Ferris Bueller, in John Hughes’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, represents the stereotype of teenagers as snarky, arrogant, and disrespectful. Throughout the film, he flouts traditional images of authority, while stringing along his girlfriend and best friend with him. Integral to Ferris’s deviance is his ability to and success in performance, an aspect that allows him to deceive others and excel in getting what he wants.
At the very beginning of the movie, Ferris provides the audience with his first performance, that of being sick. He acts out an entire farce, including sad sniffles and pathetic coughs combined with a falsely heroic attitude, to his seemingly oblivious parents. This scene catapults the movie into a comical recording of his variance performance, all of which have some aspect of defiance against the adult world. For example, Ferris refuses to take his day off alone and, as such, decides that he must get his girlfriend, Sloane, and his best friend, Cameron, to join him. Despite Cameron being actually sick, Ferris is able to not only convince him to come along, but also convinces him to perform as well. In order to get Sloane out of school Cameron pretends to be her father (with an obnoxious, uppity voice and all) and fools the principle in the same way Ferris has. Sloane, too, is drawn into the elaborate performance, mourning for her “dead grandmother.” Even more, Ferris picks Sloane up from school himself, revealing his blatant disregard for potential consequences and his arrogant disrespect and disbelief in the principle as an authority figure: he and Sloane even make-out in front of the school, enacting out a pseudo-incestual scene. This scene in which Ferris successfully convinces and enables his friends to join him comically demonstrates the conception of teenage deviance as rampant, dangerous, contagious, and yet still totally irresistible.
the three delinquents themselves
What do you guys think of Ferris and his “friendly” antics?
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