No one trashes guido the killer pimp on my watch!!!

What could David Adesnik be thinking?: [I]n case you were thinking of watching Risky Business after reading about it on OxBlog, I have one word for you: Don’t. Any movie with the line, “Joel, get off the babysitter” deserves better treatment than that. Heresy, I say!! Heresy!! On a slightly more serious note — I ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

What could David Adesnik be thinking?:

[I]n case you were thinking of watching Risky Business after reading about it on OxBlog, I have one word for you: Don’t.

Any movie with the line, “Joel, get off the babysitter” deserves better treatment than that. Heresy, I say!! Heresy!! On a slightly more serious note — I haven’t seen the movie in some years, but my memory is that it’s quite a good flick. The interesting question is whether this is true because I first saw the movie when I was roughly the protagonist’s age. It’s possible — not probable, but possible — that I’m viewing this film through rose-colored glasses. There are movies that occupy a more prominent place in our personal pantheons because of when we see them, and the good memories we associate with that time. There are “generational” movies that are valued because they click on some level with one’s entire peer group — The Shawshank Redemption for Generation Y or Rebel Without A Cause for baby-boomers, for example. Readers are encouraged to debate the merits of Risky Business, or to confess the movies that they adore but recognize may not be as good as they originally thought. Oh. and this seems as good a time as any to link to Time‘s “All-Time 100 Movies.” UPDATE: Hey, apparently this concern of mine has a name — the Tron effect.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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