St. Elmo's Fire, Revisited

As a child of the 80s, it is quite embarassing to admit that I have never seen Brat Pack magnum opus St. Elmo's Fire, until today. The adult yin to The Breakfast Club's childish yang, St. Elmo's acts as something of a prequel to American Psycho, giving hints of the true Reaganomic horror that Ellis' Patrick Bateman would one day wield across the silver screen. In Judd Nelson's philandering freshman Republican campaign assistant, in Rob Lowe's hard-drinking sax player, in Emilio Estevez's obsessive med school dropout, and even in Andrew McCarthy's chain smoking newspaper writer, we see the children of privelege breaking free of the organic community provided by life in college and rocking unhinged into the deregulated free marketplace.

A redemptive character through all of this is the chaste, innocent, frumpy Wendy Beamish, played by virtual unknown Mare Winningham, who works a thankless social service job while maintaining her virginity and resisting the blue-blood ambitions her Fortune 500 father holds for her. That she ends up banging the atrocious Lowe on his last night in town before pursuing his dreams in New York City (how many frat boy saxophone players do you remember from the 80s NYC post-punk scene, by the way?) is but one fault to her otherwise admirable innocence.

Contrast this with Demi Moore's trainwreck drunk Jules, who lies (lies!) about sleeping with her former (former!) boss in order to fend off the concerns of her circle of friends. Behind closed doors, she admits to being "tired", feeling like an old woman at age 22. A working-class girl herself, Jules vis-a-vis Wendy proves the point that capitalist excess and ennui is by no means the prerogative of the rich, and that the aristocracy, contrary to what might expect, may hold the last keys to decency.

The three-way love affair betwen McCarthy, Nelson, and the stunning Ally Sheedy tells a different story. Nelson wants her to marry him, she wants him to stop cheating on her and to let her pursue her own career, while the Romance-hating McCarthy bides his time and admires from afar. When the inevitable happens, and Nelson catches his former beau in the sack with his best friend, Sheedy performs on almost Christ-like act of self-denial: she declares her need to be alone for awhile, thus salvaging their friendships.

Yes, it is the women who save this circle of friends, who maintain the links and regulate the transferance of pleasure so that the Hot-Blooded Males may romp and stomp as they see fit (and let's not forget Andie McDowell's compassionate treatment of Estevez, who essentially becomes her stalker). Without the female presence within the circle to temper the furies of these yuppie-animals, three of the boys would be in jail and one (McCarthy, courtesy Nelson) would be dead.

Is that what woman do best: contain and distribute the flames that these wild dick-havers everywhere breathe out through their very existence? Who knows...

[ps, you may have noticed that the above post doesn't actually make a point or say anything of actual intelligence. all i can say is: it's sunday, and i'm boiling....]