The Breakfast Club: The Club to Join, 30 Years Later

I may be in the minority but I’ve never really been a big fan of The Breakfast Club, but only since our class discussion on Thursday have I begun to understand why -- largely, the film appears to strike an offensive against the wealthy and against class-distinction; and yet the acquisition of, and intermingling within, the upper class is the ultimate reward for these students. At first I thought this hypocrisy was antithetical, but since reading Anthony C. Bleach’s “Postfeminist Cliques? Class, Postfeminism, and the Molly Ringwald- John Hughes Films” I’m convinced there is a deliberately neo-conservative promotion, particularly a rebranding of feminine “liberation.” According to Bleach this new stigmatization, possible in a post-feminist society, can be observed by popular culture hijacking the tenets of feminism and warping them from the notion of empowerment to the qualities of self-indulgence and narcissism.

This allows for vehicles like Hughes’ movies to reformat feminism in a way “that sanctions ‘individualist, acquisitive, and transformative’ values and behaviors, as well as in the way that it ‘participates in the ideological and economic normalization of new patterns of exclusion and demographic propriety in the United States.” In other words, The Breakfast Club claims that women, and more accurately the individual, achieve empowerment through consumption and individualism. Additionally, while I realize that there needs to be some sort of denominator to rely on, the fact that feminist tenets (“liberation, agency, and desire”) can be so easily categorized, discerned, and manipulated seems to be indicative of post-feminist discourse itself.

However, my gripes are confined to The Breakfast Club (because I haven’t seen Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink) and not with John Hughes as a writer/director. This is primarily because of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which is easily one of my all time favorites and definitely the one movie that I compel myself to watch every time it’s on television if I happen to glimpse a scene while channel-surfing. I’m sure that Ferris finds itself in some of the same post-feminist, neo-conservative, white-suburbian ruts  that the reading delineates in some of Hughes’ other movies, but I’m usually more focused on the dynamic between Ferris and Cameron (my favorite Hughes’ character) anyways.

Now that I’ve given my obligatory Ferris plug, back to The Breakfast Club; or more interestingly (this time around), the essay. I found myself in agreement with this reading for nearly its entire length -- the exception being a few alternative ideas that stuck me (mostly with that ambiguous ending) which I’ll get to shortly. I thought this essay was one of the most fascinating readings that we’ve looked at yet because it provides a comprehensive summary and analysis of the Reagan-era eighties entirely. It also demonstrates how the eighties have informed today’s society, right along with films like The Breakfast Club (look at the massive following that the film still has thirty years later). It details supply-side Reaganomics and its principles: “growth is good, the entrepreneur is a ‘hero,’ ‘fair government’ is limited government because individuals” can make everyone benefit from their financial gain and because “individuals ‘almost always can solve problems better than government can,’ [as] ‘competition… breeds creativity’.” Furthermore, Bleach goes on to say that these policies have eclipsed economics and permeated “ideological, social, and technological” mindsets for Americans. The impoverished man as a “leech” on society is a part of contemporary discourse, spawned by these early 80s mentalities.

Suddenly, I’ve realized that I’ve participated in this same mindset, that I have marginalized feminism’s previous accomplishments and discarded them as being self-indulgent because I think that there are greater societal concerns. Occasionally when I hear someone focus only on something's effect on women where there are so many other aspects that are relevant to human nature as a whole, I might think "oh boy, more feminist extremism." But that thought process just makes me part of the system! This essay was revelatory by describing this adherence as consistent with postfeminism and I'm contributing myself to an individualistic society, and whether that is ideal or not, I didn’t even realize it (which is the frightening consequence).

Given how declarative of social status The Breakfast Club is by the opening scene alone (as detailed by the essay and discussed by all of us in class); seeing as though there are explicit measures against the upper class as Molly Ringwald’s character, the wealthiest of the detention attendants, comes under frequent assault; and because the movie does quite blatantly demonstrate, in contradictory fashion (following the film’s attack on the wealthy), that upper-class is the desired goal of the masses, it’s pretty safe to conclude that the movie champions this individualistic and acquisitive society that the essay lays out. Now I’m left wondering where Hughes’ role in this construction seems to lie (and it might be worth examining Hughes’ background to find it). It’s obvious that he is undermining his offensive against the upper-class by the end of his films, but is he obviously supporting Reagan-era policy or making that portrayal so obvious that he is satirizing it? Or does it not matter because regardless of the filmmaker’s intentions the movie speaks for itself? This last option is probably the case because even if he were satirizing this individualistic value, he is not doing it explicitly enough as his film condones the behavior rather than condemns it.

It’s fun -- and frightening -- to think that Hughes might just be more concerned with the romance than the social constructs that he has crafted. There is (though small) the chance that he’s just using class distinction as a pliable and relatable landscape to tell his story as class disparity is an age-old reservoir for conflict. He may just be trying to say that romance, especially of the happily-ever-after kind, transcends class differences, that it can bond them or circumvent them, and that it is blissfully unaware of the social constraints that it implores like individualism and acquisition. However, the basket-case must be made to look like a princess to achieve romance, and from a post-feminist perspective, “Claire’s feminism is ‘taken into account,’ only to demonstrate its totalizing force: ... all… march to the beat of her drum.”

Bleacher’s assertion that everyone marches to Claire’s beat brings me to my last point, an alternative idea of mine that I mentioned early, and more of a question for blog discussion than a thought-out commentary on what I’ve previously discussed. Did anyone else find Bender to lead the beat of this “march” through the entire film? He is harsh, he is sardonic, and at times supposedly apathetic, but I also found him to have a penchant for mentorship. Instead of a criminal, he plays more of a brotherly, perhaps even fatherly role, training these other detention inmates to see through his own “lower-class” perspective, and consequently see that being “upper class” isn’t the end goal of everything. This would have large ramifications for Bleacher’s essay: instead of him ascending to Molly’s ranks, the romantic kiss they share at the end is a token of his own success, having brought her down to his level to witness the fruitlessness of her consumerism. That said, this is still highly individualistic -- just at the other end of the spectrum.