I think it’s interesting looking at the groups in The Breakfast Club, comparing them against my high school classmates and seeing on Facebook what each of them are doing now that we are all in our mid-40s.
I would say that it certainly resonates with anyone who went to a suburban middle to upper middle class high school in the 80s, as portrayed in the film. A main theme of The Breakfast Club and 80s high school films in general is this concept of high school being socially organized along various subcultures, almost like departments in a corporation. Preppy jocks, hick jocks, burnouts (we called them “hoods” or “bong kids”), nerds, skaters, Goths, freaks (collectively called “AV kids”). So there is often a lot of pressure to figure out which of these cliques you want to be a part of and play that part. Keeping in mind that they are not all socially equal in each other’s eyes or the general publics. And within each clique there may be separate hierarchies.
Also keep in mind that you can’t just “pick” a group to belong to. Brian can’t be a jock because he sucks at sports. Claire is a preppy because her dad is rich and buys her BMWs and nice clothes. Bender is a cool stoner because he (supposedly) has a tough home life.
Although, I’m not entirely unconvinced that much of Bender’s backstory is bullshit and that he might actually be “gifted” intellectually.
It may seem like American teenagers lives revolve around high school because the high school typically has close ties to the suburban community. There was also not a whole lot to do outside of activities associated with the high school in the 80s. No internet, remember.
I disagree somewhat with the folk who say it varies by region. While some regions are MORE over the top than others, is there any region where local papers do not report on HS sports? I see it regularly in the Chicago burbs, and a nephew reports on same up in Alaska. Meanwhile, there is not comparable reporting of academics or other HS activities. Jocks are disproportionately represented among the HS elite.
Last week I asked someone from Mexico about HS sports there. He said there was some interschool soccer, but nothing to compare with the US.
HS band is another thing relatively unique to the US.
IMO, it reflects the US’s ongoing de-emphasis of academics and infantilization of youth.
Loved it. Most of the kids I hung out with would have fit into the “Criminal/Burnout” group. My daughter (14) loves it too. Sure, fashions change, but a lot of the movie stands the test of time.
I feel pretty much the same about it now as I did then; I enjoyed it but it doesn’t really resonate all that much with me. I adore(d) Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall but really didn’t care for the other leads. The Simple Minds theme song is awesome and the dance sequence in the library is too cringe worthy to ever watch again.
“Oh, he’s very popular Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he’s a righteous dude.”
Well if you go to a 20-year high school reunion, the geeks as a group particularly the guys ended up with highest paying jobs, meaning some of them got the girls in the end. The jocks were the biggest losers, overweight, middle class at best, and a tad disgruntled as a group, though there were exceptions. You saw the hot girl lost her looks and the one who was overweighed to look like a knockout.
I also saw clicks reform in front of my eyes as the evening went on, but for me, I was there to talk to everyone who showed up, not the 2 friends I went with.
I had a diverse set of friends in high school, but I also played sports, and went to some parties, that some of my friends viewed as geeks, deadbeats and not exactly invited or welcome. It sucked, but that was the way it was.
I remember sitting with them sometimes in the cafeteria, getting some looks. But outside of school, it was all good.
Back then I used to walk into a room and see who liked me. Now I walk into a room and see who I like.
This reminded me that someone I went to high school with had an oddball interpretation of The Breakfast Club where the janitor was actually God (or at least an angel or something) and had brought everyone together that day so they could have an enlightening experience.
I doubt the filmmakers intended any such thing, but it would explain why Carl was so understanding.
In my experience: The people I’ve known over the years who went to big suburban high schools do indeed see this movie as a very accurate reflection of their youths. What’s interesting to me is it doesn’t seem to me to be generational either: folks who attended those schools in the sixties, in the eighties, or in the 00s all seem to say, “yeah, that was what it was like!”
And I’m sure it was. But I attended a different kind of school (late seventies) and the movie really had no resonance with me at all. As seems (again, anecdotally) to be the case with other people I know whose high schools were not like the one depicted in the movie. It’s quite a divide!
The stereotypes were pretty much exactly like my high school, except the nerd would have been working on D&D maps in detention.
Yeah, high school football was (and still is) the center of the universe in most parts of Texas. Our high school was at the low end with a stadium seating about 12,000, but either way the culture of football was constant and pervasive, and jocks were terrifying and owned the hallways (and my high school was about 3,000 people in 3 grades).
