Talking Pitch Perfect 2: Das Sound Machine

The reason I’m starting with Das Sound Machine (among others Birgitte Hort Sørensen) is that I’m German – don’t know if you knew this but now you do. Of course, we already have a German reference in the first movie with Beca (Anna Kendrick) saying that Vader is German for father and Jesse (Skylar Astin) saying that it’s no wonder she doesn’t like fun things if she knows German. It seems that Kay Cannon has something to say there – whatever it is – but it’s kinda fun to watch in a German context and also with other German viewers (as I actually watched Pitch Perfect 2 for the first time at the movies in the dubbed German version – before going home and looking for it online so I could watch it in English).

While it’s mostly good fun, there was a part of it that made everyone at the theater flinch (it was actually like you could feel everyone flinch, every time this came up). It’s the name and its grammatical wrongness. Das Sound Machine is completely bullshit German – of course, it’s not even German but even the part that is is wrong. Yes, the article. If you translate the complete name it would mean Geräuschmaschine – the article would refer to Maschine and Maschine in German is female. The female article is Die (think Dee, not die). So, for Germans to hear DAS Sound Machine is actually painful.

Yeah, I know, it’s a tiny thing and something we’ve gotten over by the end of the movie but the first few times are really grating. Of course, if they had actually wanted to make it grammatically correct, they would’ve done it. Even if Kay Cannon hadn’t known that it was incorrect, I’m sure someone would have told her at some point and they could have fixed it, after all in Flula Borg they had at least one German native speaker on set. But let’s face it, the visual alone would have confused English speakers. Die Sound Machine – y’all would have wondered why they wish themselves to die and explaining it would have taken too much time. There’s also the fact that Das sounds way more German aggressive and is what’s actually needed for this group. Now you know, though, that it’s wrong German.

Besides this, there are a couple of fun things about this group. Like Pieter (Flula Borg) overexplaining things. Germans tend to do this, I catch myself at it sometimes. While I’m fluid in English, I always feel like I’m explaining myself clumsily, especially when I’m not sure about an expression. This leads to using more words, explaining around something – like Pieter does with his ‘Heated Mess.’ It’s hilarious. I actually think that the interactions between Das Sound Machine and the Bellas (but especially Beca) make up some of the funniest moments in the movie.

Speaking of Beca. Yes, her complete meltdown over this group is just gold. I’m not exactly sure where the attraction comes in. Given, Komissar (Birgitte Hort Sørensen) is gorgeous but the group as a whole seems to push some buttons in Beca. Many fans (me included) would like to see this as a confirmation for Beca’s bisexuality, though a better case could be made that it’s actually queer-baiting, unfortunately. It’s a comical diversion, not really something that Beca is allowed to explore. The attraction could also be explained as a sort of yearning in Beca to have a group that’s synchonized and disciplined,

It’s the military demeanor of Das Sound Machine that I would peg as least likely to appear in a German group. And it’s not because Germans don’t like order, I think we do. The thing is that we’re painfully aware of our history and the implication of this group is almost offensively reminiscent of Nazi Germany. The black attire, the uniformness, the colors of the final show – if we did something like that, people would call us out on it, always. So, in a way, Das Sound Machine is just another stereotype, another sort of ‘look, they’re Germans, and they behave like Nazis, that’s so funny.’ The only saving grace here is that they’re a great acapella group.

I’m not saying that as a German I’m offended by this representation – we deserve our place as villains in history and if we’d get offended every time we’re being shown as Nazis in films, we’d be offended all the time. It’s more that this image is outdated, that you wouldn’t find a German group that would so blatantly disrespect the victims of the Holocaust – other than Neo-Nazis. This is exactly why the imagery of Nazi symbols outside a historic context (like textbooks and museums) is forbidden in Germany because they’re painful reminders to the victims.

I didn’t intend to have this sound like a lecture. I guess I didn’t realize all the implications of Das Sound Machine before I started writing about them. I’m aware this is meant to be satirical but if you look at the final performance of Das Sound Machine, the images of Nazi soldiers marching in front of Adolf Hitler are kind of blatant.

The intent here is, of course, to show the difference between Das Sound Machine and the Bellas. While the Troublemakers in the first movies were very similar to how the Bellas are at the beginning of this movie, Das Sound Machine shows again how sameness can be a draw of success in a competition. But the Bellas are best when they show their individualism – maybe by performing an original song at the finale.

