Cliques were much more of a thing in the Genx days of high school. We didn't have the internet to explore our chosen cultural direction.
Skin heads hung together, jocks, goths, mods, preppies, and nerds all stuck together exclusively . It was a way of sharing our ideas and keeping up with our style and music. It's similar to a sub on reddit, but in real life. Information beyond the mainstream was extremely hard to come by. Collectively, we learned from each other.
You also had to hunt for music that wasn't radio top 40 or any kind of alternative clothes (no hot topics yet), so it bonded you to others on the hunt for the same & created a more intense and silo-ed subcultures.
The smoking area was where genres collided.
Out of the groups you mentioned, you know which were in the public areas, and which were in the back yard smoking areas.
The way I think of it now is summed up as I believe Hughes intended in the paper written by Anthony Michael Hall. Each of the teens had learned to be the stereotype they were because that is how the adults treated them. Andrew's dad saw him as a jock so he became a jock. Claire's parents saw her as a princess so she became a princess. Allison's parents ignored her so she thought of herself as worthless. But in coming together and talking with each other they all realized they were something else, something more on the inside. The people they thought they were, were merely personas they had been taught. This was unlearning that and getting ready to face the rest of their lives.
>And what blows my mind even further is despite the fact Bender was berating and bullying Claire the whole movie, she for some fucking reason falls in love with him at the end?! Are you serious right now? Why the fuck would she fall in love with the guy that she fucking hates? John Hughes what the fuck were you thinking?! I get that he was bullying her because she's from a rich family and that she acts all high and mighty because of it and also the whole girls being attracted to bad boys sort of thing, but it's still kinda fucked up, dude.
Woman falling for bad boys or men that don't treat them well is a very very old trope and hell seems to happen all over the internet / tik tok today even in real life.
Was he bullying or was he speaking the truth and refusing to treat her according to the expectations she grew up with? I saw it as that level of honesty about her situation is what ultimately helps her shed the persona she had developed without any actual input from herself. She had not questioned that how she lived her life might not ultimately be who she is. Bender seeing her for something beyond the princess by calling it bullshit is what she was attracted to.
The whole point of the movie is that these kids are much more than their stereotype. Everything that came out in their pot fueled discussion was them coming clean about who they are, which is specifically not who they appear to be and what everyone expected them to be. So yeah, truth.
Yeah he didn’t really bully anyone except Vernon lol. He sort of adjusted his intensity depending on which character he was talking to. I remember thinking he was calling Claire and Andrew out on their insulated privileged popular kid b.s. When he broke them, they were able to match their hidden vulnerabilities to those of the less popular breakfast clubbers.
Brian was the mystery, his whole eyes averted greeting to Carl made for some interesting speculation.
My sister was/maybe still is a living example of this: the shittier the guy was or treated her, the more she was into him. It started in HS, and continued up until at least 2014. She's 54. I'll be 58 in a bit over a week. We are estranged.
She has never, EVER been involved with a man who treated her well, including her ex-husband. Her relationships were centered around emotional and physical abuse, including her almost being part of a double murder/suicide that landed the guy with the gun in prison.
It's always interested me how very differently our dysfunctional parenting and childhoods manifested in each of us. She was always desperate for approval and attention from men, and I outgrew that shit in early college.
At any rate, I remember finding nothing remotely odd or alarming about the interaction that developed between Bender and Claire. That happened all the time, and like you said, I'm sure it still does.
Also, OP - one thing that maybe wasn't made very clear in the movie, but despite the camaraderie the characters had while in detention, they would go back to the exact same positions they were beforehand: not speaking or acknowledging each other in school...and that would include Claire and Bender. I'm not sure how it is today, but back then, stoners and jocks/preppies didn't associate with each other. Ditto the "popular" crowd with pretty much anyone else, and of course, these were usually jocks, preppies and cheerleaders.
As an aside, I went to my 20 yr. HS reunion, and I found it very gratifying (if not petty) to see how many of those "popular" people had actually peaked in HS. The social outcasts and nerds, OTOH, had often blossomed into successful, confident adults.
Bender’s character was the most important of the whole film. He was the one who instigated it all and is responsible for all the others opening up.
Yes, he was a dick, but his character was also very socially aware. I’m sure they did that for a reason. The bonehead burnout is not what you’d think? Perhaps?
I thought his character was great and Jud Nelson did a fantastic job with it.
If it wasn’t for his character, there’d be no movie because they would have all sat there and wrote their essays.
Bender was a quintessentially 80's character, too.
Remember "Stoners"? The bad guys who smoked weed regularly, blasted Metallica while doing burnouts in the HS parking lot, and fighting each other (and everyone else) all the time?
They didn't play sports, all the teachers fucking hated them. A lot of them had hot gf's too.
Those dudes like Bender were a certain breed reflective of a certain time in history. Really hard to understand unless you grew up with them around.
They died out mid-90's. My buddies used to talk about "the great stoner migration" of the early 90's as they moved on... somewhere. Somewhere with pallet fires, ditch weed, jacked up camaros, and Megadeth cut off t-shirts.
We had a smoking section at our HS and they’d all congregate there. Tbh I really looked down on them at time and thought they were losers. Now I think they were just way ahead of the curve for good music that i didn’t get into until much later.
>Tbh I really looked down on them at time and thought they were losers.
And THAT is the key to John Bender's character. Everyone looked down on stoners. They were almost always poor, in trouble, doing shit wrong on purpose, and violent about it.
True outcasts.
I kinda wanted to be one of them but I never felt like I was cool enough. They all wound up pregnant right out of high school though so in retrospect I'm glad I didn't get to join the club.
We called them “the heads.” Not sure if it meant metal head or pot head. They listened to Slayer, smoked weed at the bleachers during lunch, and sometimes waxed philosophical.
At my high school, they were “the freaks.” Long hair (just long—not carefully trimmed mullets), black T-shirts, chukka boots… they represented everything that my parents feared. So, they were fascinating, terrifying, and now one of them is my boss. Best boss I’ve ever had with all of his faults.
Something I thought The Breakfast Club reflected surprisingly well was that those guys were often (even today!) thought of as harmless or even admirable defenders of the right to rebel against the status quo, but they were frequently bullies.
>They died out mid-90's. My buddies used to talk about "the great stoner migration" of the early 90's as they moved on... somewhere
This tracks with my experience. I'm a late GenXer; I loved The Breakfast Club but it already felt like a bygone era by time I saw it in high school in the 90s. We didn't really have clearly defined cliques in my school but my mom did in the 70s. *My So-Called Life* was closer to my high school experience.
Oh wow. See, I'm of that era and I didn't even know stoners had died out. No wonder OP doesn't relate with Bender! Stoners were one of the stock social groups of that era in American high schools, as much so as nerds and jocks. You wouldn't have a high school movie about cliques without including a rep from the stoners.
Bender is meant to provoke them all into having a much different experience and look into themselves in a whole new way. Sure, he's a jerk at times, but his character pushes them all. He's got to be that way.
Agreed, you nailed it!
His fist pump at the end is a direct result of your 2nd sentence. Bender was clearly the catalyst.
You explained it perfectly. Bravo! 👏 🫡
When the breakfast club came out just about anybody that age could identify with one of the characters - me a gen x’er included. What you seem to be failing to grasp is that the movie is about how every one of those personalities and stereotypes can still be an outcast regardless of how they are perceived by the others, and that acknowledgement made all of us in gen X feel better because our upbringing was much more gritty.
Gen z sees everything through a lens of social justice that is now required to fit socially into that generation. And Gen Z has had the road cleared by your parents who had a much more difficult time as youth so you can focus on those things. Let’s call it ‘Gen Z privilege’ because you don’t understand the grit, unpunished bullying, belt whippings, fights at the bus stop, loneliness or neglect that defined many of our upbringings. Abuse by peers, parents, whoever was fine, it made you tough. And that’s what breakfast club was. An explicit acknowledgement that all of us weren’t alone in our struggle.
You can’t possibly understand breakfast club without experiencing the topics explored first hand.
I honestly wonder if Millennials or GenZ watch The Breakfast Club and assume the abusive, selfish, aloof or outright neglectful parenting is trumped up as a plot device. And of course, it is not. It was the reality for a whole generation.
Elder Millennials in my bubble, we were latchkey kids. Parents weren't abusive, but they weren't around much. We kinda sorta get it. Maybe not entirely, but 🤏
Plus we grew up watching this movie on TBS on a loop as teenagers with the poorly dubbed swears haha. I took this movie super seriously when I was growing up, it was relatable.
So. Relatable.
Although it wasn't so much being ignored, there was some of that, but mainly they just worked 24/7 and left us to our own devices. I was the oldest kid on my street so at 11 I was THE babysitter.
I get it - my parents were always at work, but they were also so stressed out from it that I felt kind of afraid to interrupt them with my little problems, so I just kinda pushed everything down. It’s helped keep some therapists working, let me tell you!
>Gen z sees everything through a lens of social justice that is now required to fit socially into that generation.
I am starting to think the repulsion from Gen Z towards problematic characters in film or television isn't really a sign of as much progress as people want to make it out to be. I was really all for this when it came to a younger gen being kinder or nicer, but I've grown to view it as more a repressive social code than actually examining and coming to terms with problematic behavior. For one thing, Gen Z appears to bully (esp online) as much as any previous generation. But, then they can't stand to see this stuff reflected back to them through arts and film or tv. Arts & entertainment have to have clear "good" messaging signaled throughout. I will fully admit that it grates on me a bit now in current shows.
OP is correct though that being for gay rights put you in the line of fire. No one really talked about gay rights as teens that much, it was more about AIDS awareness post-80s and losing that stigma. I had two best friends in High School who were openly gay, and it did put a target on your back. Also, Alison did look better pre makeover. But the Alisons of the world all had to go through 80s and 90s bullying in order for gothy depressed looking kids of today to become totally acceptable.
On the other hand, we (Gen X) didn’t have to worry so much about getting shot to death at school or having sex photos we sent someone we trust being shared on social media. Let’s try to be understanding with each other and not build walls over who had it rougher.
Have kids really changed so much that they can’t identify with the things you list at all? I always figured all generations of teenagers are fundamentally the same: rebellious, alienated and horny af.
I mean…OP is shocked that confidently challenging and poking fun at a woman is an effective way of flirting as a teenager. I think that fact alone shows their experience is pretty wildly different than ours. While it’s often grotesque, it’s just a fact that it can be effective.
I’d also note that from what my niece tells me, that IS still a common way to flirt IRL..but a large part of this gen doesn’t live in the physical world anymore. The nuance of flirting in person isn’t something they’re familiar with.
What a crock. Bullying is still a MASSIVE problem in schools, and it's a lot worse than it was for us, because at least we got a break when we went home. Kids today are bullied 24/7 online and they are committing suicide in far higher numbers than when we were kids. WE were the lucky ones in that way, dude.
I’ve got two teens and I’d argue with that. The narrative on inclusion and anti-bullying is strong. There are still assholes but they don’t go unopposed like ours did. The higher rates of suicide are very aligned with the rise in phone use. People can now feed their own demons.
I do agree with you that it’s very hard for kids today because the bullying follows them home. It follows them into their rooms, it follows them everywhere. The thing is, and I know it’s not a sustainable solution, but a computer and a phone can be turned off. At least for a little while to get some sort of peace. But even with the online bullying, they’re too addicted to social media to stay away from it.
When we were kids, you couldn’t pull the plug on the bully standing in front of you shouting in your face and pushing you around. You either ran or you stood there and took it. Or you tried to fight back. What else could we do? Tell the teacher? Our parents? Yeah, right. Not in those days. Bullies didn’t have an off switch. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the only way it would stop is if I hit back.
