Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink have more in common than Molly Ringwald. Stereotypes, different economic backgrounds, and feminism all have some part in these 80’s teen films. The themes are all the same, rich vs poor, popular or unpopular and changing yourself to fit into the ‘norm’. Social class is a recurring theme in many 80s teen movies. In all three movies Ringwalds character has to face some scrutiny of her social class. In The Breakfast Club, she was the rich girl who was attacked for having money. In Pretty In Pink, Ringwald played a girl who lived with her single father who did not have a job. She was embarrassed to have her “rich” boyfriend see where she lived. The Movie Sixteen Candles, Ringwald played a typical middle class teenager. The Breakfast Club, showed viewers how people from all economic backgrounds have something in common. From the very beginning of the film, as each student is dropped of for detention, the assumption about what these kid’s home life is like, what type of child they are and what social class they come from is established. When the kids are sitting in the library, where they sit even screams social standing. Claire and Andy sit next to each other because, from what we can tell, they are in the same standing. The hierarchy is started right from the beginning. The other kids all choose seats behind them. This shows that the popular, upper class, come first, everyone else is under them. Claire is from an upper class family and is involved in everything from the student government to prom queen. Andrew is from a working class family, but still managed to gain popularity and a friend group in a higher social class by being involved with academic programs as well as being an... ... middle of paper ... ... confesses his love to her whenever he can. When Blane asks Andie to go on a date, he drags her to basically her worst nightmare, a party with all of the richies. Once his friends start to make comments about his relationship with Andie his mind is changed and he dumps her solely on appearances (Feminist Music Geek). Works Cited Alexander, Alanna. "Social Class and 80s Movies." Qatar Culture Club. Blogger, 8 Feb. 2012. Web. 1 May 2014. 02/social-class-and-80s-movies_08.html>. Bleach, Anthony C. "Postfeminist Cliques? Class, Postfeminism, and the Molly Ringwald-John Hughes Films." Cinema Journal: 24-44. Print. Feminist Music Geek. "Remembering John Hughes Through Women: Iona." Feministmusicgeek. Word Press, 7 Aug. 2009. Web. 1 May 2014. .
Bleach, A. C. (2010). Postfeminist cliques? Class, postfeminism, and the Molly Ringwald-John Hughes films. Cinema Journal, 49, 24-44.
But I think this book is more for those people who aren’t that aware of social class, or for the ones who feel that we live in a society that is classless, rather than the actual people who have realized the consequences that class really has on someone’s life. Many people can relate to what stories are told in the book; if not, they know of a person that can relate to these stories. As a person that grew up in the lower class, I can definitely relate to most of the stories told in this book. From experience, there is a big difference in this country between the rich, middle class, and the poorest that we see daily. Even those in the so-called working class have to make continuous sacrifices and live very differently from those positioned firmly in the middle class.
Breakfast Club film contained a wide variety of behavior and stereotypes. Each person had their on personality and taste at the beginning of the film. I believe that communication played the biggest part in the movie. It shows the way that people from totally different backgrounds can communicate and even agree on issues. The various types of communication and behaviors within the film will be discussed.
producers of the last fifty years. Many of John Hughes's most well-known films are his teen films, such as The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles. In the 1980s, John Hughes was setting a new trend for the way teenagers are depicted onscreen. He managed to subvert the sensationalized portrayals of teenagers and teenage life that dominated the screen in the 1980s. Movies about teenagers coming to terms with their lives were a welcome change from the excesses of the slasher genre. John Hughes's timing was right, since audiences seemed to be growing weary of these portrayals around the same time that he emerged on the scene.
The Breakfast Club is a coming of age classic directed by John Hughes in 1985. It showcases five students that find themselves in all day Saturday detention for various unrelated incidents. John Bender, Andrew Clark, Allison Reynolds, Brian Johnson, and Claire Standish come from extremely different lifestyles even though they attend the same high school. Their parents drop them off at the school and the characters can be immediately judged by their cars and clothing. The jock, the basketcase, the nerd, and the princess are apprehensive at first, but after smoking the criminal’s weed they come out of their shells and learn about each other. They find that detention was not an entire waste of a Saturday, but turns into the day they find themselves.