Anyway, if you can disregard Das Sound Machine reminding you of a very dark time in history, you might enjoy the competition between them and the Bellas. The musical elements of this movie are really good. The Riff-Off is hilarious and if you’re watching the performance of Das Sound Machine at the car show, you might get the appeal of this group apart from the historic implication.

As a side note at the end – Beca was wrong in the first movie, father in German is Vater, not Vader. Vader is Dutch, though, so it’s close.

Let’s Talk ‘Queerbaiting’ – An Inquiry into Queer Shipping on ABC’s “Once Upon a Time”

I was never sure about the validity of the concept of queerbaiting. As I understand the term, the powers that be put something queer in a movie or a tv show to get queer people to watch. They may not be following through on a story line, they may not make your OTP canon but something queer is happening which to me always meant: exposure, discussion, visibility. A win-win situation. That was until yesterday (Monday) when the strange intricacies of Once Upon a Time‘s (love) story lines hit me over the head and asked: do you think that’s okay?

I obviously didn’t or I wouldn’t be writing about it. What happened? SleepingWarrior happened, or maybe – more accurately – they didn’t happen, per se.

Once Upon a Time is a complicated story, I cannot go into the details of all the story lines, let’s just say every character has a complicated history with every other character and it so happened that Neal Cassady/Baelfire (Michael Raymond-James) came back to the Enchanted Forrest, met Mulan (Jamie Chung) and Robin Hood (Sean Maguire), talked about his love for Emma (Jennifer Morrison) and got Mulan to go seek her love to tell them how she felt. The next time we see her she is smiling at the sight of Princess Aurora (Sarah Bolger) and the hearts of SleepingWarrior shippers everywhere soared but weren’t quite sure whether it would happen, since there was – since the beginning of this story line – Prince Philip (Julian Morris) lurking in the shadows. But here, the producers followed through (kinda), they made Mulan almost confess her love to Aurora but before she can, happy Aurora tells her that Philip and she are going to have a baby.

Mulan’s heart breaks (as do a gazillion shipper hearts still in flight) and she leaves to join Robin Hood’s merry men.

I guess, I could as well put an ‘the end’ at the end of this short paragraph. Because what else is there to happen? Aurora and Philip have their happy ending as those are still possible in the Enchanted Forrest and it is, after all, the plot device to end all other plot devices. At least, in fairy tales it is so. The question would therefore be: does Once Upon a Time follow the rules of fairy tales? I wouldn’t say so, at this point, I think, it is safe to say that this will turn into a Neverending Story – pun intended. And as we already know that Philip is prone to being cursed or disappear, Mulan might yet get her chance to become Aurora’s one true love…

This would mean, there is hope for SleepingWarrior, yes? I guess there would be if this wasn’t exactly the point where for the first time in my life I see queerbaiting. Before you, a valiant SleepingWarrior shipper, start throwing rotten apples, remember that this is a subjective opinion. I don’t own the copyrights to indisputable wisdom, and I’ve been wrong more times than I can count (and I would be happy to be wrong in this case). But let’s discuss this:

Mulan as a character in her own story certainly has the potential to be a queer character – all gender-bending and cross-dressing characters are basically queer. But queering gender and having a queer sexuality are two different things. They are not necessarily exclusive but they are not the same thing. The gender bending, cross-dressing aspect holds true for the Mulan in Once Upon a Time. With her body armour and helmet in place she’s still able to pass, though once the helmet is taken off, there is no mistaking Mulan for a man – which is the desired effect for Mulan, her days of deliberately masking her gender are over. While she might still be queering the gender-range with her garb, her sexuality is supposedly straight (I’m referring to Aurora’s supposition that Mulan is in love with Philip. While Mulan denies this accusation, it is strongly suggested that she lies to keep her peace with Aurora and probably also because she knows that Philip loves Aurora and could never love her).

I’m talking about ‘assumed sexuality,’ here, and should know better. If I learned anything from being a fan and walking through fandoms it’s that any given character’s sexuality is fluid, if not in the canon then in the fandom. With Mulan, there are even more indicators (one might even talk of a stereotype) that she might be gay: the fact that she adopted a male identity in the past, that she is still cross-dressing to possibly appear as a man at first sight, and also the fact that she is Asian. I’m not trying to be racist, it’s a mere fact that women of color are more likely to be chosen as lesbian (or bisexual) characters by story tellers (at least in movies and on tv, I’m not sure if this holds for literature), and especially Asian (American) women have a tendency to be bisexual – or at least, assumed to be bi.

