Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club dir. by John Hughes (Universal Studios) ASIN: B001AEF6BI

Plot Summary

Five teens show up for Saturday school at Shermer High School.  They are tasked with writing a 1,000 word essay on who they think they are.  In the beginning of the film, each character seems to represent a specific stereotype.  The character Brian categorizes each of them as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.  The students spend the day talking to and getting to know each other.  They bond over toying with Richard Vernon (the Saturday school supervisor), experimenting with drugs, dancing, and joking with one another.  At the film's end, it appears that each of the characters has been transformed by the experiences of a single day. 

Critical Evaluation

Breakfast Club is probably still the definitive movie about the high school experience. Mean Girls, Easy A, Clueless,  and 10 Things I Hate About You -- some of the best runners-up, each have fantastic elements that ultimately separate them from an actual high school experience: that is, they each have a sense of unreality, a sort of glamor only possible in a filmic world.  Certainly, not every element of Breakfast Club is plausible, but its grittiness -- its use of coarse language, the pain the characters cause each other, and the way that pain is used to catalyze catharsis (instead of as a plot device to complicate burgeoning romances as in every romantic comedy) -- lends it realism.  The movie doesn't speak down to its audience; each character is fully realized and grows as an individual as the movie progresses (even Vernon who seems least changed shows vulnerability in his conversation with Carl, the school's janitor). 

Reader’s Annotation

Five teens from different backgrounds interact during Saturday school and everyone's life is changed.

Information about the author

From an obituary from Variety magazine: 

Born in Michigan, Hughes used his high school town of suburban Northbrook, Ill., as a location for many of his films. He got his start as an advertising copywriter in Chicago and started selling jokes to performers such as Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers. Hired by National Lampoon magazine after submitting his short story “Vacation ’58,” he wrote his first screenplay, “Class Reunion,” while on staff at the magazine, and it became his first produced script in 1982. His next, “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” based on his short story, became his first big hit and spawned several sequels.  

Hughes’ first film as a director was 1984′s “Sixteen Candles,” starring Anthony Michael Hall, John Cusack and Molly Ringwald. The teen romance introduced several of the actors who would make up Hughes’ “stock company” of thesps, several of whom became known as the Brat Pack.  

In 1985, “The Breakfast Club” became the era’s iconic and influential high school film. It starred Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Hall and Judd Nelson as teens who must learn to get along when thrown together during Saturday detention. (Saperstein, 2009).

Genre

Motion Picture

Curriculum Ties

The movie doesn't like tie into any specific subject lessons, but the messages about acceptance and camaraderie could probably be useful in any class.

Booktalking Ideas

1.  Focus on the clique structure that informs the film and creates the stereotypes for each teen.

2. Open the talk with the David Bowie quotation that opens the film: "And these children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds; are immune to your consultations, they're quite aware of what they're going through."

Reading Level/Interest Age

9th grade and up.

Challenge Issues

Language; Drugs; Discussion of Sex; Descriptions of abuse and bullying.

I would openly greet any patron who presented a challenge to the work, giving them ample time to detail their complaint.  I would listen attentively.  To respond to these challenges I would have some reviews of the work on hand.   I would be prepared to explain that as a public institution libraries "cannot limit access on the basis of age or other characteristics" (ALA, 1999).  I would have copies of the library's collection policy on hand.  I would be prepared to politely discuss that parents can control what their children are exposed to by coming to the library with them and examining books they check out.  If the Teen Advisory Group had written reviews of the work I'd have them handy.  While it may be of little comfort to certain parents, I would also be prepared to discuss my staunch support of intellectual freedom and abhorrence of censorship.  As a last resort, I would be sure to keep copies or a reconsideration form on hand.

Why did you include this book in the titles you selected?

This is the movie that the Teen Advisory Group wanted to watch at a recent movie event.  I thought it was interesting that they felt a movie from 1985 still spoke to the teenagers of 2013.  (I had fully expected that we would watch Beautiful Creatures that day, and had a place holder set up on the blog for that film).

References

American Library Association. (1999). Strategies and tips for dealing with challenges to library materials. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/advocacy/banned/challengeslibrarymaterials/copingwithchallenges/strategiestips 


Saperstein, P. (2009).  'Breakfast Club' helmer died of a heart attack. Retrieved from http://variety.com/2009/film/news/director-john-hughes-dies-at-59-1118006975/