“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” Captures the Essence of Americanism

 Art, as they say, is a mirror, and the saying holds true for the 1986 pop-culture ‘classic’ movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Its characters and plotlines reveal the essence of modern America with remarkable clarity.

Ferris Bueller, the teenage boy at the center of the movie, is the quintessential modern American: determined to ‘pursue happiness’ (Declaration of Independence), he has no problem ignoring all rules and authorities to obtain it: skipping school, deceiving parents, etc. This plays out geopolitically with the US ignoring and/or undermining international treaties, moral traditions of other countries, the rules of warfare, and so on to obtain whatever they are after.

Authority figures in the film are portrayed as either hopelessly naïve and irrelevant (like Ferris’s parents, who believe his performance that he is ill so he can stay home from school) or utterly tyrannical (like Ed Rooney, the dean of Ferris’s school who is determined to catch Ferris in a lie and punish him). This is also very much akin to the US view of political authority: There are only those two options: Political authorities are either wicked, uncontrollable tyrants or toothless puppets of the people (autocracy vs. democracy, in Pres. Biden’s terminology).

Ferris’s best friend Cameron, who is dragged into the action by Ferris, is another illustration of the US attitude toward authority. Deathly afraid at the start that his father will find out that his prized Ferrari was driven about town by he, Ferris, and Sloane (Ferris’s girlfriend), by the end of the movie he has been transformed into the typical rebellious American who is ready to confront and win his independence from any kind of restraining force. It’s 1776 within the family, and it is glorious!

Jeannie, Ferris’s sister who is angry that he never gets in trouble for his constant rule-breaking, symbolizes virtue, morality, and conscience. It is remarkable that she is corrupted by the end of the movie (after some advice at the jail from a drug addict, another American man ‘pursuing happiness’), as she comes to Ferris’s aid just as Rooney is about to expose his lie that he has been sick all day. And this is presented in the film as a praiseworthy change that we should cheer! The charade of modern America’s morality is thus stripped away: Virtue for the US is the ability to smugly flout whatever rules they wish, and to enjoy doing so by strangling the cry of conscience.

Is it any wonder that, more and more, countries in the world with even a shred of traditional religious sensibility are beginning to question their friendship with the United States?

How can the US create close ties with them again? With stacks of cash? That might work on a few, and for a time, but certainly not with most of them, or for very long.

What is necessary is a transformation of the peoples of the US and their government, a step back into their more traditional past. Prior to their war for independence in 1776, the 13 colonies that later became the United States were basically extensions of European Christendom in North America. After that war, the new States became post-Christian – not all at once, it is a process that has been ongoing, though there have moments that accelerated it such as the Northern Yankee Revolution of 1861-5 and the CIA-driven cultural revolution of the 1960s. Nevertheless, 1776 is the dividing line, after which the States exchanged Christianity (in the attenuated forms in which they knew it) for an idolatrous worship of Liberty.

In order to regain the trust and friendship of the more traditional countries of the world that they are alienating – with the Global South, i.e., by far the greatest proportion of the world’s population, the United States will have to rediscover and nurture anew their Christian roots. The existence of those roots is still very much in evidence, whether in the form of old colonial churches like St. Philip’s Church in Charleston, South Carolina, or newer structures like the New Gracanica Monastery in Third Lake, Illinois; as well as in the many place names in the States that recall holy events, saints, and objects: St. Paul, Minnesota (named for the Holy Apostle); St. Albans, Vermont (named for the first martyr of Britain); Santa Barbara, California (named for St. Barbara the Great Martyr); etc.

We would especially emphasize the importance of the pre-Schism Orthodox saints of the West and Africa for a spiritual renewal in the US. It is difficult to overstate just how much they would be able to help if a genuine appeal in humility and love were made to them. Two saints, one from the West and one from the East, separated by about 1,500 years, make this same point.

St. Ambrose of Milan (+397): ‘By the death of martyrs religion has been defended, faith increased, the Church strengthened; the dead have conquered, the persecutors have been overcome. And so we celebrate the death of those of whose lives we are ignorant.’

St. John of Kronstadt (+1909): ‘When your faith in the Lord, either during your life and prosperity, or in the time of sickness and at the moment of quitting this life, grows weak, grows dim from worldly vanity or through illness, and from the terrors and darkness of death, then look with the mental eyes of your heart upon the companies of our forefathers, the patriarchs, prophets, and righteous ones: St. Simeon, who took the Lord up in his arms, Job, Anna the Prophetess, and others; the Apostles, prelates, venerable Fathers, martyrs, the disinterested, the righteous, and all the saints. See how, both during their earthly life and at the time of their departure from this life, they unceasingly looked to God and died in the hope of the resurrection and of the life eternal, and strive to imitate them. These living examples, which are so numerous, are capable to strengthen the wavering faith of every Christian in the Lord and in the future life. Those Christian communions who do not venerate the saints and do not call upon them in prayer lose much in piety and in Christian hope. They deprive themselves of the great strengthening of their faith by the examples of men like unto themselves.’

The 50 States probably do not have as much time as they believe to think this over. The destructive wars they wage, directly or by proxy; the perversions they fund and force on traditional cultures; the ideologies they try to impose on others (individualism, parliamentarianism, capitalism, etc.), and so on – all of this is alienating countries at a rapid rate. Repentance is needed quickly. No. Repentance was needed many years ago. The day will soon come, absent any change for the better on their part, when the US will be relegated to a humiliating position in the world, a better illustration of which would be difficult to find than that of Mr. Rooney at the end of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, when he is forced to ride home on a school bus full of students who despise him. Behold, the future of the United States.