Socialization in The Breakfast Club Of the five main characters in The Breakfast Club, “Prom Queen” Claire Standish is repeatedly socialized based on factors such as her status based on luxuries, her relationship with family, and the friends and peers she associates with. Throughout the film, Claire begins to realize life is not all about shopping and sitting atop the social hierarchy in high school. Claire’s status within the school provides her with a sense of arrogance. Claire finds it necessary to flaunt her luxuries around people to make her feel better about herself. An example of this is when Claire states to Vernon after entering detention, “Excuse me, Sir? I think there has been a mistake. I know it’s detention, but, um... I don’t …show more content…
think I belong here.” (Hughes, 1985) This shows that Claire feels that she immediately does not fit in with the misfits of the school like John and Allison. Claire feels that what she did to earn detention was not worthy of the punishment. This is evident when she is dropped off, and she tells her father, “I can’t believe you couldn’t get me out of this. It’s so absurd that I have to be here on a Saturday.” (Hughes, 1985) Her father tells her that he would make it up to her, this is an example of a primary group, Claire’s family, acting on her to make her feel a certain way; that she is too important for detention. Claire begins to show that she has progressed from her arrogance, when John questions her about her luxuries. Rather than Claire flaunting her items, she repeatedly tells John to shut up, showing that she does not want to be viewed as a prima donna anymore. Claire begins to portray herself differently than how she is viewed as the film progresses. Claire’s parents exemplify permissive-indulgent style of parenting.
Claire states that, “I don’t think either one gives a sh*t about me, it’s like they use me just to get back at each other.” (Hughes, 1985) Claire’s original conversation with her father shows that he leads Claire to believe that she is too important for something as trivial as detention. Claire’s father does not try to teach Claire that what she did was improper, but rather tells her that he would make it up to her. When the whole Breakfast Club speak about their lives at home, Claire explains that her parents use her to get back at each other. John reminds Claire of this in a conversation when comparing her life at home to his own. John questions, “Remember how you said your parents use you to get back at each other?” (Hughes, 1985) Claire nods, and John continues with, “Wouldn’t I be OUTSTANDING in that capacity?” (Hughes, 1985) This quote from John humanizes Claire, and makes her think that not everybody can sit in her position because not everyone is able to keep a luxurious life like her. Claire has always been influenced by her parents, they are the ones who make her feel like the princess, her friends simply react positively to her because they envy her wealth, making her the most popular girl in
school. John often makes reference to Claire being the prom queen, prima donna, and princess archetype. It can be inferred that this popularity stems from how her friends, peers, and fellow club members treat her and view her in this style. When making personal decisions in the film, such as performing her lipstick trick, she considers what something like that would do her social status at the school. Claire makes sure that John promises not to laugh after she performs her trick, most likely to avoid social embarrassment in front of a secondary group of people, people who she is not comfortable with yet. Claire gets very mad at John, and plays the role of the princess when she tells him, “You know, I have just as, many feelings as you do and it hurts so much when someone steps all over them.” (Hughes, 1985) This shows that just because Claire’s image, founded on her friend groups and club involvement, is fragile because she feels a certain way too. Lastly, Claire tells the group, “I hate it. I hate having to go along with everything my friends say.” (Hughes, 1985) This shows that Claire does realize that she is not portrayed in the way that she wants to be portrayed. It is not that Claire does not want to be the prom queen princess, she just gets tired of everyone telling Claire how to act. In conclusion, throughout the film, Claire shows that through insults from John, and self-realization, that she is like everyone else. Her status is influenced based on primary groups such as her family and her friends, as well as secondary groups such as The Breakfast Club, members of her school clubs, and her vendor-client relationships to buy her expensive goods, such as her earings. Claire develops her sense of identity through friends, school activities, and family. Her sense of identity is destroyed throughout the film based on John Bender humanizing her, and her creating lasting relationships with people below her social class like Brian and Allison. Claire is a great example of breaking through her social identity to find who she really is.
