The film “The Breakfast Club” explores friendship among teenagers, high school students. It narrates about three adolescent boys and two girls from different school cliques, who spend a Saturday in detention, exploring their selves as well as the others’ personalities. At first, they spend several hours arguing, blaming, and labeling one another, i.e. acting out their family-based and social patterns and stereotypes.
However, after finding out they have a lot in common, the five teenagers unite, despite their social and psychological differences, and establish a strong friendship. In the letter to their instructor they reveal their newly grown belief in their similarity: “But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain (Brian Johnson), and an athlete (Andy Clark), and a basket case (Allison Reynolds), a princess (Claire Standish) and a criminal (John Bender).” The main themes which can be identified in the storyline are crisis as a cause and catalyst of friendship, friendship and belonging, and disclosure and intimacy in friendship.
First of all, the film is instrumental in understanding the idea that the precondition of friendship is a crisis or significant conflict (Lecture Notes, Week 1, p.2). In the present case, the characters undergo the crisis of delinquency, or “crossing the line”, and the subsequent penalty. In particular, Brian brought up in the perfectionist spirit, receives an “F” and takes a flare gun to the school. Andy, a talented sportsman, feeling the pressure of the necessity of following his father’s role model, beats a fellow student. Claire skips a class deciding to go shopping and entertainment. This crisis of delinquency consists of the clash between values, patterns, and expectations, nurtured in these students since their early years, and their actual behavior.
In particular, Andy finds his delinquent act disgusting, but still believes his father expected him to break some of the school rules; Claire thinks she does not deserve such punishment for playing truant and feels offended when her father refuses to negotiate with the teacher about less stringent measures. Brian feels his act was childish but blames himself for receiving the low mark and failing to fit into his parents’ idea of “the perfect son” rather than for endangering the lives of his peers.
As one can understand, the characters are experiencing a tension between the social roles of “children of their parents”, “students” and “adolescents” (representatives of the age group). In detention, they are forced to spend nine hours in the limited space, so as social creatures, they begin to express, either directly or indirectly, their attitudes towards the situation. After realizing their crises are identical by nature, Brain, Andy, John, Allison, and Claire become close to one another.
Friendship as a realization of the need for belonging in a certain cluster of society is communicated mainly through Allison’s character. As Allan writes, friendship is one of the pillars of social identity as it helps in the formation of one’s “self-perception” in the broader social context (Allan, 1998, p.694). In this sense, at the very beginning of the film, Allison looks like a marginalized individual with a deformed vision of her social class, as the girl rejects the views and values of her upper-middle-class parents and behaves like a “basket case”, falling in the extremities, from pathological shyness to absolute frankness and straightforwardness.
She reveals she has no friends, so Allison needs an informal micro group or a reference group to from a better understanding of herself in society. Therefore, she is the first to verbally articulate that she, Brian, John, Claire, and Andy are friends, probably because the girl strives for relationships with those peers whose social identities are more “mature”. However, Claire, Andy, and John, who seem to have a greater awareness of their place in society, at first vacillate, because they already belong to an informal group that underlines their position. As Paine notes, individuals are judged based on who their friends are (Paine, 1975, p.119).
In this sense, Claire doubts whether her relationships with Brian and John will be accepted by her already existing upper-middle-class friends, obviously “golden girls”, whose future is already paid off by their parents; at the same time, John considers the possible consequences of his relationship with arrogant and glamorous Claire, who might be mocked by his lower-class or subculture friends due to the hidden Marxist antagonism between the two social classes. However, due to their young age, these adolescents prioritize informal small groups (teenage cliques) over the broader society, so the pressure of the social class is not very strong in their case. Therefore, they readily embrace diversity and make friends based on shared experiences and common problems.
Finally, friendship necessarily involves sincerity and trust. “The Breakfast Club” shows that friendship allows sharing one’s inner life and feeling trusted and respected. After the adventure of escaping the persecution of the teacher, the five adolescents believe they are a team, characterized by mutual support and protection. Later, as John “sacrifices” himself for letting others safely get to the classroom, they realize it is also possible to depend on and trust each other.
As a result, all of them reveal their dissatisfaction with the family environment, the pressure of parental hopes, abuse, and neglect and even address the most “obscure” aspects of their lives, including sex and the development of their sexuality. As Bock assumes, secrecy is one of the means of governance (Bok, 1982, p.178), so the five characters might intend to solve or mitigate their existing family problems through friendship.
As one can conclude, “The Breakfast Club” shows the spontaneous development of friendship based on the similarity of the characters’ negative responses to their roles imposed by the family. The film also shows that the crisis that equally affects everyone, serves as a powerful catalyst of friendship and facilitates the initial disclosure and growth of trust.
References
Lectures notes. Week 1. (2009).
Allan, G. (1998). Friendship, Sociology and Social Structure. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 15, 685-702.
Paine, R. (1975). An Exploratory Analysis in ‘Middle-Class’ Culture’. Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 117-137.
Bok, S. (1982). Secrets. New York: Pantheon Books.