The Pressure Of Students In The Breakfast Club In High School

When watching a movie about high schoolers, there are usually many different groups of students who all conform to one social group only. Take the movie High School Musical for example. There is specifically one scene devoted to a song about fitting in with the “status quo”. There are stereotypical groups such as jocks, nerds, theater geeks, skater kids, and the popular kids in this movie and in other movies like it. Each of these groups can be broken down and explained more in depth.

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.

In high school, social hierarchy is typically determined by perceived popularity. Adolescents experience many emotional, biological and cognitive changes during this time. Teenagers struggle with their identity as social acceptance becomes an increasingly important factor in their lives. Cliques are formed in high school as a representation of a small group of people with common interests. Cliques are joined mostly by girls because it gives them a sense of security and confidence they may otherwise lack, but boys are known to join cliques as well. Cliques provide adolescents with a strong sense of self worth and can in fact help one grow as an individual, sharing common interests and values. Adolescents who appear with high social power tend to have similar qualities and group together. Those who are less popular tend to isolate themselves more while befriending others with a similarly low social status. Often times, those who are socially dominant are generally “more influential, daring, physically attractive and socially appropriate.” (Closson 3) Cliques can foster community in a group of close-knit individuals. Different types of cliques provide adolescents with an opportunity to group together with those with similar interests. They allow teenagers to satisfy their psychological needs such as gaining a sense of belongingness and security. Although there are positive aspects of cliques, there is a correlation

High School has obviously changed since the 1985 movie, The Breakfast Club, which portrayed different school stereotypes through five students, and how this made them reflect on their identity. In a way, this theme of different High School Stereotypes proves to still be evident in High School today when students

Every public school lunch room is filled with many tables, every day these tables are the perfect place for a student to find where they “belong”. Like Beverly Daniel Tatum states in “Why Are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”, part of the social groups forming in high schools goes to thank adolescents. Tatum writes, “As children enter adolescence, they begin to explore the question of identity, asking ‘Who am I?’ ‘Who can I be?’”(375). At this point in their life everyone begins to see their own interests and hobbies that makes them a little different than others. Because students are starting to realize their differences, in modern day high schools there are many social groups that students can identify with and feel the most comfortable being themselves.

The Breakfast Club, directed by John Hughes, is a movie that has become a classic for many generations. It is about five high school students, all from different cliques, that come together during detention and discover that they all share common problems they would have never imagined. Each student did something completely different yet they all broke the rules and ended up meeting. Those few hours in that room opened not only their eyes, but also the viewers’ eyes on how wrong we can be during those years of our lives. This movie has impacted so many generations because it is true to what the high school experience really is and how judgmental teens can be without really knowing each other.

Written and directed by John Hughes, The Breakfast Club is the first quintessential high school drama that has become one of the most significant regarding high school student images. As any typical high school stereotype, there is the jock, princess, geek, the basket case and of course, the bad boy, John Bender. The focus of the movie’s characters is these five students, but Bender is the most outshining character of all. It is no doubt that the point of this movie is to prove that everyone may be different in their own way, but successfully convey that each of them have the same problem in common; contempt for the adult society. But who is that character that slowly and gradually breaks each character’s faux shells to reveal the truth? John Bender. Labelled as “the criminal”, and stereotyped as the guy to never be surrounded by, this anti-hero is

Masterfully exploring teenage tropes, The Breakfast Club imbues major juxtapositions highlighting secondary educational environments. Associations that distinguish key comparisons governing teenage social hierarchies. The Breakfast Club displays such observations through its main characters. Furthermore, each main character ascribes to the role of a high school stereotype. The film defines such archetypes as the Jock, the Brain, the Basket Case, the Princess, and the Criminal. Two different roles that stand out the most, belong to the Brain and the Criminal. To partake in observing these clichés, the film presents the persons of John Bender and Brian Johnson. Each trait thereon, relays the vital importance of establishing the fundamental relationship that Bender and Brian share. Further, the attributes fall under a plethora of subjects. Topics of interest range from a simple lunch to interactions with peers.

In the famous movie, “The Breakfast Club,” we see how five teenagers, each a member of a different high school clique, spends a Saturday in detention together and realize that they are all more than their respective stereotypes. High school cliques determine who, what and where students belong. The typical high school has "cliques"; which are groups of students with similar interests that hang out together. When looking at what really goes on in the average high school, and how friendships are formed, it is amazing. When observing the jock, the nerd and the popular kids, one must wonder where they fit in and how these groups will affect the future.

The John Hughes film The Breakfast Club (1985) focuses primarily on the pressures, which every teenager will encounter at one point in time or another as well as the issues, they may face in everyday life. The beginning of the film introduces the situation which takes place throughout the film, that of five students serving detention in their high school’s library and spending their day together doing nothing except writing a thousand word essay. When the film first shows all of the students they are constantly bickering and arguing as they see each other as being completely independent from each other, and this can best be demonstrated by the letter which the students write to the principal, which describes the group as being “in the simplest

High school is a combat zone. Perhaps incognito, high school is vile in all ways, shapes, and forms. High school is destruction of humanity. From blondes to redheads, and albinos to bronzed beauties, there is no fair play. Manipulation, deceit, lies, and forbidding grades are the fate of these entire helpless quarry. After many devastating centuries, mankind has learned to adapt to this revolution. Fighting for freedom and molding to the staggering state of affairs, students have mastered separation brilliance and competence, creating differences with style, interests, and appetites. One thing that will never change… there is no escaping these dreadful high school cliques!

The Breakfast Club is a story of five teenagers who were sentenced to Saturday detention Each of them having their own identity knew nothing about each other before this day. They all came from different socioeconomically backgrounds. We have the jock Andrew Clark, Claire Standish the most popular girl in school, Brian Johnson the brains, John Bender the catalyst of the group with his rebellious nature, and last but not least Allison Reynolds the eccentric but yet the “basket case” of the group. Despite the fact that they all go to the same school, none of them have much in common, except Andrew and Claire who are both part of the “popular” crowd. The Breakfast Club can fall into the subject of Social Psychology due to the diversity of their

One of the major themes in The Breakfast Club is role confusion. The movie focuses on five students from different cliques and backgrounds. The students start off in the beginning of the movie as strangers. They are all identified in specific cliques in school; the jock, the popular girl, the nerd, the loner, and the troublemaker. Each member identifies with their clique and group but it is only as the students’ get to know each other they realize they are not so different after all.

In picture movies, no one really pays attention to the story line plot itself. The movie that reflects a lot of psychological issues in today’s society is “The Breakfast Club”. The major development themes of the movie are of relation to a certain specific kind of audience viewing the lives of five teenagers with emotional, physical, social, behavioral and cognitive representations. They show proportional differences of all kinds of click groups in school. One of the characters is known as Brian, he was the brain, or also known as the nerd.

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.