Katie’s teacher, Mr. Dubey, puts a very high emphasis on the students at Katie’s school about how important school is. Because Katie starts to feel bad for using David to get into Harvard, his attitude toward the topic changes and he tells that she should be self-serving and not really care what people say and to not "ruin the rest of your life just because you feel a little guilty right now"(74). All of these conflicting messages on what Katie should be like, how she should treat others an...
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
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
Movies often don’t grasp this concept of teenagers struggling to fit in with their own group of friends. Denby states “lost in the eternal swoon of late adolescence, they’re (teenagers) thinking about their identity, their friends, and their clothes” (426). The most important thing too many teenagers in high school are fitting in. They idolize the idea of having a group of friends who are well known around school that other looks up too. The movie Never Been Kissed shows how teenagers often try to hard to gain and maintain friends. The main character who is a newspaper reporter goes back to school pretending to be a high school student. She tries to befriend a group of good looking rich kids and tries her best to impress them and she embarrasses herself in the process. The movie shows of allot of the average teenagers basic
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.
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
The Breakfast Club is a very well known movie that contains a variety of characters that resemble many different characteristics and traits. One character that has an assortment of attributes is Claire Standish. She is a protagonist in this story. She known as the stereotypical princess and rst glance she looks like a spoilt rich girl with not a worry in her life. However, once we get to know her better in the movie, we realise that she has problems too. She is faced with peer pressure and she feels like cannot stand up too her friends in fear of being isolated. Some attributes of Claire is that she is pampered, condescending, and pressured.
The Breakfast Club points out that certain stereotypes result in greater isolation than others. For instance, Allison is the "basket case" or " weirdo" who sits by herself at lunch. When Allison enters the library for detention, she quickly slouches in the back of the room, sitting alone. Allison 's behavior allows the viewer to perceive her has the social outcast who doesn 't have many friends. In fact, later in the movie, Allison admits she doesn 't have any friends and that she is only in detention because she "had nothing better to do." Allison shows her feeling of isolation by not talking until halfway through the movie. However, when she does talk, she makes up an extravagant lie and explains how she is a compulsive liar. The viewer realizes that Allison is attempting to escape her isolation by drawing attention to herself. Another stereotype that exhibits isolation is the "brain" or nerd, Brian. When the five students are talking about belonging to clubs, Brian quickly jabs in how he is in the physics and the math club. The viewer can see this as Brian wanting to belong with the rest. However, shortly after he says this Claire makes him feel even more isolated by saying that "academic clubs aren 't like social clubs." Brian then has a look of sadness which shows the viewer Brian 's intentions for his
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.
Social Psychology is the study of how we think and relate to other people. These psychologists focused on how the social situation influences others behavior. We see social influences everywhere we go, but might not notice it. Like when watching a movie for fun you do not notice it as much as when you are actually looking for the behaviors, like in the film The Breakfast Club. There are several examples of social psychological behaviors in the film.
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...
Charlie goes to a foot ball game and approaches Patrick because he is the only one that seems approachable to him then they talk. “Hey you’re in my shop class!” He’s a very friendly person. “Hey I’m Charlie.” I said, not to shy. “And I’m Patrick. And this is Sam.” He pointed to a very pretty girl next to him. And she waved to me.” That is the start of their friendship because then after the football game they go to a place called Big Boy and they talked and asked a lot of questions. (Page 19) In Mean Girls Katy at her first day of school tries to talk to people at a table and they just get give her a bad response, then when the second day of school happens she walks into class and Damian and Janis talks to her and they get friendly. Katy then asks them where her next class is. They then go to lead Katy out of the lunchroom to her next class but they lead her to the football field and say “sit down friend”. Katy skipped her first health class because she was called friend. These two concepts of how Charlie and Katy don’t know how to socialize shows up by the fact that Charlie felt uncomfortable to approach anyone till he saw Patrick but with everyone else he avoided because he didn’t know how to socialize. Then when Katy tried to approach people they just ignored her because she didn’t know how to socialize in her school. As soon as they both realized they had friends they felt good and
who looks in from the outside. Trying to fit in with her class mates at
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.
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.