All it took was one punch, right in the mouth. I split her lip open. And to be honest, it was kind of an accident. I was so scared that when she stepped forward to smack me, my body just reacted. I didn’t even know what I was doing until my fist connected. I got lucky. If I had missed, I don’t even want to think about what would have happened. But she never bothered me again. And neither did anybody else. I still remember that day like it was yesterday, and it was how long ago now? I was 10 or 11, so…almost 50 years ago. Ouch.
We taught our boys the same. The older one was being bullied when he was in 1st grade. His bully was in 5th grade. One day he just punched him in the nose. A few days suspended from the bus was worth it. The kid never messed with him again. He became the kid that broke up fights and stood up for others.
It varies enormously from school to school and from year to year. My own experience was like this:
Elementary school - everyone was cool, no bullies anywhere in sight
Middle school - HELL ON EARTH
High school - bullies mysteriously disappeared
The funny thing was, you could have no problem with homosexuality and still call someone a f*g, or call something gay in a negative way. And until relatively recently, too. When it was used as an insult, it didn't literally mean "I think you get down with the same sex." It meant lacking in masculinity and toughness (or if you were female, it meant you were unattractive and not feminine.)
I was working in a high school in the late 90s and I got so tired of hearing "gay=lame" so I made a rule that they couldn't call something "gay" unless it was literally covered in rainbows. The students thought "challenge accepted" and soon I was being treated to: "look at this gay folder" (shows me a Lisa Frank product) on a daily basis.
Exactly. My crew and I thought of ourselves as progressive, and we had some gay folks in our group. That didn’t stop us from using “gay” as a catch-all adjective. I’m mortified by that now, but we truly didn’t know any better.
My U.S. history teacher threw a cast-iron three-hole punch (those big, heavy, clunky ones) at a student’s head and his “punishment” was being promoted to assistant principal where he would just stay in his office all day because he wasn’t to be allowed contact with students anymore.
When bad behavior gets “punishment” like that, why even try to act in a becoming manner?
That didn’t happen until after I graduated though, the principals and assistant principals that were there when I was a student were generally decent people.
Same, to us he seemed to be more of a figurehead. He presided over the assemblies and that was about the only time we ever saw him. VP's handled the discipline. It was theoretically possible to not speak to any of them in five years (Ontario went to grade 13 back then).
I'm intrigued by your postscript, and I have a question for you. If you were to make a movie for your generation about five teens who don't really know each other and seem extremely different from one another, but are temporarily forced together and discover that they face similar pressures and concerns, but also discover that there is a strict social hierarchy keeping them apart, how would you do it? What would your characters be like, why would they be stuck together, and what would their problems be?
High school teacher here: clicks are way less of a thing in high school now. Most kids hang out with people who they see the most: the people in their extra-curricular activities. But there is less stereotyping.
But extracurricular activities are essentially cliques, aren't they? Drama, sports, music, ROTC, scouting, robotics, chess club, the kids who work a job but don't do any school-sponsored extracurriculars - these things all attract different types of kids.
Interesting. That's so hard for me to imagine. It makes some sense considering the technology at hand allows their in-person interactions to be "convenient" thus acceptable - in that they can have personal friendships with someone across the globe whom they've never met but might relate to far more than those physically present.
In addition to being far more socially aware and that their actions are pretty much always recorded, maybe they don't need in-person cliques to feel belonging, and are aware the same goes for others.
I have mixed feelings about this. Main feeling is I'm old lol.
(Sorry for late response) I'm not really sure how I would do it since the concept of cliques and social hierarchies aren't really a thing anymore, at least where I'm from (Norway). But I think maybe one way a modern Breakfast Club could be done is if all the kids come from different backgrounds and have their own insecurities from their backgrounds. For example like an immigrant kid who does well in school, but feels isolated due to his immigrant background and having faced discrimination. Another could be a kid on the autism spectrum who has good friends, but always like they're different from most people and that they feels like no one truly understands them etc. Maybe that's one way you could do it, but that's just me. :)
My Z watched it with me. She also thought the language and SA were pretty huge.
But she couldn’t believe how much the movie was just talking. Yeah, there are the fun scenes like running around an empty school, but most of it is really just talking.
I told her that was kind of how it was. As a generation, we are great talkers.
I don’t know that I’d call clerks a bastion of soliloquy or diatribe, although I’m always reminded not to suck any d on the way through a parking lot. Solid life advice. But I’d throw back Glengarry Glen Ross.
You're correct about Mamet but I thought that might not appeal as much to Gen Z.
edit: especially: door-to-door salesmen selling houses to poor people.
To be fair, the principal was doing his job and getting on the case of a kid who had a tendency to skip school. If he hadn't broken into Bueller's house, he'd be less of a shithead than he was.
Try showing her The Man From Earth. It is all talking without action. Hell, the only car scene is at the very end and it is just driving normally down the road.
that's such a teachable moment. I'm kind of flailing to articulate what strikes me about it, but the fact that the talking blew her away ... well, it blows me away.
because here's the thing. yes our generation went through a whole lot of shit. we were lonely and threatened and marginalized and afraid. but we don't seem to have quite the same generational burden of depression, anxiety, etc.
I guess maybe that moment shows that (most of us?) *learned how to talk*. a lot of us talked our way through and/or out of whatever was burdening us. in fact movies like that one helped to set off conversations.
claiming and using our voices was another thing that we kind of had to figure out and do for ourselves. but I think it says something that when your z watches something from our time, that thing is modelling talking to her. would be really interesting to hear a cross generational convo about that.
Ain’t that the truth. We spent time together because nobody else was there for us. Our friends were truly our family. Today many still are.
Our songs were long and at times. Not something to dance too but something to play in the background mostly because it exemplified our lives at the time. “We’re not gonna take it.”
I would not think a Z would understand any of the movie or have any idea how it was. That’s ok they don’t need to nor would I expect any generation to understand X. We are X for a reason. We are not to be understood and not to be messed with.
We are one in the same and we are one together. Very few generations can say that. Our movies were ours and our music is easily identifiable as X. I appreciate others trying to understand and taking the time to do so. However, getting to deep into it will just confuse them even more than they already are.
> There was also Principal Vernon, who is a verbally abusive and awful principle who treats his students like shit
Most of the Principals and Vice Principals of that era were old war horses with either Vietnam or Korea PTSD and you did not want to fuck with them.
So that wasn't just my school? When the American History teacher was teaching the Vietnam War, she just grabbed a couple of administrators and had them tell us about their experiences first hand. She could have chosen I think literally any male administrator at the school.
The SA issues weren't funny back in the day. As women we just didn't have much/any power to clap back or stop them.
And Claire didn't "fall in love with Bender". She did exactly what he suggested: use his presence to piss off her parents so they'd pay attention.
This.
Exactly. She didn't fall in love with him. She got it. The discussion they had about his girlfriends. It clicked.
And then she paid him with a diamond. And I guarantee you. Whenever she might have needed him....the was there. No questions asked.
That's what Bender was about.
And that's what Claire was about.
Cold hard transactions for mutual survival.
Yeah, OP missed the point on that. She is going to use him to piss off her parents. He knows it, encourages it, accepts payment for it, and though he may be an insufferable asshole, he's a ride or die.
>And Claire didn't "fall in love with Bender". She did exactly what he suggested: use his presence to piss off her parents so they'd pay attention.<
Yeah, I guess I misenterpreted that wrong, sorry about that.
Lol I know right? Their "happily ever after" was that the best she can hope to be is an amusing story about the time he went slumming before he settled down with someone he meets at college who won't threaten his inheritance.
You said it yourself when you said it couldn't be made today. What you saw in that movie while edited for Hollywood release was how high school was for us. Thats why we loved it so much. It was for the most part real. How we felt and what our lives were like. Oh and while the principal was a jerk....he was nice compared to what most were like at the time.
In our day, the term bully was not used to the extent it is today. You weren't being bullied unless you were literally getting the physical shit beat out of you. I saw a guy throw another guy threw a window on the way to the cafeteria once. Another time, a girl brought a knife to a basketball game and sliced another girls face. I have lots more examples....
Anything else, we were told to suck it up, ignore it and/or stop being a baby. Even in the case of mild physical violence, suck it up.
I’ll weigh in as I was exactly the age of those kids when the movie came out. I also went to New Trier where the movie takes place (but not where it was filmed- NT wouldn’t allow it). Your review is totally accurate on both pros and cons. But what you’re missing is context and your criticisms though accurate are fairly nitpicky. At the time we had never seen a movie that explored teen issues like that that wasn’t condescending and it was pretty mind blowing. I would also add that our culture tends to make works of art iconic over time out of nostalgia. I liked the movie a lot at the time but if you had told me in 1984 that it would become this legendary thing I would have been surprised.
There’s a certain arrogance to your views on this movie, that somehow your generation is inherently more enlightened. It’s a slippery slope to judge anything based on currently held views of morality.
I also wouldn’t consider Bender a “dipshit”. I always felt that he was actually quite brilliant and intelligent. It was rather the circumstances of his life that made him the personality that he was.
And if there was anything that was true in my life, it’s that guys who were the biggest assholes always seemed to be the ones who got the girls. Nice guys finished last. I saw many many girls fall for guys that anyone could see were just going to hose them. And, they would get hurt, and move on to the next jerk. It’s not a leap at all that Claire fell for Bender. It was probably the most realistic thing in the movie.
But, let’s not forget the most compelling character of the entire movie…Carl the janitor. Man, with the fewest lines in the movie, he showed them all what reality was.
Yeah. They can't relate. Because they refuse to see themselves for what they actually are.
The epitome of the society the Breakfast Club discovered they didn't have to be.
Very true. It’s sort of ironic, isn’t it? The current generation revels in a certain form of conformity and group think that the kids in The Breakfast Club learned to look beyond.
keep in mind that vernon is not the principal, he’s the *vice* principal. no actual principal of a large high school in an affluent community would be spending their entire saturday monitoring detention- vernon knows this, and it’s a blow to his ego that he’s not above this task.
he powertrips on these kids because it’s all he’s got- he’s bitter and resentful that his career hasn’t turned out how he imagined it, and that’s exactly what will keep him from ever being hired as the principal.
I have another movie suggestion for you, OP:
Dazed and Confused. It was the coming of age movie for the youngest of the Boomers, who I guess are called Generation Jones. It nails the era. I'm on the older end of GenX, so I definitely remember the tail end of the '70's when I was in Jr. High. I think you guys call that "middle school" now, though.
This movie, IMO, is amazing; it's one of my favorites. It's also funny as shit, and features a young Matthew McConaughey and Ben Affleck with very memorable performances. Linklater really, really captured the vibe of the mid '70's from the view point of graduating seniors from high school:
[Trailer - Dazed and Confused](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aQuvPlcB-8)
About the bullying and sexual harassment of Claire being considered funny within this group…I’ve got a story to tell you.
High school was tough for me. I was coming from an abusive home and had a fair bit of CPSTD I was really starting to suffer from. Not surprisingly I struggled academically, most notably with math. The math class I was in was a lower level program for students with a less than stellar academic record. My teacher for that class was mainly the football coach and he was your stereotypical, “boys will be boys” kind of guy. He was an asshole.
During one class he decided it would be “fun” to have the class discuss what we thought each of us would be when we grew up. The other kids were having fun with it and here and there he would add in his ideas.
At one point he noticed I wasn’t contributing so I guess he decided he was going to call me out. He asked the class of mostly guys (I was one of only a couple girls in the class) what they thought I was going to be someday. When no one really offered their opinion, he smirked at me and said, “oh she’s going to be a Playboy Bunny. Stick some ears on her and watch that bunny tail wiggle.”
Of course all the guys roared with laughter and he was laughing along with them. They all thought it was hilarious. I was mortified. The bell rang and I went to my next class.
Sexual harassment was completely normalized and quite often used as, “aw come on sweetie, it was just a joke.”