The possibility of Mulan being indeed queer is great, even though the story-tellers (writers and creators of Once Upon a Time) have been coy to actually let her come out – until Sunday. Because on Sunday they basically shoved her out of it in what seemed like an aweful hurry. If you think about the whole plot device that led Mulan to (almost) confessing her love to Aurora, it seems really constructed. Neal gets shot, tells Emma he loves her and awakes… in the Enchanted Forrest. He explains that he thought of the Enchanted Forrest while falling into the portal but that seems awefully convenient. He’s about to die, has just told the mother of his child that he still loves her and then he thinks of the Enchanted Forrest with all the bad memories of his dad (Robert Carlyle)… well, I guess you can’t control your dying thoughts even if you’re not really dying. He meets Robin and Mulan (is it even explained what Mulan is doing in Rumple’s castle?), recovers really quick from his bullet wound and talks Robin into using his son as bait (which is so unbelievably stupid, I’m still trying to forget it ever happened). Then he releases his speech on love and how he wants to be with Emma because she’s the only one he’s ever loved, yadda, yadda and disappears with Pan’s shadow.

The two reasons why Neal ends up in the Enchanted Forrest are: 1) so that Mulan is discovered to be in love with Aurora and 2) to give the audience another look at the lion tattoo on Robin Hood’s arm, telling us that he’s a supposed love interest for Regina (Lana Parrilla). Holy plot device, Batman! Did the Once-creators just turn one character gay to ensure that another character is definately not gay – especially not with the lead character, and NO SWAN QUEEN, SUCKERS! (I’m sorry, sometimes tumblr-speech just takes over. Or rather: sorry, not sorry at all.) That’s how it looks like to me, at least.
You may ask: okay, what has Mulan’s coming out to do with SwanQueen? Maybe nothing at all. But while there are a lot of SleepingWarrior shippers out there, there seems to be a whole SwanQueen fleet that is slowly but surely taking over the fandom because the creators have failed to give Emma and Regina both a believable (and alive) love interest. Chemistry is a tricky thing but it’s painfully clear that Emma never had it with August (Eion Bailey) or Hook (Colin O’Donoghue) and I’m also pretty doubtful about whether she has it with Neal. And Regina may have had chemistry with Daniel (Noah Bean) but he’s dead and I doubt he’ll be raised from the dead a second time. But then Emma and Regina have chemistry together, which is something that is wanted and needed on the show. Without this chemistry, most of their actions would seem stupid and questionable, they wouldn’t be able to make magic together. But here is where it gets tricky: making magic together has become a wonderful euphemism for… being in lesbians with each other.

The fandom is split on this issue, for sure. There are those who do not want Emma or Regina to be gay, and there are those who want them desperately to be together because it would ensure a happy ending for Emma, Regina AND Henry. There’s a shipping war going on but since the side of SwanQueen-opposition is devided into multiple ships, SwanQueen is relatively dominant. This poses a problem for the creators because they do not want Emma and Regina to be together either (this may be a supposition on my part but I really haven’t seen any indication that the creators are in favor of this ship – if I’m wrong, prove me so). What to do? Give the queer audience another queer character. And here we are back with Mulan and her broken heart. By giving us Mulan, they draw (bait) our focus from SwanQueen while introducing another love interest for Regina in the same plot device and have Neal profess his love for Emma – don’t tell me they did not do this on purpose, it’s simply a too convenient muddle of plot device to not be connected.

While giving us Mulan as a queer character, the creators are not giving us SleepingWarrior as a canon relationship. Given, at this point of the Aurora/Philip/Mulan story line it would have been stupid to do so. Aurora and Philip are a canonical item on the same level that Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Prince Charming (Josh Dallas) are – their story as fairy tale alone gives them this status. Of course, if the creators had really wanted to create a lesbian relationship and had thought this through and not just jumped into it, they could have left Philip lost. But it really doesn’t feel like they ever wanted to do that – whether the story line was well thought-through or not. And here is where I come back to the queerbaiting aspect of this whole story line – a possible queer character, yes, a canonical lesbian relationship, no. And we all know how much queer action characters get once their status as gay/lesbian/bi/other is established: 0, that’s how much (I don’t think we need to dwell on the reasons for this, we have discussed those at length and the most common [and commonly stupid] for Once has always been the ‘family show’-exclamation of sensitive heterosexualists’ souls).

