Breakfast Club Analysis

The well-known song “Don’t You Forget about Me” plays at the end of the movie The Breakfast Club, signaling not only the end of the famous movie, but also the end of the transitory group that had developed in the earlier scenes. Although movie was released over twenty years ago, high school students today can still use the labels that are examined in the movie to identify themselves in the cruel world they call high school. With the final lines “you see us as you want to see us...In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions,” the point of the movie finally becomes apparent; stereotypes are not accurate representations of teenagers, but instead they accurately represent who teenagers think they are. There is no doubt that students all come with labels; it is inevitable. But whether a student is a brain, a jock or a princess, they are all greatly impacted by the stereotypes and boundaries that are a part of each of their social groups.
To teenagers, being a part of a social group is huge, as portrayed in The Breakfast Club. As soon as the movie starts, viewers can decipher the cliques that each student is in. When the students are being dropped off, viewers assume which cliques each student is in by their appearances, how they respond to their parents, and how they react to coming to school on a Saturday. The most important identification of each student’s clique is seen by where they sit in the library. Much like the school cafeteria today, the students sat where they felt comfortable. In this case, it was away from everyone else in the room, with the exception of Andrew and Claire who were already in similar social groups and had similar friends. Bender eventually approaches the topic of the students’ separate cliques by asking Andrew, “Do you think I'd speak for you? I don't even know your language.” The students, while all in similar situations have trouble effectively communicating because they do not really know each other. This proves how