Deconstructing "The Breakfast Club"

Cafe Society
1

Just watched the butchered WE network airing of The Breakfast Club, where they obviously substitute very vanilla euphemisms for the swear words. This is a movie which I’ve seen about 200 times by now, so I know what they really said anyway. Saw it when it came out, and I have always loved it and cop many lines from it whenever I can. However, I am now about twice as old as I was when I first watched, and in that time I’ve become a secondary ed teacher. There were certain elements of it that bothered me more this time around.

First, why is it that Andy can’t express any interest in Allison until after she comes out wearing a pink tank top? Poor Allison, is she really going to change her whole schtick just to date a guy who taped a nerd’s butt cheeks together to impress his dad? Does she think it’s going to work?

Also, I notice that the outcasts take proof of their recent connection. Allison takes Andy’s sweatshirt and his varsity letter. Will that evidence dispel Andy’s Monday morning jitters as he faces her in the hall for the first time? Will Andy use Allison the make his stand against his conformity, or will he cave? Why does Allison want him anyway, just because he’s cute? Deep down, was she longing to be popular all this time? Really???

Claire gives John her diamond earring. Is that meaningful? Claire probably has 10 pairs just like it, but to Bender, it’s a big deal. Maybe they can ride the thrill of parental and peer disapproval through the prom, but it seems unlikely. Egos willl get in the way; John has a mean streak and deep down, Claire’s pretty shallow. Will Mom and Dad’s horror be enough to sustain them?

Poor Brian. He’s the best of the lot, and he’s the one who gets no lovin’ and has to write the apologia for the whole group. Maybe he can get Bender to help him make an elephant lamp that works.

The teacher guy, Dick Vernon, really isn’t a very appealing example of my profession, though there are some like him out there, I admit. The janitor, sorry, practitioner of the custodial arts, had him nailed-- he thought teaching would be easy and fun, and was ticked off when he found out it was actually WORK and that kids are difficult and surly as teens. Such disillusionment breaks many a teacher’s heart and spirit; however, he really is a cartoon character, donning Barry Manilow’s wardrobe, toilet cover sticking out his pants, easily duped and manipulated by John Bender, who he handles ALL WRONG. Never let a kid like that get your goat, or he pwns you. Ah well, what more can I expect of an authority figure in a John Hughes movie? If school were a fun and helpful place, full of worthy and venerated educators, there’d be no disaffected teens to feature in such films, right?

That said, I still love this movie. I’m sure someone will come and post on this thread to say how much they hate it and how insipid it is. Why bother? It’s too late to change my mind. Screws fall out all the time; the world’s an imperfect place. I love me some fantasy iconoclasm for teens, what can I say? John Hughes is a premier auteur of that genre. When this movie came out, we were pretty intrigued by the idea of breaking out of those strictly delineated peer groups back then. Kids still are now. Ah, youth. It’s wasted on the young.

2

My aunt (who’s all of 13 years older than I am) talked my dad into letting her take me and my older brother to see it, as she thought that it was an important movie for us to see at that point in our lives. It came out in 1985, right? I would have been 12, my older brother 15.

Despite the stereotype of having the disenfranchised teacher, and one of each clique being represented, it always struck me as a “true” film.

What I mean is that, as I got older, and into high school, I knew each one of those people.

3

I didn’t really enjoy the film because I watched it in 9th grade for English class and our teacher made us write an essay on why Bender and Allison were going to end up in jail by the age of 20 and why we should try to be more like Brian. We also had to write a mock psychological report on Ferris Bueller recommending that he be institutionalised, if you’re interested. Mostly because she was the kind of teacher those movies made fun of and it made her bitter. You’d think the obvious solution would be to not show us those movies but apparently not. I thought the characterisatio was pretty shallow and I didn’t know anyone like the characters - well, okay, I knew a LOT of girls like Claire. But that was all.

Oh yeah, this teacher once threw me out of her class for not writing an essay that she never assigned. She gave it to her other class but noooo, I was obviously lying, down to the office with you! The last thing I heard as I walked out was her looking to the class to back her up, then accusing them of ganging up on her when they agreed with me instead. The office ladies were utterly puzzled by my predicament and sent me straight back to the classroom, where she yelled at me again. Stupid psycho bitch. :rolleyes:

So, uh, I might watch it again and maybe I’ll enjoy it more without her around.

4

This is pretty much how I felt about it. Of course, it likely helps that I went to school in the NW suburbs of Chicago, where most of John Hughes’ films were set.

I actually went to high school about 20 min. away from where they filmed it, and eventually moved into an apt. right across from the chool they used to film it in as an adult.

I always felt it was a rather “accurate” caricature of what high school was like, and what the kids I went to school with were like. (I was very much the John Bender-type character through most of high school, sadly)

5

The best thing about the film, I think, is that nothing is going to change. They were united for one day - tomorrow they will go back to their ‘pre-determined’ roles. That is why, I think, they try to make connections in the short time they have.

