Flasz On Film

In the summer of 1986, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was released. Written and directed by John Hughes, this Matthew Broderick-starring hangout instantly grabbed the attention of the masses and climbed to the tenth place of its year’s box office. Both critics and the public at large fell in love with Ferris, whom they saw as a likeable rogue, and proceeded to rewatch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off ad infinitum when it became available to rent in video stores, cementing it as an overnight cult classic.

Which means that they all fell victim to a charming trickster. Critics, audiences, everyone. Hook. Line. Sinker.

Bueller’s masterfully orchestrated day out—which involved engineering a complex web of excuses, alibis and other assorted subterfuge—was seen as an expression of youthful rebellion; a wish fulfillment fantasy that youngsters of the mid-80’s identified with. But what was it exactly they felt kinship with and what were they opposing?

After all, it is impossible to connect with Ferris because he is not a real human being. Naturally, he is a wholly confected character, but even as far as literary creations go, he is quite uniquely fantastical. Ferris is perfect. Flawless. He’s loved by everyone. More than capable with computers and tech—he hacks into the school’s IT system and corrects his unauthorized absences while on the phone with Principal Rooney. These tech-enabled alibis that fool his mother into thinking that he is bedridden and snoring while he was in fact freewheeling in downtown Chicago didn’t engineer themselves either. His girlfriend Sloane cannot resist his charm. His best friend Cameron finds it impossible to say no to him.

Moreover, Ferris does not change one iota throughout the film. He just gets away with everything, starting with convincing his parents, clearly blind to his scheming, that he must stay home and recover from fake flu or something, tricks Cameron into giving him access to his father’s rare Ferrari and Principal Rooney to allow Sloane to be excused from school on account of a fake sudden death in the family. He gets the gang to infiltrate a highfalutin restaurant by pretending he is the Sausage King of Chicago and before the day is over he is safely back in bed, while Rooney goes home empty-handed. In fact, even Jeanie—his sister and the only person who is personally frustrated with how easy it is for Ferris to pull wool over people’s eyes—eventually caves in and covers for him when Rooney comes knocking.

Call me old-fashioned but I find it rather strange to identify with a character who is this visibly inhuman. He has more in common with unicorns than actual people. If he played in a band and worked night shifts as a heart surgeon, you’d be excused for equating him with Buckaroo Banzai, the decade’s cult polymath. And this wish fulfillment? What are we fantasizing about exactly? If anything, the idea of longingly sighing while looking at Ferris’s day out in Chicago is equivalent to wishing you could also do whatever you liked with absolutely no consequences ever coming your way. Is that it? Oh, wouldn’t it be splendid if I could just not go to school or work, make a whole bunch of ill-advised decisions and come out on top? Or is it simply the idea of ditching chores and responsibilities and just heading out to have fun? Either way, what you are fantasizing about is not much of a wish. It’s a holiday at best. And truthfully, Ferris didn’t need to take an unauthorized absence from school to do any of this. His titular day off could have easily been a Sunday. But then again, it wouldn’t have been half as fun for him that way. Which is where problems really begin.

If you take a closer look at Ferris as a character—or rather a narrative object, if I’m honest—you will see that this guy is far from his projected perfection. Upon closer examination, he exhibits some traits that are consistent with covert narcissism nurtured by toxic parenting. In his parents’ eyes he is clearly the golden child and their favourite. Even Jeanie admits that she would have to “bleed from her eyes” to be allowed to stay home instead of going to school. Meanwhile, Ferris only needs to cough slightly and he gets the attention he so desperately craves plus his desired dispensation to stay home and do whatever.

Animosity between siblings often manifests in such scenarios where parents overtly and bluntly favour one of their children over another. Jeanie needs to encounter Charlie Sheen’s character at the police station—where she lands after allegedly misusing police resources, which is indirectly brought about by Ferris’s decision to skip school—to realize that her anger at Ferris may have been misdirected. Although we never see her confront her mom and dad about what amounts to parental injustice, we can only hope that one day she would, or that at least she would lay down some healthy boundaries. But I wouldn’t be surprised if at age forty-five Jeanie would cut off ties with her family completely. Some wounds are impossible to heal otherwise.

In any case, Ferris has absolutely no concept of this. He is blissfully unaware of the fact that Jeanie is continually hurt by his attention-seeking behaviour and frustrated by seeing time and again how Ferris always finds a way to safely land on all four legs like a cat. What is more, he never even realizes—through coincidence or manipulating others to cater to his needs—that his actions carry consequences that other people must deal with.

Case in point—the Ferrari.

One of the most commonly encountered maneuvers defending Ferris as a “force for good” is found in his relationship with Cameron, his best friend whose relationship with his father—related to us in passing—looks highly troubled. The gang ends up taking his dad’s precious Ferrari for their day trip, which is then usurped by car park attendants and ends up driven for a few hundred miles; something Cameron’s father would not miss. Ferris dismisses Cameron’s initial concerns and suggests they would simply run the car in reverse for a while, thinking it would do the trick. Not only does this denude Ferris’s questionable “genius” because the idea that an odometer would run backwards in reverse is nothing short of brain dead, but it also sets up Cameron’s personal awakening. Confronted with the impending showdown with his father, whom he fears, Cameron lashes out against the car and ends up inadvertently destroying it completely.

