploring the similarities and motifs that feature within all of these movies, focusing especially on the issues that the characters deal with and the audience that Hughes’ films are targeted towards. Mostly they are teenagers and usually the issues that they tend to experience are ones that teenagers can relate to; as in most of Hughes’ films, they are praised for their representation of teenagers for being realistic. These tend to be his more successful films, as the ones he has made that are targeted towards children tend to be panned by critics and audiences alike, such as “Flubber” and “Uncle Buck”. Although there are exceptions such as “Home Alone”, and he has also written family films such as “National Lampoon Vacation” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”, however these were less frequent than his teen films and don’t have as many similar motifs as the ones I have chosen, also his teen centred films tend to be more critically acclaimed, so that is why I chose these films.

In terms of what I’ll be using for my research, it will be a mixture of websites from the internet and biographies and books based on 80’s films. The reason why I will be using these sources is because his films (including the ones I chose) are a big part of films from the 1980’s and whenever there is a book or documentary based on 80’s cinema, Hughes films are always discussed and I can get plenty of information from them.