Fear, Oppression, or Encouragement?

Robert Downey Jr. and Benjamin Franklin have more in common than one might think. Weird Science is a science fiction comedy film directed by John Hughes, and though it was most likely not Hughes’s intention of including ideas that are reflected in early American literature, the movie Weird Science and early American literature relate because of the goals in each that are formed through encouragement, oppression, or fear. The raiders in Weird Science, like Jonathan Edwards’ in his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” use fear in order to achieve their goals. While Jonathan Edwards’ goal of his sermon is to scare people into converting to Christianity, the raiders in the movie Weird Science use fear in order to achieve their goal--embarrassing and angering Gary and Wyatt into standing up to them. On the other hand, John Winthrop in “A Model of Christian Charity” and Lisa in John Hughes’s movie, Weird Science, use encouragement to achieve their goals. John Winthrop encourages the people going to the New World to create and be “a city upon a hill” (Winthrop 3) in his sermon. Similarly, Lisa in the movie Weird Science constantly tells Wyatt to stand up to his older brother, Chet, and encourages both Wyatt and Gary to go get the two girls they are in love with. In addition, Benjamin Franklin’s father in The Autobiography and Chet in Weird Science both oppress his son and his brother, respectively, in order to get what they want, but ultimately fail. Benjamin Franklin’s father’s oppresses his son’s dreams in order to get Benjamin Franklin to master in what he wants his son to do with his life while in Weird Science, Chet, Wyatt’s older brother, constantly pushes his little brother around by giving him wedgies and slamming him against walls in order to get money or some sort of “reward.” People reach their goals in various ways, and the ways the characters in Weird Science and the authors of early American literature went about it--fear, oppression, and encouragement--are three very different ways of achieving a goal. An 80s movie directed by John Hughes and early American literature written or preached by people such as Benjamin Franklin, John Winthrop, and Jonathan Edwards do not have much in common on the surface. But dig a little deeper, and there is always some connection between two things that might seem on two different ends of the spectrum.