Some would say that Ferris set it up on purpose to help Cameron out of his hiding spot, that he had always seen his relationship with his dad as toxic and in need of an intervention, which is why he puppeteered Cameron to succumb to his whims and orchestrated for the story to end up with the car completely demolished. False. I don’t believe for a second that Ferris engineered Cameron’s awakening out of concern for his friend. All he needed was the car for his trip and the rest didn’t matter. He honestly didn’t care at all about what would happen if the Ferrari ended up scratched, misused, stolen or destroyed. After all, he had never had to own up to anything. Consequences are an alien concept to Ferris Bueller whose entire existence is consumed by hedonistic pursuits of complete attention from everyone he interacts with and guided by unadulterated solipsism—something kids would call “main character energy.”

As far as Ferris Bueller is concerned, everyone in his life is an NPC and thus in his own estimation his life and pursuits are the only ones that matter. Therefore, his need to procure the car vastly outweighed the potential downside of setting his friend on a path towards conflict with his parent. Ferris didn’t save his friend out of the kindness of his heart. It was a coincidence. He would eventually take credit for it by cognitively reframing his manipulative actions to remain the hero in his own self-propelled narcissistic fantasy, but make no mistake—Ferris was driven by purely self-serving intentions. Cameron had a car that Ferris needed and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. But he ended up a hero in his own estimation, as well as in the eyes of film viewers who couldn’t differentiate between true altruism and self-interested manipulation of an attention-seeking solipsistic hedonist.

And no wonder: it is quite difficult to do so because charm used by people like Ferris could be classified as weapons-grade camouflage. People like this are astoundingly good at hiding in plain sight, keeping their self-serving intentions behind calculated likeability, smiles and warmth emanating from their presence. They’re “sparky.” If you met a guy like Ferris, you’d be convinced that you have some chemistry. That there was a connection between you. A spark. That he’s a good friend or boyfriend material. But that’s an act. Most people who interact with a Ferris-type experience this “spark,” which is a product of their exquisitely trained emotional manipulation. You might think that you have a friend in Ferris Bueller, but what you have is an emotional vampire who sees you as an audience, not an equal.

Fortunately, this spell doesn’t work for everyone. If you take some time and scroll through negative reviews of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off you won’t find very many “it’s boring” takes. What you will find is a handful of people who felt anxious watching the movie, some that couldn’t understand the hype behind it because something was off about this slippery character who’s too perfect for his own good. Even fewer would connect the dots. But they’re nonetheless there.

However, counting yourself among those who see through the mask of Ferris Bueller’s calculated charm is a lonely experience because it is nearly impossible to explain an ineffable feeling that something’s not right with this guy to someone who’s convinced that he’s their cinematic best friend. You might feel like Roddy Piper in They Live, a man who could see that some people were alien ghouls wearing camouflage. Without handing someone the sunglasses that filtered out their disguise, he sounded like a lunatic. And I am fully aware that I might come across as one to the throngs of fans of this cult classic. Still, I am one of the ones that can see.

I see Ferris Bueller’s Day Off not as The Graduate of its time that this movie was touted as by its ardent defenders. In fact, Risky Business fits this title much better. And if anything, if John Hughes had paid more attention to Cameron’s story—which is under-baked and only tangentially developed—then maybe the reading of this movie as a generational call for rebellion against conservative norms of the time would hold more water. Cameron is the one who stands up to his father, or at least he’s about to before the credits roll. Jeanie is the one who learns something and finds freedom in disentangling her own happiness from her brother’s toxic influence. But Ferris? Ferris is the one who doesn’t have anything to rebel against and has nothing to stand for. He has had everything handed to him in life. He bends the world to his will. The universe rewards his manipulative egoism.

Therefore, what can he possibly teach me? How can I take his words of wisdom that “life moves pretty fast” seriously if I can see with my own eyes that they are underpinned by absolutely no experience of having to seize the day, chase after a goal or run away from undesirable life outcomes? His words ring as hollow as motivational quotes posted on Instagram by celebrities born to opulence and privilege. Ferris Bueller is no Ben Braddock. He has more in common with Clay from Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero, only that Clay was aware of his own nihilism and grew dejected by self-centered hedonism surrounding him from all directions.

Meanwhile, Ferris continues to hide in plain sight to this day. He relives his solipsistic day off every time someone decides to watch the movie and fails to see through his camouflage, ignores the many red flags—from manipulating his friends to looking at complete strangers from a position of pampered superiority—and thinks that they are casually spending some time with their best friend, a casual outlaw ant the epitome of cool. Little do they know that they have been manipulated by a consummate manipulator driven by nothing more than a self-interested, hedonistic pursuit of complete control over the world around him and a permanent spot in the spotlight.

And you liked him for it.