Uncle Buck

So, Uncle Buck is a story by John Hughes about an unmarried, fat, drinking, cigar-smoking uncle who comes to look after his brother's kids when the couple leaves town to visit the wife's father (who's just had a heart attack). The kids parents are extremely square and meal-times are tense. Then crazy ol' Uncle Buck arrives to stir things up. He swears and curses, smokes cigars indoors, makes giant pancakes, tells the daughter's nitpicking headmistress where to go, punches an alcoholic clown and threaten's the teenage daughter's boyfriend with a hatchet. My favourite scene is when he crashes a highschool party to find her and walks through with a cigar and beer in hand totally freaking out all the teens who are like, WTF who is this crazy old fat guy doing here? Basically, Uncle Buck is great because he doesn't stand for any kind of shit and he's not afraid to poke a stick in it no matter how many people it'll piss off. His honest humanity wins the kids over, and even breaks the icy wall of the teenage daughter. Society needs more Uncle Bucks.

As I was watching this movie, I constantly keep feeling, wow! That's nuts!? How the hell is he doing that??.... I think that today's society is a lot more square and regulated and you couldn't make and release Uncle Buck today. It's interesting, if you asked people if they thought society was more square or more liberal than 30 years ago, a lot of people might assume it's more liberal because of all the "sex, drugs and violence" on TV. I haven't seen any TV from the 70's but I've been told that there were totally naked people on TV all the time, and not just late at night. So, maybe there is more violence on TV today, but that doesn't exactly indicate a culturally liberal society. Yes, I definitely think that society has got more square in some ways.

Another reason why you wouldn't see this film made and released today, is due to the social climate in context of the recent "war on men". I'm not sure when it all started, but it seems that these days, the media is completely and overly obsessed with the threat of pedophilia and pedophilic porn. OK, so pedophilic porn is no good. Keep funding police programs to thwart it. So, sexual abuse of children is of course no good. Well, haven't studies shown that most sexual abuse comes from family members or those known to the family and not strangers? So, they should address that through family-centred social programs. So, why this very generalised, hyper-paranoia about men? Apparently it is hard for men nowadays who want to pursue careers child-care or early-childhood teaching without being seen as dodgy... And although we were always taught "stranger danger", I think it's really been hyped up generally over the last few years and especially towards men. Today's Uncle Buck wouldn't stand a chance. I think that's sad.

The end.