Stereotypes In The Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club is a 1985 American movie written and directed by John Hughes. The movie focuses on five different teenagers, each of which fits a typical stereotype. Each teen is introduced individually, displaying the traits of their respective stereotypes. The audience is first introduced to Claire, the preppy, popular girl, referred to as “The Prom Queen” in the script. Next, the audience is introduced to Brian, the nerd, or geek, of the group. Following Brian, the audience is introduced to Andrew, the popular athlete, referred to as “The Jock” in the script. In the shortest introductions, the audience is given a small glimpse of John Bender, although at this time the stereotype he fits is not known, a short observation of the physical attributes and clothing style will reveal to the audience that John Bender fills the role of the rebel or delinquent. The final member of the group is introduced in a short fashion as well. Allison, steps out of a car, dressed in dark clothing, with dark hair and makeup, is the outcast, or introvert of the group. Each stereotype represented by the teens is predicated on the general idea of high school cliques and the categories they generally fall into.

Stereotype; a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. In the realistic fiction novel, The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton, and in the short story, “Geeks Bearing Gifts”, written by Ron Koertge, stereotypes are defied by ordinary people. In The Outsiders, Johnny Cade and Darry Curtis face many struggles throughout their lives. Their town in separated into two: the rich and dangerous Socs, and the quiet, tough Greasers. For them, living dangerously is a reality. As a result of their lifestyle, Johnny has become fearful and Darry is considered the toughest man in the gang. In “Geeks Bearing Gifts” aspiring journalist, Renee, interviews her fellow classmates who are classified as “outcasts.” After meeting several students, she realizes her assumptions were incorrect about them. After reading both of these stories, the reader learns that our thoughts about others often revolve around stereotypes and assumptions, but most of these ideas that we have about other people are proven wrong.

The iconic coming-of-age movie The Breakfast Club, focuses on the development of five, seemingly very different high school students. In the movie we are presented with the five main characters all with stereotypes that they identify with. Claire is the princess or the beauty queen, John, often referred to by his last name “Bender,” is the criminal, Brian is the brain or the nerd, Andrew, is the athlete, a wrestler , and finally Allison is the basket case or the weirdo. The story is set in saturday detention where they are forced to spend eight hours with people from other cliques that they would normally never interact with. The day progresses and the characters interact with one another, smoke, dance, break rules, and reveal very personal parts of themselves with the others. The story ends with some of the characters making an attempt to change their identity with the realization that even with the boxes they have been put into they are not that different from one another.

The Breakfast Club is a classic 1980’s film depicting the various lives of a group of extremely diverse high school students; each dealing with and trying to overcome their own obstacles and challenges. Despite the initial conflict between the characters due to them all coming from different backgrounds and social cliques, they soon learn that they are not all so different from one another and are each struggling with similar problems within themselves and their personal lives. They eventually learn to accept the differences between each other and realize the falseness of some of their internalized values and stereotypes that they hold against others and themselves. The Breakfast club perfectly exhibits how stereotypes effect our lives, illustrates

Jumping into a burning building is one of the things that the boys from the “Greaser Gang” would do for each other. When the main character, Ponyboy, jumps into a burning church to save children from the flames, his two gang members and family, Johnny and Dally, jump in after him to help get the children out and ensure that he can get out. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton shows two main themes. These themes show many examples of stereotyping could lead to misjudgment of people and to be loyal to the people around you, especially the ones close to you.

John Hughes masterfully captures the shades of adolescent stereotypes and interactions, the culture clash between adolescents and adults, and the role that parents play in modeling the high school experience of each adolescent. The Breakfast Club follows five different teenagers throughout the course of a day as they are forced to endure detention on a Saturday. Each character symbolizes a classic adolescent prototype: the athlete, the basket case, the brain, the criminal, and the princess. At first, the adolescents separate themselves and make judgments and assumptions about each other based on the stereotype they each characterize. As the film develops, the characters start to move past these stereotypes to recognize they have

Coming of age is a popular theme in literature with many authors, directors, and musicians basing their work around it. They create works with the intent to examine our youth from different perspectives. Two great examples of this would be the film The Breakfast Club and novel The Perks of being a wallflower. Both show a realistic and relatable take on the lives of high schoolers, however I’d argue Breakfast Club better accomplishes this goal. The Breakfast Club takes each classic high school stereotype and grants the viewer some understanding as to who they really are beneath their label, compared to The perks of being a wallflower which performs poorly in trying to accurately portray high school life.

This movie portrayed people of different races and present how people from different cultures stereotype others. The first concept that I want to illustrate is “out group homogeneity”. “Out group homogeneity” means that people tend to see outgroups less diverse than themselves whereas they view themselves as unique and individual. Outgroup members are viewed as highly similar. The ingroup members tend to attribute that the outgroup members have the same characteristics and personalities. The outgroup homogeneity effect was observed in wide and diverse groups,

The Breakfast Club consists of a principle, Richard Vernon, and 5 teenagers who spend a Saturday together because they have detention. The students are diverse and come from different social groups: Claire “the Princess”, Allison “a quiet Outcast”, John “a Rebel”, Brian “the Nerd”, and Andrew “the Jock”. The “mean” principle orders the students to write a 1000 word essay on “Who You Think You Are?” Instead the teens, fall asleep, talk to each other, and roam the halls.

Emily Smith Professor Mary McMyne December 8, 2014 English 110 Rough Draft #3 John Hughes "The Breakfast Club": Judging a Book by it's Cover A rigid, oversimplified, often exaggerated belief that is applied both to an entire social category of people and to each individual within it.("Stereotype") Everybody has been in a situation where they have been stereotyped or themselves have stereotyped others. The way we present ourselves, the way we dress, and the friends we hangout with, these are all things that people stereotype.

In the movie, The Breakfast Club, stereotypical students are displayed and illustrated, they include the the princess, the brain, the athlete, and the criminal.

Have you ever been judged by your looks or how you act? Has anyone ever put you in a specific category ? In The breakfast Club a group of high school students get an 8 hour detention where they learn more about each other and find their inner Self. The breakfast club was created after a group of kids got a Saturday detention in a cafeteria. Each character has their own stereotype, Allison is the weird one that doesn't care what anyone thinks, John is the big bully or the jock, he seems like he's been through a lot and doesn't care much, Claire is the popular cool girl in school that wants everyone to like her, Brian's the nerd that is smart and in a bunch of clubs, and lastly Andrews the athlete that is relying on a scholarship.

The 80’s cult classic film, The Breakfast Club, was written and directed by John Hughes. This teen drama comedy film stars Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy, who all plays teenagers in high school. All five of these characters are all from different cliques who are forced to spend the whole day together in detention because they violated the school rules in some shape or form. Known as the Princess, Athlete, Criminal, Brain and Basket Case, they eventually come to terms that they all have something in common with one another. This is a film all teens can related to because of the teen stereotypes and how they are trying to interact with one another.

An example of a counter-argument to these stereotypes, The Breakfast Club (1986). The basic plot for this movie is that a group of high schoolers with seemingly different social “cliques”, or stereotypes if you will, are all forced together for a saturday due to unrelated detentions. The movie allows the concept of stereotyping and alienation to be presented in the first half, and the rest of the movie serves to “break” this conditioning. The students reveal their personal situations, as to denounce their stereotypes, as well as find similarities between each other (as to denounce the alienation which occurs in the beginning of the movie). The basic plot of this movie was created as to combat the concept of alienating those who are different from us, as well as those who do not act accordingly to the way their outward appearance is perceived through society’s conditioned mind.

In this way, the movie makes stereotypes and people will start to think negative things about them. That may be the central