Breakfast Club

For my movie analysis assignment, I chose to watch the movie The Breakfast Club. The breakfast club, written by John Hughes in 1985, is an American teen drama film full of stereotypical gender roles. The characters in this film have all violated a rule at Shermer High School, located in Shermer, Illinois. The five students in the film all violated a rule at Shermer High resulting in a Saturday morning detention. The five students having to report for the Saturday morning detention do not share the same interests and are somewhat familiar with one another. Andrew Clark, Claire Standish, Allison Reynolds, Brain Johnson, and John Bender are the five students. Shermer High’s assistant principal Richard Vernon is supervising the three males and two females in the library. Obedience to these gender roles is enforced by each of the characters except Bender, who attempts to break them down by treating everyone the exact same way, unkindly, but equally so. Bender’s role in the film is to break down each character to their core rather than allow them to continue to show a false exterior façade. The Expectations of gender are represented in this movie in a very general way but spread out among the characters. The three male characters all embody a different form of the prototypical male form, a sports star, a brainiac, and a bad boy. The two women are separated by their varying levels of femininity; Claire embodies the popular girly-girl while Allison is the secretive and reclusive type. The film paints a good picture of what gender each character is because if they were described by their traits only a person could determine who is male or female. The expectations of these characters are tested multiple times. In Clair’s case when she applies her lipstick utilizing the cleavage of her breasts she surprises everyone because that is an act that a lady like her would not do. Andy and Brian both challenge the expectation of being male by crying and speaking about their