The Breakfast Club Sociology

The 1985 film, The Breakfast Club, takes place during a Saturday detention in a Chicago high school. Five students, all from very different backgrounds, must serve this detention together for a nine-hour period. Everyone is at the detention for diverse reasons but throughout the course of the day, they soon discover they are not as different as they thought they were. The Breakfast Club analyzes how social interactions between students and their social contexts lead to the prevalence of discrimination and prejudice within the high school environment. Demonstrating how it is contrary to other films of the era, The Breakfast Club particularly examines these social issues through the establishment of cliques which were founded based on the hierarchy

of our society’s social classes, as well as stereotypes.
When The Breakfast Club was released, it was later regarded as the “the best high school film of its time” (“The Breakfast Club”, 2006). Unlike many other films during that time, this film challenged the original cultural beliefs, showing that it is not the teens but the parents who help define who we are. Hughes looked at the problems many teens were facing throughout their high school career, and he understood that these problems not only mattered and affected high school students. What was once regarded as normal high school behavior became learned behavior that developed from interactions with social contexts at home and at school. Hughes addressed the appearance of cliques by showing the way interactionism leads to this dilemma. His approach was unique because he demonstrated the sociological issues of prejudice and discrimination through an engaging storyline that captivated the audience’s attention. Much of Hughes’ success with The Breakfast Club would not be apparent if it were not for his proper portrayal of the sociological issues in high school environments. For this reason, this film became the model for the coming of age stories in the future.
This coming of age story began on a cool spring day, March 24th, 1984, five cars drove to the front of Shermer High School and dropped off five students. These five students, Allison Reynolds, John Bender, Claire Standish, Andrew Clark, and Brain Johnson, seemed to have nothing in common. They sat in the library where their detention was taking place and waited for the assistant principal, Richard Vernon, to enter the room. When he did, he chastised them for being part of the Saturday detention and told them about their assignment. He said that they must write a 1000-word essay describing who they are. Ironically, this assignment addressed one of the main sociological issues that surrounded their high school environment. It illustrated the idea that students in high school find their identity based on stereotypes which are developed through social interactions in the home and high school environment. A stereotype is a belief about members of a group that are usually false, or at least exaggerated, but are the basis of assumptions made about individual members of the group. Each student attending the Saturday detention that day held a very different stereotype.
Allison Reynolds was described as a “basket case”, this stereotype was based on her character attributes. Her character attributes included being described as: mysterious, strange, desperate, reserved, and a recluse. She wore dark clothes and seemed strange based on her actions. Most believed she acted this way because she just had a strange personality but in reality she had no family social context, which would have helped her form lifelong interactions and appropriate cognitive capacities. Her family did not pay any attention to her; thus they did not supply her with any nurture, which would have allowed her to develop a sense of self through interactions with reference groups. Yet Allison acted cold towards her peers and had no reference group because she believed she would receive the same lack of attention that she got at home. Although she seemed to not want attention, in reality she craved attention. She displayed this want by creating the idea that she wanted to run away one day. As she said in the film, “home life is unsatisfying” (The Breakfast Club, 1985), this line demonstrated Allison’s true issues and wants. Allison’s reservation to the peers around her developed because the ones who were supposed to listen to her true wants and needs, did not. But she learned at the end of the film that the peers around her shared similar home life interactions.
John Bender was described as “the criminal”; this stereotype was also based on his character attributes and actions. A criminal is defined as a person that commits a crime. John Bender seemed to fulfill this stereotype because he acted tough and he wore ripped clothes. He also smoked marijuana and had a reputation as a person who stole things. Before Bender did anything, he was automatically thought of as the person to blame. Sadly, similar to Allison, Bender did not have a good family social context that allowed him to learn basic rules of society and influence how he should act. He held prejudices against many people in his high school and even discriminated against them because of these prejudices. In fact, Bender’s family social context made him hate himself. He could not rely on them to provide the care that he needed; this is apparent at the end of the film when he walked home instead of waited on his parents to pick him up. In fact, many of Bender’s actions and attributes were influenced from his family, as well as his poorly chosen reference group. Although some of the stereotype’s characteristics were true, Bender should not have been defined by this stereotype. People treated Bender differently because of the stereotype he attained. Similar to Allison, at the end of the film Bender discovered that the other students in the detention shared the same experiences with their original context group. He also discovered that the cliques that have developed around each person at the detention did not define who they were.
Unlike Allison and John, Claire Standish and Andrew Clark had more influence from their parental social contexts; which ultimately allowed them to develop their own high school stereotypes.

Claire Standish was known as “the princess”. She dressed in pink and acquired many material items because of her rich parents. Many students envied her life, and considered her to be stuck up and snobbish because she received whatever she wanted. Andrew Clark was known as “the athlete”. He wore a letter jacket with all of his accolades displayed and seemed to discriminate and bully kids whose social statuses were below his. This is especially apparent in his reason for the detention: bullying a fellow student in the locker room. In addition to this, both Claire and Andrew’s reference groups and family social contexts guided them to the detention that day. Andrew’s father and friends encouraged him to perform the bullying act that landed him in detention. His father was happy that Andrew was attending the detention because he believed it would give him a better reputation in the athletic world. Claire’s father allowed her to skip school one day to go shopping. It seemed that Claire’s family believed that material items and wealth was more important than school. Claire displayed this belief and landed a spot in detention. Although Claire and Andrew did not reside in the same high school cliques, their cliques were near the top of their high school hierarchy. Their cliques defined what everyone thought they wanted, but the stereotypes that surrounded these two individuals was a façade. They also discovered through the journey of the film which was the realization that everyone is the same on the inside, even though their outsides are

different.
Brain Johnson is described as “the brain”; this stereotype is also based on his character’s attributes and actions. He wore khakis and a sweater and is labeled “the brain” because he got good grades, but this in no way defined who he was. It is evident that his primary social context pressured him to do well in school. In the very first scene, Brian’s mother droped him off before the detention and angrily told him to use his time wisely. This is an example of how Brian’s reference group put too much pressure on him. This pressure at one point was so large, that Brian considered killing himself because of a bad grade; which is part of the reason he was at the detention. Overall, his actions were shaped because of this extreme pressure. This is apparent when he said, “You can’t have an F, I can’t have it, and I know my parents can’t have it” (The Breakfast Club, 1985). Brian also learned that the stereotypes surrounding everyone were not true because many people share similar pressures, just in different ways.
As the film comes to a close, the characters become more comfortable with each other and reveal their personal struggles; which they discover are quite similar to one another’s. Particularly, each person discovered that the cliques created based on their identities formed from their social context and defined by their high school environment, did not mean anything. They also discovered that a person is much more than a stereotype. This concept can be analyzed through a use of a sociological imagination in our understanding of how interactionism with social contexts and reference groups can help form one’s basis of self. Hughes’ film suggests that other films of the time were unaware of how these issues were occurring in the high school environment. Thankfully, John Hughes demonstrated the real struggle of high school stereotypes, which lead to discrimination and the hierarchy of social classes based on high school cliques. As the song by Simple Minds, “Don’t You Forget About Me,” played at the very end of the film, the characters leave the audience, and themselves, with a lasting impression of who they are. They emerge from the detention knowing that these stereotypes only uncover some of their stories, not all. They realized life has no label nor definition; it is what they, and what we make of it.