Teen Film Genre In The Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club is pivotal film that should be within every high school student’s must watch list. There are aspects of the romance and the coming of age genres within the film, but this film contains much greater weight with the ideas of the Teen Film genre. The film consists of a group of kids, each from a specific stereotype within their high school and forced into a room for Saturday detention and through this and other features of the Teen Film genre they learn that they are not all that different after all. This paper will discuss the idea of this film being part of the Teen Film genre and its place as a classic within the stages of genre. The teen film genre is described by Catherine Driscoll in the introduction of her book, “First,

Within the primitive stage, teen film consisted of young stars playing young adults and just simply focusing on them and their lives including such films as Dead End and Love Finds Andy Hardy (Driscoll 1). After this comes the institutionalization of the teenagers across a multitude of subgenres within the 1950’s making for the classic stage within the genre. Within the classic stage, films begin to develop rule and guidelines that are to be followed in order for the film to be considered a teen film. The film had to be about the newly emerged teenager for whom the film was made for (Driscoll 9). This classified such teen films as, Rebel Without a Cause and Grease. This brings up the subject of The Breakfast Club which came out during the renaissance of the genre within the 1980’s. However within the film The Breakfast Club the rules of Teen Film are followed pretty strictly, making it part of the classic stage within the genre. Throughout the film, the entirety of the plot was directed toward an audience of teenagers and the problems they face within school, within themselves, and within their families. These five teens have been given Saturday detention for varying reasons. Throughout their time in detention the teens are fighting the authority of their principal. Mr. Vernon at one point in the movie admits to feeling like he’s failing at this job he worked so hard for because the kids are so different, but in actuality it’s just him getting older and not changing with the