Fair is Fair!

#17: The Legend of Billie Jean

This 1985 teen rebellion drama stars Helen Slater (of Supergirl infamy) as a trailer park idealist who finds herself defending her brother (a very blond Christian Slater in his first film role) in a conflict with the local petit bourgeois bully cum Romeo over a scooter. Billie confronts the bully and his father to collect the money to repair the scooter, after the local police decline to get involved, and is rewarded for her efforts with an attempted rape. One accidental shooting later and Billie Jean, her brother and two friends from the similarly wrong side of the tracks are on the run.

All of this ends, predictably for a 1980's anthem film, in the spontaneous generation of a cult-like following of teenagers across Texas, all of whom are willing to abet the "Billie Jean Gang" in its quest for justice for all people, no matter what their socio-economic status. Part road movie, part class struggle, part commentary on the power of television to create celebrity, and all Helen Slater in high 80's fashion this film has it all. Plus a smokin' Pat Benatar theme song.

I actually found this film a little difficult to watch. Helen Slater is better than one might expect if all you have seen her in is Supergirl. Having said that, directer Matthew Robbins seems unaware of the potential of the story he has to tell. Appropriate to the man who also directed Corvette Summer, all of the problematic issues presented in the script (class divisions, 80's feminist resistance, even the nascent seeds of reality celebrity--think the OJ slow-speed chase by way of Marshall McLuhan) are treated as fodder for a maddeningly routine teen flick. Billie Jean is a trailer park feminist (just think about how that cuts across major cultural cleavages!) but is still subjected to a chemistry-free romance with a wholly awkward teen heartthrob. As part of their celebrity the Billie Jean Gang finds itself literally a target for adult aggression but the potentially explosive question of the use of violence to discipline transgressive behavior is really just a set-up for an ill timed menstruation joke. And so it goes, on and on, for what feels like hours.

Even Billie Jean's messianic turn, inspired by a glimpse of the movie Joan of Arc, is really just an excuse to work in a rad haircut.

I know it is a bit much to expect powerful social commentary from a summer teen movie intended primarily as a vehicle to launch Slater's career. Nevertheless. As an aside, I'm beginning to wonder about Keith the Programmer's agenda here. I fully understand that The Watching Hour is just an opportunity for him to scratch his own movie itch but, still. Streets of Fire and now this? It is only a matter of time until he screens Fire with Fire.