There is one aspect in this whole story line that might actually become a redeeming factor for the whole show. When Tinkerbell (Rose McIver) uses pixie dust to conjure up a new love for Regina, one of the fundamental truths of fairy tales is put into question – that of one true love. Daniel has been introduced to us as Regina’s one true love, if there can be another, however, who is to say that this wouldn’t also be true for Aurora (or even Snow)? Of course, this could just be one of those not very well thought-through plot devices that the creators of this show like to throw at us – like how true love’s kiss sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t (unless, of course, as I am kind of hoping Rumple is not Belle’s [Emilie de Ravin] one true love). I would like to see this followed through, however. Not because I want to see Regina with Hood but because I like to see the fairy tale myth questioned and ultimately broken. The myth of one true love has created a standard human beings are not really born to live up to, it also holds us all hostage to a repetitive Hollywood theme that allows a whole industry to become lazy. And it makes Once Upon a Time cling to Snow and Charming as a representative tool for advertising heterosexuality as the norm – when the show could do so much better than this.

The Meta of Pitch Perfect: The Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club in Pitch Perfect is one of Jesse Swanson’s favorite movies. As I have already pointed out in my post about Jesse’s movie collection, it is the most unconventional of his choices of films. Why? Because, although it is a classic of its time, a perfect representation of rebellious adolescence, there were few awards to confirm its status as ‘great movie.’ While it has been a favorite with misunderstood teens from its making until now – like so many other John Hughes movies – it doesn’t stand out in the great scheme of movie making history. Jesse’s other favorite movies do.

Still, as part of Pitch Perfect, this movie had been chosen to stand out during the story line to build a link between Beca Mitchell – who doesn’t like movies – and Jesse Swanson – who loves movies and especially music in movies. And once again, there is this question: why? Why The Breakfast Club?

Movies as reference in movies (or tv) is not a new concept. Popcultural references exist almost as long as movies have. Think of James Stewart singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ in The Philadelphia Story thus referencing The Wizard of Oz, a movie that had been produced by the same studio and had come out the year before. Reference as advertisement, or reference as simple reminder of how great some movies were. But in most recent years, movies as reference have often been used to examplify a sort of kinship in plot or characterization.

Think of Easy A, the main reference is certainly The Scarlett Letter (yes, this is strictly speaking a literary reference but at least two movie versions are mentioned) but it also points toward the same movies The Breakfast Club is a part of: John Hughes’ movies about adolescents fighting to be understood – if only by their peers. And it uses the references to draw similarities, in actuality, goes as far as to copy scenes from these movies.

Pitch Perfect doesn’t do that. And this is a surprise. The similarity in plot you can find between Pitch Perfect and the movie it references is merely this: a group of very different people (some of them social outsiders) comes together. That’s all. They don’t do the same things, they don’t even exist in the same social setting, they merely come together.

Believe me when I say that from a cultural theorist’s point of view this is disappointing. I spent quite a few hours trying to come up with similiarities that simply don’t exist. Plotwise. Yes, you can point out that one scene in which the Bellas sit down together and share little stories of their lives but it falls short in comparison with the unscripted bonding scene in The Breakfast Club. The amount of time dedicated to this scene in the 80s movie, its significance for the film alone, would put a comparison with the Pitch Perfect-scene to shame. This is not a comparison worth making.

But, fortunately, there is more than plot to compare. Characters are an important part of every story worth watching or reading, they usually exist with the plot, sometimes despite the plot, and even without it (and then there are those unfortunate examples of movies without characterization, be it with or without plot).

As the ending of The Breakfast Club is the part of it Pitch Perfect dwells on (playing the ending twice, having Jesse state that the ending is the best part of any movie), and it’s the part of the movie that states the characters’ stereotypical function within the narrative, it makes sense to have a closer look at the characters:

Beca Mitchell (Anna Kendrick) is an unlikely heroine. I don’t know if this has been stressed enough or at all but the heroines of movies about coming-of-age and young adulthood are not usually tomboys wearing dark eye-liner and plaid shirts – at least they haven’t been for the last 20 years. I can only think of one other (female) character with similar markers: Mary Stuart Masterson’s Watts in Some Kind of Wonderful – another movie written by (who else?) John Hughes. The tomboy is not part of a popular narrative but if you think about it, she lends perfectly to stand as reference to a male character of the 80s. Feminist instead of casually misogynistic

John Bender (Judd Nelson) and Beca Mitchell are both discribed as rebellious, they struggle within their familial bonding, and live to do their thing. They value friendship and don’t shy away from breaking the rules to help someone out. They embody teenage ennui, are quick witted, somehow under-challenged. They repesent the smart American teenager/young adult who is not interested in being an intellectual.

