“Blow yourself.”
Jeanie Bueller tends to get a bad rap
as the killjoy of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
“What a little asshole.”
She wants to spoil her brother’s fun
and bring him down.
“I hate him.”
But if we look back more than 30 years later
with 2018 eyes,
we start to see that Jeanie has some valid complaints,
“Why should he get to do whatever he wants whenever he wants?”
and she has one of the best arcs in the story.
So here’s our defense of Jeanie Bueller
and why she’s the real heroine of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
“Why don’t you put your thumb up your butt?”
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Almost everyone else sees Ferris as a magical boy wonder,
but Jeanie sees him for exactly who he really is.
She’s immune to his charms and manipulations.
“What’s this?
What’s his problem?”
“He doesn’t feel well.”
“Yeah right.
Drag that one out you could fertilize the lawn.”
Her vendetta against Ferris is on one level classic sibling rivalry.
“In a nutshell, I hate my brother.”
Ferris is the golden boy everyone adores,
and Jeanie’s always in his shadow.
At home he’s the favorite who can sweetalk their parents
into anything he wants.
“Now you get better pumpkin.”
“Okay pumpkin.”
While their parents are strikingly harder on Jeanie.
They treat her like a nuisance
“I lost the Vermont deal because of her.”
“I think we should shoot her.”
or ignore her altogether.
“That’s it.
I want out of this family.”
But it’s not just a sibling thing --
it’s also a bigger problem.
As lovable as Ferris is
Jen Chaney at Uproxx argues that he pretty much embodies
white male privilege.
“I’m taking a day off.”
He’s used to bossing people around
“Now come on over here and pick me up!”
and getting his way.
“How about we rent a nice Cadillac?
My treat!”
Jeanie objects to the special treatment that comes with Ferris’s privilege --
and we start to realize she’s right.
“You’re letting him stay home?”
“I can’t believe this.
If I was bleeding out my eyes,
you guys would make me go to school.
This is so unfair.”
The world seems set up to favor Ferris over Jeanie.
At school he’s the cool kid who has everyone wrapped around
his little finger.
“Oh, well he’s very popular, Ed.
The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods,
wastoids, dweebies, dickheads.
They all adore him.
They think he’s a righteous dude.”
Jeanie is disliked and dismissed as an angsty teenage girl.
“Why hello Jeanie, who’s bothering you now?”
Ferris lies to everyone that he’s seriously ill,
but no one pays attention to Jeanie’s real problems and feelings.
“Save Ferris?”
“What?”
When she calls the cops about a break in
“There is an intruder!”
they’re more interested in talking about Ferris.
“Look it’s real nice that you hope my brother’s feeling better,
but I’m in danger, okay?”
And when she thinks help has finally arrived,
it’s just, you guessed it, another person looking for Ferris.
“I heard that you were feeling ill.
Headache, fever, and a chill.”
Ironically it’s not Ferris, but Jeanie,
who faces any kind of punishment in the end.
The police accuse her of making a phony phone call
and her parents aren’t interested in her side of the story.
“Do you know what it’s like to be pulled out of work
to pick up your daughter at the police station?”
Jeanie’s seen by everyone around her
as the difficult woman.
“Why don’t you keep your opinions to yourself.”
Nobody understands why she can’t just be happy-go-lucky,
like Ferris.
But Jeanie has good reason to be so mad all the time.
Wouldn’t you be?
If everyone was always treating your brother
like some kind of God, when he’s done nothing to deserve it,
and you actually try hard at things.
“Screw ‘em.”
Jeanie doesn’t really hate her brother --
she just wants Ferris to be held to the same standards
as everyone else.
Jeanie has a lot going for her.
She’s smart, adorable, and funny,
“I’d also like to add that I have my father’s gun
and a scorching case of herpes.”
she’s played by Dirty Dancing’s Jennifer Grey.
“Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”
She’s just as clever and perceptive as Ferris,
but she’s never given the benefit of the doubt
that Ferris can always rely on.
“What do you care if your brother ditches school?”
“Why should he get to ditch when everybody else has to go?”
“You could ditch.”
“Yeah, I’d get caught.”
Jeanie just wants an even playing field.
Jeanie has something in common with the school principal, Mr. Rooney.
They both want Ferris to face some consequences.
Jeanie’s and Rooney’s plots converge in the movie,
because they have the exact same plan.
“Ferris.”
“Bueller.”
To go to the Bueller house and prove that Ferris
is skipping school.
“I knew it!”
There’s a crucial difference between Jeanie and Mr. Rooney though.
As we’ve said, ultimately Jeanie
just wants fair treatment.
She’s not really trying to destroy her brother’s life.
Mr. Rooney’s hatred for Ferris is far sicker and deeper.
He says he doesn’t want Ferris leading the other students astray.
but really his ego is bruised by the fact
that Ferris has repeatedly embarrassed him.
“He jeopardizes my ability to effectively govern
this student body.”
“Well, makes you look like an ass is what he does, Ed.”
It seems that Rooney also resents Ferris just for being
young, suave, and happy.
And Rooney is willing to do totally inappropriate
and illegal things to crush the spirit
of this young kid.
Jeanie gets a wakeup call in Mr. Rooney --
“Goddamn you little bastard.”
because ultimately, Rooney is a killjoy to the core,
and that’s not her.
“By the way Mr. Rooney, you left your wallet
on the kitchen floor.”
In the end, she manages to get on board with some aspects
of Ferris’s carpe diem philosophy
on her own terms.
Jeanie starts to reconsider her grudge against Ferris
when she meets the Charlie Sheen character at the police station.
He points out that the energy she spends on obsessing about Ferris
would be better used on herself.
“You outta spend a little more time dealing with yourself,
a little less time worrying about what your brother does.”
And he’s not wrong.
For most of the film, Jeanie doesn’t exactly
make it easy for people to get to know her.
“Go piss up a flagpole.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You should be.”
She pushes everyone away by being haughty and hostile.
“Hi Jeanie.”
“Shut up.”
And even though she’s right that Ferris’s special treatment isn’t
fair,
she’s been punishing herself even more and wasting
her own gifts by fixating on her brother.
This is Jeanie Bueller’s day off too, but she’s not letting herself
have any fun at all.
She finally starts to live her own life
and let loose in a way that Ferris would totally approve of.
“Achem.”
“Hi.”
So after her new hookup and her run ins with Rooney,
Jeanie has a change of heart.
She decides to rescue her brother from the sick principal,
who almost certainly would have issued a punishment
way too harsh for the crime.
All day long the town has been talking about “Saving Ferris”
but as Chaney points out,
it’s Jeanie who really does save him.
And she becomes the unforeseen heroine of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
It may seem cooler to fly high like Ferris,
who doesn’t get bent out of shape by anything,
but on repeated viewings, we also feel more for
the characters who don’t find everything so easy.
Jeanie is like Cameron, not too cool to care.
In fact, she cares too much about things.
She’s got passion.
So at the end it’s the ultimate payoff
to see her using her inner fire for good
and having some fun.
After the day she’s had, she deserves it.
“I am very cute, I am very alone,
and I am very protective of my body.
I do not want it violated or killed, alright?”
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