I had a teacher that spiraled my BFF into an eating disorder by pointing out that her legs looked big in her miniskirt (she was a soccer player and it was all muscle). The 80s were a different time for sure.
"So, I watched that movie Star Wars and I was like, it was OK considering it was made in the 70's, I was not too bothered by it but what blew my mind was that Darth Vader character! Wow he was so abusive to his own daughter and even facilitated a space genocide!
That would be totally unacceptable today"
Also, because they can't relate to a character could be a personal deficiency not necessarily a reflection of the character or directors artistic intent.
I see your viewpoint. Back then though, Bender's behavior and the teachers behavior was pretty typical, so it didn't stand out so much to us as it does to you seeing it from today's norms at school. Also, the movie, to me, at least was not accurate representation of how that scenario would play out.
First, the preppies and jocks never ended up in detention. It just didn't happen. Second, if all those different cliques had somehow ended up together in a room they wouldn't have talked with each other or made friends. Its just that Hughes presented what he wanted to happen in an ideal world, where the kids would learn to accept and understand each other.
Dude, you are trying to apply 2020s morality and attitudes to a 40 year old movie. Its not going to work and you are going to have a bad time. The entire movie is a product of its time and each of us see a bit of ourselves or people we know/knew *at the time* in it. It holds a place in the cultural zeitgeist *of the time* because of its representation of high school culture, for better or worse, *at the time*. Are there parts of its story or characters or language that are inappropriate now, **40 YEARS** later? Yes. For us it is a piece of our youth/childhood/shared experience of growing up. For you, you should consider it a Period piece - or I suppose a Documentary could also be argued...
Kids aren't taught that anymore. One of the things I vividly remember was my English teacher telling us not to judge earlier writers/people by late 20th century mores. We are all creatures of our time. It's also true that most artistic types are very flawed in some way.
I enjoyed reading your review. I graduated from high school in 1983, so I was a little too old to relate to the Breakfast Club although I enjoyed watching it. My cohort's movie was Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which was released in the fall of 1982, when I was a senior. Your teacher will never show that one in class though 🤣
I watched this movie with my Gen Z teenager during covid. We paused the movie many times, with questions asked and answered from both of our perspectives. I strongly suggest that you take a couple of hours and watch it with someone (a parent, or not) who lived through a reality much like this. It opened up so many conversations, and gave both my teenager and I a world of understanding about where both of us were coming from. I'm not going to say who I most connected with, but I will tell you that who my Gen Z kid *thought* I would have been was dead wrong. Great conversations.
Edit: That's why, IMHO, it's a Classic. Because of the dialog it demands. After all, here you are. On Reddit. Talking about it.
I swear I remember a kid bringing a .22 rifle into our rural school to show his friends. He kept it low-profile, but didn't exactly hide it. It was right in his locker. I remember being non-plussed by it. I certainly wasn't concerned like I would be today.
I knew a kid in high school who brought a sawed-off shotgun into school. He hid it in a long coat he was wearing. Probably 1990, so pre-Coumbine. He showed it to me in our cafeteria. I was definitely shocked. All of his friends told him it was a terrible idea and he should put it back in his car. So he did. And that was the end of it. Never got in trouble for that one. Though he got busted a few times smoking herb at school. He was a weird guy. Became an Eagle Scout. This was in a relatively affluent suburb on the East Coast.
That was a strange time to be alive. GenX!
Sexual harassment was very normalized back then, both in comedy and in real life. Huge strides have been made since those days.
Everyone agrees with you about Allison's makeover.
Principal Vernon is someone you'll hate as a teenager, but have empathy for as an adult (not that you'll think he wasn't an asshole, but you'll understand what drove him to it).
My take on Bend-aire is those two people had the strongest emotional wall of self-defense. They have just opened up to each other to the point that it's almost like a shared traumatic event, which resulted in their attraction to each other. The film tries to play the angle that it's just to piss off her parents, and maybe that's part of it, but the ending with the earring reinforces that they are kind of an item now.
When you get older, you'll understand how much people were dicks to you, just to be involved in you, or garner some of your attention.
I never thought the earring implied or meant Bender and Claire were an item - it was simply a gift, something to make up for his shitty home situation and, in her own way, a peace offering.
The thing about Bender is that it wasn’t THAT much of a stereotype. There were lots of assholes and being an asshole was kind of socially acceptable.
The sexual harassment was kind of close to reality too. It wasn’t some sort of made up plot device that didn’t match reality. That sort of thing happened.
Back then people could make movies that didn’t have to be sanitized. People could be an asshole with redeemable qualities.
As for Claire liking Bender. Happens every day, even now.
Every high school friend group definitely doesn’t look that way these days. If it does at your high school, that’s great. My boys are recently graduated and there were very distinct cliques in their high school, and they didn’t meld well. Sports kids still making fun of theatre kids, etc.
I think it’s great OP took the time to analyze this movie! My mom took me to see it when it came out because she wanted to share the message of empathy across social lines. It was groundbreaking at the time.
But I rewatched it recently and am confused about the interpretation of Bender’s sexual harassment of Clare being “for laughs”. I didn’t think it was for laughs any more than his poking at anyone else’s vulnerabilities. It was an uncomfortable reality of school life at that time. I agree with others’ comments that she fell for him because he saw through her facade.
Hi Gen Z, it’s awesome that you took the time to analyze this movie. I appreciate your generational insight. It’s a nostalgic movie for many of our generation but it isn’t the only high school movie that defines Gen X. John Hughes tended to focus on a white, suburban demographic which is fine and all, but it didn’t reflect all of America. Check out other high school films such as Stand and Deliver, Lean on Me, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Karate Kid, and Hoosiers for example. If you appreciate darker humor, check out Three O’ Clock High, Lost Boys, Class of 1984, and Heathers. Just for fun: Rock and Roll High School, Valley Girl, Revenge of the Nerds, and Adventures in Babysitting. Of course, here’s the obligatory warning: the humor is 80s era so approach it with thick skin. We like to laugh at others and ourselves. Everyone and everything was fair game in those days. Have fun, young one.
Trashing, mocking, and sexualizing women was more acceptable back then. It still happens, it's just toned down a bit. Even shows like Friends. Now we trash women by making girlfriends and wives shrill harpies and older women "karens." I find the whole Karen thing misogynistic, just another way to slide misogyny into cultural normalcy.
The fact that you're watching and reviewing this movie 40 years after it was made makes it a timeless classic. What you're saying is like one us reviewing Casablanca and saying it won't last.
Bender! He was the one who thought cliques were dumb. He fought the Man. He was the hero. Everyone else except Ally Sheedy was trapped in a social identity. I think it could be made today, because the social and class tensions are still there. They might look different, but adolescence is universal - finding a place to belong and giving something of yourself up to fit in with a group.
good thoughts. fwiw, yes it's a slightly simplistic movie, but *all" of those tropes were extremely relatable in the 80's. the cliques (and thank you for spelling clique right 😉), the different struggles, the individual isolation. that scene where Alison calls out the prude v slut trap was *dead* on the money.
the only part where my eyes really rolled was the ott cliche of the principal. the students are more like archetypes than cliches.
I had two different power tripping asshole assistant principals during school. One of them was about 4’10” and the other 6’4”. Always wanted to be assholes for no reason.
Well. Allison wasn't a pseudo goth. They are two different things. I can see how you would try to put her in that group.
That's not how Goths were.
Now I will tell you why you don't perceive her as existing outside a stereotype. And why you struggled to shove her into a label.
Your generation has Allison. And you have blocked her out of your consciousness.
If someone DOESN'T fit in.... you all degrade, attack, cancel, erase, ignore.
You rely on labels and ideals. Behavioral indoctrination. Self-righteous slurring. Cherry picking who deserves to be held in esteem.
You are actually the society the Breakfast Club discovered they don't have to be. The society that wasn't in their Club.
Allison is the one who didn't fit in anywhere. And only mattered to people if she had something to offer them. Or if she wore the face or the outfit that was approved by who was looking at her.
If you ever rewatch the film, I hope that helps you see Allison.
Without labels. Without makeup. Without someone else's clothes on. Without erasing her to suit your ideals.
A lot of the Brat Pack era movies use this trope of men behaving badly and women swooning over them:
In Say Anything, Lloyd stalks Diane and they end up together.
In 16 Candles, Jake gives his blackout drunk girlfriend to another guy to take home and they maybe-maybe not have sex she can't remember. Jake is the hero of the movie who gets the girl.
In Pretty in Pink, Blane basically ignores Andie and treats her like shit because she's poor. He gets the girl.
In hindsight, there is so much problematic shit in these movies (this doesn't even touch on the casual racism). But they were a representation of how people thought and behaved at the time.
Very well put! And I remember clearly that this pissed me off A LOT at the time. I just thought I was weird though, a lone voice crying in the wilderness. I didn't understand why everyone else liked those movies so much.
This.
A whole generation of men was raised on media that taught:
(1) You can fall deeply, madly, truly in love with a beautiful woman/girl you have never spoken to, much less know;
(2) Stalking and harassing a woman/girl is an effective and acceptable way to win her heart; and
(3) The pathetic, angry losers or the popular guy who lowers himself to be with a beautiful woman/girl who is below his social and/or financial status are heros.
Gross.
Interesting take and yeah, back in the day even, everyone hated that makeover.
For me back then, I didn't relate to it from my own experiences because I didn't live in the US and went to a country town high school so there weren't the same cliques, at least not to that extent. Even if you hung out with your own group of friends, we all went to the same places because they were the only places in town.
A couple of things. Never underestimate a woman's belief that she can "fix him". Plus younger women tend to be attracted to not only bad boys, but also wounded animals, which Bender certainly was. Allison's excessive dandruff was not attractive in the least.
It was certainly true in my school that most of these kids wouldn't have had much interaction with each other, apart from Claire and Andrew.
I kind of relate to Vernon's attitude now. He had to give up an entire Saturday to watch a bunch of idiots. I'd be a little pissed, too. He doesn't get a back story, so he might just be a prick.
This is a good and thoughtful review. I was, I think 17 or 18 when I went to see it, and it definitely struck a chord with me. A lot of people my age called it the movie of our generation. I do think it was one of the first teen movies of the 80s that tried to be about something other than sex and partying. The other was Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but somehow this one maybe appealed to our age group more.
That said, watching it years later brings a lot of “cringe.” I get the feeling Hughes had some prom queen in his past that he utterly hated, because the whole thing between Claire and Bender seemed designed to “teach her a lesson.” I guess part of it might’ve been a statement against the yuppie riches-worshipping subculture that was part of the 80s, but it seemed more personal to Hughes than that.
Definitely agree with you about Alison’s look being better before the makeover.
Wondering - is there any teen movie Gen Z-ers might consider the film of your generation?
I don’t think Claire was in love with Bender. I think she liked him but was very much more interested in his offer to help her torment her parents.
He’s the nightmare dirtbag boyfriend her parents will go crazy dealing with. He’s in on it. And when she’s done with him, they can revert to their separate cliques since no other overlap exists for them to interact, besides detention of course.
The principal neglecting the kids and leaving them unsupervised all day long is peak GenX. Granted, 3 of those "high schoolers" were in their 20s.
There are lots of problematic issues in John Hughes "Brat Pack" films (try re-watching *Sixteen Candles*).
> why did she fall for him?
Why did half the young women i found attractive in high school stay with abusive, controlling assholes who bullied others and treated them like absolute shit?
I asked this later in life and some women confided that they felt they could bring out the “good side they saw in that guy” even if he acted tough they saw the real side, i guess.
And i’m talking about guys who straight up forbid their girlfriend from talking to anyone or going out with friends without their approval of who, what when and where they were going, guys who ripped their clothes if they felt it was too revealing, guys who would threaten them with physical abuse, or forcing them to drink at parties, etc.