If Siam Sam wanders by this thread he’ll have something to say, he grew up in the Mecca of HS football, West Texas.
Back when *Friday Night Lights *was on, I remember someone posted that they couldn’t get into the show because it seemed ridiculously unrealistic that the whole town was depicted as caring about high school football, including adults who didn’t even have kids in high school. Another poster replied “Clearly you’ve never been to Texas.” And it’s not just a Texas thing, I’d say high school football is considered a pretty big deal through much of the American South and Midwest.
So in response to Uosdwis R. Dewoh’s question, yeah, school sports, especially football, are treated as important in the US. This does vary somewhat from region to region and even school to school; for most of high school I attended a very small school that didn’t have any sports teams at all. That’s unusual for the US, though.
I would say that the importance of school plays is often exaggerated on TV, though. I spent a year and a half at a big, rather Breakfast School-esque high school that had a well-funded theater department and competitive auditions – I knew someone who was turned away due to “lack of experience”, although I don’t know where a teenager is supposed to get experience if they can’t get cast in a school play – but it seemed like it was only really a big deal to the people actually involved plus their friends and families. School plays could easily be ignored if you weren’t interested. But even if (like me) you thought sports were stupid and boring, they were talked about all the time at this school, football players and cheerleaders wore their uniforms to class all day on game days, and several times a year we had a shortened class schedule to make time for mandatory pep rallies.
Wow, suburbia is different. Here in NYC you were lucky if you had an athletics department in your high school, much less people caring about it. What riled the parents in my South Bronx neighborhood was when my district contemplated getting rid of the music department. It was a New York tradition to come home for the weekend with that Bd. of ED stamped flute case (or in my case, violin case). Even in the urban decay hell that was the South Bronx in the '70s and early '80s , the parents fought for the music. At least in my district.
I didn’t go to high school in my local district, however. Lucky for me because the cliques there included the nerds, the really stupid, the Black Spades and the Latin Homociders (told you there were dumb) and the only princesses were boys in lipstick. I was rescured by going to a specialized high school. I loved The Breakfast Club when it came out and was fascinated by the campus. The school was on a damned campus with friggin grounds. And I went to the largest high school in the city.
Hopefully, you were lucky enough to have a pretty white lady or inspiring no-nonsense tough guy come in and motivate your class with some tough love. At least…that’s my understanding of how urban schools worked in the 80s.
But seriously though, the “campus” style high school is pretty common in suburban and rural communities simply because there is so much room. My HS consisted of the main building (a large sunken 2 story structure), parking lots, a football stadium / track (nothing like Texas though), soccer fields and a baseball field. It was fairly typical of schools in the state.
Athletics were certainly a thing, but again, not the spectacle you see out in Texas. Mostly it was just something to do on Friday nights. You drive up with a bunch of your friends. Meet with other groups of friends. Maybe if you’re lucky someone has a six pack or there’s a party afterwards.
Chicago probably is “suburbia” compared to NYC in terms of population density, but high school athletics are reasonably big even in the city. Until maybe a couple decades ago, the world record crowd for a sporting event was a high school football game between the Chicago Pubilc Schools league champ and the Catholic League Champ. Granted, this was in 1937, but 120,000 people showed up to watch the game at Soldier Field. The same game even in the 60s had attendences of 90K+. Of the top 15 football programs in Illinois, two of them are Chicago schools (Mount Carmel and St. Rita.) If you go into high school basketball, then you have a bunch more. Five of the top ten teams in the state were from Chicago last year. So it really isn’t a suburbs vs urban thing, in my opinion. Probably more a regional thing.
I went to HS in Delaware in the '90s. The whole town revolved around football. Things shutdown on friday nights. The school didn’t even have a soccer, golf, or lacrosse team. Pretty sure they made and kept an antiquated faculty position just to prop up the pay of the football coach. That was my 2nd high school. The first 1 was in MD and I left due to constant bullying among other things. If your parent had to talk to the principal for some reason, he would ask “Who is your son? What sport does he play?”
I live in Ohio now and people are into it here, too. The other day when I picked up my son from school people were tailgating in the parking lot. At least 3 guys (that I know of) from my small town were picked in the NFL draft this year.
And it’s not just a Texas thing, I’d say high school football is considered a pretty big deal through much of the American South and Midwest.