This character is much more likely to be male than female. The tomboy is used as a stand-in for ‘male characteristics’ in female characters. Which is certainly an interesting theory but not one I want to elaborate here.

If we take the names of these two characters, Beca and Bender (as he is called despite his first name being John), we have another marker that connects them, a letter: B. This would not be significant if we couldn’t draw a line from the two heroes to the other characters where this is repeated. Look at it: Claire and Chloe , Andrew and Aubrey, Brian and Benji – and Allison and Amy which works better with the letters here than with the characters.

Of course, if you want to look at it this way, you cannot ignore Bender’s first name and the fact that he and Jesse (Skylar Astin) also share a letter. It would seem to me that Cannon – or whoever came up with this lettering comparison – created Beca and Jesse as two sides of John Bender. This would certainly pull them together in a platonic (from Plato’s theory of one person being smite into two by envious gods) soul-mate-y kind of way – if Jesse was indeed a part of Bender. But – and this I have already stressed in my other post about Jesse’s movie collection – there is little to nothing that connects Bender to Jesse. I see Jesse as a very conservative fellow who lacks instinct – another characteristic that Bender and Beca share. He’s not very adventurous although he would probably disagree with this assessment. What I see in him – when put in relation to The Breakfast Club within Pitch Perfect – is a meta narrator. He point us toward the movie, introduces us to the meta discourse that connects The Breakfast Club with Pitch Perfect, pretty much introduces Bender to Beca to make her see where she stands in the scheme of her own narrative. Fascinating and necessary as he is in this regard, he doesn’t seem to be part of this narrative itself. He’s more of a tool than a character in introducing The Breakfast Club (just think of how many of you watched The Breakfast Club after watching Pitch Perfect – Jesse introduced it to you).

I am not saying that Jesse Swanson isn’t a character within the Pitch Perfect narrative – he is Beca’s love interest (as by request of the powers that be), he is also her rival, her adversary, and Mr. Nice Guy of the movie – but i wasn’t able to find him as a representative to one of the characters within The Breakfast Club-reference – even though he introduced it to us. This may seem complecated but it also makes sense since it would make for bad narrating if he were to point out a movie to us in such detail in which he would see himself as the hero – much more so because he is not the hero of Pitch Perfect since that’s Beca.

While Jesse is certainly put into Pitch Perfect as Beca’s love interest, this stereotype is undermined by the referential narrative of The Breakfast Club. If Beca is Bender, then there is no doubt Chloe is Claire. Brittany Snow was asked by the makers of the movie to change her hair color to red (and please keep in mind that her red hair was a kind of signature feature of Molly Ringwald’s at the time – much as platinum was Marilyn Monroe’s [what I’m saying is that in some cases a hair color is not just a hair color]). If we keep this in mind, it is not surprising that there is a fair amount of confusion (or certainty) about Beca and Chloe’s relationship. Bender and Claire were an item – as shortlived, passionate and off-camera as it was, they were canon. Is it surprising that fans of Pitch Perfect see this in Beca and Chloe also? No, it is actually part of their referenctial narrative: they are polar opposites who more than like each other.

Chloe’s character is certainly that of a ‘princess’ – she is priviledged, her open demeanour is part of a character who knows that she can afford it because it has never been rejected. It is never said whether Chloe’s parents are rich but I at least made it part of her story line in my fanfictions – even before I bagan thinking about her as a Claire-character. She comes across as someone who doesn’t have to work hard to be liked – she is popular. Pitch Perfect‘s narrative complicates this, certainly, as Chloe is part of a world that is more nerdy than mainstream, still, she is very open and well liked (even by someone as reclusive as Beca).

If anything she is more generous and less concerned with other people’s opinion than Claire but she is also in her early twenties while Claire is still very much a teen. Also: while referential characters may have some of the original’s characteristics, they shouldn’t have them all. Mere repetition is not very flattering, and Pitch Perfect‘s characters would only have been half as interesting if they had been mere rip-offs of The Breakfast Club‘s characters.

