
ineeddrama
- June 24th, 2006
To those who are loyal "JAKETTES" (girls gaga over Jake Ryan), read this article:
Real Men Can't Hold a Match to Jake Ryan of 'Sixteen Candles'
(The Washington Post | February 14, 2004)
By Hank Stuever
Listen to all the Thompson Twins songs you want, but let's finally admit that Jake Ryan from "Sixteen Candles" is never coming to get you.
Not in the red Porsche 944, and not wearing that Fair Isle sweater vest. Not with his shiny black hair moussed gently heavenward, not with his gooey brown eyes and square Matt Dillonesque jaw. He will not be standing there with his hands in the pockets of his 501 button-fly jeans (while leaning against said Porsche), and he will not be shyly waving at you from across the street. ("Yeah, you," he mouths, just as in the movie, after you look behind you to see what girl he could possibly be interested in.)
Let's be even more clear: Popular high school seniors don't dump their cheerleader girlfriends with great bods so they can ask out a sophomore girl nobody notices. Jake did not actually do this, because he is not real.
This last fact has not stopped many, many women (and not a few men on the refreshment committee) from wishing there was such a thing as Jake Ryan.
Jake Ryan, Jake Ryan, Jake Ryan. Write his name in loopy cursive on a piece of loose-leaf notebook paper and pass it on. Even though it has been two decades since the release of John Hughes's high school comedy "Sixteen Candles," there are women out there in their late-twenties to mid-thirties (and even younger, including teenage girls today who weren't even around in that era) who to this day are still pining for a fictional character, the perfect high school crush.
"Jake Ryan? He's only the most popular boy in school," goes a line from the movie. The simple utterance of his name is enough to add salt to the wound of Valentine's Day.
"He's the whole package," says Andrea Danyo, 28, who does public relations work for National Public Radio. "Even just the name has become something. I swoon when I hear it. . . . For just about all of my friends, 'Jake Ryan' is a given moniker for the ideal boy, as in, 'Yeah, it was a good date, but he's clearly no Jake Ryan.' "
Women who fell hard for Jake Ryan have for years secretly harbored the idea of the one true and perfect boyfriend who (through some Hollywood miracle we're never quite made to understand) notices the freckly, insecure wallflower Samantha Baker, played by Molly Ringwald, whose family has forgotten her 16th birthday. Ringwald stands in for Everygirl, who, on some subconscious level, hated being a teenager.
In the movie's happy ending, it turns out Jake (played by long-ago vanished model-actor Michael Schoeffling) has just as big of a crush on Samantha. He shows up at the end and takes her away to his big, rich house and gets her a birthday cake aglow with candles. This image of them sitting on top of the dining room table burned hot and permanent into the post-boomer female psyche.
"Make a wish," he tells her, about to kiss her.
"It already came true," she manages before the lip lock. Cue New Wave popsters Thompson Twins singing "If You Were Here."
Why Schoeffling? Why Jake? Why him and not any of a hundred other hunky love interests from underwhelmingly successful teen flicks and TV shows? ("I'm trying to think of another one who compares to him," Danyo ventures, "and there aren't. . . . Maybe that's why I'm single. Maybe he really has ruined it for us all.")
Women can talk about Jake two ways:
The first way is easy and chatty, in the hyperactive sing-song you hear from people who appear on all those VH1 retro-documentaries about '80s pop culture. (Oh, those weird, wacky '80s trends! Remember??!!) Actress Sarah Michelle Gellar told Cosmopolitan magazine in 1998 that "John Hughes killed high school for me" and Jake Ryan ruined her on love (this was before she met Freddie Prinze Jr., who falls somewhat short of Jakeness). Same goes for Jennifer Love Hewitt, who in 2002 told Rolling Stone, "My whole life, I've been waiting for Jake Ryan . . . to come and get me." And Moon Unit Zappa -- the ur-Valley Girl -- told the Times of London in 2000 that she used to carry around a photo of Schoeffling in her wallet, and even now: "I'd watch ["Sixteen Candles"] with anyone, even a stranger off the street. And if they don't like it, they're no friend of mine."
The second way of talking through Jake-related issues is harder. It's about an ache, a loss. It's about the imperfection of life. In the movie, Ringwald's character muses on what a 16th birthday is supposed to be like: "A big Trans-Am in the driveway with a ribbon on it and some incredibly gorgeous guy you meet in France and you do it on a cloud without getting pregnant or herpes." In this way she is asking for a miracle and Jake is Christ, redeeming the evil sins of high school. Jake as the ideal. Jake as the eternal belief in something better. (Jake on the phone, leaving a message Samantha is temporarily fated not to receive: "Would it be possible for you to tell me if there is a Samantha Baker there, and if so, may I converse with her briefly?")
Some women admit, when they look back at the movie, that there are a few red flags: "I don't really like guys who drive nice cars," Danyo says, thinking of the Porsche. "But I think he still has values." Also, there is the nagging suspicion that Jake only notices Samantha when he chances upon the lost "sex test" she fills out in her independent study period, writing that Jake Ryan is the one boy she would "do it" with. Also, he's a rich kid who hangs out with jocks and bimbos, and nothing good ever came of that, not in high school.
But Jake stands the test of time, even in his good looks. His wardrobe -- cargo pants, plaid shirt -- portends an Abercrombie vibe years before it came. His haircut requires only minor tweaking in a mental update of the fantasy. "He's timeless. He doesn't have a Flock of Seagulls hairstyle or anything," says Rick Sayre, 30, a bookstore employee in Miami who started a Web page devoted not only to the Jake Ryan ideal but to locating Schoeffling.
Boo. Step on a girl's fantasy, won't you. But it's true. This is reality. Jake Ryan is make believe.
Too bad.