In the 1980’s, John Hughes was a very popular film director. He mostly made comedic movies about teenage life. One of his most famous and most quoted movies is The Breakfast Club. The movie is set in Chicago, Illinois inside a high school library; it is the story of five teenagers who have Saturday detention for different reasons. Their assignment during detention is to write an essay explaining who they are. Each teenager comes from a different style of parenting, clique and with their own unique set of pressures. The movie The Breakfast Club portrays that peer pressure, stereotypes and parents attitudes shape the way kids act.
The Breakfast Club should be considered a timeless classic as it is still relevant today. Teenagers are always looking
…show more content…
From beginning to end, the distance the characters feel from each other is lessened by them opening up to one another and breaking down barriers. Peer pressure is something everyone faces in high school and is especially obvious in The Breakfast Club. While stereotypes were placed on every character, they all broke down the stereotypes by seeing each other as equals in the end. Even though all of their parents shape the way they act, most of them had come to terms with the expectations placed on them and ways to deal with the stress it causes. By the end of the movie, the nerd ends up writing the essay explaining who they are but he writes it as a rhetorical question to the principal: “You see us as you want to see us… In the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain… …and an athlete… …and a basket case… …a princess… …and a criminal. Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club” (The Breakfast Club, 1985). Further proving that they all know they are going to be pressured and judged and it may not change the way anyone, even their parents see them, but they know the truth now: that they are all a lot more alike than they has previously
The Breakfast Club is a 1985 American movie written and directed by John Hughes. The movie focuses on five different teenagers, each of which fits a typical stereotype. Each teen is introduced individually, displaying the traits of their respective stereotypes. The audience is first introduced to Claire, the preppy, popular girl, referred to as “The Prom Queen” in the script. Next, the audience is introduced to Brian, the nerd, or geek, of the group. Following Brian, the audience is introduced to Andrew, the popular athlete, referred to as “The Jock” in the script. In the shortest introductions, the audience is given a small glimpse of John Bender, although at this time the stereotype he fits is not known, a short observation of the physical attributes and clothing style will reveal to the audience that John Bender fills the role of the rebel or delinquent. The final member of the group is introduced in a short fashion as well. Allison, steps out of a car, dressed in dark clothing, with dark hair and makeup, is the outcast, or introvert of the group. Each stereotype represented by the teens is predicated on the general idea of high school cliques and the categories they generally fall into.
In the Breakfast Club, there are many cognitive advancements that are conveyed. The biggest cognitive advancements that takes place throughout the film are abstract thought, hypothetical thought and multidimensional thought. The movie centers on the essay that the students need to write, “Who do you think you are.” This question requires the group of students to think about their experiences, formulate ideas, acknowledge their knowledge, awareness and reflect on their experiences. The film illustrates how the adolescents thinking changes from concrete thinking- judging their peers and their own lives, to abstract thinking- viewing similarities between the characters and understanding the differences in their lives while showing empathy.
In all of our lives there are goals we have, values we possess, and strengths and weaknesses that make us who we are. All of us, no matter if we are a jock, or a brain, someone who succeeds in education, or someone who wants so badly to get out, face barriers in our lives. Some of us come from broken families, some us of come from abusive situations, but all of us have a unique and individual story. At the heart of this story are the struggles we have experienced, the people we have associated ourselves with, and the lessons we have learnt along the way. Such can be said about my own life, and the lives of the characters from the Breakfast Club. The characters from the Breakfast Club that I feel most represent me are: Claire Standish (The
The Breakfast Club is a wonderful example of pubertal timing in adolescents. Throughout the film the viewer can see where the characters are at in their development as well as the impacts of their pubertal timing. The Breakfast Club highlights physical changes, relationships with parents, relationships with peers, and the timing of early and late maturation. Claire is portrayed as the stereotypical popular girl and can be described as an early maturing girl. She wears expensive clothes, diamond earrings and wealthy accessories. Throughout the film, Claire relies solely on her looks, and is viewed as conceited, privileged and spoiled. Claire shows characteristics of an early maturing girl because she is strongly influenced by social and cultural views. Claire says in the film, “Your friends wouldn 't mind because they look up to us.... I 'm not saying that to be conceited! I hate it! I hate having to go along with everything my friends say!” Claire is aware of her social status among her peers and holds herself to higher expectations to uphold her reputation. She states, “Do you know how popular I am? I am so popular. Everybody loves me so much at this school.” To fit in with her peers, she must act a certain way in public to impress them. Claire is
The 1985 comedy drama movie, The Breakfast Club, included five teenagers who are in Saturday school detention for various reasons and at the end of the day must write an essay that explains how they define themselves. In Saturday school detention, each teenager learns about one another, what they have in common, and why they were assigned to be in detention. The teens all have similar problems with stereotyping of how society and especially how their parents define them. In the movie, four of the main characters: Claire, John, Andrew, and Allison experience at least one of the following theories: strain theory, social learning theory, control theory, and labeling theory.
