Who Could Possibly Go to School On a Day Like Today?

Is Ferris Bueller a monster? When you watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off the first time, the lead (and title) character feels like the hero of the story. For any teen watching the film Ferris is the ideal we’d all want to achieve. He does what he wants, thwarting the wishes of parents, teachers, and authority figures, going out to have a fantastic day of freedom and fun, and then he gets home with absolutely no one being any the wiser about his adventure. He gets to live the life so many of us would desire, and then he comes home the conquering hero.

Thing is, though, he’s not really the hero of the story. He’s not a hero at all. At best you could describe him as an agent of chaos, one set in motion to change the lives of those around him. You could even consider him an antagonist, as he directly causes the change in figures that should, in any other movie, be considered the heroes. Every traditional hero role in the film goes through a path of change, but they’re all side characters (and, in two cases, those people are considered “villains” by the film). All of this in service of Ferris’s goals, all so he can have his perfect day.

Now, yes, his perfect day does include his best friend and his girlfriend. He wants them to be a part of it, but at the same time, how much of what he did was to ensure his people had a good time, and how much of it was to show he could provide a good time? The key difference there would be Ferris’s motivations. Does he want his friends to enjoy themselves, or does he want them to identify that they had fun because of Ferris? If we accept that Ferris has a certain amount of ego about him fueling his actions, then it does seem like everything he does is truly, deep down, for the betterment of Ferris. This is his day (it even says so in the title) and everyone else is stuck on the ride with him.

Thus, from a certain perspective, we could view Ferris as a monster. He’s the villain of the piece, forcing everyone else to dance for his bidding. All of the traditional heroes around Ferris – the best friend that has to grow a backbone, the sister who wants to prove her brother is a bad seed, the principal that wants to catch a delinquent student in the act – are punished for acting against Ferris, and the only person that actually gets through the movie unscathed (and even applauded for their actions) is Ferris. He is viewed as the hero by the film and the audience, but he’s really kind of a jerk.

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy Ferris Bueller's Day Off, it is a finely crafted, tightly made movie that shows the power of well written, well edited comedy. There are whole segments I can recite from memory, jokes and lines and readings that have lived in my head nearly 40 years because they are just so damn funny. The movie chugs along at a brisk pace, never slowing or getting gummed out. It runs like clockwork, with biting wit and smooth characters thrown in. But I’ve never been able to shake the fact that, deep down, the film is focused on the wrong person.

Let’s look at Ferris for a second. As played by Matthew Broderick, Ferris Bueller is a smarmy, egotistical, upper middle class shit head. Broderick is charismatic in the role, sure, and you do end up liking Ferris despite himself, but deep down there’s something inherently unlikable about Ferris. He decides to play sick so he can stay home from school, and then decides that just playing hooky isn’t enough; he has to rope his best friend and girlfriend into an elaborate scheme so they can all ride off to Chicago to have a day of fine dining and culture. He commits electronic fraud, forces his friends to commit fraud as well, steals an expensive, antique car, and then proceeds to go on a tear in the big city. And he suffers no real consequences for his actions at all.

Everything he does sure does look cool, of course. That car (even if, in reality, it was a fake) sure was sweet. The museums he visits are cool, the restaurants he eats at look fancy, and he even catches a baseball game (which, while not my speed, I can understand the appeal). He gets to participate in a parade, and is the real hero of the moment. For anyone looking to have the absolute best day ever, Ferris not only proves it’s possible but then trumps every idea anyone else could come up with. And he does it all simply because he thinks he deserves it. Just living his good life in his rich, suburban town isn’t enough. He has to have more.

In any other film Cameron (Alan Ruck) would be the hero of the story. In effect Cameron goes on an actual hero’s journey. He is suffering in his life, depressed all the time, until Ferris magically rings him up. Ferris, the agent of chaos that always knows what to do, pulls Cameron out of his humdrum existence and takes him on a magical journey to Chicago, showing him sights and plying him with food. Cameron has a real adventure, but then he has to leave this magic land and come home, back to a life he loathes and a father (who we never see) who hates him. He then finally grows a backbone and decides to stand up to his father (especially after he destroys the car his father loves), which will mean consequences for Cameron but also points a way for the guy being a more complete, better person in the future. He’s exorcized his own personal demons through growth and chance.

A couple of the other characters are also pushed through their own journey. Ferris’s sister, Jeanie (Jennifer Grey), really wants to catch Ferris skipping school so she can prove to her parents that he’s not the “good one”. But then, after she skips school and gets scared by the school principal breaking into her house (we’ll get to that in a second), she gets arrested for making a false police report. She’s punished for, in a way, trying to do the right thing, but this also pushes her to grow and learn to relax. She becomes an ally to Ferris in the end, instead of his opponent, and it shows real change for Jeanie.

The principal, Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), even has his own arc. While we set aside the fact that Jones is a convicted child sex criminal, which adds its own creepy factor to the fact he’s playing an educator here, we have to acknowledge that the character of Rooney wasn’t exactly wrong. Ferris did ditch school, on multiple occasions, without an excuse. Ferris also hacked the school computer systems, and Rooney literally saw the evidence of it as Ferris’s absence days counted down before his eyes. Rooney knew Ferris was up to no good so he went to the Bueller household to prove it. Sure, yes, he went too far trying to break into the house to out the rapscallion, but in a different film Rooney could be seen as a sympathetic figure just trying to get a bad student on the path to redemption.

That’s not the arc here, of course, because the film views Ferris as a hero. But again, I think the film was teaching us the wrong lesson. There’s a strong anti-authority vibe to the film, with Ferris bucking his role at every turn so that he can have the best day possible. That fits into the vibe of the generation, the need to get what’s yours and screw everyone else. Boomers coming into adulthood at the time of this film’s release would have loved that message. Teenagers seeing the film for the first time would have enjoyed it, too, because who didn’t want to ditch school and just… chill? I get it. I enjoyed it myself back when I was a teen seeing the film over and over again on Comedy Central (as it aired regularly). The film is fun and I make no bones about that.

But let’s be clear. Ferris Bueller is not the hero of this story. He’s the villain. We’ve been getting it wrong this whole time. He’s a liar and a cheat and, quite clearly, a criminal. He gets away with it, and we accept that. But let’s not put this monster on a pedestal. In a few years he probably helped crash the global financial markets during the housing boom and bust. I bet you the Great Recession was all Ferris’s fault and, more than likely, he walked away a few hundred million richer in the process.

Screw you, Ferris Bueller. We all know what you did!