The Breakfast Club is a gathering of high school students who go to a saturday detention each with a different reason to why they are there. Mr. Vernon gives them a basic task to do while they are in there. They must write an essay about themselves. Every individual has a smart thought of what the other is. Yet, as they argue and speak about reality, they realized they care for eachother more than at first sight. In The Breakfast Club, we are introduced five students who are all very different from one another. There is Claire who is the princess and the most popular of the entire school.
John, who is the rebel of the school. Andrew, who is labeled as the jock and head of the wrestling team. The last two are brian who is the one with the brains, and allison, the quiet one who does not speak until the end. One theory I can see in this movie was Erikson’s developmental Theory. There were many concepts in this movie that it was very hard to just chose few. Stereotypes, discrimination, role confusion, invincibility fable, operant conditioning, social learning, identity foreclosure, authoritarian, permissive and neglectful/uninvolved parenting were shown.
In the beginning of the movie, the parents were dropping off their teens at school for the saturday detention. This is where you can see how the parents interact with their children. John, however, did not get dropped off. He came to school walking. Claire was the first one to get dropped off in her father’s BMW. This scene shows the Permissive parenting. Permissive parenting is an approach to child reading that is characterized by high nurturance and communication but little discipline, guidance, or control (Berger, 2011). He spoils her with materialistic love and not so much of parent love.
Claire mentions how she feels her parents use her to get back at each other, it is never about her. They buy her diamonds and whatever she desires but they do not care for her the way parents should. Andrew is the sensitive plays hard wrestler. His character demonstrates identity foreclosure which occurs when an adolescent adopts parents or society’s role and value wholesale, without questioning or analysis (Berger, 2011). Andrew is under a lot of pressure from his friends but mostly his father. He’s stuck incompletely on whether he’s effective or not, whether he’s useless or not.
His perspectives depend on his dad’s conclusion. Andrew utilizes the feelings of others and uses to develop his own identity. For example, he taped a kid’s butt cheeks together, but he only did it in light of the fact that he needed his dad to believe he’s cool and he can be as tough as his father was at his age. Andrew seems very self-conscious and hasn’t exactly developed his own personality, and uses his dad’s and friends idea to make a picture of himself. Andrew does not seem like he wants to be a wrestler and only doing it to pass down his father’s trade.
He likewise shows some invulnerability, The excitement that nobody can touch him, that nobody can hurt him or do anything to make him feel wear or incapable. He’s a competitor, and knows he’s quicker and more grounded than a large portion of the others, making him feel a false security that causes issues between him and John. The rebel, john, is an example of invincibility fable. It falls under adolescent’s egocentric thinking which is the conviction that he or she cannot be overcome or even harmed by anything that might defeat a normal mortal, such as unprotected sex, drug abuse, or high speed driving (Berger, 2011).
John is the son of those uninvolved parents who just push him towards violence and drugs. Once in the movie he mention that all he gets for his birthday is a pack of cigarettes. His dad is abusive and not worthy of being a dad. John is involved with sex which is most likely to be unprotected, he is involved with drugs, always getting in trouble in school and just not listening to anyone. He thinks he knows that all these things will not hurt him in anyway and even if it does he would not care. He also seems to be in role confusion.
A situation in which an adolescent does not seem to know or care what his or her identity is (Berger, 2011). John just does not care about what others think of him. He is very often talking about sex, bullying people. When Mr. Vernon tells him he is worthless and will not go far in life, he had no response. He also shows social learning, which holds that humans sometimes learn without personal reinforcement. This also occurs through modeling, when people copy what they see others do (Berger, 2011). He does not seem to have much of his own personal experience.
He instead does as his father does and what his friends do as well. Brian is the brains of the school. He suffers from authoritarian parenting who approach to child rearing that is characterized by high behavioral standards, strict punishment for misconduct, and little communication from child to parent (Berger, 2011). Brian is in lot of pressure from his mom to the point where he was suicidal. He got his first Fin shop class. Because of that, he wanted to kill himself before his parents found out about the grade. He was always a straight A student and very smart.
Lastly, Allison is the quiet one that is always in the back of the room, She only starts opening up after being confronted by Andrew, after pouring her purse out and declaring that she wanted to run away. She is very socially awkward. We see romance with her and andrew at the end of the film. Allison is dealing with neglectful parenting at home. Neglectful/uninvolved parenting is an approach to child rearing in which the parents are indifferent towards their children and unaware of what is going on in their children’s lives (Berger, 2011).
Allison tells us in the movie that her parents are always ignoring her. She is not getting the parental love and support. In the beginning of the movie when allison was getting dropped off, her parent just drove off without communication. She came to saturday detention simply because she had nothing better to do. The Breakfast club has showed us most of the characters of adolescent. We see that they have all been discriminated against. Stereotypes is the possibility that one’s appearance or behavior will be misread to confirm another person’s oversimplified prejudiced (Berger, 2011).
This movie shows stereotypes that each person in this film is helped with. Allison for one was seen as awkward and quiet, but it just took sometime to get her talking. Claire is seen as the daughter of a wealthy family when she is not as stuck up as people make her seem. She is a humble girl. John is seen has a very arrogant guy but his father is the one to blame for that. The film also shows a great amount of friendship. Teachers may try to separate friends, but most developmentalist realize that friends help each other learn both academic and social skills (Berger, 2011).
Friendship is very important to adolescents especially this group of students. Friends can be like family when your real family does not seem to get you. You guys share interest in many things and have same goals. This film was an eye opener for me. I have watched it before few years ago by choice. As I was thinking about which film to analysis for this assignment and how hard it was for me to finally pick movie, The Breakfast Club came in mind. Claire in this describes me as a teen without the BMW. In middle school, I was very outgoing and had the most friends in my corner.
My mother was my supporter. My dad is still back home but he is almost here with us. My mom always did and still does everything she can for me. She always made sure I has the best cloths, a phone and just materialistic stuff. While watching a movie from now you just can’t help but analysis it. After this assignment, it is much easier for me to watch and analysis. Before this assignment, I always had a hard time with reading because I could not get my mind around the story I was reading. I could not be able to tell or write about the movie or book because I didn’t know how to analysis and summarize.
I thought it would’ve been hard to get at least nine concepts out of this movie but surprisingly I did and I know I succeeded this assignment. I know few of my friends siblings and few other adolescents I know throught volunteering for their school. I wish I could encourage them to watch this movie knowing they will get something out of it. They would hopefully look at their schoolmates different. They would set aside any stereotypes or rumors they have heard. They would get to know them and focus on the similarities they share.