The Breakfast ClubWe've all been there...growing up and not feeling like we're ever going to understand our place in the world. It's hard sometimes to realize that you're not alone. The Breakfast Club is a movie about five high school teenagers, forced to attend Saturday detention at Shermer High School for various infractions. The five teens represent five different--but familiar--archetypes of adolescence. There's the rough burnout John Bender (Judd Nelson), the jock Andy (Emilio Estevez), the rich "princess" Claire (Molly Ringwald), the brainy dork Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), and the artsy "freak" Allison (Ally Sheedy). Though ambassadors from different cliques, their mutual disdain for their parents and authoritarian figures like Assistant Principal Vernon (Paul Gleason) eventually binds them to one another.
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The Breakfast Club was written and directed by John Hughes, best known for his teen comedies like Sixteen Candles. The Breakfast Club is similar in that it is set in a high school, abandoned for the weekend, where the teens, Vernon, and janitor Carl (John Kapelos) exist as the concentrated kernel of the true spirit of the school. The film is dramatic, and would no doubt translate well if adapted for the stage, largely due to the central set of the school library where the teens are effectively imprisoned. Combined with the relatively limited cast, The Breakfast Club is also something of a chamber piece. The Breakfast Club is often funny, but just as often it is filled with poignant, heartfelt confessions of these young souls in strife, feeling the oppression inflicted upon them by the older generation. Ironically, perhaps more than other John Hughes movies, The Breakfast Club feels largely devoid of cliches. In another way, it establishes the cliches of the teen archetypes only to later tear them down as superficial first impressions, the kind of labels forcibly placed onto the kids by teachers, parents, and--by proxy--each other. These five kids are initially defensive around one another, and it is clear that they would not socialize with one another were it not forced upon them. Why? With time it becomes clear that none of the teenagers have ever really felt a sense of individuality, that their parents and teachers have built them into replicas of themselves and not real human beings. Perhaps that is the biggest danger of bringing up children--making them into nothing more than puppets without souls. It is this existential angst which affects each of the children in differing ways; it is the root of their respective outbursts and rebellions that bought them a day (or more) in detention. Their time with one another is something they resent, and Bender's frequent antagonism of Vernon and others as egos clash means that there is often the threat of a fight breaking out on multiple occasions. Coincidentally, John's wildness is the catalyst which helps to crack the others' proverbial shells, some sooner than later. Once John inspires them to secure a little privacy, they slowly but surely begin to open up to one another, a kind of therapy and liberation of the soul. As they abdicate the shackles of their false personae, they take the first steps into adulthood and individuality.
I think watching The Breakfast Club is an experience which will differ for each person. I can say from experience that I was a lot like Brian--I was literally in a Latin Club, for the record. But more important is that this doesn't preclude one from sympathizing with the other characters. It is clear that for all his swagger and tough guy routine, that deep down John Bender is a hurt young man, and that he adopts the angry burnout image to shield himself from being vulnerable outside of his home. Andy may initially be hard to sympathize with because he's bound for success on purely athletic merit, even though he is at times chivalrous. However, Andy's heartfelt, marijuana-infused confession in the semicircle tears down some of the roadblocks he's put up like John, and is one of the most touching and heart-rending of all revelations. He is a young man who looks like he has the world on an oyster, but doesn't have any real say in the matter. Claire is not that different, coming from an opulent lifestyle but without the sense of achievement in any of her blessings. She is rich and popular as the "queen" of the school, and has been conditioned to accept her position as elite nobility without question. But she even struggles to realize, more than the others, that she is not a ruler but a slave to an image. She claims she is "being honest" when she comments that they probably won't be friends come Monday morning, but that is because even she is not yet aware of the grasping tendrils of her own popularity, keeping her sheltered from the real world. Allison is easily the most enigmatic of the batch by design; she feels so ignored and unimportant that only by acting weird and strange will anyone bother to pay attention to her. Even when no one is looking at her, Allison behaves in an obtuse way; I doubt it is because she actually likes what she does--she is a talented artist, all the same--but because she wants to cry out for someone to acknowledge that she exists. For a self-proclaimed compulsive liar, one senses that when she says her parents ignore her, there's more than a grain of truth in that statement. It would be simple to regard Brian as a mere comedy pastiche of geekdom, a clean cut boy scout who Bender describes as a parent's "wet dream". Dressed in nice khakis and whose lunch actually includes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, with the crusts cut off, Brian is not so far removed from Andy. They are both pushed to extremes by their parents to achieve in order to measure their worth. Brian's failure to complete a lamp for shop class, and his subsequent emotional breakdown, shows just how damaging this mindset is when inflicted upon impressionable teens, and makes it clear that no matter one's place in society, everyone hurts and suffers when they do not feel valued, by themselves or others.
