Essay on Social Cliques in The Breakfast Club by Eric Berne

Stereotypes are oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person, group or thing. Obnoxious, narcissistic, rebellious, emotionless, unloyal, out of control and up to no good… are a few wide number of stereotypes that are accredited to teenage boys nowadays. Stereotypes are everywhere: social media, television, magazines, etc… Stereotyping a person or a group of people in a negative manner has a long lasting effect on those who experience the prejudice. Stereotyping causes many misconceptions about teenage boys. This could be seen throughout the novel, Holes, the author, Louis Sachar, endorses and challenges the teenage boy stereotypes by the diversity of the characters’ persona, actions and characteristics. The book Holes follows the tale of

Oftentimes, in the public, people have to be “normal” to be successful and accepted. Author William Saroyan believes that society steers people to be conformed and fit in, but he wants people to be able to be diverse. In the short story “Gaston,” Saroyan shows that carving a unique path can turn out to be erroneous. Through symbolism and contrast, Saroyan conveys the theme that society does not always accept people’s differences.

You know that kid in your 6th period, who sits in the back of the classroom; he makes comments under his breath, skips class, and has a vile view of the world. Yeah, him. He is considered a criminal and a social deviant because of his actions, the clothes he wears, and his attitude. By generalizing a person based on a certain characteristic and comparing it to a group of people, by definition is stereotyping. Bender, in The Breakfast Club, is the social deviant or criminal because when students see him in his ripped jeans, work boots, a thermal shirt, a plaid over-shirt and a torn flannel (UR) is associated with a tough, rebellious attitude (UR). Due to his abuse at home (US) he uses his clothes as a way to show he is not week to be given any sympathy. Students view him as a criminal by getting in trouble and smoking marijuana, the image is created (CS). His abuse he gets at home causes him to hate adults and authority of any kind. Seeing the preppy girl hanging out with the same group of people, her expensive clothes, and everyone loves her and wants to be her. The conditioned stimulus (CS) is the association and the expectation of their stereotype and when it is paired with the unconditioned stimulus (US), events making them the way they are (abuse at home, parental expectations, etc.) consistently the association becomes stronger. The conditioned response (CR) is the action towards that group, such as avoidance or hanging out with them. The unconditioned response (UR) is

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary that someone must judge another to reassure their own position as a superior being. It is at this time, those that threaten individuality and culture be reminded that they are made of the same matter that nature intended for us as humans, and these oppressors of unique must now swallow it.

No matter where you go in the world people are divided. They can be divided by their wealth or state of living these are social classes. In the novel “The Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton social classes a very apparent the rich and the poor. In The Outsiders, social classes create a divide in the community. The isolation of these two groups lead to the tension and violence that is seen in the book.

Rebellion is an unavoidable yet beneficial aspect of any teenager’s life, and is often used as a theme in literature and films. The Novel A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews explores the constricting Mennonite lifestyle imposed upon Nomi Nickel and her rebellious tendencies resulting from it. The film “The Breakfast Club” directed by John Hughes illustrates the complicated lives of five teenagers, most notably John Bender and his constant rebellion against his school and principal. Both of these works use rebellion as their respective protagonist’s outlet for the frustration they feel towards their environments. Nomi and John both engage in recreational drug use in their unaccepting environments. They disrespect their authority figures through

1)A group role is the part a member plays in a group, as a function of your traits, personality, your expectation, expectations of others in the group. and who you are as an individual. Each member in the Breakfast Club has had an input into the story line and there are multiple characters with different roles, inputs and circumstances and all of them interacting to make this film quite interesting. Lets start off with the most deviant of them all.

No matter where you go in the world, people are divided. They can be divided by their wealth or state of living these are social class. In the novel “The Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton social classes a very apparent the rich and the poor. In The Outsiders, social classes create a divide in the community. The isolation of these two groups leads to the tension and violence that is seen in the book.

