Beyond the Surface

The Breakfast Club gives the viewer an inside look of a Saturday detention session, to which five students were sentenced. They were to stay in the school's library for a daunting nine hours with their oppressive principal, Mr. Vernon, who did not allow talking, sleeping, or even studying. However, you know how we teenagers are: just when someone tells us to refrain from doing something, we tend to completely disregard their words. And that is exactly what happened.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the five students featured in this film all came from vastly contrasting backgrounds, but over time they began to assimilate.  On the surface, they couldn't possibly be more different from each other, but as the hours went on, I quickly began to see that they weren't so different at all. There is no doubt that their relationships with/perceptions of each other had changed for the better, and as the film progressed, the message became clearer and clearer that they all struggled with something:

Claire was always under constant pressure from her so-called friends, whom she followed after instead of being herself.

Brian nearly killed himself over an F in his shop class, fueled by the pressure his parents put on him to consistently earn high grades.

Bender also had tensions between his parents, driven by his abusive father.

Allison not only was a basketcase, but she utilized her personality to compulsively lie and sneakily steal items from other people, both of which she did very often.

Andrew might have seemed well-put-together, being an athlete on the wrestling team, but he never let his true self show. He always behaved how other people wanted him to, never taking the time to think for himself.

All of this goes to show that no one is perfect. Even though Brian and Claire, for example, appeared perfectly fine on the outside, they were carrying an emotional burden on the inside. If it weren't for the Saturday detention, none of these details would have ever surfaced, and all of the teenagers would have carried on with their normal lives. This brings me to a lingering question: what is going to happen on the Monday that everyone returns to school? Claire was wondering the same thing, because while the five of them now understand each other so much more deeply, the rest of the world still views each of them as their stereotypes. Nothing less, and nothing more. That, my friends, is the true evil of stereotypes at its finest.