Tag: John Hughes

I guess you could read all sorts of profound messages into The Breakfast Club, such as:

• If people from various cliques were forced to spend time with each other they’d see what they have in common and empathize with each other or they’ll get along for that day without their respective peers around, but when they’re back with their cliques, things would be the same.

• Teens from various groups can bond over their mutual contempt for parents, authoritarian figures, really, most adults. So I guess for that moment in time they get each other and see they’re not that different, at least in this. It would be interesting to see The Breakfast Club 20 years later when they are the adults they disdained.

• How teens feel pressure from adults as well as peers and the subsequent forms of rebellion.

• Vernon doesn’t really enjoy being an authoritarian. He clearly doesn’t have the resources to properly work with the students on a productive level. He resorts to bullying which is what educational professionals are trying to stop.

• One day can change your life.

• Or you could see The Breakfast Club as a bunch of kids bored in detention, smoking marijuana who talked the nerd into doing their essays for them.

  

This film did change the way teens were marketed.  It’s also one of the movies that makes some people believe they’d like their life to be an 80s movie.

Mostly it just gave us great lines like:

Does Barry Manilow know that you raid his wardrobe?

Mess with the bull, young man.  You get the horns!

And my personal fav, Screws fall out all the time, the world’s an imperfect place.

Of course this movie wouldn’t exist today. The Athlete, The Basket Case, The Princess, The Criminal and The Brain would all be on the cell phones all day and would never be bored enough to interact.