The Breakfast Club Essay

949 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Social penetration theory stages essay

The Breakfast Club is a movie that was written in 1985. It was written and directed by John Hughes. In the movie five teenagers have to spend 8 hours and 54 minutes of their Saturday in detention for various reasons. The teenagers know of one another, but they are all apart of different cliques. Bender is considered the “criminal”, Claire who is the “Princess”, Brian is the “brain”, Andy is the “athlete”, and Allison is the “basket case”. The social penetration theory was shown throughout the movie The breakfast club.
Explained by Baack, Fogliasso, and Harris (2000) the social penetration theory was created by Taylor and Atlman in 1973. It is compared to an onion diagram that is describing a person’s personality structure through layers of …show more content…

At the beginning of the day they had little interactions with one another. When Bender first walked in and Brian was in his spot he makes him get up and move. This is an example of the first layer the Orientation level because they kept their conversation short and no information was released. When the group begins to talk about why they received their detentions they enter the second layer of the onion the Exploratory affective stage. Bender starts to peel away the other teenager’s layers by making fun of them, laughing at them, and taunting them. Bender caused most of the reason they began to opening up because he was very mean and straightforward with all of them all. This is showing the social penetration theory because when Bender was taunting Claire about her popularity within the school she started to open up and confess about how she felt about being popular. Bender was pulling Claire’s layers and starting to get to her inner core. When Bender was pestering each person they began to open up under pressure. The things that they were doing throughout the day were not all things that they would normally do with their clique of friends. At the end of the movie when they all should have had their essay’s completed the unexpected happened and they all came together and wrote one paper. The principle never expected this because the kids are all so

Show More
Related

  • The Breakfast Club: Symbolic Convergence Theory

    1495 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the iconic film, The Breakfast Club, five random high school students must spend their Saturday together in detention. Each teen is in detention for a different reason. The Jock (Andrew), the Princess (Claire), the Brain (Brian), the Basket Case (Allison), and the Criminal (Bender) must put aside their differences to survive their grueling eight-hour detention with their psychotic and rash principal Mr. Vernon. While in detention, they are expected to write about “who they really are” in one thousand words. Throughout the day, their actions reveal their innermost struggle involving their cliques and their home lives. As the movie progresses, we find out the reason each teen is in detention that culminates in a climactic discussion about

    Read More

  • Social Identity in the Breakfast Club

    1430 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Breakfast Club Labeling Theory

    854 Words  | 2 Pages

    The 1985 film The Breakfast Club examines the cases of five individuals during their experiences in a Saturday morning high school detention session; each is bound by unique characteristics and circumstances, yet their shared experience allows them to form a group— an assortment of people who interact with one another and who feel as if they have reason to belong together— and socialize, or gain knowledge of group traits as well as the knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, norms, and actions thought appropriate for each member. Notwithstanding the fact that each of these young scholars possesses wildly different attributes, they are all able to overlook such factors in favor of attainment of personal progress as well as propagation and fortification

    Read More

  • The Breakfast Club: Exploring Peer Relationships

    714 Words  | 2 Pages

    The movie The Breakfast Club is a perfect example of peer relationships in the adolescent society. It shows the viewer some of the main stereotypes of students in high school you have a jock, a nerd, the weirdo, a rebel, and a prep. Over the course of a Saturday detention the different types of peers learn a lot about one another by hearing what each one has done to get into Saturday detention as well as why they chose to do it.

    Read More

  • How Does The Breakfast Club Relate To Sociology

    953 Words  | 2 Pages

    The famous the note that was left by the teens in detention at the end of the movie shows the social connection between each of their roles in society and how those are tie to society. The teens use the stereotypical names to tell Mr. Vernon who they think they are; the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess, and the criminal, they use the names that society has given them because of their reputations, hobbies and looks. They each realize throughout the movie that there is something that connects them to one another which makes them all realize that no matter the stereotypical separation between them, they all have some things in common and can work together for a common goal.

    Read More

  • The Breakfast Club

    392 Words  | 1 Pages

    Despite an inappropriate music-video sequence and a phony up-tempo finale, The Breakfast Club offers a breakthrough portrait of the pain and misunderstanding which result from the social hierarchy created by youth themselves. The lookers and the jocks are popular and can do whatever they want — except relate to those outside their social circle of winners.

    Read More

  • The Breakfast Club Erikson's Theory

    1040 Words  | 3 Pages

    The breakfast club is an American comedy and drama film which was written and produced by John Hughes. It talks of an experience gone through by five students in a library at New Trier High School; the school went to by the child of one of John Hughes' companions (Kaye, 2001). In this way, the individuals who were sent to detainment before school beginning time were assigned individuals from "The Breakfast Club".