In the movie, The Breakfast Club, there are five characters that are to go to school on a Saturday, to serve a detention. While getting to know one another, each student has a different personality. Also, they discover that each and every one of them belong to “classified” group. For example, like the personalities in the movie, there might be athletic, girly, smart, odd, or trouble-making cliques that go through a school. As time passes by in detention, they manage to accept each other's’ differences, and become decent friends. This movie accurately depicts the type of isolation and separation that occurs in high school.

Social class describes the different "layers" that exist in society. These "layers," or classes in society, are a division that civilization has been running on ever since the beginning of mankind. In most modern societies, our system of social class division is one of opportunity. We experience a good deal of social mobility, where people through generations or in their own lifetime can move up or down the social scale. By examining the many different perceptions of social class along with S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, it is illustrated that social class has an impact on people while they are growing up, and will usually deny them from rising above adversity.

The Breakfast Club is an inspiring tale of five adolescents: Brian, Andrew, Claire, John Bender, and Allison, from diverse backgrounds that unite over a course of eight grueling hours in mandatory Saturday detention. These five individuals come from different social groups and a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds are present, but in the end they discover that they are more alike than they assumed.

In the film The Breakfast Club, Deviance and Conformity to the norms are used throughout the film to help viewers understand the Labeling Theory and how it connects to the behavior of adolescents. Deviance simply put is the departing of social norms and and values in social situations while the Labeling Theory can be defined as that people generate their own self image solely based upon what others think of themselves which leads to poor self image and feelings about themselves and others around them. The Labeling Theory is applied in The Breakfast Club because it appears that all the characters feel like they already know everything about one another solely based on who they really are when they all first meet. In the film, we start to get an idea of exactly who the characters really are inside. In the first few minutes we start to understand that there is a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal but by the end of the film we start to understand that the individuals are all different than what they seem. It feels like only in high school, you really care about how others perceive you, how you’re labeled and you’d do anything to just prove that you’re not some loser who spends time alone feeling bad for themselves. An example throughout the film is how defensive Claire acts when Bender is teasing her for all she has. By the end of the film, we start to understand that Claire does everything she can to get respect from her peers.

Breakfast Club film contained a wide variety of behavior and stereotypes. Each person had their on personality and taste at the beginning of the film. I believe that communication played the biggest part in the movie. It shows the way that people from totally different backgrounds can communicate and even agree on issues. The various types of communication and behaviors within the film will be discussed. Key terms will be pointed out and highlighted, as well as described in relation to the examples extracted from the film. To begin with the film started out with a communication climate that was both tense and without verbal communication. This was mainly due to the variance in membership constructs of the characters involved. The

A stereotype is a generalized belief about an individual or group of individuals. Stereotypes can sometimes be true, however most are overgeneralized and false. These false beliefs start almost all of the initial conflicts within this film; the above descriptions for each person are what the others see them as, and even they themselves have assumed these roles given to them. (The reason why will be explained later on in this paper). John accuses Claire of being a tease, causing verbal conflict between those two and Andrew. At the very beginning of the movie, Mr. Vernon assumes they are all terrible kids because they are in detention. This can be tied to the fundamental attribution error. The fundamental attribution error states that people underestimate the power of the situation and overestimate the power of personal disposition. This means that individuals incorrectly find meaning in another person’s actions and behavior through believing their personality caused their actions. Mr. Vernon made assumptions as to why they are in detention based on what he believes are underlying traits about each of the students not on the possibility that this could be just

Do you ever wonder what people are really like and not just what they show on the outside? Yes, we all do. This is because we never take the time to meet up with a person to understand more about them. We meet our five characters at the beginning of the movie and they are all different. There is Andy the athlete, Claire is a princess, Allison a basket case, Brian the brain, and John Bender the criminal. But throughout the movie they learn more and more about each other and find that they all have a lot of common problems and beliefs. In his film The Breakfast Club, John Hughes uses the Star-crossed lovers and loyal companions archetypes to reveal how we as humans fail to recognize how trustful a person can be, because we let our differences control how we act and feel towards others and their beliefs.