#GuiltyPleasureConfessional: The Legend of Billie Jean

Recently, a former coworker, a white guy, posted on the Book of Faces that Blazing Saddles is the best western ever made. In the thread that followed, inspired no doubt by the absolute trash fire that is our current political and social reality, someone made the comment that it could never be made today. This in turn inspired my own contemplation of other films that indeed would not be made in today’s political and social climate: among them, Dog Day Afternoon, a 1975 film that helped solidify Al Pacino’s career; 9 to 5, a feminist comedy that holds up and is painfully relevant more than 30 years later; and 1985’s Real Genius, a sci-fi comedic romp that expressed strong anti-war sentiments in what turned out to be the last years of the Cold War. But what occurred to me deep into the my rumination about films that would have a hard time in Hollywood today was The Legend of Billie Jean.

When I started thinking about The Legend of Billie Jean, I wondered if it would actually stand the test of time. It’s not a great film, but I hold that it is still an important film. (And the soundtrack is hot fire! Pat Benatar’s anthemic “Invincible” is the theme song. I mean.) I think the first time I saw it was when I was 10 or 11. My mother was and is someone who has a television on at all times, regardless of what’s being broadcast. On some cable station was this 1985 film about a teenager named Billie Jean Davy (Helen Slater) in the city of Corpus Cristi, Texas, dreaming of a better life …