Released in 1985, <The Breakfast Club> is one of the most popular masterpieces that has been seen in homage in various movies and dramas. <The Breakfast Club> tells the story of five different students who get detention at school on a Saturday. Saturday, inside the school, five characters, what can a movie tell in these limited circumstances? If you want to know, please pay attention to the following article.
Characters
The characters in <The Breakfast Club> have typical and flat characteristics. The five characters divide the various kinds of students into five types. John is defiant and says rude things to other students without hesitation. Wrestler Andrew follows his father’s words and lacks subjectivity. Mystery Allison shows abnormal behavior and words. Claire, the daughter of a rich family, is popular in school. A model student Brian has excellent grades and listens well to his teachers.
Our Own Stories
The teacher orders the students to write an essay about “Who you think you are” and leaves the classroom. Students who happen to spend time together in a closed space for a day start to talk little by little, fight, dance, and laugh together. When they sit around and talk, the true face of the film reveals itself. While talking about the reason they had to come to detention, Claire says, “I hate having to go along with everything my friends say!” and says to Brian, “You just don’t understand the pressure that they can put on you!” Then Brian explodes saying “You think I don’t understand pressure, Claire?” and vents the oppression and burden of his studies, which has stifled him. The reason why he had to come to detention was because he was caught hiding a gun in his locker. Brian got straight A in his classes except for one F. That’s why he hid the gun in his locker. This was due to too much of a burden to get good grades and his parents’ pressure.
We easily think of other people’s lives as better, or easier, than ours, or judge them by their appearance only. Our targets are often celebrities on TV as well as people around us. However, the appearance and the life that the person actually lives in can be as different as the lives of the students in <The Breakfast Club>. Just like Brian, who looks like to be living as a perfect model student but hid a gun in his locker. A person who lives a fabulous life may be struggling with loneliness, or a person who looks as bright as a child may be suffering from depression all night long. We cannot judge the lives of others and shouldn’t try. By showing these five typical types of students, <The Breakfast Club> shows that we cannot know other people’s life just by appearance. And we can realize that we should be wary of this kind of attitude. In addition, although they were students of different shapes living in five different worlds, they empathize, as well as feel sad and angry listening to each other’s stories. This shows that even though they are different, they can understand each other.
A Child Who Became an Adult
When the teacher says, “These kids turned on me. They think I’m a big joke.”, the janitor tells him “Come one. Listen Vernon, if you were sixteen, what would you think of you, huh?” A child who became an adult can no longer understand children. Just like the teacher from <The Breakfast Club> who regards students as incomprehensible. However, all adults used to be children at one time. The movie takes place in the eyes of five teenagers. The audience, who were teenagers in 1985, may take another meaning from an adult’s point of view by watching the film again after many years. As we became university students, we reinterpret the relationship between Dooly and Go Kil-dong differently from the past while watching <Dooly the Little Dinosaur>. We felt bad for poor little Dooly when we were a child, but now we feel sorry for Go Kil-dong, an adult who is the object of Dooly’s mischiefs. Even the five students who hate their teacher may find their children incomprehensible when they grow up over time.
Conflicts between older and younger generations have long existed in human history. Believe it or not, adults’ saying “Children these days are spoiled” appears on the Mesopotamia Sumer clay tablets, on the walls of the Altamira cave, and the walls of the Egyptian pyramids. This conflict is ongoing in modern society as well. Why can’t we understand each other? This is because the older generation has lived in their own culture and society, and the younger generation live in a new era completely different from the older generation. Allison says, “It’s unavoidable, it just happens. When you grow up, your heart dies.” And to John’s words, “Who cares?”, she answers firmly, “I care.” We must not forget that we were all children one day and that we will all be adults one day. And as Allison said, we must make sure our hearts don’t die even when we become adults. And we also should “care.”
A Story in a Day
Only one day on Saturday, they open up their heart and become friends. But nobody knows whether they will greet each other when they go back to school on Monday and encounter each other in the hallway. They are more likely to ignore each other and live in their own world as before. This one-day event, this one-shot, is what makes <The Breakfast Club> more attractive. Brian writes the following essay and <The Breakfast Club> finishes with the narration of it with students saying goodbye to each other and getting on their parents’ cars.
“Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you're crazy to make an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.”
This movie doesn’t feature anything spectacular to see. It’s only all about the story led by five students. Nevertheless, the film gives us things to think about and valid messages even in our society today. We may be defining people the way we want to see them. Just like Brain said in his essay, “You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions.” However, we must keep in mind that we all live different lives, that what we see is not everything, and that we should make a world where we understand each other. CAH hopes you can answer “I care” like Allison did and listen to the stories of the five students in person through <The Breakfast Club>.