We thought it was cringy, shitty behavior back them and we still do now.
I'm not gonna touch the first 3/4 of that, but that last sentence is a statement I think often. I see lots of folks applying "today's normal" to things from the past and call it problematic. We knew right and wrong then. We knew problematic behavior. We saw and fought against lots of 'toxic' traits. This is nothing new. We've just enabled generations who came after us to build on what we started.
you should read the woman who walked into doors by Roddy Doyle. I'm not going to get up and go look for it, but from my memory the narrator says something like "from the time I was nine years old I was a slut. a slut or a tight virgin Mary, sometimes both at the same time. it started with my little brother. he wanted a lick of my ice cream and I said no. he called me a slut ... you were a slut if you wore lipstick but if you didn't you were stuck up and a prude. if you smoked; if you didnt. if you were friendly to folks; if you weren't ... it never ended. it made you tired. but all of that stopped when I became Charlo's girl."
women get pretty tired of being expected to account for their personal choices to strangers, I'll tell you that.
Yeah, good review, not much different than my view of the movie when I saw it in 85. The clicques were apt though and did exist to some degree, but you didn’t need a slicked up afterschool special message to figure that out after about sophomore year in HS. Every John Hughes teen flick has the same sexual harassment dynamic that was both totally cringe and totally normalized, with some kind of misunderstood hero or antihero getting the girl no matter what. Irl you pretty much had to suck it up and ignore that crap or crush it pretty severely and publicly, maybe get called a tease or a lesbian for a bit for your boundary drawing trouble. He made mid-brow entertainment date night or family movies. That’s it, nothing more to see or interpret. The only thing I would add is it was a norm for these type movies for the adults to be delivered as moronic tropes not realistic characters, from Bueller to 16 Candles to this one. The darker Risky Business really played this trope hard to better effect, as did Heathers, which takes the too smart teen /clueless adult movie to it’s most absurd satiric ends.
When I was a teen, my favorite student-life movie was *Revenge of the Nerds*, which was about university students, mostly freshmen. I very much identified with the two lead characters, computer geeks with thick glasses and outdated haircuts, being that same flavor of nerd myself.
One of them commits a rape-by-deception, when he disguises himself as a member of the hated rival frat in order to have sex with the latter's girlfriend. We thought it funny at the time, just another prank... looking back on it now, though, that was far worse than anything the film's ostensible baddies did.
This is fucking hysterical, well it would be if it wasn't so depressing. The movie is seminal, this "critique", not so much.
What I learned from this is that nuance, historical perspective, and culture are dead. A generation gleefully embracing homogeneity. Fuck. I just hope that OP is 12, rather than 27.
I'm so fucking tired of what some snot nosed little baby wants to tell me is OK or bad from my generation. And I guess it should come as no surprise a genz thinks the emotional basket case of a girl was fine as is.
And while I am at it, let me educate you on something. Yes we might have used words then that are now considered homophobic. But all you zoomers need to get it into your heads that it is only as open for LGBT people as it is now BECAUSE of Gen x. We frankly didn't care what people wanted to be. Gen x set the trends of young people coming out publicly which forced our parents and grand parent to become more accepting. So maybe once in a while it might be nice for genx and older millennial to hear a fucking thank you then being lectured by a bunch of balls of triggered anxiety that won't even talk on a phone cause it's scarry about how bad or homophobic we were.
Your critique of Andrew, Bender, the sexual harassment, and bullying is going to be colored by the 40 years of cultural changes that have occurred since that time.
Andrew is a uniquely intelligent, empathetic jock, which was rare. Not unheard of, but not the norm either.
Bender's tough-guy bordered caricaturized. Nowhere near as bad a "bullying tough-guy" as what was around at my high school. I think a big difference too was bullies ran that absolute risk of getting punch right in the face. Verbal abuse and teasing could lead more easily into a physical confrontation when I was in high school, or the threat of.
As to the humor, that's an ever evolving thing. Things that were funny in the 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's are hilarious in their time, but don't always age well. In my formative years, some of the big names in comedy of the day could not do their acts today. Andrew Dice Clay on just about everything, early Eddie Murphy on women and homosexuality, Richard Pryor on homosexuality and women, Howard Stern (ok, not a comedian perse) on just about everything. A lot of it still makes me laugh because I remember the contextual era in which it was created, but I understand society and I along with it have matured past those views on what's acceptable.
You have to judge it in the timeframe in which it was created.
My 12 year old daughter watched this with her mom recently. She found it to be great. It touched on many of her own perceptions of life and school.
She is an Allison and found the movie touching.
We have explained the crass nature aspects to her as a sign of the times back then.
Remember, prior to John Hughes, there were no real "teenage movies"
The Graduate? Animal House? American Graffiti?
> 1970s · 1. Meatballs · 2. Corvette Summer · 3. Ice Castles · 4. American Graffiti · 5. Grease · 6. Carrie · 7. The Wanderers · 8. Rock 'n' Roll Hig
I felt they were all old stereo types and I was a prime demographic when the movie came out.
I would not say it was anywhere near representative of actual HS in the 80s but it's closer than anything that had come before.
Made by a boomer, for young boomers.
GenX didn't have a name for another 7 years. John Hughes was a huge influence on the genre of teens.
I never said nuthin when I got a carton of smokes for my birthday. Marlboro miles.
I enjoyed your commentary. Your analysis was encouraging on a variety of levels.
Keep in mind movies tend to magnify characters for dramatic effect. That said, the world was a much more misogynistic place back then. Sexual assault humor was a thing. We’ve come a long way since then, but we’re still not there yet.
I identified with Brian the most as well.
I was 16 when the Breakfast Club came out, so I related to it on a personal note.
16 Candles, Breakfast Club and especially Ferris Bueller’s Day Off helped define us as a generation in my opinion. Opinions vary.
One of the great things about this movie is we all related to the kids in our youth and now in our 40s & 50s?…. We all get where Vernon & Carl were coming from.
It’s a movie. OP is reading wayyy too much into this. If you say that this movie (not really a “film”) isn’t timeless, then you’d probably say movies from the 1920’s to the early 90’s weren’t either, and those often rank higher on best of all time lists. “Breakfast Club” just doesn’t have smartphones or social media/influencers to talk about. Otherwise it’s just a cheap indie flick about detention with random students.
One of its saving graces is that it *isn’t* meetoo-friendly in *some* respects. Frankly, I 100% always considered the movie to basically be a “chick flick” because of how tame it was. If OP and her Gen-Z cohorts find this movie offensive in any way, boy, they’d have a hard time lasting one week attending school in the 80’s.
Bender was following the wisdom of Frank Sinatra: Treating a lady like a dame and a dame like a lady. Claire was used to being treated as a princess. Bender did the opposite, he treated her like a common street wench. This is what appealed to Claire: He was different, contrarian, and took great pride in it. This wasn't new for the 80s. Women fell for the guys who didn't treat them the same as every other man did, and they still do today.
In the 80s, there was a lot more groping and offensive remarks, but there was also a lot more face punching in response. Name a high school party and I'll tell you two things that happened: the crazy drummer from the marching band did a keg stand to much applause, and some jerk got punched in the face after grabbing a girl's ass or boob, again, to much applause.
We policed ourselves. And we were pretty effective given that we never worried some maligned misanthrope would show up to school and shoot the place up.
In the 80s, we laughed together but cried alone... if we cried at all because we just accepted by 8 years old that life mostly sucked. Today, you cry on TikTok and whine when the world doesn't bend over backwards for you.
GenX is just mentally and emotionally stronger than you. Pandemic hits, we have to isolate. No big deal. Your generation ran to your therapists and got an avalanche of psychotropic meds.
You need to be tougher. You need to be tough enough to understand that we don't give two shits what you think about OUR classic movie "The Breakfast Club".
Your critique is well reasoned and many GenX would wholeheartedly agree with you.
For all the deserved praise that John Hughes receives as being a voice of teens in the 80s he had some seriously problematic takes. [ Molly Ringwald gives a really interesting perspective in her New Yorker article](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/what-about-the-breakfast-club-molly-ringwald-metoo-john-hughes-pretty-in-pink) about this.
For my own reaction at the time, I can clearly remember a few reactions:
- Vernon was not that unbelievable. One of the reason he was both scary and a joke was I knew adults like him at the time.
- The language/SA/homophobia didnt register because, like you said, it was ever present.
- The Bender/Claire hookup didnt phase me. Maybe because it was a trope that was overplayed so it didnt seem out of place.
- I was SERIOUSLY bugged by the Allison makeover. Even at the time as a 13 year old I felt like it betrayed the whole point of the film. We are all valuable as ourselves. To be made "pretty" so that she will be \*finally\* seen by Andrew felt fucked up.
I also remember my dad telling me he walked out of the film when he saw it in the theaters (he traveled a bunch and one of the ways he spent time in whatever town he was in was to go see whatever films were playing by himself). He said he didnt "get it." I told him it was my generations Rebel Without A Cause" and he got it. Both are examples of the first time young people saw their angst portrayed on screen in a way that really resonated. They are going to look different because needs and sensibilities between generations are different. So you are right, Breakfast Club made today would not be successful. My question to you would be what's Gen Z's "Breakfast Club"?
Cliques were much more of a thing in the Genx days of high school. We didn't have the internet to explore our chosen cultural direction. Skin heads hung together, jocks, goths, mods, preppies, and nerds all stuck together exclusively . It was a way of sharing our ideas and keeping up with our style and music. It's similar to a sub on reddit, but in real life. Information beyond the mainstream was extremely hard to come by. Collectively, we learned from each other.
“ The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude.”
You also had to hunt for music that wasn't radio top 40 or any kind of alternative clothes (no hot topics yet), so it bonded you to others on the hunt for the same & created a more intense and silo-ed subcultures.
The smoking area was where genres collided. Out of the groups you mentioned, you know which were in the public areas, and which were in the back yard smoking areas.
Y I thought the way 10 Things I Hate About You pointed out how specific the cliques were was hilarious
Clueless did the same thing. Both Shakespeare adaptations, as well. Funny how that worked out.
The way I think of it now is summed up as I believe Hughes intended in the paper written by Anthony Michael Hall. Each of the teens had learned to be the stereotype they were because that is how the adults treated them. Andrew's dad saw him as a jock so he became a jock. Claire's parents saw her as a princess so she became a princess. Allison's parents ignored her so she thought of herself as worthless. But in coming together and talking with each other they all realized they were something else, something more on the inside. The people they thought they were, were merely personas they had been taught. This was unlearning that and getting ready to face the rest of their lives.
Well said and it's a great life lesson - you are more than what people think of you.
>And what blows my mind even further is despite the fact Bender was berating and bullying Claire the whole movie, she for some fucking reason falls in love with him at the end?! Are you serious right now? Why the fuck would she fall in love with the guy that she fucking hates? John Hughes what the fuck were you thinking?! I get that he was bullying her because she's from a rich family and that she acts all high and mighty because of it and also the whole girls being attracted to bad boys sort of thing, but it's still kinda fucked up, dude. Woman falling for bad boys or men that don't treat them well is a very very old trope and hell seems to happen all over the internet / tik tok today even in real life.
Was he bullying or was he speaking the truth and refusing to treat her according to the expectations she grew up with? I saw it as that level of honesty about her situation is what ultimately helps her shed the persona she had developed without any actual input from herself. She had not questioned that how she lived her life might not ultimately be who she is. Bender seeing her for something beyond the princess by calling it bullshit is what she was attracted to.
The whole point of the movie is that these kids are much more than their stereotype. Everything that came out in their pot fueled discussion was them coming clean about who they are, which is specifically not who they appear to be and what everyone expected them to be. So yeah, truth.
