Tuesday, January 17, 2023

She's Out of Control (1989)


Movies were different in the past. The people behind making movies, mostly cishet white men, weren’t respectful to people that were different from them. They treated the worlds they built as though cishet white men were the only people who mattered. Sure, there were women, children, other races, and other sexualities present. But the cishet white men who were writing, directing, and producing movies usually presented their stories through the perspective of a cishet white male main character.

Telling stories through this lens frequently presented problems. Racism and sexism abounded. Blackface, yellowface, and brownface were sometimes ways to get minority characters into a story without hiring minority performers. Or it was used as a way to insult those other races without having someone present who would be able to object that treatment. Even through the 1980s, there were movies like Soul Man that featured white actors donning racial makeup for laughs. Sexism and misogyny were also major elements of movies through slashers and sex comedies, among others. Things have improved since then, but those elements aren’t completely gone.


One of the 1980s movies that was problematic due to the cishet white male lens was She’s Out of Control. Katie Simpson (Ami Dolenz) was a sheltered, nerdy girl. When her father, Doug (Tony Danza), went away on a business trip, Katie got a makeover. This caused Doug to react with hysteria. He couldn’t handle his fifteen-year-old daughter dating boys. With the help of his therapist, Dr. Fishbinder (Wallace Shawn), Doug manipulated Katie in whatever way he could to keep her as sheltered as possible. It was a struggle for him to not be the only man in her life.

She’s Out of Control wasn’t about racism or misogyny in the typical way. It did have misogynist elements, however, thanks to the story. The movie was about trust. Doug had been such a controlling factor over his daughter’s life for so long, he couldn’t handle losing that control. He couldn’t handle losing that control because he didn’t trust his daughter and didn’t trust any of the boys she started dating. The only boy he trusted was the boy next door, who he had forced his daughter to date. She felt no feelings for that kid and, as soon as she got her makeover, broke up with him in favour of playing the field. Doug didn’t like that.


It might seem right now that control was more of the issue than anything. You might think that Doug simply wanted to control his daughter for her entire life. He was the reason she had braces. He was the reason she stayed in and studied, rather than going out to have a social life. Before the makeover, I mean. And you might be right. But it was definitely the trust issues that drove the story forward. It wasn’t that Doug wanted Katie to be with Richard (Lance Wilson-White). He did, but it wasn’t because he wanted to control her life. The reason Doug was comfortable with that relationship and wanted it to continue was that Richard had grown up next door. Doug knew Richard. He had known him for Richard’s entire life. There was trust built there because Doug knew Richard. Richard was the known.

Every other guy that Katie began dating was the unknown. Doug hadn’t watched these guys grow up. He didn’t know what they were like. He didn’t trust them to treat his daughter well. Not that he ended up treating her well. After the first date or two, Doug began screening the guys as they came to the door, turning them all away for one reason or another. They weren’t right for his daughter. Sure, this was controlling. I can’t deny that. But the control came from a lack of trust he had with the guys. He thought they were all focused on Katie’s body and nothing else. Based on a beach scene later in the movie, he was right.

Aside from Joey (Dana Ashbrook). Doug’s first impression of Joey wasn’t a good one. After turning away so many potential suitors, Katie snuck into a date with Joey. She made sure Joey didn’t come to the door, instead meeting him outside at his big-wheeled pickup truck. Doug couldn’t see who the guy was, only seeing the big truck, and made his judgement based on that. He didn’t trust people who drove vehicles like that. They were from the wrong side of the tracks and would do bad things. You know, societal judgment, class difference stuff. When he finally met Joey, face-to-face, they would connect. Unintentionally, but the connection was there.


I say unintentionally because Doug was being helped, if you could call it that, by Dr. Fishbinder. This doctor was only making Doug’s trust issues worse. As revealed at the end of the movie, he wasn’t even a credible doctor. Dr. Fishbinder was writing about things he had no experience with. He wrote about raising horny, teenage daughters without ever having a daughter. Doug didn’t discover that until the end, though, and spent most of the movie following Fishbinder’s increasingly ludicrous advice. Increasingly offensive advice.

The advice began with the screening of all the boyfriends to take control of his daughter’s dating life. There’s that control again. It wasn’t so much that Doug wanted control, even with his sleep-talking mantra of “I’m in control.” He just felt like he was losing the love of his daughter for boys, and he didn’t trust the boys. She was supposed to be daddy’s little girl. The control idea only gave him reason to let his lack of trust in anything unknown come to the forefront. But it was spurned by the advice of Dr. Fishbinder.

