Just watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off again and having recently read the whole Ferris as product of Cameron's imagination theory I was looking out for that as well. What mainly struck me about the theory after watching the film was just how unnecessary it was. The film goes to great lengths to point out just what a fantasy figure Ferris is to Cameron, Cameron himself points it out, Ferris knows it. Ferris is set up as the opposite of Cameron, not just in personality but the loving family vs the absent family, popular vs invisible (Ferris is missed from school, Cameron not at all). The point is that whether or not Ferris is a figment of Cameron's imagination doesn't alter the reading of the film in the slightest. Even the events that don't effect Cameron could be seen in the context of his imagination, he imagines all the attention that is being lavished on Ferris, by his principal, his sister, everyone really, in his absence, as a counterpoint to the absence of attention he receives while he is there. But again there is no altered meaning depending on the realness or otherwise of Ferris.
It could actually be that the film is more interesting if we do read Ferris as real, because then we have to ask the question, "why is Ferris hanging about with Cameron?" He's popular with everyone in school and yet he chooses to hang about with the miserable and boring Cameron? Looking at it from this point of view we can actually envisage a third reading in which Ferris isn't a product of Cameron's imagination but that the whole film is a product of Ferris' imagination. It is Ferris imagining his own over the top popularity, his own daring personality. He imagines Cameron as a witness to all his deeds, a way of reflecting his fantasy back onto himself, "wow, imagine what Cameron thinks of me," a way of making himself feel like someone to be looked up to and admired. Perhaps our 2nd Ferris is simply a fairly ordinary middle-class kid ill in bed imagining what he could be doing, imagining what is happening at school in his absence.
But anyway, whoever is having the fantasy, it really is the greatest film...
And here's a cool Ferris related video (which I saw on Discobelle) of Diplo's "Twist and Shout" remix, put over the parade scene -
It could actually be that the film is more interesting if we do read Ferris as real, because then we have to ask the question, "why is Ferris hanging about with Cameron?" He's popular with everyone in school and yet he chooses to hang about with the miserable and boring Cameron? Looking at it from this point of view we can actually envisage a third reading in which Ferris isn't a product of Cameron's imagination but that the whole film is a product of Ferris' imagination. It is Ferris imagining his own over the top popularity, his own daring personality. He imagines Cameron as a witness to all his deeds, a way of reflecting his fantasy back onto himself, "wow, imagine what Cameron thinks of me," a way of making himself feel like someone to be looked up to and admired. Perhaps our 2nd Ferris is simply a fairly ordinary middle-class kid ill in bed imagining what he could be doing, imagining what is happening at school in his absence.
But anyway, whoever is having the fantasy, it really is the greatest film...
And here's a cool Ferris related video (which I saw on Discobelle) of Diplo's "Twist and Shout" remix, put over the parade scene -
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