6

And the universality of it is also what makes it speak to us strongly .In The Breakfast Club you have the artifical situation of it happening en masse, but it haven’t we all had a private moment when we “clicked” with someone from another clique? When you’re forced to work on a project together, you suddenly realize that the girl who lives at the trailer park isn’t a total scuz, after all. Or your parents drag you to some adult social event where the only other person there your age is (OMIGOD) the most popular guy in school, and (OMIGOD OMIGOD OMIGOD!!!) you actually end up having a somewhat normal conversation.

But the next day, snap!, it’s back to reality, and you might exchange a very faint and guarded smile in the hallway, but nothing more.

7

I don’t think it’s so much about what she’s wearing as it is symbolic of her coming out of her shell and getting some self esteem. She thought she was ugly and worthless, and by the end realized that she was not, and didn’t have to hide herself. I always thought that was what he found attractive, not the actual tank top.

8

Oh, to this day I wish I could break tradition and give my closet-smoking mother an unwrapped carton of smokes for the holidays and say “smoke up”!!!

9

I guess I first realized I was an adult when I saw “The Breakfast Club” and hated every one of the kids, and found the only person I had any sympathy for at all was the teacher who had to waste his Saturday babysitting them.

10

I think so. It was symbolic of the breaking down of the artificial wall of affluence she kept herself behind to protect her (in a psychosocial sense, as opposed to physical) from the have-nots. In that moment she realized that the connection she felt with John was worth more than her material possessions, especially since she didn’t even “work for the money to pay for” them.

The whole movie is about the breaking down of artificial walls between high school cliques - walls created by parents and the home environment that they grew up in. They realize, if only for a day, that underneath it all, they’re really all the same and all deal with the same issues.

Will it last? I’d like to think that at some level they’ll all take the insights from that day with them. I think all teenagers (or at least introspective ones) have to practice a sort of doublethink where they fully embrace their clique identities while also at some level realizing the silliness of it all. But no doubt, come Monday morning, they’re all right back in their respective cliques.

11

One of my favourite movies of all time.

We watched this movie in our high school health class, during our section of the year devoted to mental health, as an example of defense mechanisms people use to distance themselves from others. I think that was a very constructive interpretation of the movie.

It is odd, though, how much my perception of the movie has changed as I’ve grown older. In high school, I was 100% Allison, going out of my way to be as weird and creepy and strange as possible because I was so attention starved. I never really saw that in myself, though, until years later, even though I watched this movie religiously through the entire time.

The adults in the movie are very 2 dimensional, but they are not the focus of the movie, and to make them any more realistic would have taken away from the very meaningful interation of the teenagers, I think.

12

I think the jock (sorry, horrible with names) will stay open to the nerdy/pre-goth girl. I think these two will acknowledge Brian in the halls.

Claire will keep “slumming” with the burn-out. She also speaks a truth near the end when she says scathingly that Jock will maybe say hi to Brian and then mock him to his other jock friends after Brian moves down the hall. That is pure essence of HS, at least it was for me.
I really dont’ like Claire and have trouble identifying with her–but then, I was more like Ally Sheedy, anyway(sans dandruff).

[QUOTE=astorian I guess I first realized I was an adult when I saw “The Breakfast Club” and hated every one of the kids, and found the only person I had any sympathy for at all was the teacher who had to waste his Saturday babysitting them[/QUOTE]

(hope I coded that correctly).

Well, then I have not grown up and hope never to. I’ve got one kid in HS and one in 8th grade. These archetypes are still alive and well and going strong, sadly enough. If anything, the scene is that much more complex now.

That teacher was a died in the wool prick and is a bad rep for teachers everywhere. What he does to the burn-out in the closet or wherever is inexcusable.

I do see the movie differently now, as an adult. Some of the things just aren’t important in the grand scheme of things (like what they all have for lunch–but so many judgements are made based on that alone!)–but that is teens for you. They lack perspective.

It’s a great film–IMO it should be required for all teens (at least suburban ones) to see. I would like to see a gifted director do it again, but add more “archetypes” to it–black kid, ADD kid, pregnant or afraid she is kid. But I am afraid it might suck.

13

I watched this on WE last night too. There were a couple scenes I noticed this time that caused me to read at least a slight bit of humanity into the Vernon character.

After his first run-in with Bender…the one that results in the extra two months of Saturdays…he has a moment out in the hallway when he appears to be de-compressing from the confrontation. I read into his expression that he wasn’t happy about what he’d done, but that it was just something he had to do to retain control. Also, the scene where Andy is collecting the milk money (which is used to buy soda), Claire asks Vernon if he can break her large bill. It looked like a $50 to me. I’ll bet that $50 was a lot more that Vernon had in his pockets at the time.

Some of these little things added a small amount of dimension to what was otherwise a caricature. After this viewing I thought of Vernon more like he was someone who may have been a good teacher at some point in his career. But years of babysitting spoiled brats had worn him down into what he is now…grizzled, angry and out of touch.

14

I think you’re reading more into Vernon than was intended. He wasn’t so much supposed to be a human as a force of authority. A common enemy to enable the other characters to play off of each other.

