Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader(25)

3 Rabbi Nosson Scherman, The Torah: Haftaros and Five Megillos with a Commentary Anthologized from the Rabbinic Writings (The Stone Edition).





KAMI GARCIA

After reading this essay, I’ve decided my writing doesn’t get lumped in with the films of John Hughes often enough. I’ll have to work on this.

Meanwhile, enjoy Kami’s loving dissection of why the hapless best friends never get the girl…unless they happen to be the girl. But you’ll read more about that in a minute.


WHY THE BEST FRIEND NEVER GETS THE GIRL

I’m just going to come right out and say it because we’re friends, and I don’t want there to be any secrets between us (unless, of course, I’m your best friend and I’m madly in love with you). Brace yourself, here it comes: Simon never stood a chance with Clary.

Before you start sending hate mail, give me a chance to explain. I’m not suggesting that Simon isn’t handsome and brave and perfect for Clary in every way. Some mundanes might actually argue that he’s superior to Jace in all three categories, but that doesn’t change the fundamental law of attraction on which my claim is based. In literature and film, the best friend never gets the girl.

It has nothing to do with Simon’s potential as boyfriend material. He lost the battle before he even had a chance to fight, doomed to join support groups full of best friends who never got the girl. (The reverse is true if the person in question is a girl secretly in love with her best friend, but we’ll get to that later.)

In pursuing Clary, Simon ignored a decade’s worth of case studies conducted by a handful of gifted filmmakers in the 1980s, most notably John Hughes, the godfather of them all, who dedicated his career to exposing what I refer to as the Duckie effect.

For those of you unfamiliar with this master filmmaker and his legacy, the Duckie effect is this: A boy falls hopelessly in love with the girl of his dreams who also happens to be his best friend, spends all his time with her, yet she still chooses another guy over him. It’s a fascinating and heartbreaking phenomenon, worthy of scientific research. But you don’t need to be a scientist to analyze the data collected from the 1980s filmmakers and conclude that our Simon is a victim of the Duckie effect.





Case Study 1: Pretty in Pink (John Hughes, 1986)


It’s only fitting to begin with the movie that includes the best friend after whom the phenomenon was named.

In Pretty in Pink, Andie is not one of the popular girls at her high school. In fact, she’s one of their favorite targets. Andie wears the wrong clothes and drives a beat-up car, and she isn’t the girl that most of the guys at her school want to date. Unless you happen to be Duckie, the guy who pretends he needs help with his homework just so he can spend time with her. Duckie is completely devoted to Andie, but she still falls for Blane, a handsome and popular guy at school—the complete opposite of Duckie in every way (sound familiar?). So what does Duckie do? He tries to make Andie jealous by kissing her friend Iona.

Exhibit A: Like Duckie, Simon tries to make the girl he loves jealous.

In City of Bones, Simon notices the attraction between Clary and Jace almost immediately and employs a slightly more sophisticated strategy to make Clary jealous. Simon focuses all his attention on the beautiful Isabelle, often staring at her “rapt and openmouthed.” And he is actually more successful than Duckie. Simon does make Clary jealous, most notably at Magnus Bane’s party, when she watches as Isabelle dances around Simon, “looking at him as if she were planning to drag him off into a corner to have sex.” In American literature and film, consciously choosing a guy with whom they have an instant attraction is one of the ways young women signal their independence. Their sexual identities are closely tied to breaking free from their parents and the expectations others have for them—expectations that sometimes include a sweet best friend.

This might explain why making Clary jealous doesn’t actually work in the long run. Jace is the one Clary is instantly attracted to and ultimately the one she wants—the aloof enigmatic boy who kisses her in the hallway outside her bedroom. Even when Simon interrupts the kiss and admits his feelings for Clary, professing “I’ve been in love with you for ten years,” he still doesn’t get the girl. Like Andie, Clary feels guilty and torn. But in the end, she can’t fight the way she feels, and Jace wins out.





Case Study 2: Sixteen Candles (John Hughes, 1984)


Sixteen Candles is another example of the Duckie effect at work. In the film, Samantha is turning sixteen the same weekend her older sister is getting married. Relatives descend on the house, along with a foreign exchange student, and Sam loses her room and her family’s attention. School is a welcome distraction, especially since her secret crush, Jake Ryan, is there.

Sam’s “Duckie” is more of an accidental friend than a lifelong best friend. Farmer Ted, as Sam calls him, is king of the geeks, and he bets his friends that he can “make it” with Sam at the school dance. The same night, Sam’s family forgets her sixteenth birthday. She shares a moment with Jake before his nightmare diva of a girlfriend drags him off to a party. Sam retreats to the school auto shop, where she spills her guts to best friend stand-in Farmer Ted and he tries to kiss her. Farmer Ted never gets a kiss (though Sam does give him her underwear so he can save face with his friends), and she ends up with Jake.