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... ... middle of paper ... ...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.
This theory offers an explanation for the appearance of a group's cohesiveness, consisting of shared emotions, motives, and meanings. Within it, sharing group fantasies creates symbolic convergence. In The Breakfast Club, the goal set for the group by the teacher in charge of the detention is to write the 1000 word essay describing who they think they are as a person. They are told to sit there without talking or moving and think and write only about themselves. Of course, the whole movie consists of their procrastination as they bicker about their lives and scheme against their teacher and they start to see a different side of everyone as they find out more about each other. There are predictions of the others’ lives acted out, sharing of stories and even lying and making up things in order to get each others attention or get each other away from finding out the real truth about them. These are the dramatizing messages. A fantasy chain starts to pick up once they begin revealing the problems they have outside of school (parents/home life) and grow closer as they tell each other the reason they got into detention in the first place and how it connects to their home life. The five realize that even though their problems are significantly different, they all are equal in the fact that they are all human and one of their problems is not any less important than the others. In short, the
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.
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.
Nothing survives the span of time like coming of age and growing pains. It’s something every teen must endure to enter into the “real world” and claim their place in adult society. It doesn’t matter if one believes themselves to be upper class or lower class, popular or unpopular; every teen experiences the difficulty of growing up, and the struggle to triumph over high school. Though many try to rush this process some are in no hurry to join the ranks of adulthood and walk down the inevitable path that leads to becoming one’s parents. Because at one time or another most have exclaimed, “I will never be like my parents”. This is the underlying theme that binds together the characters in John Hughes’s film “The Breakfast Club”.
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
Conformity means a change in one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people. As a teenager, the pressure to conform to the societal “norm” plays a major role in shaping one’s character. Whether this means doing what social groups want or expect you to do or changing who you are to fit in. During class, we watched films such as Mean Girls, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and The Breakfast Club which demonstrate how the pressure to conform into society can change who you are. In the movies we have seen, conformity was most common during high school.
Five teenagers who don't' know each other spend a Saturday in detention at the suburban school library. At first they squirm, fret and pick on each other. Then after sampling some marijuana, a real encounter session gets underway. The stresses and strains of adolescence have turned their inner lives into a minefield of disappointment, anger and despair.
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 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
During the novel, the reader becomes increasingly aware of Jack’s dominating and violent tendencies. Specific actions taken are when Jack suggests using one of the younger children as a substitute pig, ties up Wilfred, and hunts Ralph. Things begin to get out of hand when the group’s game turns into a cruel beating. Not long afterwards, Jack suggests that the group
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.
What can you learn about adolescence by watching five very different teens spend Saturday detention together? With each and everyone of them having their own issues weather it be at home, school, or within themselves. During this stage of life adolescents are seen as rude, disrespectful, and out of control. But why is this? Is it truly all the child’s fault? Teens have to face quite a few issues while growing up. Adolescence is the part of development where children begin push back against authority and try to figure out who they are or who they are going to become. Therefore, we will be looking at adolescent physical changes, their relationships, cognitive changes and the search for identity as depicted in the movie The Breakfast Club (Hughes,1985).
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.
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.
As preteens and teens push for increasing independence from their parents, they tend to turn to their peers for guidance, acceptance, and security. For those who are low in self-esteem and confidence, their safety lies in fitting in and having a place to belong. Most people find a group in which they connect with in a healthy way while others make their way in cliques that give them security but at the price of their own values and individuality. The movie Mean Girls portrays how high school female social cliques operate and the effect they can have on girls. I will argue how if one doesn’t have a strong sense of self-identity, the opinions of others will become their identity.