Everybody who has seen the classic 1985 movie The Breakfast Club (directed by John Hughes) knows how they look and where they live. The film is simply a must-see viewing for many schools’ stereotypes of life in 1980s high schools. Five students from different social groups were forced to spend an entire Saturday in detention together: the rebel (John Bender), the princess (Claire Standish), the athlete (Andrew Clark), the brain (Brian Johnson), and the basketball player (Allison Reynolds). Much of the action in the movie takes place in the school library, where they gradually become different people on the inside during this long day. They had discovered how much more they had in common than they realized when they first came to class. While …show more content…
Trust is gradually built up between the characters; they reveal themselves to each other and, in the process, begin to see one another not as the stereotype they’ve placed on each other but as a human being who has suffered and is now vulnerable. This leads to a fragile truce breaking out among them; they have bonded, and this gives them respect for one another. The message of the film is clear: people are more than the stereotypes placed upon them. On the other hand, the price paid to get to this point of understanding is the fact that the movie relies on all of the stereotypes from start to finish, which makes this perceived ‘liberation’ seem just a bit on the airy-fairy side. So while the ending feels like a vintage Hollywood ‘problem solved’ moment, the very process of getting there clashes with this message. On the one hand, you have a denigration of those who have been stereotyped, and on the other, you have an open recognition of having something in common with each other that transcends their surface differences. It’s a wonderfully ‘Hollywood’ conclusion: our sense of belonging can cut through the artificiality of these divisions, and their differences will be left behind for now. The types and stereotypes can live happily ever after, with the guards lowered on their gated