The Breakfast Club Sociology

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.

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.

Have you ever had a simple feud between peers, or even close friends? Imagine if you had a fight over social classes, would it be worse? S.E. Hinton, the author of the 1967 novel, The Outsiders, uses unique characters, symbols, and hectic events to prove that class conflict is pointless, unwarranted, and destructive. In the novel, fictional characters are brought to life by the author, as she connects and compares their taxing lifestyle to that of the reader. Using 14 year old boy, Ponyboy Curtis who is a greaser who has it fairly bad, living with only his brothers after his parents dies in a tragic car accident, Hinton shows that it’s tough all over, no matter your social status. Ponyboy can only rely on Sodapop and Darry, and the rest of the gang. The author displays class conflict throughout the book, by using the ‘socs, or ,the rich kids with mustangs and madras, showing that this dispute, between the greasers and socs, does not make life any easier. The Outsiders uncovers that blood, may not be thicker than water, after all.

     John Hughes’ 1985 film, The Breakfast Club, gives countless examples of the principles of interpersonal communication. Five high school students: Allison, a weirdo, Brian, a nerd, John, a criminal, Claire, a prom queen, and Andrew, a jock, are forced to spend the day in Saturday detention. By the end of the day, they find that they have more in common than they ever realized.

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.

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.

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.

This movie is a great example of social groups, leadership, culture, norms, society, nature and nurture, and social lives. This movie represents how the American culture chooses our social class in society. Some sociologists believed that lifestyle choices are an important influence on our social class position (Giddens, 209). Our class position is the way we dress, where we eat, where we sleep, and how we relax (Giddens,

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.

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

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”.

The movie The Breakfast Club takes viewers on a comedic tour of the ups and downs of adolescence. The Breakfast Club, directed by John Hughes, focuses on the events that unfold between five very different high school students during a Saturday detention. Even though the movie was shot in the 1980 's the characters portrayal is still relatable in a way to a lot of people today. Director John Hughes takes us on a comedic ride with what seems like another typical "teen movie" while still portraying a few life lessons along the way and exposing some truths behind stereotyping.

Fear from the society and family willing to accept their identity. This is the film” The Breakfast Club” which ties with overall themes of film friendship and identity, As it revolves five teenagers on a Saturday detention. The opening scene of film, is a quote said by David Bowie which relates to the whole idea of movie that all teens struggle with judgement from other and know what they're dealing with. Later showing a building of school. Thus telling the audience the setting of film is a school.

In the film all the people in the detention group are all apart of their own group outside of the detention. They identify in a group as either popular, jock, outcast, or nerd. Usually all those type of groups would not be seen together inside or outside of school, well at least as most of society views it. The characters move from being in an “out group” to a “in group” when they finally start to accept their differences and see why they would not be actual friends outside of that detention. Towards the end of the film the group identity becomes one, they understand all the differences between them and think about what the reactions of their other friends would be and sort of accept that as they go their own ways they know what happened with them and where they stand with each other and that’s all that really matters to them.