Aubrey (Anna Camp) and Andrew (Emilio Estevez) are probably most similar. They both get a lot of pressure from their fathers, and they both ‘blow’ under pressure. While Andrew uses his strength and aggression against a weak schoolmate, Aubrey literally ‘blows’ – losing her lunch at the most important event of her aca-career, ruining her team’s chances of winning. They’re both athletic, they’re both drawing attention by their looks. Aubrey and Andrew are both complicated characters in search for control – unaware that losing control can actually help them more. They both find help in friendship but also have a hard time letting themselves fall into those friendships. I like both characters a lot, because they are so complex but not at the heart of the narrative. They are important but not the main heroes of their stories.

Considering this, I should probably note the antagonism between Aubrey/Beca and Andrew/Bender. And it’s the same kind of antagonism: a person who sees themself as leader has issues with an anti-hero figure, an alt-girl, a troublemaker. Out of this antagonism can arise sexual tension and whether we look at Pitch Perfect or The Breakfast Club, homoerotic subtext can be read into both pairings.

The nerd-factors of Benji (Ben Platt) and Brian (Anthony Michael Hall) are obvious. They are outsiders within the narrative of the outsider. It is again Jesse who introduces Benji’s otherness to the Pitch Perfect narrative, and it is no big leap to see Brian in him. While Benji is not part of the Bellas (couldn’t be) he is still part of the outsider-meme in Pitch Perfect. But his otherness is probably more problematized than any other because it is frowned upon. Otherness as part of institutionalized discrimination – racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. – may be touched upon in Pitch Perfect but as it is recognized as discrimination, there is more tolerance, more politcal correct liberalism afforded to it than toward mere nerd-dom which is labelled as plain ‘weirdness.’ This is probably not surprising, as nerds are mostly seen as straight, white, and male (which is, of course, not entirely true) – and are represented in both movies as (possibly) straight, white, and male. But there is, of course, more to either Benji or Brian than their geek-dom. Benji dreams of being part of the aca-world but is denied access because of his ‘weirdness’ and Brian can only adopt his parents’ dream of excellency because he is afraid that he will be a failure if he strays from it. While they are both very likable, they have problems making friends because few people dare to look past their ‘weirdness’.

Allison (Ally Sheedy) is probably the least defined character of The Breakfast Club. I always feel like John Hughes has taken the least care with her, making her another outsider among outsiders (just as Brian) but with even less character. But her non-definition lends itself very well to a different interpretation when it comes to her representation in Pitch Perfect because I see her represented by the Bellas as a group. The ultimate outsider, if you want, someone without friends, without links even to a real world. She says that she is a nymphomaniac (Stacie [Alexis Knapp]) but then it turns out she is more of a pathological liar (think of the fact that Fat Amy [Rebel Wilson] lied about her name, Fat Patricia), she’s a little bit goth (Lily [Hana Mae Lee]) with dark eyeliner (Beca) and the tendency to overshare (Chloe). Maybe we cannot find all of the Bellas in Allison (homosexuality and race were not necessarily topics John Hughes discussed in his movies – and that is certainly representative of mainstream 80s movie culture), but her ‘otherness’ can include all kinds of otherness the Bellas inhabit, and maybe even all the otherness of Pitch Perfect‘s aca-world.

Pitch Perfect and The Breakfast Club are very different movies, from different times with different messages and memes but there’s a reason they have been linked because they share themes and (stereo)types. The Breakfast Club may seem a little extreme to the audience of today – sexuality, teenage life, outsiders were discussed differently back then, they were different back then, maybe more open, maybe more harshly expressed… the 80s, if you haven’t lived through them, were a time of inner change, of young themes, youth cult – much like the 60s but even more liberating. While we adopt a lot of themes of the 80s today, we seem to have conventionalized some of them, erased others from our memory (whatever happened to androgynity?)… Picking up The Breakfast Club in Pitch Perfect was quite daring, I think. Referencing a movie (tv show, book), practically calls for a comparison and in most cases the newer version falls flat before the referenced material. But while Pitch Perfect may never gain the same place within today’s movie culture as The Breakfast Club inhabits within its own – due to non-sensical labels such as chick-flick, or its placement in the genre of musical – it is no less valuable. Pitch Perfect is a great movie, not because it is like The Breakfast Club but maybe because it is not.