Examples Of Individualism In The Breakfast Club

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Intercultural communication doesn’t only refer to the communication between people with different nationalities, but also to communication between members of different social groups. The Breakfast Club is about five high school students from a different life endure a Saturday detention together. Each person represents a different type of culture/social group; there is the jock, the rebel, the princess, the outcast and the brains. Each has a chance to tell their story, and when the detention is over, they question whether the school will be the same. The movie starts with Brian saying a message to the principal, “Dear Mr. Vernon… We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was that we did wrong, what we did was wrong, that the defiant act of the Ego threatened you, that individualism triumphed over the slow stagnation of collectivism.” Notice how I emphasized the words individualism and collectivism, I did this because I will be discussing these concepts, …show more content…

This concept was present in the film because, at the beginning of the movie, everyone was there because of themselves. They were all strangers, so they weren’t focused on the needs of the group just yet. Instead, they all are focused on what they can do to occupy themselves while in detention. Each person has their own thing to do, for example, the outcast is drawing, the rebel is playing with matches and the jock is flicking paper footballs. However, interpersonal communication shows the communication across the cultures, not within the cultures. So, a more fitting example of interpersonal communication is when the rebel seems to be more focused on his enjoyment and not the group’s feelings, by going around dissing everyone’s social group. This is more fitting because this is communication across all of the cultures, not just within their

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