Directed by John Hughes in 1985, “The Breakfast Club” is a quintessential 1980s coming-of-age film that follows five high school students who are forced to spend their Saturday in detention. This experience allows each of these distinctly different individuals to see past the stereotypes and appearances of the others to understand what lies beneath the facade that an individual puts on for the world. In a single Saturday, the five teenagers in 1984 find friendship, love, and a new understanding of themselves, the people around them, and the world. 

Labels, boxes in which an individual is seen, do not always define us. Labeling and breaking free from stereotypical labels is a significant theme in 80s movies, and in this film, the stereotypical labels were provided from the very start: “the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess, and the criminal”. The students are told by the supervising teacher to write an introspective essay about who each student believes themselves to be. They are instructed to not speak or leave the classroom while the teacher resides in his office not far away, the students do not obey. Initially making judgments on everyone else and portraying themselves within the little box they are meant to be, the students, so seemingly different from each other, argue. Eventually, deeper aspects of each student’s personality and character are revealed, which may challenge the initial perception based on the label. For example, the seemingly spoiled rich ‘princess’, Claire, believes neither of her parents truly care for her; the ‘criminal’, John, has a very difficult home life with abusive parent; ‘the Jock’, Andrew, has parents with unrealistically high standards to the point where he did despicable things just for his father to think he’s cool; the ‘basket case’, Allison, is a compulsive liar with deplorable table manners but has been severely neglected by her parents to the point of considering running away; the ‘nerd’, Brian, has such pressure and standards for himself that a single F in shop class made him attempt something horrific.

The theme of Identity vs. Role confusion, which stems from the adolescent’s psychosocial stage in Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stages theory, is prevalent in coming-of-age films and is also present in The Breakfast Club. The way parents and teachers view adolescents often does not accurately reflect how the adolescents perceive themselves. The teacher who supervises their detention plays the role of assumptions from labels, especially for John Bender, ‘the Criminal’, in which the teacher often repeats the notion that John will truly end up in jail. The film allows for the students to all break free from their boxes, turning the mere labels and stereotypes into individuality that is reflective of human nature. 

It should be noted that this is a rated R movie and does have some coarse dialogue, sexual dialogue, and violence. I highly recommend this film as one of the best movies to emerge from the 1980s.