‘Sixteen Candles’ Cast Members Open Up About That Date Rape Scene In The Wake of #MeToo

In the months that have followed the demise of Harvey Weinstein and other abusers and the rise of #MeToo, many artists have publicly reconsidered past works and behaviors through a new, more critical lens. Few have done it as articulately and honestly as Molly Ringwald, once the reigning rom-com princess of the 1980s and now an accomplished author, too. In an introspective and insightful piece in The New Yorker published earlier today, Ringwald revisited the films that made her a household name – The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, and Pretty in Pink – and found they came up pretty short in their depiction of women and rape culture.

When discussing some of the scenes in these John Hughes films that didn’t quite sit well with her, Ringwald recalled a storyline in Sixteen Candles that had aged remarkably poorly. In the film, Jake (Michael Schoeffling) orchestrates a scenario in which the Geek (Anthony Michael Hall) can bed Jake’s girlfriend, high school villain Caroline (Haviland Morris) in order to get her underwear. It’s unsettling to watch now, as Caroline is entirely too drunk to give any form of consent, and she’s seemingly nothing more than a plaything to these two boys. “The Geek takes Polaroids with Caroline to have proof of his conquest; when she wakes up in the morning with someone she doesn’t know, he asks her if she “enjoyed it.” (Neither of them seems to remember much.),” Ringwald wrote. “Caroline shakes her head in wonderment and says, “You know, I have this weird feeling I did.” She had to have a feeling about it, rather than a thought, because thoughts are things we have when we are conscious, and she wasn’t.”

see also

So THAT Happened: Anthony Michael Hall Date Raped Jake's Girlfriend In ‘Sixteen Candles’

Curious about how the actress who played Caroline felt about the scene and the character now, Ringwald reached out to Haviland Morris, and the two met up for coffee. Initially, Morris did not seem to have the same grievances with the scene that Ringwald did – in fact, she felt as though Caroline was partially to blame for having drank too much. “I’m not saying that it’s O.K. to then be raped or to have nonconsensual sex,” said Morris. “But . . . that’s not a one-way street. Here’s a girl who gets herself so bombed that she doesn’t even know what’s going on.”

To try to frame it differently for Morris, Ringwald described her own near-date rape situation, and finally wound up asking her hypothetically how she would feel about it if this happened to one of her children. That seemed to change her mind – at least a little, Ringwald wrote:

If one of our kids had too much to drink, and something like that happened to one of them, would she say, “It’s on you, because you drank too much”? She shook her head: “No. Absolutely, positively, it stays in your pants until invited by someone who is willing and consensually able to invite you to remove it.” Still, she added, “I’m not going to black-and-white it. It isn’t a one-way street.”

Later, however, it seemed like Ringwald’s words had really hit a nerve with Morris, and she wound up receiving an email from her co-star that indicated Morris was still conflicted about it, but seemed to agree that Hughes had done Caroline wrong:

“You know… the more I think of it this evening, oddly, the less uncomfortable I am with Caroline. Jake was disgusted with her and said he could violate her 17 ways if he wanted to because she was so trashed, but he didn’t. And then, Ted was the one who had to ask if they had had sex, which certainly doesn’t demonstrate responsible behavior from either party, but also doesn’t really spell date rape. On the other hand, she was basically traded for a pair of underwear . . . Ah, John Hughes.”