Stereotypes In The Film The Breakfast Club

The 1985 comedy drama movie, The Breakfast Club, included five teenagers who are in Saturday school detention for various reasons and at the end of the day must write an essay that explains how they define themselves. In Saturday school detention, each teenager learns about one another, what they have in common, and why they were assigned to be in detention. The teens all have similar problems with stereotyping of how society and especially how their parents define them. In the movie, four of the main characters: Claire, John, Andrew, and Allison experience at least one of the following theories: strain theory, social learning theory, control theory, and labeling theory.

The groups that are formed as adolescents often determine group associations as adults and define an individual within their social group that will either set them with or against other groups. This is described in an article on social groupings by Colin Allen, which mentions that our social associations as adolescents are strong indicators to future patterns of social norms as adults. Therefore, the group of students in the movie, The Breakfast Club, can also be extrapolated to adult group dynamics. However, the varying social norms between groups can present conflicts when adults are required to function within a very diverse group of individuals. In The Breakfast Club, the Jock, Geek, Prom Queen, Delinquent, and the Freak groups are brought together initially through an autocratic or directive leadership role, used to bring the group together in order to proceed to the next phase of group development. This stage is particularly important within a group of

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.

approach does not account for this. In close relation to norms, beliefs are an important factor in The Breakfast Club. Beliefs tell us what we think is true or false. In this movie there are many false beliefs that are shattered by the time the credits roll.

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

According to Erik Erikson, he identifies the task of an adolescent as identity versus role confusion. This is where adolescent tries to form their personal and social identity. Some adolescents may adopt the values and beliefs of their parents; however, others may develop their identities from peers and oppose the values and beliefs of their parents. Adolescence who are emerging into adulthood struggles to confine with their psychological, cognitive, social, and emotional development. During this time period, there are five distinctive characters of emerging adulthood: age of identity explorations, age of instability, self-focused, age of feeling in-between, and age of possibilities. In The Breakfast Club, five high school students spend their Saturday together in detention, and they have to set aside their differences in order to make it through those long hours. The jock, the princess, the basket case, and the criminal reveal their internalizing problems involving their peers, parents or self. Their behaviors and personalities indicate the underlying issues of their cognitive and social development. The interaction between the students helps them find common ground with each other and learn the details of their life beneath the stereotypes. Throughout the movie, John Bender has an impulsive and aggressive personality that can be characterized by the environment that he was raised in, his

When each of the students came into detention, they each had their own identities and their own underlying issues that no one knew about. When they started to open up and grow closer with each other, their identities changed all together. They were beginning to show their real personalities within each other and at the end of the film they all embraced who they really were on the inside and who everyone else was.

An anonymous speaker once said," Young nonconformists often identify with a subculture--such as hipsters, Goths, skaters, or Trekkie--that has interests or beliefs that go against the mainstream. "This basically means that teenagers identify with groups that go against the community's norm, but not against their own norms. I agree with this statement because teens hang in groups that others think there beliefs and ideals are wrong, but the teens in the group think their belief and ideals are right. In the realistic fiction novel written by S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders, there were groups of characters whose beliefs and ideals were against the norm of the community. Pony boy Curtis, the protagonist of the story, belonged to a gang that

Members of a perceived in-group tend to classify themselves as being better than people who they perceive as belonging to an out-group. (Edwards et. Al. 2014) for example Cady who was home schooled all her life, was forced to learn the social norms when she moved to high school. At the beginning of the movie Cady meets two friends, Damian and Janis. These students are seen as the out-group as they are different and don’t possess the same qualities as other people. They do not try to be pretty like the plastics, they do not socialise by going to parties and therefore they are an out-group. When they entered the cafeteria Janis made it clear that where you “sit in the cafeteria is crucial”. As Cady walked past “the plastics” who are represented as the “in – group”, they call her to sit down. The plastics represent what everyone wants to be. They think that they are better than everyone in the school and that they have better qualities than anyone else in the school. They are popular, rich and pretty. Therefore they are seen as the in-group. Prejudice can therefore form when people feel the need to protect their self – esteem by belonging to a particular group and behaving negatively towards other members of a community. (Edwards et. Al.

From experience, it seems as though the everyman doesn’t really know who they are and what they want to be. So, as a result of being so undefined, one will try to define themselves as what everybody else seems to be; basically becoming one of the crowd. Giving this a specific age to associate this with, the age would have to be a pre-teen or late elementary and early middle school. The awkward stages of the twelve and thirteen-year-old girl that was Kayla were particularly callous and unsympathetic. This stage for my class was simply about fitting into a cruel and judgmental group of people. As a result, instead of celebrating and admiring our differences, any particular individual would bury the uniqueness within themselves and mask their own personality with the one that was accepted. Then, by becoming the accepted, my classmates and I had become the everyman. Thankfully, though, the harsh unforgiving environment of middle school would transition into the inviting and extraordinary place that is high school; where differences are celebrated by the upperclassman which blazes the trail for the underclassman to follow. The transition into high school was typically the time where my class and I had, for the most part, discarded the everyman archetype for at least a short while, and became

In The Breakfast Club, five high schoolers break their social barriers and manage to get along in Saturday detention. These diverse high school students open up to each other and become friends by overcoming the concepts such as stereotyping, self-presentation, and their self-concept. Although their social perspectives are completely different from one another, their feelings toward certain subjects like their parents are common. Stereotyping is defined as the act of fitting groups individuals into existing categories without adjusting the schema appropriately. Schemas are known as, “Mental structures that put together related bits of information that forms patterns to create meaning.”

Stereotyping has been around for a long time, it relates to people in the 60’s and people now, in 2016. You probably see it happen on a daily basis at your school, infact you probably also fit into a stereotype. In The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton, there are a lot of stereotypes that might not be correct, once you get to know the person being stereotyped you might think of them differently.

An example of this is the play “Cyrano de Bergerac”. In the play Cyrano is in love with his cousin Roxane, but no body thinks that she will like him because he has a huge nose. They all judge him on his appearance and forget all about his well-rounded personality. So, he writes poetry and puts someone else’s name on it, at the end when Roxane finds out, she falls in love with him. That goes to show that appearance is not everything, regardless of what some may think. Stereotyping is also shown in a recent movie put out by Disney, called “You Wish”. This boy wants to be popular and cool, but his friends know that it does not matter. He wishes his brother out of his life and everything changes, he becomes the star football player and his friends are different. When he tries to talk to the old ones, they are rude to him because they think he is just a conceited jock. In the end when he gets his old life back he learns to accept himself and love what he does have.

The Breakfast Club is a coming of age film about a group of high school kids that have been sentenced to a saturday detention. Each of these kids represents a clique or a stereotype within the average high school demographic. Throughout the film they learn that appearances are not everything and that they share more in common then they are aware. Under the eye of their principal this group struggles to sit through the detention without getting at each others throats, but they somehow manage to form a friendship. This film does a great job of showing some insight on the psyche and the problems that every day high school there’s have to face, but I don’t think it helps people face these problems. This film helps people realize that physical appearances are important in the world, but I don’t know if it will motivate people enough to completely change the way they look. The Breakfast Club had an impact on my perception of society and how physical appearances can have an effect on the treatment people receive on a daily basis.

The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s fire and Pretty in Pink, form part of the films acted by the Brat Pack, a group of actors that appeared in various coming of age films. In the three films there is a pressuring society imposing a set of rules or expectations that have to be followed. In these films we can see how youth doesn’t agree with the established conventions and feel the pressure through another character that represents the judging society, such as the parents or the teachers, through the mise–en–scène.