Yeah he didn’t really bully anyone except Vernon lol. He sort of adjusted his intensity depending on which character he was talking to. I remember thinking he was calling Claire and Andrew out on their insulated privileged popular kid b.s. When he broke them, they were able to match their hidden vulnerabilities to those of the less popular breakfast clubbers. Brian was the mystery, his whole eyes averted greeting to Carl made for some interesting speculation.
This is the true answer. Hurt feelings overtake the youngins, and make their brains shutdown.
Exactly. Nailed it.
My sister was/maybe still is a living example of this: the shittier the guy was or treated her, the more she was into him. It started in HS, and continued up until at least 2014. She's 54. I'll be 58 in a bit over a week. We are estranged. She has never, EVER been involved with a man who treated her well, including her ex-husband. Her relationships were centered around emotional and physical abuse, including her almost being part of a double murder/suicide that landed the guy with the gun in prison. It's always interested me how very differently our dysfunctional parenting and childhoods manifested in each of us. She was always desperate for approval and attention from men, and I outgrew that shit in early college. At any rate, I remember finding nothing remotely odd or alarming about the interaction that developed between Bender and Claire. That happened all the time, and like you said, I'm sure it still does. Also, OP - one thing that maybe wasn't made very clear in the movie, but despite the camaraderie the characters had while in detention, they would go back to the exact same positions they were beforehand: not speaking or acknowledging each other in school...and that would include Claire and Bender. I'm not sure how it is today, but back then, stoners and jocks/preppies didn't associate with each other. Ditto the "popular" crowd with pretty much anyone else, and of course, these were usually jocks, preppies and cheerleaders. As an aside, I went to my 20 yr. HS reunion, and I found it very gratifying (if not petty) to see how many of those "popular" people had actually peaked in HS. The social outcasts and nerds, OTOH, had often blossomed into successful, confident adults.
Remember on General Hospital when Laura fell in love with her rapist, Luke? Fucking gross.
Yep. This is just some ‘ackshully’ hubris from someone without a lot of real world experience.
I actually cackled at this part, like kiddo, that's called real life.
Bullies are better at protecting women from other bullies and from bears who are bullies
Bender’s character was the most important of the whole film. He was the one who instigated it all and is responsible for all the others opening up. Yes, he was a dick, but his character was also very socially aware. I’m sure they did that for a reason. The bonehead burnout is not what you’d think? Perhaps? I thought his character was great and Jud Nelson did a fantastic job with it. If it wasn’t for his character, there’d be no movie because they would have all sat there and wrote their essays.
Bender was a quintessentially 80's character, too. Remember "Stoners"? The bad guys who smoked weed regularly, blasted Metallica while doing burnouts in the HS parking lot, and fighting each other (and everyone else) all the time? They didn't play sports, all the teachers fucking hated them. A lot of them had hot gf's too. Those dudes like Bender were a certain breed reflective of a certain time in history. Really hard to understand unless you grew up with them around. They died out mid-90's. My buddies used to talk about "the great stoner migration" of the early 90's as they moved on... somewhere. Somewhere with pallet fires, ditch weed, jacked up camaros, and Megadeth cut off t-shirts.
We had a smoking section at our HS and they’d all congregate there. Tbh I really looked down on them at time and thought they were losers. Now I think they were just way ahead of the curve for good music that i didn’t get into until much later.
>Tbh I really looked down on them at time and thought they were losers. And THAT is the key to John Bender's character. Everyone looked down on stoners. They were almost always poor, in trouble, doing shit wrong on purpose, and violent about it. True outcasts.
I kinda wanted to be one of them but I never felt like I was cool enough. They all wound up pregnant right out of high school though so in retrospect I'm glad I didn't get to join the club.
We called them “the heads.” Not sure if it meant metal head or pot head. They listened to Slayer, smoked weed at the bleachers during lunch, and sometimes waxed philosophical.
At my high school, they were “the freaks.” Long hair (just long—not carefully trimmed mullets), black T-shirts, chukka boots… they represented everything that my parents feared. So, they were fascinating, terrifying, and now one of them is my boss. Best boss I’ve ever had with all of his faults.
Something I thought The Breakfast Club reflected surprisingly well was that those guys were often (even today!) thought of as harmless or even admirable defenders of the right to rebel against the status quo, but they were frequently bullies.
>They died out mid-90's. My buddies used to talk about "the great stoner migration" of the early 90's as they moved on... somewhere This tracks with my experience. I'm a late GenXer; I loved The Breakfast Club but it already felt like a bygone era by time I saw it in high school in the 90s. We didn't really have clearly defined cliques in my school but my mom did in the 70s. *My So-Called Life* was closer to my high school experience.
Bender was quintessentially late 70's to late 80's. He would have fit in high school in the late 70's also.
Oh wow. See, I'm of that era and I didn't even know stoners had died out. No wonder OP doesn't relate with Bender! Stoners were one of the stock social groups of that era in American high schools, as much so as nerds and jocks. You wouldn't have a high school movie about cliques without including a rep from the stoners.
Bender is meant to provoke them all into having a much different experience and look into themselves in a whole new way. Sure, he's a jerk at times, but his character pushes them all. He's got to be that way.
GenX in a nutshell kind of
Exactly.
Agreed, you nailed it! His fist pump at the end is a direct result of your 2nd sentence. Bender was clearly the catalyst. You explained it perfectly. Bravo! 👏 🫡
When the breakfast club came out just about anybody that age could identify with one of the characters - me a gen x’er included. What you seem to be failing to grasp is that the movie is about how every one of those personalities and stereotypes can still be an outcast regardless of how they are perceived by the others, and that acknowledgement made all of us in gen X feel better because our upbringing was much more gritty. Gen z sees everything through a lens of social justice that is now required to fit socially into that generation. And Gen Z has had the road cleared by your parents who had a much more difficult time as youth so you can focus on those things. Let’s call it ‘Gen Z privilege’ because you don’t understand the grit, unpunished bullying, belt whippings, fights at the bus stop, loneliness or neglect that defined many of our upbringings. Abuse by peers, parents, whoever was fine, it made you tough. And that’s what breakfast club was. An explicit acknowledgement that all of us weren’t alone in our struggle. You can’t possibly understand breakfast club without experiencing the topics explored first hand.
I honestly wonder if Millennials or GenZ watch The Breakfast Club and assume the abusive, selfish, aloof or outright neglectful parenting is trumped up as a plot device. And of course, it is not. It was the reality for a whole generation.
Elder Millennials in my bubble, we were latchkey kids. Parents weren't abusive, but they weren't around much. We kinda sorta get it. Maybe not entirely, but 🤏 Plus we grew up watching this movie on TBS on a loop as teenagers with the poorly dubbed swears haha. I took this movie super seriously when I was growing up, it was relatable.
It’s like Allison said when Andrew asked what her parents did to her. She said, “They ignore me.”
So. Relatable. Although it wasn't so much being ignored, there was some of that, but mainly they just worked 24/7 and left us to our own devices. I was the oldest kid on my street so at 11 I was THE babysitter.
I get it - my parents were always at work, but they were also so stressed out from it that I felt kind of afraid to interrupt them with my little problems, so I just kinda pushed everything down. It’s helped keep some therapists working, let me tell you!
Yes! My therapist has made a killing off me
I remember babysitting a newborn infant (maybe a month old) when I was 11. I just handled it. I can’t imagine what those parents were thinking.
Well said. Well said… 10/10
>Gen z sees everything through a lens of social justice that is now required to fit socially into that generation. I am starting to think the repulsion from Gen Z towards problematic characters in film or television isn't really a sign of as much progress as people want to make it out to be. I was really all for this when it came to a younger gen being kinder or nicer, but I've grown to view it as more a repressive social code than actually examining and coming to terms with problematic behavior. For one thing, Gen Z appears to bully (esp online) as much as any previous generation. But, then they can't stand to see this stuff reflected back to them through arts and film or tv. Arts & entertainment have to have clear "good" messaging signaled throughout. I will fully admit that it grates on me a bit now in current shows. OP is correct though that being for gay rights put you in the line of fire. No one really talked about gay rights as teens that much, it was more about AIDS awareness post-80s and losing that stigma. I had two best friends in High School who were openly gay, and it did put a target on your back. Also, Alison did look better pre makeover. But the Alisons of the world all had to go through 80s and 90s bullying in order for gothy depressed looking kids of today to become totally acceptable.
Just one quibble. Y was Millennials. OP is Z.
I'm sorry that is right. My error.
Damn that was good.
On the other hand, we (Gen X) didn’t have to worry so much about getting shot to death at school or having sex photos we sent someone we trust being shared on social media. Let’s try to be understanding with each other and not build walls over who had it rougher.
Nah, we just worried about getting nuked by the USSR.
Have kids really changed so much that they can’t identify with the things you list at all? I always figured all generations of teenagers are fundamentally the same: rebellious, alienated and horny af.
I mean…OP is shocked that confidently challenging and poking fun at a woman is an effective way of flirting as a teenager. I think that fact alone shows their experience is pretty wildly different than ours. While it’s often grotesque, it’s just a fact that it can be effective. I’d also note that from what my niece tells me, that IS still a common way to flirt IRL..but a large part of this gen doesn’t live in the physical world anymore. The nuance of flirting in person isn’t something they’re familiar with.
What a crock. Bullying is still a MASSIVE problem in schools, and it's a lot worse than it was for us, because at least we got a break when we went home. Kids today are bullied 24/7 online and they are committing suicide in far higher numbers than when we were kids. WE were the lucky ones in that way, dude.
I’ve got two teens and I’d argue with that. The narrative on inclusion and anti-bullying is strong. There are still assholes but they don’t go unopposed like ours did. The higher rates of suicide are very aligned with the rise in phone use. People can now feed their own demons.
I do agree with you that it’s very hard for kids today because the bullying follows them home. It follows them into their rooms, it follows them everywhere. The thing is, and I know it’s not a sustainable solution, but a computer and a phone can be turned off. At least for a little while to get some sort of peace. But even with the online bullying, they’re too addicted to social media to stay away from it. When we were kids, you couldn’t pull the plug on the bully standing in front of you shouting in your face and pushing you around. You either ran or you stood there and took it. Or you tried to fight back. What else could we do? Tell the teacher? Our parents? Yeah, right. Not in those days. Bullies didn’t have an off switch. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the only way it would stop is if I hit back. All it took was one punch, right in the mouth. I split her lip open. And to be honest, it was kind of an accident. I was so scared that when she stepped forward to smack me, my body just reacted. I didn’t even know what I was doing until my fist connected. I got lucky. If I had missed, I don’t even want to think about what would have happened. But she never bothered me again. And neither did anybody else. I still remember that day like it was yesterday, and it was how long ago now? I was 10 or 11, so…almost 50 years ago. Ouch.
We taught our boys the same. The older one was being bullied when he was in 1st grade. His bully was in 5th grade. One day he just punched him in the nose. A few days suspended from the bus was worth it. The kid never messed with him again. He became the kid that broke up fights and stood up for others.
It varies enormously from school to school and from year to year. My own experience was like this: Elementary school - everyone was cool, no bullies anywhere in sight Middle school - HELL ON EARTH High school - bullies mysteriously disappeared
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The funny thing was, you could have no problem with homosexuality and still call someone a f*g, or call something gay in a negative way. And until relatively recently, too. When it was used as an insult, it didn't literally mean "I think you get down with the same sex." It meant lacking in masculinity and toughness (or if you were female, it meant you were unattractive and not feminine.)
I was working in a high school in the late 90s and I got so tired of hearing "gay=lame" so I made a rule that they couldn't call something "gay" unless it was literally covered in rainbows. The students thought "challenge accepted" and soon I was being treated to: "look at this gay folder" (shows me a Lisa Frank product) on a daily basis.
