The Breakfast Club Film Analysis

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The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985) is a film in which focuses on the stereotypes of teenagers within high school and the difficulties that are faced during this period of their lives. The film is based on a group of five young adults who have never met before, and are in Saturday detentions for varied reasons. They are asked to write a thousand word essay in which they have to describe who they think they are, but instead refuse to do so. Due to this, they get bored and it permits for them to bond and share experiences, beliefs and values. From this, they discover that although they are all different on the outside but in fact they are similar on the inside. This then allows for them to grow and develop not only as a group, but as individual …show more content…

Throughout the film, they are forced to form bonds as a group in order to pass the time and kill boredom. Through this, they breakdown their cultural differences in order to find out more about each other. This leads to them discussing each of their issues, which typically surround insecurity within education, family life and personal life. All of which they all have in common. The cultures they are currently in are what is breaking them down the most, and led them to finish up in Saturday detention. An example of this is with Claire, as she skipped class in order to go shopping. This would be something that would happen regularly amongst her group of people, and she would have been judged if she had refused to go. In turn, trying to fit in with the clique led her to a Saturday Detention like the other …show more content…

Examples such as Sixteen Candles (John Hughes, 1984) focuses around the issues that a teenager may face. For the young girl she faces problems with love, family and birthdays. These are also problems that may come as part of growing up. Part of the teenage culture is learning how to deal with these issues and providing an understanding that issues are not just individual, but the majority of people will go through. A number of films that tackle these issues will be more appealing to a wider audience. A film similar to The Breakfast Club, is St. Elmo’s fire (Joel Schumacher, 1985) which focused upon the following of a group of college graduates who are now facing issues that come with adulthood. “St. Elmo 's is a Washington, D.C. bar frequented by a group of Georgetown graduates. Like the recent "Breakfast Club" and last year 's "The Big Chill," the film concerns itself with the aspects of adjusting to the real world of post-college life. For some of the young men and women, the transition has yielded productivity; for others, the passage into the world of adult responsibility is a move too frightening to handle.” (Michael J. Borza,

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