Coming-of-age films have enjoyed mass popularity since the sixties, beginning with one of the most well-known youth film – The Graduate. The Graduate, starring Dustin Hoffman, tells the story of a naïve college graduate enticed into an affair with an older married woman only to fall in love with her daughter. Despite the slight comedic angle, The Graduate is actually a story of self-definition, something most young people struggle through from a high school age through college. Similarly, The Breakfast Club looks at a group of high school students in detention, working against parents, principals, and social restraints. The rebellious nature of both films is evident. The Graduate and The Breakfast Club focus on two highly charged periods of …show more content…
Each film reflects the times as the expectations of parents and the influence of peers are examined and broken down.
Expectations play a prominent role in each character’s life throughout both The Graduate and The Breakfast Club. In The Graduate, the expectations come largely from parents or parental figures. The first scene, a celebration, makes it clear that expectations are high for Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) to succeed now that college is behind him. Common questions include topics like graduate school and finding a girl. His parents are suffocating figures, using Benjamin as a sort of entertainment and symbol of their supposed success in parenthood. This is prominently shown at Benjamin’s 21st birthday, when his father forces him to wear the scuba suit. Despite Benjamin’s quiet pleas, he is forced to march out in this ridiculous suit and test it out in the pool. Even as Benjamin attempts to surface, his father and mother push him back under the water and, eventually, the audience sees him in the corner of the deep end, resigned to his position. The Breakfast Club introduces the main protagonists in a similar situation, as the audience is shown snippets of interaction with almost each parent and each student.
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Many of Benjamin’s interactions are with people of his parents’ generation, especially Mrs. Robinson, emphasized by the fact that the audience never learns any first names for many of the characters. However, The Breakfast Club takes a look at expectations within their generation, especially in terms of social behavior. Each character represents a clique often found in high school – the princess, the athlete, the basket case, the criminal, and the brain. As the film follows their day shut up in the library, the characters become deeper and more layered, revealing similarities and the crippling expectations of those around them. In the circle scene, the most emotionally charged scene in the film, the audience is shown some of the deepest secrets of the characters. Not only are some of the characters pressured by their parents, but also by their peers. Claire makes this clear as she explains that both she and Andrew would tease Brian or Allison behind their backs to maintain their relationship in their group of friends. Despite John’s remarks, Claire also points out that he would claim they were having sex in order to maintain his reputation. The only people who appear immune to this are Allison, who doesn’t have any friends, and Brian, who simply doesn’t understand how someone could treat someone else that way. From the beginning, social expectations within the group are clear through
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.
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
“I viewed each of the films at least once…taking notes on the role of the teacher, peer relations, among students, relations between students and adults, student attitudes toward schoolwork, extracurricular activities, the role of the family, the resources of the school, the use of violence and drugs, exploitation of sexuality (4).”
The film that interested me for this assignment was “Boyz n the Hood”. The movie was about a Los Angeles neighborhood expanding of drug and gang culture, with increasingly tragic results. It was about how one teen had family support to guide him on the right path in life regarding the social problems around him. The other two teens in the film wasn’t as fortunate and fell into the social problems of drugs, violence, and gangs; where one ended up dead.
Allison obviously lacked the respect of others, for she had no friends whatsoever prior to her time spent in this detention. She also has nervous ticks, such chewing her nails, and played with her hair. Brian was another case of insecurity. The influence of self-concept was strong with Brian Johnson for he had no sense of self. He could not meet the standards of his desired self and was therefore unhappy with himself as a person.
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
This film contains some classic examples of the kinds of real life issues adolescents deal with. Issues such as popularity, peer relationships, family/sibling relationships, sex, and struggles with identity are all addressed in this ninety-minute film.
People like John Hughes made some lasting changes in the way that teenagers are depicted onscreen. Seeing the real, down-to-earth concerns of teenagers being dramatized is much more common today than it was in the 1980s. Teenagers in films today will frequently discuss their issues like the protagonists in the Breakfast Club. The Breakfast Club was one of the first films to deconstruct the high school archetypal characters, but these character types are frequently subverted today. John Hughes managed to stand apart from many other writers and directors in his day by taking a whole genre of films in a new direction.
