Breakfast Club Essay

The Breakfast Club is the story of five teens from different cliques forced to spend the day together as they serve their detention. All of the major high school stereotypes are represented: the jock, the rebel, the popular girl, the nerd, and the outcast. Conflict quickly arises as the students are forced to interact with one another, but as the afternoon wears on, *things begin to change. Thus unfolds a humor-infused teen drama that reveals the breakdown of labels and the bonding of a very diverse group of individuals. In the opening scene, Bryan, the overachieving nerd, tells the audience that teenagers are seen with the simplest labels and most convenient definitions. Adults see kids the way they want to see them and never search for the person underneath the stereotyped identity. However, Bryan fails to mention that teens do the same thing with one another. As the students enter the library to serve their detention, all but Claire and Andrew sit at a table by themselves. Claire (the beautiful “it” girl of the school) and Andrew (the star wrestler) can share a table because they are in the same social circles. The rest segregate themselves physically by sitting at different tables just as their social labels divide them every day. Each student seems very aware of his or her role within the school and acts the part he or she is assigned. Bryan is known for his smarts and frequently corrects grammar and regurgitates random facts; he behaves exactly like a nerd should. Bender destroys books and calls the principal a “brownie hound” in order to maintain his rebellious image. The majority of the verbal exchanges between the students are filled with brusque comments or vulgar jokes originating most with Bender. The students have such fixed, almost caricatured notions of each other, that they can’t sit or communicate with those of a different label. The members of the group eventually begin to talk amongst themselves, and although their conversations are less than harmonious, the audience begins to see common experiences and emotions emerge from the seemingly disparate teens. All of them feel that they have little control of their lives, and are torn between finding themselves and pleasing others. Andrew admits he feels like a racehorse with no control over where he is going, driven by his demanding father. He is so used to following his father's dreams that he loses sight of what he wants to accomplish in the future. Bender’s dad is physically abusive, and his home life is so unpredictable that he feels the need to wreak havoc wherever he goes, displacing onto others, perhaps, anger justifiably felt towards his father. He can’t control his father, so Bender is determined to be the master of something, if only to act in an equally uncontrolled way. The two boys want to find their own identity, but feel so overcome by outside circumstances that they have accepted the roles given to them and behave accordingly. Another overwhelming similarity among the five teens is the enormous pressure put on them by the school, their friends, and their families. Bryan’s parents relentlessly push him to get good grades, and as a result, he believes his intelligence is his only redeeming quality. Bryan is so distraught about failing shop that he brings a gun to school. This dramatic example reveals the tremendous stress teens feel to succeed. Bryan thinks that without a perfect report card, without his “smart” label, he amounts to nothing. Claire clings as desperately to her popularity as Bryan does to his high GPA. Claire knows she is popular but is also aware that without her daddy’s money or her high status friends she would be just another face in the crowd. Even as the group members open up to one another and start to develop bonds of mutual understanding, Claire admits that come Monday, she probably won’t acknowledge her fellow detentionees. To the dismay of Bryan, Claire explains that he doesn’t understand the pressure of being popular. Her friends wouldn’t understand if she talked to the nerd or the outcast, and she can’t risk losing her sense of belonging by allying with her new acquaintances. Little does Claire realize that Bryan, Bender, and Andrew, all feel the same pressure to uphold their roles within the school. Allison is the only exception because she belongs to no group. They all are willing to go to extreme lengths to maintain their image and please others around them. Andrew is in detention because he duct taped a weaker wrestler’s butt cheeks together. He humiliated the boy and caused him substantial physical pain in removing the tape. Andrew admits he tortured this boy in an attempt to emulate his dad. His father often tells him these outrageous pranks he pulled in high school, and Andrew wants his father to believe that he is just as cool. The teens are willing to behave without compassion and almost inhumanely to seem cool or fit in. This sad truth both causes and promotes cliques in high school and is driven by the overwhelming desire to belong somewhere, to claim an identity when one is least sure of who he or she is as a person. Overall, The Breakfast Club is an entertaining movie containing elements of truth regarding the high school experience. However, that truth is rendered less credible by the movie's sensationalism. At the end of the film, all the harsh words magically evaporate into the previously tension-filled air, and the boundaries between the students similarly dissolve. Claire ends up kissing Bender, and Andrew grows eyes for social leper Allison (only after she has had a makeover of course). Realistically, this social transformation wouldn’t happen in high school in just one day. Also, there probably would not have been so much hostility between the students in the first place. The high school experience, included cliques, but they were not so rigid that students were overtly rude to those outside their immediate circles. In order to be socially accurate and convincing, the interactions between the students should have been toned down and less caricatured. They didn’t need to resent one another so thoroughly in the beginning, nor undergo such a complete change of heart at the end. Both instances were equally implausible. Still, to appeal to adolescent viewers, a teen drama requires “twist ending” in order to generate an “aww” response from the audience. Although its plot and its characters did not necessarily reflect real life, The Breakfast Club accomplished its goal of providing some insight into the mind of the high schooler and exposing just how uniform the emotions of teens can be, no matter their group identities. Claire, Andrew, Allison, Bender, and Bryan seemed so different on the surface, but as the day went on, they realized that they all experienced the same needing to belong and pressure to conform. See this movie to relive the emotional ride of being a teenager, but younger audiences be warned: a more nuanced, less simplistic high school experience than depicted in Breakfast Club, awaits you.