Stereotypes In The Breakfast Club

The film being analysed is the Breakfast Club, directed by John Hughes. Trapped in Saturday detention are 5 stereotyped teens. Claire, the princess, Andrew, the jock, John, the criminal, Brian, the brain, and Allison, the basket case. At 7 am, they had nothing to say, but by 4 pm; they had uncovered everything to each other. The students bond together when faced with the their principal, and realise that they have more in common than they think, including a hatred for adult society. They begin to see each other as equal people and even though they were stereotyped they would always be The Breakfast Club. The Breakfast Club highlights a variety of pressures that are placed upon teenagers through out high school. One of the most challenging aspects of screenwriting is creating characters that an audience can identify with, relate to, and be entertained by.

This is seen as a subculture. Subcultures form by a transition from childhood to adult hood (coming of age), self-discovery, social rejection, and social change; all of these are present during the movie. A subculture is pretty much any group of people that do not precisely conform with the larger culture in which they live but instead conform to their own group. The outcome of these subcultures are stereotyping, social pressure, altered definitions of social norms, and transition. Subcultures in people are seen mainly as stereotypes. The use of stereotypes is used frequently because it enables people who watch them to form an opinion of the characters and their beliefs just from seeing them before they may have even spoken and sometimes just from the way they walk and are spoken to by other people. In this movie there was a jock, the brain, the rebel, the princess, and the basket case. This was how the director conveyed sub cultures across the