Who Is Malcolm Gladwell In Brats? Brat Pack Documentary Appearance Explained

Summary

• Gladwell’s commentary adds deeper insight into the impact of the Brat Pack phenomenon on Hollywood and young people in the 1980s.
• His ability to extrapolate larger patterns highlights the generational transition happening in Hollywood at that time.
• The Brat Pack label represents both a cultural positive impact and a personal negative one, as shown in the documentary Brats on Hulu.

In Hulu’s new Brat Pack documentary, Brats, several pop culture and Hollywood experts are interviewed, but one curious inclusion stands out: Malcolm Gladwell. Brats, inspired by actor and former 1980s Brat Pack member Andrew McCarthy’s memoir Brat: An ’80s Story, sees McCarthy traveling to interview his fellow Brat Pack actors to discover how the label impacted them personally and professionally. Each had a different feeling about the infamous 1985 New York Magazine article in which the hated Brat Pack nickname was coined that changed their lives forever.

Along with the actual Brat Pack members, McCarthy also interviewed various experts, from casting agents, to producers, to pop culture and movie critics, to writers. One of those experts is Malcolm Gladwell, who has some very passionate feelings about the everlasting Team Duckie vs. Team Blane argument from the quintessential Brat Pack moviePretty in Pink. Jokes aside, he also had some really insightful commentary on the Brat Pack phenomenon and how it impacted the zeitgeist, both of Hollywood and young people in the 1980s.

Who Is Malcolm Gladwell? His Career Explained

He’s A Thought-Provoking Writer

Malcolm Gladwell is a really interesting person. A journalist, author, podcaster, and all-around intellectual, Gladwell is one of our modern era’s biggest thinkers. His background in journalism was built through the 1980s and 90s, working for publications from The American Spectator to The Washington Post. After writing for those papers, he joined the staff at The New Yorker in 1996, where he’s been ever since.

However, Gladwell’s reputation as an intellectual really took off with the publication of his first book in 2000: The Tipping Point, which, controversially popularized the “broken windows” theory of policing. His second book, Blink, came in 2005, and it explored the ways humans subconsciously make informed decisions in a matter of seconds thanks to a wealth of information and experience behind them. By far his most popular and successful book, Outliers, was published in 2008. It explored how a person’s environment, as well as their personal makeup, impacts their opportunities and their chances of success. It was Gladwell’s Outliers that popularized the “10,000 hours to become an expert” rule. Since then, he’s published four more books.

To be fair, Gladwell has been accused by critics of oversimplification of complex topics, and of being a little too enamored with his pet theories. In particular, The Tipping Point has come under fire for popularizing and supporting policing methods that have been proven incredibly harmful, specifically to communities of color. Still, there’s no denying that Gladwell likes his ideas big and that he gets his readers to also think bigger.

Why Malcolm Gladwell Was In The Brat Pack Documentary

He Offered Some Interesting Insight Into The Brat Pack Phenomenon

On the surface, it seems odd that in Brats, Andrew McCarthy made a point to seek out Gladwell and get his opinion on the Brat Pack phenomenon. But in the context of the documentary’s goal of exploring the Brat Pack not just from the perspective of its individuals, but also its larger impact on the zeitgeist of the time, it makes perfect sense. Gladwell has a knack for taking seemingly localized phenomena and extrapolating the larger patterns at play; such is the case with the Brat Pack.

Gladwell has a knack for taking seemingly localized phenomena and extrapolating the larger patterns at play; such is the case with the Brat Pack.

While “Brat Pack” was the name that stuck, it was merely a misleading label applied to a larger seismic shift happening in Hollywood at the time. These days, Hollywood revolves around the old and young alike. For every movie with a veteran actor, there are just as many movies with Timotheé Chalamet, Florence Pugh, Zendaya, Austin Butler, and the rest of young Hollywood. But the 1980s’ explosion of young actors had never been seen before. With the Brat Pack, a youth movement was started in Hollywood that threatened to wrest power and influence away from the aging and gritty mindsets of the New Hollywood era of the 1970s.

Considering the above, Gladwell was the right person to talk to, offering a unique perspective that helped McCarthy see the Brat Pack label, which he’d always perceived as the albatross around his neck, differently:

“The Brat Pack is signifying that a generational transition is happening in Hollywood…It was possible then in a way it’s not possible now. Nothing like that can happen anymore. We can’t have a cultural touchstone that everyone in their 20s can refer to. If you gathered a hundred 17-year-olds at random in America in 1986, 90% of them would have seen – or at least been conversant in – Pretty in Pink. No question! They wouldn’t even have had to see it to be able to hold a conversation about it. There is absolutely no cultural phenomenon, at the present time, of which that can be said. It’s not possible.”

While it’s a dubious argument that there is no pop culture touchstone in the modern day that most teens and young 20-somethings can talk about, Gladwell isn’t wrong about the power of the youth-oriented movies of the ’80s. The Breakfast Club, for example, is still shockingly relevant today, a classic for a reason. As Malcolm Gladwell helped show in Brats, the “Brat Pack” label came with just as much of a cultural positive impact as a personal negative one, and there’s a power in that.

Brats
is now available on Hulu.