The groups that are formed as adolescents often determine group associations as adults and define an individual within their social group that will either set them with or against other groups. This is described in an article on social groupings by Colin Allen, which mentions that our social associations as adolescents are strong indicators to future patterns of social norms as adults. Therefore, the group of students in the movie, The Breakfast Club, can also be extrapolated to adult group dynamics. However, the varying social norms between groups can present conflicts when adults are required to function within a very diverse group of individuals. In The Breakfast Club, the Jock, Geek, Prom Queen, Delinquent, and the Freak groups are brought together initially through an autocratic or directive leadership role, used to bring the group together in order to proceed to the next phase of group development. This stage is particularly important within a group of
The Breakfast Club is a n all time classic film that portrays a number of individual and complex personalities. It is visible in the film that each teenager has their own traits and
Five teens, five different cliques, one eight-hour Saturday detention. These is the basics of The Breakfast Club. Through spending the day with one another Allison, Andrew, Brian, Claire and John realize there isn’t much difference between them, and the differences that are between them aren’t too important. Watching The Breakfast Club is a great way to learn about adolescents. You have five, very different -yet very similar- adolescents to observe along with what they do together. In observing them you can understand how they’re beginning to cognitively develop from children to adults
The movie The Breakfast Club was released in 1985, and is based on a group of five high school students from stereotypical cliques; the popular, jock, nerd and the outcasts, who all wind up stuck together for Saturday detention. Throughout the movie many themes present themselves such as teenage rebellion, peer pressure and family issues as the students get to know each other. The most prominent theme throughout the movie is the student’s placement in the social structure of the school. From the very different reasons why they are in detention to the way that they are all treated differently by the principle, their social placement is evident.
According to Erik Erikson, he identifies the task of an adolescent as identity versus role confusion. This is where adolescent tries to form their personal and social identity. Some adolescents may adopt the values and beliefs of their parents; however, others may develop their identities from peers and oppose the values and beliefs of their parents. Adolescence who are emerging into adulthood struggles to confine with their psychological, cognitive, social, and emotional development. During this time period, there are five distinctive characters of emerging adulthood: age of identity explorations, age of instability, self-focused, age of feeling in-between, and age of possibilities. In The Breakfast Club, five high school students spend their Saturday together in detention, and they have to set aside their differences in order to make it through those long hours. The jock, the princess, the basket case, and the criminal reveal their internalizing problems involving their peers, parents or self. Their behaviors and personalities indicate the underlying issues of their cognitive and social development. The interaction between the students helps them find common ground with each other and learn the details of their life beneath the stereotypes. Throughout the movie, John Bender has an impulsive and aggressive personality that can be characterized by the environment that he was raised in, his
Released in 1985, The Breakfast Club depicts five high school students from Illinois as they spend a Saturday together in detention. Prior to their arrival, John Bender, Claire Standish, Andy Clark, Brian Johnson, and Allison Reynolds had not met, nor would they have associated with one another on a typical day in high school. After spending nine hours together, however, the group of vastly different adolescents break down emotional barriers, manage to build a sense of intimacy, and some establish dating relationships by the day’s end (Hughes et al., 1985). The film illustrated a rather realistic portrait of adolescence in several topical domains.
The Breakfast Club was an extraordinary film that dealt with teenagers in detention. Although it looked like a regular movie, it had deep meanings involved with it. The movie showcases a circle of teens who are completely different from each other. At first they didn’t interact with one another, but as the movie goes on they begin to become close friends. The Breakfast Club does a great job at exemplifying the dynamics of a group in society because there are so many associations of people who interact with each other even if the interests are completely different. The characters in the movie move from an out group to an in group because they all felt like outsiders towards each other, but as time was going on in detention they were starting to really like each other. They became an in group towards the end of the movie because they made their own grouping, which they referred to it as “The Breakfast Club”.
The movie The Breakfast Club takes viewers on a comedic tour of the ups and downs of adolescence. The Breakfast Club, directed by John Hughes, focuses on the events that unfold between five very different high school students during a Saturday detention. Even though the movie was shot in the 1980 's the characters portrayal is still relatable in a way to a lot of people today. Director John Hughes takes us on a comedic ride with what seems like another typical "teen movie" while still portraying a few life lessons along the way and exposing some truths behind stereotyping.
The Breakfast Club is about a group of five teenagers that portray different stereotypes of the athlete, the brain, the princess, the basket case and the criminal. They are all sent to detention at their school on a Saturday morning in order to write a letter about who each of them think they are and what sent them to detention. Throughout the entire afternoon they start from being
John Hughes's The Breakfast Club is one of film history’s most iconic and renowned movies and is a cornerstone of 1980’s pop-culture. The Breakfast Club showcases five unique high school students who all unfortunately find themselves imprisoned in an all-day Saturday detention. The students go as following: Claire (a pretty girl), Brian (the nerd), John (the bad boy), Andrew (an athlete), and Allison (the strange, goth girl). These students come from very different backgrounds and social settings which proves to spark many conflicts between them as well as with their supervisor Mr. Vernon. But through this conflict they find similarities between themselves, and after spending nine hours locked up together, they find resolution within themselves and with their new friends. Psychology can explain why this happened as well as what caused other events to occur. This paper will examine four different psychological phenomena: stereotypes, conformity/normative social influence, ingroup versus outgroup/superordinate goals, and the various causes of attraction.