What I like about this movie is that Ally Sheedy was originally cast as Claire. When she read the script she demanded to play Allison instead. She found it to be a much more rewarding role.

15

I saw this movie when I was about 12 years old. I didn’t identify with any of the characters at the time. In fact, looking back, I think I’ve been like each of them at one point or another. But the character I admire the most in that film is Judd Nelson’s character. He is the one that forces the walls to come down. He forces them all to really look at each other in ways they had never thought to before. He is the cynical rebel who happens to be right about a lot of things. Without him the others would have never broken out of their roles.

16

I didn’t mean to imply it was the tank top itself either. My point was that she had to move closer to his idea of what was attractive and acceptable for him to be able to SEE her. He wasn’t quite able to penetrate that coating of “black shit” to see the pretty, shy girl in there. Maybe I’m being too hard on Andy-- after all, he’s a teenage boy and a self-admitted conformist, so even showing any feelings for Allison is a big deal. She makes some steps to show herself and he takes steps towards acknowledge feelings for her that will likely be found unacceptable on Monday morning.

I think of this movie the same way I think of the ending of A Christmas Carol… on Christmas Day, Scrooge is a changed man, and maybe that’d last until January 2. But old habits die hard, and soon enough, he’ll be aggravated at Cratchit for wasting his money on firewood again. Ditto all the transformations in this movie. But maybe that’s me being a cynical 30-something. Maybe love and friendship can break down barriers and change people’s lives…

Nah, not usually. Good movie anyway though. I like to hope that sometimes, it’s true, despite my currently nihilistic view.

BTW, I agree that Vernon’s attack on John Bender in the closet was inexcusable, and it comes from Vernon feeling so personally attacked and belittled by Bender’s posturing that he can’t keep his boundaries straight. I see teachers do this often, taking kid’s bullshit and making it a personal issue. It isn’t. What Bender needs is compassion and understanding, not more challenges from overbearing male authority figures who threaten him with bodily harm. Really, whatever sympathy I had for Vernon went out the window there b/c, frankly, he’s supposed to be the adult in the situation. He totally blew it and further alienated someone who is so obviously crying for help.</sermon>

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Ruby -I agree. This is a movie where alot of little things come to light upon repeated viewings.
Re Ally Sheedy’s “blossoming”. I think it took both Claire’s attentions and the jock’s appreciation of it to make Ally realize that she IS pretty and that she DOES matter to others. She is so invisible to her parents–one of my favorite bits is the part about the car-she and the car do a little dance when she is dropped off. Her parents are so clueless, they don’t even have her safety in mind!

This movie came out in my junior or senior year. The fashions, the stereotypes, the teacher’s suit and demeanor–believe me, it all existed. I had several teachers like Bender. Double knit polyester suits, bad hair and a grievance against their lot in life. It is not a good fit with the HS mentality. But he’s a prick to boot. If he had changed his tactics in the supply room with Judd, things may have turned out a bit differently. (doubtful since trust and respect develope over time, but this is a movie). I went to a HS very similiar to this one-large, upper middle class suburban with some lower SES and very few minorities. In my HS, I doubt that so much character revealing would occur on Saturday detention (for all I know, the parents now threaten to sue the school if kid is given this punishment!).

As to Judd Nelson’s character being the truth teller and catalyst for change…yes and no. They all have their truths to tell–Brian’s is no less vaid than Judd’s (mixing up character and actor names, sorry). Judd is certainly no leader in the emotional/cognitive arenas–he openly derides Brian for not being capable in shop and dismisses his academic success and superior intelligence. Brian, to his credit, sticks up for himself, as best he can.

IMO, the least truthful character is Claire. I think this is why I didn’t warm to her–she is open about her planned using of Judd to get back at her parents etc, but does she really feel for him? For his plight (and he is dealing with some heavy shit)? I doubt it. She is shallow as a puddle and about as long lasting. To me, she is the lost character–more so than Judd, who at least knows that he is in the shit. He does a noble thing when he bangs on the lockers and acts as a diversion.

Oh, so much to discuss! Now I want to see it again.

18

Really? I didn’t have a single one. :smiley:

19

Well, I think all or their truths are equally valid, but I don’t think that there’s any question that Judd is the catalyst in the story. Take him out of the equation and you’re left with four kids who sit quietly the entire day and write their essays as they’re told. Now that I think about it, Judd is really the only one who begins the day with his walls already knocked down. Each of the other characters initially deny their issues: (e.g. Emilio - in the scene where Ally Sheedy asks why he’s here: “I’m here because I’m a winner…”; Claire - “I’m not that pristine” ; Ally Sheedy in lying about being a nympho; Brian - well, him we don’t even get a hint of his emotional issues until the end, so his whole character is a lie, obscurred by his desire to be a good student “guys, I think we should just do the essay”).

Each of them have their issues dragged out of them, typically in cases where they’re asking each other how they got detention.

But Judd is the only one who forces his own issues on everyone. “This is what you get in my house for spilling paint in the garage”.

20

Ooops. Not sure how that got in there. Please disregard.