Benjamin Braddock is already starting at the top but does not know what he wants to do next. Benjamin, at the urging of his Mr. Robinson, wants him to sow some wild oats, and encourages him to have fun during the summer. Within a short period of time he is seduced by Mrs. Robinson and they begin an affair at the Taft Hotel. This is a destructive relationship because it’s only bound to become known since Mrs. Robinson has a drinking problem. When Benjamin is attracted to their daughter Elaine, a relationship that would seem appropriate, Mrs. Robinson does everything possible to undermine it. He breaks away from his parents mores but blows them up with his affair with Mrs. Robinson. Neil Klugman, on the other hand, sees the relationship as a chance to move upward. Neil is attracted to the rich life of Short Hill where Brenda and her family lives. At that time Newark New Jersey was undergoing some major changes as middle class families were leaving for the suburb and poorer families of color were taking their places. Neil wants to grab the “brass ring” and move up to a wealthier lifestyle and he see that the best way to accomplish this is to marry into Brenda’s family. Neil not fit well into Brenda’s family, and that mater, Brenda’s life. For him, he is more comfortable working at his low paid job in Newark and when Brenda realizes it, she ends the relationship. In Neil’s case, he wanted to strive upward but found that the price might be too high to
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.
...d to be a jock and rough person who is really competitive as a wrestler. However he is actually pressured to be aggressive and competitive by his father, which he does not accept or like. Brian is perceived to be a genius, confident and nerdy person. However he is in fact pressured by his parents to exceed in school and do more than what he is capable of doing. As such, he breaks down when he gets bad grades which is a disappointment to his parents. Lastly, John is perceived to be a cold, “badass”, gangster type of person who harasses people with regret or remorse. However he behaves this way because his parents are abusive to him and treat him disgustingly. To cope with this, John behaves coldly. In The Breakfast Club various social psychological theories and concepts are demonstrated by the characters through the way they reveal their behaviors and inner selves.
Of all the 1980’s films, that can be described as “Eighties Teen Movies” (Thorburn, 1998) or “High School Movies” (Messner, 1998), those written and (with the exception of “Pretty In Pink” (1986) and “Some Kind of Wonderful”(1987)) directed by John Hughes were often seen to define the genre, even leading to the tag “John Hughes rites de passage movies” as a genre definition used in 1990s popular culture (such as in “Wayne’s World 2” (1994 dir. Stephen Surjik)). This term refers to the half dozen films made between 1984 and 1987; chronologically, “Sixteen Candles” (1984), “The Breakfast Club” (1985), “Weird Science” (1985), “Ferris Bueller's Day Off” (1986), “Pretty In Pink” (1986) and “Some Kind Of Wonderful” (1987) (the latter two being directed by Howard Deutch). For the purpose of this study, “Weird Science” and “Some Kind of Wonderful” shall be excluded; “Weird Science” since, unlike the other films, it is grounded in science fiction rather than reality and “Some Kind of Wonderful” as its characters are fractionally older and have lost the “innocence” key to the previous movies: as Bernstein states “the youthful naivete was missing and the diamond earring motif [a significant gift within the film] was no substitute” (Bernstein, 1997, p.89). Bernstein suggests that the decadent 1980s were like the 1950s, “an AIDS-free adventure playground with the promise of prosperity around every corner … our last age of innocence” (Bernstein, 1997, p.1). The films were very much a product of the time in terms of their production (“suddenly adolescent spending power dictated that Hollywood direct all its energies to fleshing out the fantasies of our friend, Mr. Dumb Horny 14 Year Old” Bernstein, 1997, p.4), their repetition (with the growth of video cassette recorders, cable and satellite with time to fill, and also the likes of MTV promoting the film’s soundtracks) and their ideologies.
... time retain one outstanding quality---they are empowering, first in how much power they give to the youth of that time. These are films for them and about them. They reflect their everyday experiences or those they long to have, with the best films knowing exactly what their young audiences want to see on screen and never judging them for it because the mistakes, struggles, and imperfections of young adulthood are timeless too. Second, coming-of-age films also give so much back to young audiences and empower them. These films’ characters have taught audiences what to do, how to feel, and essentially given them the tools by which to navigate the transition from childhood to adulthood and how to make it as painless as possible. As ‘coming-of-age’ changes or stays the same in meaning over time, youth culture, as a genre and subject, will remain a necessity in film.
In this essay, I claim that the use of Mise-en-scene in The Graduate (1967) and Jaws (1975) suggests that a major issue within these films is the difference in social class and background. Class can be portrayed in many different way some based on gender, family, and ethnicity. Being that each film has a variety of different characters and how there portrayed in plot shows each character coming with different standpoints and backgrounds based on the situation that their faced with. The Graduate (1967) it tells a story about Ben a recent college graduate that unsure about what he wants in life and coincidentally is seduced and has an affair with an older married woman then falls in love with her daughter Whereas Jaws
The documentary looks at all these skills and qualities that are being built every day as a child grows, family influences and character difference within the different age groups and having a better understanding to how children develop in different situations.