The Five Adolescent Students In The Breakfast Club (1985)

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The Breakfast Club (1985) follows a group of five adolescents through an eight-hour long detention at their high school. The film progresses through their day evading their assistant principal and engaging in delinquent activity, all in an attempt to pass the time faster. Though all coming from different cliques and social groups, by the end of the movie, the five students come closer together and find that their differences are not as deep as they seem. Films within the popular media have tried to accurately depict what it’s like to be an adolescent and The Breakfast Club (1985) does just that. By incorporating five different students from five different cliques, Allison the basket case, Claire the prom queen, John the criminal, Brian the …show more content…

The personal fable, as defined by Arnett (2013), is the belief among adolescents that their experience is unique and no one else can understand what they are going through (Arnett, 2013, p. 81). This proves to be true within the film as each of the students finds out that they are all similar to each other and their stories have places where overlap occurs. The overlapping theme among all five students is their parents. They realize that they all have issues that stem from experiences with their parents. Though conflicts with parents is a separate connection to adolescence, it is worth mentioning within the personal fable. Each student, upon being dropped off for detention, has some sort of interaction with their parents. These interactions hint at what they end up talking about after they smoke Benders marijuana. They each come in to detention thinking that they are alone in the issues that they face and that no one else understands them when in reality each one of them shares real experiences with one another. The personal fable is the first of many connections to adolescence today in The Breakfast Club …show more content…

Arnett (2013) says that Adolescents with authoritative parents tend to be better off than those with parents in the other three categories with some exceptions. (Arnett, 2013, p.183). This can be reflected in Brian who is very intelligent and driven however on the inside is actually experiencing suicidal thoughts. Arnett (2013) also says that adolescents with parents that are disengaged tend to be impulsive and tend to be more involved in delinquent behavior while adolescents with parents who are permissive tend to be immature and irresponsible (Arnett, 2013, p.183). This can be reflected in John and Claire. John has disengaged parents and is involved in delinquency and is very impulsive while Claire has permissive parents and is more on the immature side when it comes to interactions with John. Parenting styles can affect adolescents in both positive and negative ways, and this is reflected through the characters in The Breakfast Club

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