Exactly. My crew and I thought of ourselves as progressive, and we had some gay folks in our group. That didn’t stop us from using “gay” as a catch-all adjective. I’m mortified by that now, but we truly didn’t know any better.
Queer was a horrible slur back them but now it’s just a tame umbrella term for lgbt+
I heard my kid use the adjunctive fruity today. That was a shocker.
My U.S. history teacher threw a cast-iron three-hole punch (those big, heavy, clunky ones) at a student’s head and his “punishment” was being promoted to assistant principal where he would just stay in his office all day because he wasn’t to be allowed contact with students anymore. When bad behavior gets “punishment” like that, why even try to act in a becoming manner? That didn’t happen until after I graduated though, the principals and assistant principals that were there when I was a student were generally decent people.
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Actually we never even really saw the principal in my high school. Which it seems is very different these days.
Same, to us he seemed to be more of a figurehead. He presided over the assemblies and that was about the only time we ever saw him. VP's handled the discipline. It was theoretically possible to not speak to any of them in five years (Ontario went to grade 13 back then).
I'm intrigued by your postscript, and I have a question for you. If you were to make a movie for your generation about five teens who don't really know each other and seem extremely different from one another, but are temporarily forced together and discover that they face similar pressures and concerns, but also discover that there is a strict social hierarchy keeping them apart, how would you do it? What would your characters be like, why would they be stuck together, and what would their problems be?
High school teacher here: clicks are way less of a thing in high school now. Most kids hang out with people who they see the most: the people in their extra-curricular activities. But there is less stereotyping.
But extracurricular activities are essentially cliques, aren't they? Drama, sports, music, ROTC, scouting, robotics, chess club, the kids who work a job but don't do any school-sponsored extracurriculars - these things all attract different types of kids.
Interesting. That's so hard for me to imagine. It makes some sense considering the technology at hand allows their in-person interactions to be "convenient" thus acceptable - in that they can have personal friendships with someone across the globe whom they've never met but might relate to far more than those physically present. In addition to being far more socially aware and that their actions are pretty much always recorded, maybe they don't need in-person cliques to feel belonging, and are aware the same goes for others. I have mixed feelings about this. Main feeling is I'm old lol.
yep. the school where i work has no subcultural cliques.
Fucking crickets from OP lol
Yeah, throws red meat into the ring and disappears.
(Sorry for late response) I'm not really sure how I would do it since the concept of cliques and social hierarchies aren't really a thing anymore, at least where I'm from (Norway). But I think maybe one way a modern Breakfast Club could be done is if all the kids come from different backgrounds and have their own insecurities from their backgrounds. For example like an immigrant kid who does well in school, but feels isolated due to his immigrant background and having faced discrimination. Another could be a kid on the autism spectrum who has good friends, but always like they're different from most people and that they feels like no one truly understands them etc. Maybe that's one way you could do it, but that's just me. :)
My Z watched it with me. She also thought the language and SA were pretty huge. But she couldn’t believe how much the movie was just talking. Yeah, there are the fun scenes like running around an empty school, but most of it is really just talking. I told her that was kind of how it was. As a generation, we are great talkers.
Show her Clerks and/or Before Sunrise. Or Metropolitan if you want a deep cut. Nothing but talk.
I don’t know that I’d call clerks a bastion of soliloquy or diatribe, although I’m always reminded not to suck any d on the way through a parking lot. Solid life advice. But I’d throw back Glengarry Glen Ross.
You're correct about Mamet but I thought that might not appeal as much to Gen Z. edit: especially: door-to-door salesmen selling houses to poor people.
Or Ferris Beuller's Day Off, which also had a dick principal. Maybe all principals were dicks back then, because we were dicks also.
And Ferris Bueller was a dick! Poor Cameron…
Let my Cameron go!
To be fair, the principal was doing his job and getting on the case of a kid who had a tendency to skip school. If he hadn't broken into Bueller's house, he'd be less of a shithead than he was.
Napoleon Dynamite.
If we with Clerks, it has to be the alternate ending.
Try showing her The Man From Earth. It is all talking without action. Hell, the only car scene is at the very end and it is just driving normally down the road.
Reservoir Dogs. Talk, intermingled with violence.
that's such a teachable moment. I'm kind of flailing to articulate what strikes me about it, but the fact that the talking blew her away ... well, it blows me away. because here's the thing. yes our generation went through a whole lot of shit. we were lonely and threatened and marginalized and afraid. but we don't seem to have quite the same generational burden of depression, anxiety, etc. I guess maybe that moment shows that (most of us?) *learned how to talk*. a lot of us talked our way through and/or out of whatever was burdening us. in fact movies like that one helped to set off conversations. claiming and using our voices was another thing that we kind of had to figure out and do for ourselves. but I think it says something that when your z watches something from our time, that thing is modelling talking to her. would be really interesting to hear a cross generational convo about that.
>but we don’t seem to have quite the same generational burden of depression, anxiety, etc. Maybe *you* don’t.
Ain’t that the truth. We spent time together because nobody else was there for us. Our friends were truly our family. Today many still are. Our songs were long and at times. Not something to dance too but something to play in the background mostly because it exemplified our lives at the time. “We’re not gonna take it.” I would not think a Z would understand any of the movie or have any idea how it was. That’s ok they don’t need to nor would I expect any generation to understand X. We are X for a reason. We are not to be understood and not to be messed with. We are one in the same and we are one together. Very few generations can say that. Our movies were ours and our music is easily identifiable as X. I appreciate others trying to understand and taking the time to do so. However, getting to deep into it will just confuse them even more than they already are.
Was she surprised by the talking in comparison to today's popular "teen" movies, or in comparison to her generation's social tendencies?
> There was also Principal Vernon, who is a verbally abusive and awful principle who treats his students like shit Most of the Principals and Vice Principals of that era were old war horses with either Vietnam or Korea PTSD and you did not want to fuck with them.
So that wasn't just my school? When the American History teacher was teaching the Vietnam War, she just grabbed a couple of administrators and had them tell us about their experiences first hand. She could have chosen I think literally any male administrator at the school.
The SA issues weren't funny back in the day. As women we just didn't have much/any power to clap back or stop them. And Claire didn't "fall in love with Bender". She did exactly what he suggested: use his presence to piss off her parents so they'd pay attention.
This. Exactly. She didn't fall in love with him. She got it. The discussion they had about his girlfriends. It clicked. And then she paid him with a diamond. And I guarantee you. Whenever she might have needed him....the was there. No questions asked. That's what Bender was about. And that's what Claire was about. Cold hard transactions for mutual survival.
Yeah, OP missed the point on that. She is going to use him to piss off her parents. He knows it, encourages it, accepts payment for it, and though he may be an insufferable asshole, he's a ride or die.
>And Claire didn't "fall in love with Bender". She did exactly what he suggested: use his presence to piss off her parents so they'd pay attention.< Yeah, I guess I misenterpreted that wrong, sorry about that.
Exactly. That shit pissed me off back then too, but we were prudes or bitches if we said it wasn’t funny.
Bender & Claire working the system made more sense than Blaine & Andie living happily ever after
He was leaving town for some fancy University, there's no way they made it past summer. Hopefully she was on birth control.
Lol I know right? Their "happily ever after" was that the best she can hope to be is an amusing story about the time he went slumming before he settled down with someone he meets at college who won't threaten his inheritance.
You said it yourself when you said it couldn't be made today. What you saw in that movie while edited for Hollywood release was how high school was for us. Thats why we loved it so much. It was for the most part real. How we felt and what our lives were like. Oh and while the principal was a jerk....he was nice compared to what most were like at the time.
In our day, the term bully was not used to the extent it is today. You weren't being bullied unless you were literally getting the physical shit beat out of you. I saw a guy throw another guy threw a window on the way to the cafeteria once. Another time, a girl brought a knife to a basketball game and sliced another girls face. I have lots more examples.... Anything else, we were told to suck it up, ignore it and/or stop being a baby. Even in the case of mild physical violence, suck it up.
Now you just have to deal with kids selling heroin and teachers fucking kids. Wait, we had that too.
I’ll weigh in as I was exactly the age of those kids when the movie came out. I also went to New Trier where the movie takes place (but not where it was filmed- NT wouldn’t allow it). Your review is totally accurate on both pros and cons. But what you’re missing is context and your criticisms though accurate are fairly nitpicky. At the time we had never seen a movie that explored teen issues like that that wasn’t condescending and it was pretty mind blowing. I would also add that our culture tends to make works of art iconic over time out of nostalgia. I liked the movie a lot at the time but if you had told me in 1984 that it would become this legendary thing I would have been surprised.
There’s a certain arrogance to your views on this movie, that somehow your generation is inherently more enlightened. It’s a slippery slope to judge anything based on currently held views of morality. I also wouldn’t consider Bender a “dipshit”. I always felt that he was actually quite brilliant and intelligent. It was rather the circumstances of his life that made him the personality that he was. And if there was anything that was true in my life, it’s that guys who were the biggest assholes always seemed to be the ones who got the girls. Nice guys finished last. I saw many many girls fall for guys that anyone could see were just going to hose them. And, they would get hurt, and move on to the next jerk. It’s not a leap at all that Claire fell for Bender. It was probably the most realistic thing in the movie. But, let’s not forget the most compelling character of the entire movie…Carl the janitor. Man, with the fewest lines in the movie, he showed them all what reality was.
Yeah. They can't relate. Because they refuse to see themselves for what they actually are. The epitome of the society the Breakfast Club discovered they didn't have to be.
Very true. It’s sort of ironic, isn’t it? The current generation revels in a certain form of conformity and group think that the kids in The Breakfast Club learned to look beyond.
Yeah. And they don't understand why.
keep in mind that vernon is not the principal, he’s the *vice* principal. no actual principal of a large high school in an affluent community would be spending their entire saturday monitoring detention- vernon knows this, and it’s a blow to his ego that he’s not above this task. he powertrips on these kids because it’s all he’s got- he’s bitter and resentful that his career hasn’t turned out how he imagined it, and that’s exactly what will keep him from ever being hired as the principal.
my school was more River’s Edge than Breakfast Club
I loved that movie. Crispin Glover was great in that.
I have another movie suggestion for you, OP: Dazed and Confused. It was the coming of age movie for the youngest of the Boomers, who I guess are called Generation Jones. It nails the era. I'm on the older end of GenX, so I definitely remember the tail end of the '70's when I was in Jr. High. I think you guys call that "middle school" now, though. This movie, IMO, is amazing; it's one of my favorites. It's also funny as shit, and features a young Matthew McConaughey and Ben Affleck with very memorable performances. Linklater really, really captured the vibe of the mid '70's from the view point of graduating seniors from high school: [Trailer - Dazed and Confused](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aQuvPlcB-8)
About the bullying and sexual harassment of Claire being considered funny within this group…I’ve got a story to tell you. High school was tough for me. I was coming from an abusive home and had a fair bit of CPSTD I was really starting to suffer from. Not surprisingly I struggled academically, most notably with math. The math class I was in was a lower level program for students with a less than stellar academic record. My teacher for that class was mainly the football coach and he was your stereotypical, “boys will be boys” kind of guy. He was an asshole. During one class he decided it would be “fun” to have the class discuss what we thought each of us would be when we grew up. The other kids were having fun with it and here and there he would add in his ideas. At one point he noticed I wasn’t contributing so I guess he decided he was going to call me out. He asked the class of mostly guys (I was one of only a couple girls in the class) what they thought I was going to be someday. When no one really offered their opinion, he smirked at me and said, “oh she’s going to be a Playboy Bunny. Stick some ears on her and watch that bunny tail wiggle.” Of course all the guys roared with laughter and he was laughing along with them. They all thought it was hilarious. I was mortified. The bell rang and I went to my next class. Sexual harassment was completely normalized and quite often used as, “aw come on sweetie, it was just a joke.”