There is a magic to John Hughes' movies which have made them iconic representations of teenage angst and emblematic of the 1980s. The magic of The Breakfast Club is that, while the scenes of confessions and bonding are filled with pathos and joy, it is also a dream of a kind of harmony between high school cliques--and the world at large--which is still an unlikely one. And that is not because of the scenes of kids partying and doing cartwheels through the library and jamming out to new wave rock, but because it is really, really hard to shake off the prejudices instilled into kids in their developmental stages by their parents or guardians. There is a bit of fantasy to The Breakfast Club; it's unlikely that even an ambitious and vindictive assistant principal would gather five troublemakers on his day off, forcing himself to play warden to them at his own expense. The school is like a ghost town, a place where we can see the institution for what it really is--not a place for learning, but a chemistry set, where people of various backgrounds collide and where they are forced to acquiesce to authority or be treated as "defectives", as Claire puts it. The five teens in The Breakfast Club become the "rebels" of their respective cliques by pulling back the curtain on these arbitrary boundaries that divide them. Perhaps their rebellious streaks are even galvanized by Vernon of all people. Vernon represents the very embodiment of what this younger generation detests and resents. Even when Bender takes the screw out of the door to give them privacy, none of the others rat him out--not out of a loyalty to John, but a mutual distaste for Vernon and the generation he represents, the same as their parents. The kids talk of their parents as though they were a malady, a disease inflicted upon them; and in the context of The Breakfast Club, they are. We only see brief flashes of some of the teens' parents at the start, but even in these short moments, we can appreciate the realities of the statements made in confidence to one another as they bare their souls about how they feel pressured or abused by those who are supposed to teach them and love them. The Breakfast Club is bookended by a narration by Brian; it is the "essay" they were all supposed to write, who in turn makes it a kind of "declaration of independence". It is a rebellion against the imperial rule of the old generation, the five wiser teens casting the die into adulthood. It is a brave, even risky move--and will likely net them another detention--but one which must be made, as every rebellion begins with telling someone off someone in authority.
Recommended for: Fans of a heartfelt, sympathetic drama about the pains of growing up and struggling to claim your own identity, and about standing up for your own values, not just those imposed on you. How's that for an essay of a thousand words, Vernon?
I think watching The Breakfast Club is an experience which will differ for each person. I can say from experience that I was a lot like Brian--I was literally in a Latin Club, for the record. But more important is that this doesn't preclude one from sympathizing with the other characters. It is clear that for all his swagger and tough guy routine, that deep down John Bender is a hurt young man, and that he adopts the angry burnout image to shield himself from being vulnerable outside of his home. Andy may initially be hard to sympathize with because he's bound for success on purely athletic merit, even though he is at times chivalrous. However, Andy's heartfelt, marijuana-infused confession in the semicircle tears down some of the roadblocks he's put up like John, and is one of the most touching and heart-rending of all revelations. He is a young man who looks like he has the world on an oyster, but doesn't have any real say in the matter. Claire is not that different, coming from an opulent lifestyle but without the sense of achievement in any of her blessings. She is rich and popular as the "queen" of the school, and has been conditioned to accept her position as elite nobility without question. But she even struggles to realize, more than the others, that she is not a ruler but a slave to an image. She claims she is "being honest" when she comments that they probably won't be friends come Monday morning, but that is because even she is not yet aware of the grasping tendrils of her own popularity, keeping her sheltered from the real world. Allison is easily the most enigmatic of the batch by design; she feels so ignored and unimportant that only by acting weird and strange will anyone bother to pay attention to her. Even when no one is looking at her, Allison behaves in an obtuse way; I doubt it is because she actually likes what she does--she is a talented artist, all the same--but because she wants to cry out for someone to acknowledge that she exists. For a self-proclaimed compulsive liar, one senses that when she says her parents ignore her, there's more than a grain of truth in that statement. It would be simple to regard Brian as a mere comedy pastiche of geekdom, a clean cut boy scout who Bender describes as a parent's "wet dream". Dressed in nice khakis and whose lunch actually includes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, with the crusts cut off, Brian is not so far removed from Andy. They are both pushed to extremes by their parents to achieve in order to measure their worth. Brian's failure to complete a lamp for shop class, and his subsequent emotional breakdown, shows just how damaging this mindset is when inflicted upon impressionable teens, and makes it clear that no matter one's place in society, everyone hurts and suffers when they do not feel valued, by themselves or others.
There is a magic to John Hughes' movies which have made them iconic representations of teenage angst and emblematic of the 1980s. The magic of The Breakfast Club is that, while the scenes of confessions and bonding are filled with pathos and joy, it is also a dream of a kind of harmony between high school cliques--and the world at large--which is still an unlikely one. And that is not because of the scenes of kids partying and doing cartwheels through the library and jamming out to new wave rock, but because it is really, really hard to shake off the prejudices instilled into kids in their developmental stages by their parents or guardians. There is a bit of fantasy to The Breakfast Club; it's unlikely that even an ambitious and vindictive assistant principal would gather five troublemakers on his day off, forcing himself to play warden to them at his own expense. The school is like a ghost town, a place where we can see the institution for what it really is--not a place for learning, but a chemistry set, where people of various backgrounds collide and where they are forced to acquiesce to authority or be treated as "defectives", as Claire puts it. The five teens in The Breakfast Club become the "rebels" of their respective cliques by pulling back the curtain on these arbitrary boundaries that divide them. Perhaps their rebellious streaks are even galvanized by Vernon of all people. Vernon represents the very embodiment of what this younger generation detests and resents. Even when Bender takes the screw out of the door to give them privacy, none of the others rat him out--not out of a loyalty to John, but a mutual distaste for Vernon and the generation he represents, the same as their parents. The kids talk of their parents as though they were a malady, a disease inflicted upon them; and in the context of The Breakfast Club, they are. We only see brief flashes of some of the teens' parents at the start, but even in these short moments, we can appreciate the realities of the statements made in confidence to one another as they bare their souls about how they feel pressured or abused by those who are supposed to teach them and love them. The Breakfast Club is bookended by a narration by Brian; it is the "essay" they were all supposed to write, who in turn makes it a kind of "declaration of independence". It is a rebellion against the imperial rule of the old generation, the five wiser teens casting the die into adulthood. It is a brave, even risky move--and will likely net them another detention--but one which must be made, as every rebellion begins with telling someone off someone in authority.
Recommended for: Fans of a heartfelt, sympathetic drama about the pains of growing up and struggling to claim your own identity, and about standing up for your own values, not just those imposed on you. How's that for an essay of a thousand words, Vernon?