    Read More

  • Pressure In The Breakfast Club

    848 Words  | 2 Pages

    Every person sees themselves differently, whether you're the jock, the brain, or even the criminal, we all have a plethora of personality quirks in common. We don't belong solely to the singular “clique” that society has placed us in. Throughout The Breakfast Club, we see ourselves in each of the characters, and so did John Hughes, while we may relate to a singular character or clique in the beginning, we come to see ourselves, our struggles in each and every character. Though John Hughes may have seen himself as the geek or the athlete in high school, that's not all he was, and it's through this classic film that he shows himself to be all of the characters in some way or another. We're all united in common beliefs, in

    Read More

  • How Does The Breakfast Club Relate To Sociology

    1618 Words  | 4 Pages

    The purpose of this paper is to analyze a movie and list five sociological concepts outlined in our textbook, Sociology A Down-To-Earth Approach, 6th edition by James M. Henslin, which was published by Pearson Education, Inc in 2015, 2013, and 2011. I have chosen the movie, “The Breakfast Club.” This is a 1985 movie directed by John Hughes. It is about five high school students that have detention on a Saturday for nine hours. The five students are played by, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, and Anthony Michael Hall. These five students are deviant in their own particular ways and have different stereotypes. Eventually the students share personal information about their

    Read More

  • Examples Of Conflict In The Breakfast Club

    395 Words  | 1 Pages

    The 1985 film, The Breakfast Club, directed by John Hughes shows how a person’s identity can be influenced by conflict he or she has experienced in life. First, John Bender is in the library telling everyone how he got a cigar burn on his arm from his dad. For example, his mother and father don’t treat with the most respect or any respect at all. They call him names and say he can’t do anything right. One day him and his dad got into a really bad argument and his dad burnt him with is cigar that he had. Because his parents treat him that way, he treats everyone he’s around very badly.

    Read More

  • The Influence Of Adolescence In The Breakfast Club

    645 Words  | 2 Pages

    What can you learn about adolescence by watching five very different teens spend Saturday detention together? With each and everyone of them having their own issues weather it be at home, school, or within themselves. During this stage of life adolescents are seen as rude, disrespectful, and out of control. But why is this? Is it truly all the child’s fault? Teens have to face quite a few issues while growing up. Adolescence is the part of development where children begin push back against authority and try to figure out who they are or who they are going to become. Therefore, we will be looking at adolescent physical changes, their relationships, cognitive changes and the search for identity as depicted in the movie The Breakfast Club (Hughes,1985).

    Read More

  • Social Psychology In The Movie The Breakfast Club

    956 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of these is normative social influences, this is “the influence others have on us because we want them to like us (King, 2013, p. 447). Andrew shows this when he talks about how he got in detention. Andrew states he bullied a kid, so the kid would think he was cool. You see that Andrew does this disgusting action to this kid so he could be seen as cool. Another social behavior that is seen in the film is the fundamental attribution error, which is observers overestimate the importance of the internal traits and underestimate the importance of external factors when explaining others behaviors. We see the fundamental attribution error a lot in this movie. First we see it with Brian, everyone sees him as smart. But when Brian explains that he failed shop class people were surprised; they never thought this kid would ever fail, since he is so smart. Another is with Bender, they see him as disrespectful and aggressive. What they do not know is, at home, he is being verbally and physically abused by his dad and has to defend himself. This can bring us to conformity, which is a change in a person’s behavior to get more closely with group standards. We see this with all five of the students. Let’s start with Andrew, he covers up his hatred for him father so he wouldn’t be seen as abnormal. Then you have Brian who talks about contemplating suicide for failing a class. He did not want to

    Read More

  • Examples Of Isolationism In The Breakfast Club

    1019 Words  | 3 Pages

    The film, The Breakfast Club, introduces five students, each perceived with a different stereotype which is commonly found in American high schools.

    Read More

  • The Breakfast Club

    1084 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Review of the Movie: The Breakfast Club

    996 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the film The Breakfast Club there are various social psychological theories and concepts that describe the inner selves of the characters. The characters in the film are initially perceived in a certain manner by each other because of knowing the way they behave in school and the type of people and environment they surround themselves with in school. However one detention on a Saturday brings these characters together and throughout the film their true personalities and behaviors start to reveal themselves by means of social psychological theories and concepts. The characters individually and as a group display their personalities through theories and concepts of social psychology. At the very start of the film, one of the concepts displayed is the acceptance type of conformity. The principal assigns the characters (students) to complete a task and because he is a figure of authority, the characters accept having to complete the task by the end of the day without any attempts to alter that. One of the students, Claire Standish, is revealed to display the concept of narcissism, which is unfortunately a dark side of herself. This is evident as Claire claims that she is popular and loved by her fellow schoolmates and seems to care and showcase her rich and beauty too much. She is, as her detention-mates discover, full of herself. In addition this also shows signs of the spotlight effect theory which can relate to Claire in that she believes that her schoolmates look at her and pay so much attention to her appearance add rich, spoiled-like behavior. Another character to show a theory of social psychology is Allison Reynolds. In the film, Allison is a character with an introvert personality, although she also displays strange and...

    Read More

More about The Breakfast Club Essay

Open Document