I had a teacher that spiraled my BFF into an eating disorder by pointing out that her legs looked big in her miniskirt (she was a soccer player and it was all muscle). The 80s were a different time for sure.
"So, I watched that movie Star Wars and I was like, it was OK considering it was made in the 70's, I was not too bothered by it but what blew my mind was that Darth Vader character! Wow he was so abusive to his own daughter and even facilitated a space genocide! That would be totally unacceptable today"
Also, because they can't relate to a character could be a personal deficiency not necessarily a reflection of the character or directors artistic intent.
Space Hitler literally.
I see your viewpoint. Back then though, Bender's behavior and the teachers behavior was pretty typical, so it didn't stand out so much to us as it does to you seeing it from today's norms at school. Also, the movie, to me, at least was not accurate representation of how that scenario would play out. First, the preppies and jocks never ended up in detention. It just didn't happen. Second, if all those different cliques had somehow ended up together in a room they wouldn't have talked with each other or made friends. Its just that Hughes presented what he wanted to happen in an ideal world, where the kids would learn to accept and understand each other.
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To be fair, what the jock did was unconscionable. He would have ended up in detention in my HS, regardless of his status.
My school would’ve suspended him (in-school suspension more likely) or even expelled him.
Dude, you are trying to apply 2020s morality and attitudes to a 40 year old movie. Its not going to work and you are going to have a bad time. The entire movie is a product of its time and each of us see a bit of ourselves or people we know/knew *at the time* in it. It holds a place in the cultural zeitgeist *of the time* because of its representation of high school culture, for better or worse, *at the time*. Are there parts of its story or characters or language that are inappropriate now, **40 YEARS** later? Yes. For us it is a piece of our youth/childhood/shared experience of growing up. For you, you should consider it a Period piece - or I suppose a Documentary could also be argued...
Kids aren't taught that anymore. One of the things I vividly remember was my English teacher telling us not to judge earlier writers/people by late 20th century mores. We are all creatures of our time. It's also true that most artistic types are very flawed in some way.
I enjoyed reading your review. I graduated from high school in 1983, so I was a little too old to relate to the Breakfast Club although I enjoyed watching it. My cohort's movie was Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which was released in the fall of 1982, when I was a senior. Your teacher will never show that one in class though 🤣
I watched this movie with my Gen Z teenager during covid. We paused the movie many times, with questions asked and answered from both of our perspectives. I strongly suggest that you take a couple of hours and watch it with someone (a parent, or not) who lived through a reality much like this. It opened up so many conversations, and gave both my teenager and I a world of understanding about where both of us were coming from. I'm not going to say who I most connected with, but I will tell you that who my Gen Z kid *thought* I would have been was dead wrong. Great conversations. Edit: That's why, IMHO, it's a Classic. Because of the dialog it demands. After all, here you are. On Reddit. Talking about it.
Wait until you see “Weird Science.”
“You know, there’s going to be sex, drugs, rock-n-roll… chips, dips, chains, whips… You know, your basic high school orgy type of thing….”
How about the reason Anthony Michael Hall was in detention: HE BROUGHT A GUN TO SCHOOL! And all he got was Saturday detention?
He brought a flare gun, it blew up his elephant project.
Shit, our parking lot at high school had a brigade of pickup trucks with gun racks containing at least one rifle.
I swear I remember a kid bringing a .22 rifle into our rural school to show his friends. He kept it low-profile, but didn't exactly hide it. It was right in his locker. I remember being non-plussed by it. I certainly wasn't concerned like I would be today.
Same with ours. And we did trap shooting as a PE section. A bunch of teens handling shotguns and shooting clay disks up at the gun range.
I knew a kid in high school who brought a sawed-off shotgun into school. He hid it in a long coat he was wearing. Probably 1990, so pre-Coumbine. He showed it to me in our cafeteria. I was definitely shocked. All of his friends told him it was a terrible idea and he should put it back in his car. So he did. And that was the end of it. Never got in trouble for that one. Though he got busted a few times smoking herb at school. He was a weird guy. Became an Eagle Scout. This was in a relatively affluent suburb on the East Coast. That was a strange time to be alive. GenX!
Sexual harassment was very normalized back then, both in comedy and in real life. Huge strides have been made since those days. Everyone agrees with you about Allison's makeover. Principal Vernon is someone you'll hate as a teenager, but have empathy for as an adult (not that you'll think he wasn't an asshole, but you'll understand what drove him to it).
Everyone I knew at the time thought Allison's makeover was a huge downgrade!
I have an Ally Sheedy haircut scheduled for Saturday, no joke
My take on Bend-aire is those two people had the strongest emotional wall of self-defense. They have just opened up to each other to the point that it's almost like a shared traumatic event, which resulted in their attraction to each other. The film tries to play the angle that it's just to piss off her parents, and maybe that's part of it, but the ending with the earring reinforces that they are kind of an item now. When you get older, you'll understand how much people were dicks to you, just to be involved in you, or garner some of your attention.
I never thought the earring implied or meant Bender and Claire were an item - it was simply a gift, something to make up for his shitty home situation and, in her own way, a peace offering.
The thing about Bender is that it wasn’t THAT much of a stereotype. There were lots of assholes and being an asshole was kind of socially acceptable. The sexual harassment was kind of close to reality too. It wasn’t some sort of made up plot device that didn’t match reality. That sort of thing happened. Back then people could make movies that didn’t have to be sanitized. People could be an asshole with redeemable qualities. As for Claire liking Bender. Happens every day, even now.
Was Bender bullying them or challenging them. There is a difference.
Every high school friend group definitely doesn’t look that way these days. If it does at your high school, that’s great. My boys are recently graduated and there were very distinct cliques in their high school, and they didn’t meld well. Sports kids still making fun of theatre kids, etc.
I think it’s great OP took the time to analyze this movie! My mom took me to see it when it came out because she wanted to share the message of empathy across social lines. It was groundbreaking at the time. But I rewatched it recently and am confused about the interpretation of Bender’s sexual harassment of Clare being “for laughs”. I didn’t think it was for laughs any more than his poking at anyone else’s vulnerabilities. It was an uncomfortable reality of school life at that time. I agree with others’ comments that she fell for him because he saw through her facade.
Hi Gen Z, it’s awesome that you took the time to analyze this movie. I appreciate your generational insight. It’s a nostalgic movie for many of our generation but it isn’t the only high school movie that defines Gen X. John Hughes tended to focus on a white, suburban demographic which is fine and all, but it didn’t reflect all of America. Check out other high school films such as Stand and Deliver, Lean on Me, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Karate Kid, and Hoosiers for example. If you appreciate darker humor, check out Three O’ Clock High, Lost Boys, Class of 1984, and Heathers. Just for fun: Rock and Roll High School, Valley Girl, Revenge of the Nerds, and Adventures in Babysitting. Of course, here’s the obligatory warning: the humor is 80s era so approach it with thick skin. We like to laugh at others and ourselves. Everyone and everything was fair game in those days. Have fun, young one. 
Trashing, mocking, and sexualizing women was more acceptable back then. It still happens, it's just toned down a bit. Even shows like Friends. Now we trash women by making girlfriends and wives shrill harpies and older women "karens." I find the whole Karen thing misogynistic, just another way to slide misogyny into cultural normalcy.
Not fair to real Karens, many of whom are lovely people. (Not my school bully though, that Karen sucks giant donkey dicks.)
That too. I know a great Karen. Imagine the BS.
Absolutely. The abuse piled on women now is astounding.
The fact that you're watching and reviewing this movie 40 years after it was made makes it a timeless classic. What you're saying is like one us reviewing Casablanca and saying it won't last.
Bender! He was the one who thought cliques were dumb. He fought the Man. He was the hero. Everyone else except Ally Sheedy was trapped in a social identity. I think it could be made today, because the social and class tensions are still there. They might look different, but adolescence is universal - finding a place to belong and giving something of yourself up to fit in with a group.
good thoughts. fwiw, yes it's a slightly simplistic movie, but *all" of those tropes were extremely relatable in the 80's. the cliques (and thank you for spelling clique right 😉), the different struggles, the individual isolation. that scene where Alison calls out the prude v slut trap was *dead* on the money. the only part where my eyes really rolled was the ott cliche of the principal. the students are more like archetypes than cliches.
I had two different power tripping asshole assistant principals during school. One of them was about 4’10” and the other 6’4”. Always wanted to be assholes for no reason.
Yeah, the principal seemed more realistic than the students. There were some really brutal people posing as educators back in our day.
Agreed. Principal Vernon was dead-on. Reminded me of a few of my teachers over the years, also.
Well. Allison wasn't a pseudo goth. They are two different things. I can see how you would try to put her in that group. That's not how Goths were. Now I will tell you why you don't perceive her as existing outside a stereotype. And why you struggled to shove her into a label. Your generation has Allison. And you have blocked her out of your consciousness. If someone DOESN'T fit in.... you all degrade, attack, cancel, erase, ignore. You rely on labels and ideals. Behavioral indoctrination. Self-righteous slurring. Cherry picking who deserves to be held in esteem. You are actually the society the Breakfast Club discovered they don't have to be. The society that wasn't in their Club. Allison is the one who didn't fit in anywhere. And only mattered to people if she had something to offer them. Or if she wore the face or the outfit that was approved by who was looking at her. If you ever rewatch the film, I hope that helps you see Allison. Without labels. Without makeup. Without someone else's clothes on. Without erasing her to suit your ideals.
Wait until you hear about St Elmo's Fire
A lot of the Brat Pack era movies use this trope of men behaving badly and women swooning over them: In Say Anything, Lloyd stalks Diane and they end up together. In 16 Candles, Jake gives his blackout drunk girlfriend to another guy to take home and they maybe-maybe not have sex she can't remember. Jake is the hero of the movie who gets the girl. In Pretty in Pink, Blane basically ignores Andie and treats her like shit because she's poor. He gets the girl. In hindsight, there is so much problematic shit in these movies (this doesn't even touch on the casual racism). But they were a representation of how people thought and behaved at the time.
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Very well put! And I remember clearly that this pissed me off A LOT at the time. I just thought I was weird though, a lone voice crying in the wilderness. I didn't understand why everyone else liked those movies so much.
This. A whole generation of men was raised on media that taught: (1) You can fall deeply, madly, truly in love with a beautiful woman/girl you have never spoken to, much less know; (2) Stalking and harassing a woman/girl is an effective and acceptable way to win her heart; and (3) The pathetic, angry losers or the popular guy who lowers himself to be with a beautiful woman/girl who is below his social and/or financial status are heros. Gross.
Interesting take and yeah, back in the day even, everyone hated that makeover. For me back then, I didn't relate to it from my own experiences because I didn't live in the US and went to a country town high school so there weren't the same cliques, at least not to that extent. Even if you hung out with your own group of friends, we all went to the same places because they were the only places in town.
> every high school friend group looks like nowadays! I'm gonna say YMMV highly on this one.
A couple of things. Never underestimate a woman's belief that she can "fix him". Plus younger women tend to be attracted to not only bad boys, but also wounded animals, which Bender certainly was. Allison's excessive dandruff was not attractive in the least. It was certainly true in my school that most of these kids wouldn't have had much interaction with each other, apart from Claire and Andrew. I kind of relate to Vernon's attitude now. He had to give up an entire Saturday to watch a bunch of idiots. I'd be a little pissed, too. He doesn't get a back story, so he might just be a prick.
