Lena, I like your comparison of "Life After High School" to The Breakfast Club. I did not make this connection when I read the story. However, after reading your response to the story, your comparison seems so clear now. I agree with your analysis of Zach. I too felt that his struggle to maintain his false identity was the catalyst that drove him to commit suicide. As you mentioned, the story really shows how past life experiences shape who we become as adults. Isn't it ironic that Zach's death played such an important role in molding Barbara and Tobias into the adults they eventually became? I also found it interesting that, at first glance, both Zach and Sunny seemed to be stereotypical characters. However, by the end of the story,
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
Throughout the movie, Brian goes through the Identity Foreclosure, Identity Moratorium and Identity Achievement statues of James Marcia’s identity statuses theory. When Brian lives up to his obedient, “Good Citizen,” nerd image, he’s in the Identity Foreclosure status since he unquestioningly adopts his parents’ and society's visions, values and roles. He follows rules, questions rebelliousness and allows others to view him as weak for being a geek. Then, he transitions into an Identity Moratorium status where he delays his commitment to being the Brain and explores “alternative ideologies” and sides to himself when he smokes weed and connects to the troubles and philosophies of the rest of the Breakfast Club (Weiten, 457). Finally, at the end of the movie, Brian achieves the Identity Achievement status where he grows closer to a sense of identity and direction after “thinking through alternative possibilities,” or hanging out with the rest of the Breakfast Club (Weiten, 457). After being accepted by others, Brian builds his self-esteem and values his life despite his failures once and for all.
The Breakfast Club is a movie about five students from Shermer High School who gather on a Saturday to sit through eight hours of detention. These five students; Andrew Clark, Claire Standish, John Bender, Allison Reynolds and Brian Johnson, have nothing in common. The Breakfast Club zooms in on the high school social groups and cliques that are often seen in the development of peer groups during adolescents. The peer groups that are portrayed in The Breakfast Club include, John “the criminal”, Claire “the Princess”, Allison “the Basket case”, Brian “the Brain”, and Andrew “the athlete”. The movie centers around an essay that Principle Vernon wants each student to write regarding who they think they are. In the beginning of the film, the
Example 1 – Andrew displays Identity Diffusion when he conforms to peer pressure and follows the acceptable behavior of the group. When the group decides to leave the library, he also follows even though he know the teacher has strictly forbade them from leaving their chair.
Released in 1985 and directed by John Hughes ' The Breakfast Club ' is a film about teenagers that seem different on the surface but come to discover otherwise . When five students from different high school cliques are forced to spend their Saturday in detention, the brain, athlete, basket case, princess and the criminal together are faced with the question of who they think they are. The five characters put aside the ir dissimilarities in aid to survive the painful eight hour detention and in the process they discover they aren 't as unalike after all.
The Breakfast Club movie is about five high school students from Shemer High School with different backgrounds. It’s the story of “a brain (Brian), an athlete (Andrew), a basket case (Allison), a princess (Claire) and a criminal (Bender).” The purpose of the movie is to captive the feelings and perspectives on what other people have experienced and learned from each other. The analysis about The Breakfast Club is about the common insecurities and challenges of the teenager during high school. The Breakfast club is a movie to convey emotions, fears, and companionship that everyone can relate to. However, with new knowledge comes new perspective and emotions. This movie opens up a world of abstract thoughts because none of the five students know each other and it helps to create an interpersonal communication, they revealed to each other how their lives actually are. This movie is about Social Judgment Theory, Interpersonal conflict, self-disclosure, Social Comparison Theory and an unresolved life conflicts of a teenager life by finding their identities.
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.
High school: a place of acceptance, growth, and love. Life After High School by Joyce Carol Oates takes place in the small town of South Lebanon, New York in 1959. Oates details the lives of three students: Zachary Graff, Barbara “Sunny” Burhrman, and Tobias Shank. Zachary struggles with finding love; both Sunny and Tobias turn him down during the rough times of the 1950’s, and Zachary’s struggle ultimately leads to his death. Throughout the stories the three characters mask themselves behind a happier and fitter version of themselves; the hide behind religion, lies, and stereotypes. Oates writes in a third person limited point of view to reveal the theme of hiding one's identity is destructive. Oates creates a perspective of literary fiction to reveal the emotion of what the characters feel, think, and act.
Brian Johnson, or the “Brain,” in the movie The Breakfast Club, possess thought processes evident in Piaget’s Formal Operational Period stage in his theory of cognitive development. During Piaget’s Formal Operational Period, people begin to “apply their mental operations to abstract concepts in addition to concrete objects;” their thinking is hypothetical, systematic, reflective and logical (Weiten, 448). Brian asks himself existential questions like “Who do I think I am? Who are you? Who are you?” as he brainstorms Mr. Vernon’s assignment for the students in detention; these thoughts are abstract. His thought processes are also logical since he’s extremely intelligent; being part of the math, Latin and physics club requires some advanced thinking skills. Additionally, he understands how concrete applications like engineering stem from abstract concepts like Trigonometry. He also reasoned that if he took a class like Shop that “dopes” take, he could pass that class easily to maintain his GPA; such reasoning requires complex thinking. Finally, his thinking is reflective, especially when he ponders the permanence of the Breakfast Club’s friendship and describes how he steps outside himself to analyze what he sees. Unfortunately, when he observes himself, he’s highly critical and despises his “true” self; he possess a highly negative view of himself, labeling himself a failure, eventually leading to suicidal thoughts and actions.
In the movie The Breakfast Club, five seemingly different adolescents are assigned Saturday detention where they learn that although they each fit a particular stereotype, they all have the same characteristics, but they are expressed differently because they have different experiences, strengths and weaknesses that makes them who they are. In the movie, Bender is the “criminal”, Brian is the “brain” and Allison is the “psychopath.” Each of their situations, strengths and weakness are similar to students that are in our classrooms currently or we may have in our classrooms in the future. For each student it is important to understand their learning differences and as a teacher, how I can use their strengths to help them become
The Breakfast Club contains important themes that resonate in many people, particularly teenagers, one of those themes being alienation and acceptance. This film perfectly portrays the alienation many students feel in high school, whether popular or unpopular, and follows it up with acceptance as they see they are not alone and find those who can help them. These themes are portrayed both through the characters and the way they act and what they have been through as well as in the movie as a whole. In 1985, when The Breakfast Club was made, this portrayal of the isolation of high school was very important for teenagers to see, and today in 2017, it is still insanely important. From then to now, high school has been a hard time for many
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”.
Sociologists use many different theoretical perspectives to study the behavior of people in society. According to Macionis, sociology uses both a micro-level and macro-levels to look at both the big picture and the smallest details (p.17). There are three major analytical models in sociology that include functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interaction. Both functionalism and conflict theory are macro-level and symbolic interaction is micro-level (Macionis, P.19). Each one looks at society in a different way and can in this paper I will analyze the movie “The Breakfast Club” using these perspectives.
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.
The movie, The Breakfast Club, is a movie about five students who get Saturday school and become friends as a result of it. The characters were: Allison, the quiet girl who would sit in the back and refuse to talk; John, the troublemaker who always talked back to the teachers; Claire, the popular girl who always got what she wanted; Brian, the nerdy student who only cared about having good grades; Andrew, the wrestler who was only focused impressing his father. While watching the movie, I mainly related to Brian. He is pressured to have good grades by his parents and is labeled as the nerd because of it. I am also pressured to have good grades; however, I am labeled as the smart kid in many different classes, but I’m not classified as a nerd.