Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and a man forced to
wear a full-body condom by his health-obsessed girl-
friend. The collection also includes a parody of Law-
rence Kasdan’s filmThe Big Chill(1983). “Me Cargo
en la Leche (Robert Jordan in Nicaragua),” on the
other hand, is less a parody of Ernest Hemingway’s
For Whom the Bell Tolls(1940) than a questioning of
Americans’ loss of idealism. The unhappy marriages
in “Sinking House” comment on the emotional fail-
Closing of the American Mind, The
Impact Boyle refused to be tied down to a single
subject, genre, or style, demonstrating a restless
need to encompass all of American experience in his
fiction. His true subject was the contradictions at
play in the American soul. His work was therefore of
particular importance to the 1980’s, a decade in
which the contradictions between humanitarianism
and greed, between altruism and nationalism, were
more apparent than ever.
Further Reading
Boyle, T. Coraghessan. “An Interview with T. Co-
raghessan Boyle.” Inverview by Elizabeth Adams.
Chicago Review37, nos. 2/3 (Autumn, 1991): 51-
63.
Kammen, Michael. “T. Coraghessan Boyle and
World’s End.” InNovel Histor y: Historians and Novel-
ists Confront America’s Past (and Each Other), edited
by Marc C. Carnes. New York: Simon & Schuster,
2001.
Law, Danielle. “Caught in the Current: Plotting His-
tory inWater Music.”In-Between: Essays and Studies
in Literar y Criticism5, no. 1 (March, 1995): 41-50.
Michael Adams
See also Big Chill, The; Literature in the United
States.
Brat Pack in acting
Definition Group of young American actors
The so-called Brat Pack figured prominently in entertain-
ment news and gossip columns of the 1980’s. The young,
attractive actors appeared in several hit films together and
frequently socialized with one another off screen as well,
helping drive tabloid sales during the decade.
As early as the 1940’s, Hollywood studios produced
some films that focused on and appealed to Ameri-
cans in their teens and twenties. During the 1980’s,
however, that demographic assumed a much more
important role in Hollywood’s production and mar-
keting decisions. As a result, the teen comedy
subgenre—characterized by earthy, raucous ac-
counts of sex, school, and family told from the per-
spective of high school and college students and in-
spired in great part by two hits of the 1970’s,Animal
House(1978) andAmerican Graffiti(1973)—came to
occupy a sizable proportion of the nation’s movie
screens for the first time.
Some of the most successful teen comedies starred
members of a group of young performers who came
to be known in the media as the “Brat Pack,” after a
cover story inNew Yorkmagazine so labeled them.
The name was modeled after the Rat Pack, the nick-
name given to a group of singers, actors, and comedi-
ans in the 1960’s, centered on Frank Sinatra. As with
Sinatra’s group of friends, the roster of Brat Pack
members was unofficial and fluid, but seven names
figured most prominently in publicity using the term:
Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Rob Lowe,
Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, and Emilio
Estevez. Andrew McCarthy and Matthew Broderick
were also often considered Brat Packers, as was John
Hughes, the director of some of their most popular
films, though he was somewhat older than his stars.
Likewise, the question of what qualifies as a Brat Pack
film is subject to controversy, although four are most
often considered examples:Sixteen Candles(1984),
The Breakfast Club(1985),Pretty in Pink(1986), andSt.
Elmo’s Fire(1985). The first three of these—all come-
dies directed by Hughes—are sometimes seen as a
Brat Pack trilogy, linked by shared character types
and themes rather than by shared characters or con-
tinuing story lines.St. Elmo’s Firewas the Brat Pack’s
most noteworthy attempt at straightforward drama.
Others sometimes seen as Brat Pack films includeOx-
ford Blues(1984) andClass(1983).
Icons and Archetypes The actors who made up the
Brat Pack came to be seen as a distinct group, simply
because they often worked—and played—together
in public. However, their significance for the 1980’s
lies not in their being branded with a memorable la-
bel by the press but in the iconic status they achieved
in their films. The best evidence of this is found in
Hughes’sThe Breakfast Club, in which five of the Brat
Pack’s members embody high school character ste-
reotypes: the athlete (Estevez), the teen princess
The Eighties in America Brat Pack in acting 137