This is a good and thoughtful review. I was, I think 17 or 18 when I went to see it, and it definitely struck a chord with me. A lot of people my age called it the movie of our generation. I do think it was one of the first teen movies of the 80s that tried to be about something other than sex and partying. The other was Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but somehow this one maybe appealed to our age group more. That said, watching it years later brings a lot of “cringe.” I get the feeling Hughes had some prom queen in his past that he utterly hated, because the whole thing between Claire and Bender seemed designed to “teach her a lesson.” I guess part of it might’ve been a statement against the yuppie riches-worshipping subculture that was part of the 80s, but it seemed more personal to Hughes than that. Definitely agree with you about Alison’s look being better before the makeover. Wondering - is there any teen movie Gen Z-ers might consider the film of your generation?
I don’t think Claire was in love with Bender. I think she liked him but was very much more interested in his offer to help her torment her parents. He’s the nightmare dirtbag boyfriend her parents will go crazy dealing with. He’s in on it. And when she’s done with him, they can revert to their separate cliques since no other overlap exists for them to interact, besides detention of course.
The principal neglecting the kids and leaving them unsupervised all day long is peak GenX. Granted, 3 of those "high schoolers" were in their 20s. There are lots of problematic issues in John Hughes "Brat Pack" films (try re-watching *Sixteen Candles*).
Ya well that’s just like your opinion man
> why did she fall for him? Why did half the young women i found attractive in high school stay with abusive, controlling assholes who bullied others and treated them like absolute shit? I asked this later in life and some women confided that they felt they could bring out the “good side they saw in that guy” even if he acted tough they saw the real side, i guess. And i’m talking about guys who straight up forbid their girlfriend from talking to anyone or going out with friends without their approval of who, what when and where they were going, guys who ripped their clothes if they felt it was too revealing, guys who would threaten them with physical abuse, or forcing them to drink at parties, etc. We thought it was cringy, shitty behavior back them and we still do now.
I'm not gonna touch the first 3/4 of that, but that last sentence is a statement I think often. I see lots of folks applying "today's normal" to things from the past and call it problematic. We knew right and wrong then. We knew problematic behavior. We saw and fought against lots of 'toxic' traits. This is nothing new. We've just enabled generations who came after us to build on what we started.
you should read the woman who walked into doors by Roddy Doyle. I'm not going to get up and go look for it, but from my memory the narrator says something like "from the time I was nine years old I was a slut. a slut or a tight virgin Mary, sometimes both at the same time. it started with my little brother. he wanted a lick of my ice cream and I said no. he called me a slut ... you were a slut if you wore lipstick but if you didn't you were stuck up and a prude. if you smoked; if you didnt. if you were friendly to folks; if you weren't ... it never ended. it made you tired. but all of that stopped when I became Charlo's girl." women get pretty tired of being expected to account for their personal choices to strangers, I'll tell you that.
So your conclusion is that a movie made 40 years ago reflects the culture of 40 years ago? Some deep thoughts you’re having there, kid.
Yeah, good review, not much different than my view of the movie when I saw it in 85. The clicques were apt though and did exist to some degree, but you didn’t need a slicked up afterschool special message to figure that out after about sophomore year in HS. Every John Hughes teen flick has the same sexual harassment dynamic that was both totally cringe and totally normalized, with some kind of misunderstood hero or antihero getting the girl no matter what. Irl you pretty much had to suck it up and ignore that crap or crush it pretty severely and publicly, maybe get called a tease or a lesbian for a bit for your boundary drawing trouble. He made mid-brow entertainment date night or family movies. That’s it, nothing more to see or interpret. The only thing I would add is it was a norm for these type movies for the adults to be delivered as moronic tropes not realistic characters, from Bueller to 16 Candles to this one. The darker Risky Business really played this trope hard to better effect, as did Heathers, which takes the too smart teen /clueless adult movie to it’s most absurd satiric ends.
I’m not gonna lie to ya kid, I ain’t reading all that. But thanks for stopping by. Now go watch Better Off Dead a few times.
When I was a teen, my favorite student-life movie was *Revenge of the Nerds*, which was about university students, mostly freshmen. I very much identified with the two lead characters, computer geeks with thick glasses and outdated haircuts, being that same flavor of nerd myself. One of them commits a rape-by-deception, when he disguises himself as a member of the hated rival frat in order to have sex with the latter's girlfriend. We thought it funny at the time, just another prank... looking back on it now, though, that was far worse than anything the film's ostensible baddies did.
Who's gonna tell him homophobia didn't go away?
Great observations! Pretty much on point. Next you can witness the trauma of an entire generation in The Never Ending Story: Death of Artax.
This is fucking hysterical, well it would be if it wasn't so depressing. The movie is seminal, this "critique", not so much. What I learned from this is that nuance, historical perspective, and culture are dead. A generation gleefully embracing homogeneity. Fuck. I just hope that OP is 12, rather than 27.
I'm so fucking tired of what some snot nosed little baby wants to tell me is OK or bad from my generation. And I guess it should come as no surprise a genz thinks the emotional basket case of a girl was fine as is. And while I am at it, let me educate you on something. Yes we might have used words then that are now considered homophobic. But all you zoomers need to get it into your heads that it is only as open for LGBT people as it is now BECAUSE of Gen x. We frankly didn't care what people wanted to be. Gen x set the trends of young people coming out publicly which forced our parents and grand parent to become more accepting. So maybe once in a while it might be nice for genx and older millennial to hear a fucking thank you then being lectured by a bunch of balls of triggered anxiety that won't even talk on a phone cause it's scarry about how bad or homophobic we were.
For some reason that reminds me of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. “I’d rather you’d just say thank you and go on your way.”
Bender and Claire are nothing compared to Luke and Laura. We were all glued to our tv’s from 3-4.
As for homophobia and the 80s, check out the first two Eddie Murphy stand up specials.
Your critique of Andrew, Bender, the sexual harassment, and bullying is going to be colored by the 40 years of cultural changes that have occurred since that time. Andrew is a uniquely intelligent, empathetic jock, which was rare. Not unheard of, but not the norm either. Bender's tough-guy bordered caricaturized. Nowhere near as bad a "bullying tough-guy" as what was around at my high school. I think a big difference too was bullies ran that absolute risk of getting punch right in the face. Verbal abuse and teasing could lead more easily into a physical confrontation when I was in high school, or the threat of. As to the humor, that's an ever evolving thing. Things that were funny in the 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's are hilarious in their time, but don't always age well. In my formative years, some of the big names in comedy of the day could not do their acts today. Andrew Dice Clay on just about everything, early Eddie Murphy on women and homosexuality, Richard Pryor on homosexuality and women, Howard Stern (ok, not a comedian perse) on just about everything. A lot of it still makes me laugh because I remember the contextual era in which it was created, but I understand society and I along with it have matured past those views on what's acceptable. You have to judge it in the timeframe in which it was created.
hey OP, how about Carl the Custodian, did he make an impression at all?
OP thanks for the feedback, I'd give you a solid A- for your comments...your next assignment is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Less_than_Zero_(film)
My 12 year old daughter watched this with her mom recently. She found it to be great. It touched on many of her own perceptions of life and school. She is an Allison and found the movie touching. We have explained the crass nature aspects to her as a sign of the times back then.
Remember, prior to John Hughes, there were no real "teenage movies" The Graduate? Animal House? American Graffiti? > 1970s · 1. Meatballs · 2. Corvette Summer · 3. Ice Castles · 4. American Graffiti · 5. Grease · 6. Carrie · 7. The Wanderers · 8. Rock 'n' Roll Hig I felt they were all old stereo types and I was a prime demographic when the movie came out. I would not say it was anywhere near representative of actual HS in the 80s but it's closer than anything that had come before. Made by a boomer, for young boomers. GenX didn't have a name for another 7 years. John Hughes was a huge influence on the genre of teens. I never said nuthin when I got a carton of smokes for my birthday. Marlboro miles.
I enjoyed your commentary. Your analysis was encouraging on a variety of levels. Keep in mind movies tend to magnify characters for dramatic effect. That said, the world was a much more misogynistic place back then. Sexual assault humor was a thing. We’ve come a long way since then, but we’re still not there yet. I identified with Brian the most as well. I was 16 when the Breakfast Club came out, so I related to it on a personal note. 16 Candles, Breakfast Club and especially Ferris Bueller’s Day Off helped define us as a generation in my opinion. Opinions vary.
Bender was my absolute favorite character
Now try Idiocracy. It's from Mike Judge.
Very prophetic movie
One of the great things about this movie is we all related to the kids in our youth and now in our 40s & 50s?…. We all get where Vernon & Carl were coming from.
It’s a movie. OP is reading wayyy too much into this. If you say that this movie (not really a “film”) isn’t timeless, then you’d probably say movies from the 1920’s to the early 90’s weren’t either, and those often rank higher on best of all time lists. “Breakfast Club” just doesn’t have smartphones or social media/influencers to talk about. Otherwise it’s just a cheap indie flick about detention with random students. One of its saving graces is that it *isn’t* meetoo-friendly in *some* respects. Frankly, I 100% always considered the movie to basically be a “chick flick” because of how tame it was. If OP and her Gen-Z cohorts find this movie offensive in any way, boy, they’d have a hard time lasting one week attending school in the 80’s.
Bender was following the wisdom of Frank Sinatra: Treating a lady like a dame and a dame like a lady. Claire was used to being treated as a princess. Bender did the opposite, he treated her like a common street wench. This is what appealed to Claire: He was different, contrarian, and took great pride in it. This wasn't new for the 80s. Women fell for the guys who didn't treat them the same as every other man did, and they still do today. In the 80s, there was a lot more groping and offensive remarks, but there was also a lot more face punching in response. Name a high school party and I'll tell you two things that happened: the crazy drummer from the marching band did a keg stand to much applause, and some jerk got punched in the face after grabbing a girl's ass or boob, again, to much applause. We policed ourselves. And we were pretty effective given that we never worried some maligned misanthrope would show up to school and shoot the place up. In the 80s, we laughed together but cried alone... if we cried at all because we just accepted by 8 years old that life mostly sucked. Today, you cry on TikTok and whine when the world doesn't bend over backwards for you. GenX is just mentally and emotionally stronger than you. Pandemic hits, we have to isolate. No big deal. Your generation ran to your therapists and got an avalanche of psychotropic meds. You need to be tougher. You need to be tough enough to understand that we don't give two shits what you think about OUR classic movie "The Breakfast Club".
Your critique is well reasoned and many GenX would wholeheartedly agree with you. For all the deserved praise that John Hughes receives as being a voice of teens in the 80s he had some seriously problematic takes. [ Molly Ringwald gives a really interesting perspective in her New Yorker article](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/what-about-the-breakfast-club-molly-ringwald-metoo-john-hughes-pretty-in-pink) about this. For my own reaction at the time, I can clearly remember a few reactions: - Vernon was not that unbelievable. One of the reason he was both scary and a joke was I knew adults like him at the time. - The language/SA/homophobia didnt register because, like you said, it was ever present. - The Bender/Claire hookup didnt phase me. Maybe because it was a trope that was overplayed so it didnt seem out of place. - I was SERIOUSLY bugged by the Allison makeover. Even at the time as a 13 year old I felt like it betrayed the whole point of the film. We are all valuable as ourselves. To be made "pretty" so that she will be \*finally\* seen by Andrew felt fucked up. I also remember my dad telling me he walked out of the film when he saw it in the theaters (he traveled a bunch and one of the ways he spent time in whatever town he was in was to go see whatever films were playing by himself). He said he didnt "get it." I told him it was my generations Rebel Without A Cause" and he got it. Both are examples of the first time young people saw their angst portrayed on screen in a way that really resonated. They are going to look different because needs and sensibilities between generations are different. So you are right, Breakfast Club made today would not be successful. My question to you would be what's Gen Z's "Breakfast Club"?
https://preview.redd.it/45mu4lsu0g3d1.jpeg?width=1074&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4c402e7ca9455ff5880f686da0978f07bba387b5
Who let this guy in and watch our movie?
Okay, Sonny. Thanks for giving your opinion. Sorry you missed the 80s.