“If you expect nothing from anybody,
you’re never disappointed.”— Sylvia Plath
After paging through dozens of options on Netflix.com and Amazon.com, the three of us — a 48-year-old who prefers gory war flicks, a 44-year-old who leans toward rom coms and science fiction, and a 16-year-old who, thanks to a bizarro fluke captured in a vortex of drama, had nothing better to do than sit in the livingroom with his father and stepmother playing “World of Warcraft” while occasionally acknowledging the TV screen — agreed to watch “Easy A,” a high school sex comedy set in 2010 with text-messaging and webcast plot twists but written with an eye toward Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850 and John Hughes in 1980.
I think 40somethings might appreciate the clever pacing and witty writing of “Easy A” more than its target audience of teen-agers. Starring Emma Stone, the modern-day version of “A Scarlet Letter” was cute but not entirely predictable, naughty but not dirty and very funny if you could keep up with the cultural references.
At one point, a character suggests reading Sylvia Plath on a date and the clever retort included a reference to sticking one’s head in an oven.
This is meaningless and not at all amusing unless you know who Sylvia Plath was. Which brings me to today’s cultural reference defined for your better understanding of 2010 teen-age comedies:
Sylvia Plath was a 20th century American poet whose work tended toward the depressing and who committed suicide at 30 by sticking her head in an oven.
When it comes to John Hughes and the significance of John Cusack holding a boombox above his head in 1989’s iconic movie of teen-age angst “Say Anything,” you’re on your own.
And by the way, everything in life is writable about
if you have the outgoing guts to do it,
and the imagination to improvise.
The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.— Sylvia Plath
Minnesota Transplant 