The Breakfast Club: Culture of the American High School

John Hughes Jr. was born in 1950 in Lansing, MI. When he was 13, he and his family moved to Illinois and lived close to Chicago. He graduated from high school in 1968 and then went to the University of Arizona in Tucson. He did not finish at the university, but dropped out and became an ad copywriter. He began to write stories and screenplays around this time. In 1984, he began directing a series of movies with a high school theme. His first film was Sixteen Candles, a movie about a teenage girl whose birthday is forgotten in the chaos of her sister’s wedding preparations. Hughes would go on to direct and produce several more movies, including Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and the Home Alone series. Hughes died in 2009.

Hughes’ second movie, The Breakfast Club, came out in 1985 and is set in 1984. The movie is simple, being set in a high school on a Saturday, with only five teenagers and two adult main characters. Do not let this simplicity fool you, however. The film presents many themes that can be examined from several different perspectives. It presents a look at American culture as it pertains to high school dynamics, as well as adult-teenager relationships. Interwoven in these broad themes are pictures of class differences and issues of divorce and abuse.

The movie begins with each teenager being dropped off at the school. We are immediately introduced to the relationship – or lack thereof – of the teenagers and their parents. After they get settled in the library for detention, the principal gives them instructions for the day. They are not to move or talk. He instructs each of them to write an essay for him describing who they think they are. Though they do not work on this essay throughout the movie, the viewer discovers the answer through their dialogue and journey to discovering it themselves.

The teenagers come from different backgrounds and hang out with different groups in the school. Claire is the popular and conceited rich girl, Andrew is the over-pressured jock, Brian is the smart one, Allison is the crazy and neglected loner, and John Bender is the angry troublemaker. Through these characters is shown the diversity of personalities of all human beings, but they also demonstrate the values of society through their descriptions of their lives and why they were in detention.

Claire comes from a home in which her parents use her to get back at each other. If one parent says to do one thing, then the other will tell her to do the opposite. She also believes that she has no choice about who she hangs out with. She is rich and popular, and feels pressured to hang out with a certain crowd.

Andrew is an athlete whose father pressures him to do well so he can get a scholarship. He does something cruel to another student in an attempt to impress his father. When he is dropping him off at detention, the father sympathizes with Andrew, his only complaint being that he got caught. Andrew feels pressured and invisible, and he realizes how cruel his actions were.

Brian is smart and quiet, bowing to the wishes of others most of the time. He too is pressured by his parents to get good grades. Though Bender makes fun of what he thinks is Brian’s perfect life, the truth is that Brian felt so pressured by his parents that he became suicidal when he failed a project for shop class. This pressure is seen at the beginning of the movie when he is dropped off by his mother. She orders him to find a way to do homework even though he explains he is not supposed to during detention.

When Allison arrives at the high school, she gets out of the car and tries to say goodbye to whoever dropped her off, but they drive off quickly. She goes into the library and sits in the back, turning away from everyone else. Her hair covers her face and she is dressed in black. She does not speak until the middle of the movie. When she does, the viewer becomes aware that she is a compulsive liar and desperately wants someone to care about her.

Finally, John Bender arrives at the high school by walking in front of Allison’s car, looking straight ahead. He is the troublemaker, smoking pot and listening to heavy metal. He stirs up the other teenagers, making fun of them and acting like he doesn’t care what they think of him. Throughout the movie, he and the principal butt heads, with the principal eventually threatening him. By the end of the movie, he still maintains a tough façade, but the viewer knows that he is really just as vulnerable as the rest of the teenagers.

Each of these teenagers had a different reason for being in detention, a different home life, and a different personality. At the end of the movie, however, it is clear that they are very similar. This film portrays the lives of teenagers in the 1980’s as being characterized by a dissonance between them and their parents and teachers. Each of the five teenagers in the movie feels misunderstood, ignored, and abused. For someone watching this movie from another culture, it would appear that American high school culture is characterized by troubled and rebellious teenagers and unsympathetic adults. There is only one adult in this movie who is portrayed positively: the janitor. When Bender mocks him, he takes it in stride and essentially speaks his language right back to him. He is not threatening or disrespectful, but he does not allow the teenagers to get to him.

Through this movie, Hughes presents American high school culture to the viewer. He raises issues about cliques, parental pressure, and abuse of authority. Through the reconciliation of the teenagers, he also shows the value of tolerance and equality. In the final scenes of the movie, Brian writes the required essay, but he writes it for all five teenagers. He tells the principal that he sees them as he wants to see them, but that they have realized that they are all “a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.” This gives the message that though everyone is different, we can appreciate those differences, while also focusing on what we have in common.

References:

Cieply, M. (2009, August 6). John Hughes, Who Captured the Lives of Teenagers in the 1980s, Dies at 59. The New York Times.  Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/movies/07hughesobit.html?_r=0. 

John Hughes. (2015). The Biography.com website. Retrieved 04:07, Mar 29, 2015, from http://www.biography.com/people/john-hughes-476258.

Tanen, N., & Hughes, J. (Producers), & Hughes, J. (Director). (2008). The Breakfast club [Motion picture]. United States: Universal Studios.