Bueller vs Bueller

With this year marking the 25th Anniversary of the release of the classic 80s movie 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' I suppose it's only natural that people want to indulge in their love of this iconic movie.

Or do they?

I remembered this happy little cyberspatial spat, appropriately enough, on the way into Chicago last weekend for a wedding. I mentioned it to both The Quiet Man and the Missus, but failed to put much in the way of detail behind it.

One Google search later and I've got both article and two sides of the vicious, cultural debate up for discussion. In one corner, Alan Siegel from The Atlantic taking the anti-Ferris position. And in the other corner, Stephen Green of Vodkapundit taking the pro-Ferris position.

In the end, I've got to side with Green on this one. Siegel makes a few good points (I mean, how realistic is Ferris, really? And how white and middle class can you get? Both somewhat shaky, valid points, but as Green neatly rebuts:

So — take away the complaints that Siegel got just plain wrong, and here’s what you are left with: There aren’t enough black people in Chicago’s ritzy suburbs. Or as we used to say in the Eighties: No shit, Sherlock?

Trying to see Ferris Bueller through a classist or racial lens is going to be a waste of time. For a white, upper middle class suburban Chicagoite, Ferris Bueller probably isn't too far off the mark- and he's not pretending to be anything other than what he is.)

But the real lesson is a simple one, however: people need to take a deep breath and remind themselves that it is, after all, just a movie.