When Katie began dating Joey and not bringing him anywhere near the house, Dr. Fishbinder told Doug to become fake friends with the new boyfriend. Doug got home to find a makeout party in the living room and used that opportunity to connect with Joey. The problem was that he actually formed a sort of connection with the guy. Joey was allowed to drive Doug’s Jaguar. In fact, he was allowed to street race Doug’s Jaguar, with Doug excitedly watching. The car getting destroyed by the second train of a two train fake-out is beside the point. Doug rooted for Joey in the race, showing that he had invested in Joey, however little. There was a small connection. Joey would later come to Doug to talk out his emotions after Katie dumped him. Doug didn’t kick him out, showing that the bond was there.


The third, and maybe worst, piece of advice that Dr. Fishbinder gave Doug came when Katie started dating Timothy (Matthew Perry). Timothy seemed like a nice, upstanding young man. He met Doug and mentioned he was going away to Yale for school, against his parents’ wishes because they wanted him to go to Princeton. He said he would bring Katie back an hour before her curfew. It was all the right things to make Doug happy. However, Dr. Fishbender pointed out that Timothy was a wolf in sheep’s clothing and said Doug needed to show Katie how bad Timothy was. Doug began stalking the high school senior, snapping photos of Timothy with other teenage girls. You know, that real creeper kind of stuff. A full grown, adult man taking pictures of teens getting their freak on. All because he (justifiably, when you see what he sees) didn’t trust Timothy to treat his daughter well.

It all came to a head during senior prom, which Timothy took Katie to. Doug made sure that his dinner date with his girlfriend, Janet (Catherine Hicks), and her parents was at the same location as the prom. That way, he was able to sneak onto the dance floor to spy on his daughter. The chaperones rightfully kicked him out. Then he followed the teens to a motel and essentially broke into the bedroom where Timothy tried to force himself on Katie, much to her refusal. Yes, he helped his daughter. But it really showed that he didn’t trust her to handle her own situations. She didn’t ask for his help. He just kind of barged in, which was a breach of their mutual trust. Because the trust was already gone from his end. He had no trust in anyone.


Dr. Fishbinder was a major source of these trust issues. When Doug couldn’t handle the thought of his daughter dating boys he didn’t know, he sought out Dr. Fishbinder’s help. Instead of helping, Dr. Fishbinder egged on Doug’s thoughts. He made them worse. He threw Doug into a downward spiral of trust issues with his daughter. Doug probably would still have his Jaguar and wouldn’t be as predatory if it weren’t for Dr. Fishbinder’s influence. The doctor made things worse. Much, much worse. To the point where it hurt Doug’s career and his relationship with Janet.

Although you might be able to point at Katie living her own life without Doug’s oversight as the cause of Doug’s stress, I think it was more about his trust in other people than anything. Doug was a guy who was comfortable with the things that he knew. He knew his daughter. He knew her boyfriend. He knew her marks in school. When unknowns were thrown into his life through Katie’s new, carefree attitude after her makeover, Doug was uncomfortable. He didn’t trust the new people in his daughter’s life. He didn’t trust his daughter to stay safe around those people. It was a lack of trust, more than anything, that drove Doug to be a crazy man.


Nearly thirty-five years after She’s Out of Control was released to theaters, it’s easy to see why the movie wouldn’t be made anymore. Having a story from the point-of-view of a father who doesn’t trust his daughter and her sexual freedom is no longer an easy sell. People are more open about their sexuality. The double standard of men sleeping around being cool and women sleeping around being bad has begun to fade. Having this story in a major, theatrical comedy would be seen as a misogynistic story (which it was) that perpetuated heteronormative double standards (which it would). There’s a story to be told about a father who can’t handle his daughter hitting puberty and showing interest in boys. This is not it.

There’s a growth within society as time passes by. People begin to understand each other. They begin to care for each other. That’s not the case for everyone. If the Trump presidency showed us anything, there are still a lot of people out there filled with hate and prejudice. But movies have, for the most part, taken large steps forward as time moved forward. Racism, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry have lessened to a great extent on the big screen. Diversity has become a bigger part of the filmmaking process, allowing stories to be told and influenced by people who aren’t cishet white men. Though, every once in a while, a very offensive cishet white male story like Chicks Dig Gay Guys sneaks through.

With these changes happening behind the scenes, movies will only get more inclusive and less offensive on the whole. There may still be some outliers, but the advancements seem to be outweighing any setbacks. Things have changed a lot since the early 2000s, the 1990s, the 1980s, and anything before. Storytellers care more about how they treat their characters and how their characters represent the audience. We might just be beyond the days of most major releases featuring bigotry.


We’re not past these notes, though:

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