How Does The Breakfast Club Relate To Sociology

Belen Castillejos
Anthony Blacksher.
Sociology 101
3 November, 2014

The Breakfast Club is a film detailing a Saturday intention involving five very different students who are forced into each other’s company and somehow to share their stories. In the movie, The Breakfast Club we can see sociological issues such as high school cliques, stereotypes, and different forms of social interaction such as social sanctions, peer pressure. Throughout the film we can see the different characters are in conflict with each other, mostly because they come from different social and economic groups (rich, middle class and poor). The first principle seen in the film is a stigma, which is disapproval, attached to disobeying the expected norms so that a person

Also we can see how each character illustrates the term deviant and through this we can understand some of their behaviors. Each character is deviant in their own ways. When referring to deviance, deviance refers to the violation of society’s norms (Ballantine 173). Each character is seen as deviant by either their actions that brought them into detention or some of the acts we see them do during the detention. For example, during one scene we see Allison as a thief because she steals Brian’s wallet during the detention and also because she comes to detention without even being in trouble, just to be deviant. Also we see Claire as deviant in the way she skips school to go shopping, and puts make up on during detention and how she cares about her appearance, also she enters in a relationship with John during the detention. Andy is deviant when he smokes marijuana because he is a varsity athlete and that is what athletes are supposed to do. John is constantly deviant in so many ways such as he is not involved in school activities, challenges Principal Vernon; he destroys school

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.
We can relate these social roles to social identity. These students acted as though they needed to hold these social roles that in the beginning of the movie, they identified themselves with (the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess, and the criminal) but like I said by the end of the movie each one broke that stereotypical relation by doing things that were abnormal or not common for that type of stereotype(the princess talking to the basket case and helping her out or the athlete connecting with the