The breakfast club was to say the least a boring 800s movie. But it was a good movie for the purpose of analysis. Simply put, it will not be on my list of movies to rent next time that I am at the rental store. I chose to explain the points of view of Andrew, the jock, and Allison the loner/quite person. I will also be making use of the key terms Clique Groups, and Identity Crisis.
At the start of the movie, Allison was a person off in a corner by herself. She didn’t talk to anyone, she knew that she had a “place” in the society of school. This society of school, also know as clique groups, takes place at many schools, the one in the movie and most of all Richland High School. Like our school, this one has very many clique groups.
In fact in the group of students in Saturday school, each clique group had a representative if you will. Allison knew that in the minds of others she was a loser because she was not popular and not pretty. So, we have here a girl who doesn’t think that she is pretty, and rates herself lower because of that. They don’t look at her personality or her inner being, but her outward appearance. She thinks that she is ugly because of what everyone else thinks. She has a low self-image and self-esteem simply because of what others think.
In order to overcome this, she has to not let the opinions of others interfere with her thinking. This is very much easier said than done. In the middle of the movie, Andrew began to notice that she was in need and want of attention. She went so far as to make up stories, and say that she was a pathological lier, just to get people to pay more attention to her. She also did some very different things that I have never seen any normal girl do.
Usually, a girls purse is a private object that carries personal items. Eve never seen any girl just literally dump all of the contents out of her purse and onto the couch. To me, she needed some attention. I believe before this scene, Allison told us that her family life was a mess. Obviously Andrew answered her subliminal cries for attention. He came down to her level, and saw that she was a normal girl, but that she let everyone else judge her, and he took the opinions of others before he went and spent time with her and saw what she really was like.
Lets switch our view to Andrew. This is a guy who in the eyes of others was a stud. He was considered to be cool, hip, and handsome. More than likely he had every girl all over him. He thought that he was the total reverse of the afore mentioned Allison. He had friends, but what everyone didn’t know was that his family life was as bad as Allisons.
However, it was in other ways. His dad pushed him to be the best and not to lose a single game, match or whatever sport he was participating in. This in my opinion drove him almost to the edge. When he saw that Allison was in the same situation that he was in, he was amazed because he thought oh, shells much more different than I am. He had peer pressure to succeed, he was in a clique with tons of other popular people just because of his success as an athlete. What they didn’t know was that he was really unhappy, just as Allison was. He could have had all the friends in the world, but it would have never filled this void in his heart.
The moral of the story? Well, obviously don’t judge a book by its cover to use and old cliché. These concepts have been discussed by leading researchers all around the world for ages. Philosophers, Psychologists and Psychiatrists have analyzed just about everything. In my opinion sometimes they have gone too far. In this case of the Breakfast Club, not just the two characters that I pointed out were struggling with peer pressure, an identity crisis, or belonging to a clique group. It was all of them.
The underlying theme that I think that the director or writer was getting at was the fact that no matter how many friends you have, or don’t have, no matter how much money you have, or don’t have, everyone still has the same problems. These problems are the same problems that my parents had, and the same problems we have today, and more than likely the exact same problems that my kids will have.