Social class has always been a controversial issue in America. This idea, that individuals are defined by their wealth, is explored by Jeannette Walls in her memoir, The Glass Castle. Walls shows, through a manifold of personal anecdotes, how growing up in a dysfunctional household with financially inept parents affected her and her siblings. Growing up in this environment, Jeannette was exposed to a very different perception of the world around her than those of higher social status. However, despite the constant hardships she faced, Walls makes it clear that a lower social status does not define an individual as inferior to those in a higher class.
The USA is a very big country with a lot of people and the social classes are very important. We can see that social class plays a big part of people’s life. Everyday people are working, studying, trying to be better. Even though right now it’s a time when everyone has many opportunities in his life, anyway there is a gap between classes and groups of people with the same features. Your background probably will build your future. The main idea is that Social Classes still exist. There are three reasons why line between groups still exist.
In “High-School Confidential: Notes on Teen Movies” David Denby criticizes movies portraying high school. He writes “The most commercial and frivolous of genres harbor a grievance against the world” (426). In many movies starting in the early 90’s you began to see an extreme amount of disrespect to adults from teenagers. High school movies are filled with unruly
The Breakfast Club is about 5 high school students enduring detention on a Saturday. You first see the in groups and outgroups. An in group are people who belong to the same group as you, while the out group are people who belong to a different group as you. This was shown right off the bat in
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.
Movie Stars of the 80’s were very different then than they are now. They talked differently, they dressed differently, and they acted differently. Some big movie stars of the 80’s were Corey Feldman in The Goonies, Emilio Estevez in The Breakfast Club, James Spader in Pretty in Pink, Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club, and last but not least, Molly Ringwald, the star of my two most favorite 80’s movies, Pretty in Pink, and Sixteen Candles. In 1978, Molly was chosen to play Kate in the movie Annie. She then started turning toward motion pictures and got nominated for a Golden Globe award for her role in the 1982 film The Tempest. She then stared in her major motion picture Sixteen Candles. Ringwald then appeared in multiple 80’s films including The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Can...
All throughout the movie social class is a problem. Social class is the division of classes based on social, economic, and achieved status. All of the events on the ship are broken down based on which social class each person falls under. The upper class were those who were on a luxury trip, and
In today’s society people are viewed as being in different classes depending on how much money they bring in. The categorization of people is known as classism. Classism is simply the prejudice or in favor of people belonging to a particular social class. Classism is known as one of the largest social problems plaguing the world today. Classes are formed according to how the rules of the following institutions; government regulations and economic status. It is held in place by a system of beliefs and cultural attitudes that ranks people according to their; economic status, family lineage, job status, and level of education. There are three major classifications to which people are titled. They include upper or high class which includes the people with the most money. The middle class who includes the people that brings home the average income. Finally, the class titled the lower class that includes the people who have only one income coming in or none at all (“What Is Classism.”). In the classrooms these classes still remain and the students within each class have different ways in which they learn, and view schooling. We as educators have to look passed their ways and address each class the same.
Social class, as defined by the film, is something that affects who you are as a person. In the film, the people saw class as the defining factor of a person. They saw class as a barrier between people. If one person is in a different class than another person, then obviously, they are not supposed to associate. They allowed their social class to dictate their action each day. It was amazing to me just how much the people in the film allowed their class to truly define them and really serve as a boundary in their life. The people in the film lived their daily life with their social class as the most influential factor. Their worth and value as individuals was not determined by anything else except the amount of money they had. It was really interesting to see how the amount of money a person had somehow equated with their worth in society. The same is true within our society today, but in the film, this aspect was especially evident. The film really shed a light on just how impactful social class is and just how much we allow it to
Social class is an underlying factor to which all characters run their lives. It is always a priority and influenced most, if not every part of their lives. Most of the characters in the novel respect the rules of class and are always trying to climb the social ladder. Or if they are atop this ladder, they make it a mission that they remain there. Mrs. Bennet tried very hard to have her daughters marry the most socially advanced men and in the end the daughters chose socially respectable men.