Morality and Hierarchy in “The Breakfast Club”
I like the concept of the movie “The Breakfast Club”- individual students from different high school castes being forced to interact with each other and get to know each other. It’s something I even thought about in high school. To what extend do (artificial?) social boundaries prevent people from understanding each other’s true personalities? It’s especially interesting in the pre diversity 80s. What causes a group of people of the same race to create such distinct and hostile hierarchies?
My interest was more about the exploration of different personality types, however “The Breakfast Club” is ultimately a subversive and moralistic film. A lot of it’s charm has become cringe over time but the characters are still likeable and relatable. The “group therapy” climax of the film is a very powerful and emotional scene that captures the extreme intensity between the “cool kids” and the “freaks and weirdos”. It’s packed with moral judgments about hierarchy, friendship, and humanity.
After the members of the group become friends, the nerdy kid, Brian, asks “What happens to us on Monday?” when they’re all back together at school, back to their usual friend group/ social caste. “I consider you guys my friends… I’m not wrong, am I?”
Claire, the popular girl, responds with brutal honesty. “Oh, be honest, Andy…if Brian came walking up to you in the hall on Monday, what would you do? I mean picture this, you’re there with all the sports. I know exactly what you’d do, you’d say hi to him and when he left you’d cut him all up so your friends wouldn’t think you really liked him!”
Brian begins to cry and Bender, the sigma male, become indignant- “YOU ARE A BITCH!” Claire points out that she’s just being honest and that he would do the same. He moronically responds with mob resentment “You don’t look at any of my friends and you certainly wouldn’t condescend to speak to any of my friends”- impotently casting judgment on Claire to punish her.
Brian responds: “Then I assume Allison and I are better people than you guys, huh? Us weirdos… (to Allison) Do you, would you do that to me?”
Allison: I don’t have any friends…
Brian: Well if you did?
Allison: No…I don’t think the kind of friends I’d have would mind…
Brian: I just wanna tell, each of you, that I wouldn’t do that…I wouldn’t and I will not! ‘Cause I think that’s real shitty…
Claire: Your friends wouldn’t mind because they look up to us…
Brian becomes more indignant and angry, calling Claire “conceited” and impotently trying to guilt her with his own misery.“Fuck you! Fuck you!” He asks her why she’s like this and she doesn’t have a clear answer.
The film tries to tell us that these hierarchies are created by pressure and dysfuction in their home lives with their parents. Andy, the jock, engages in cruel acts because his father doesn’t like weakness. Brian attempts suicide because his parents demand perfection from his grades. The true villian of the film seems to be pressure itself. But was Claire ever proven wrong? “Your friends wouldn’t mind because they look up to us”. Brian and his friends would love to be like Andy or Claire if they had the power to be so. The judgment that he casts upon them comes from a place of powerlessness. “Allison and I are better people than you guys”. His sense of good and bad is completely defined by the strong and the powerless.
Allison doesn’t have any friends but she says if she did she wouldn’t have this sense of hierarchy. She would be “better” than that. She and Brian are part of the Chandala, non-caste multitude. Allison could try to be less cold toward people- surely there are other lonely people at her school that she could be friends with. For her and Brian to say “if I had power, I would not be conceited” is pure cope- a moral fiction constructed by the powerless as a form of resentment.
Everyone in the group is given a moment of pity for their suffering accept for Claire. They’re all victims of hierarchy that are products of pressures from society. But Claire is simply “conceited”. The source of evil in the world is selfishness-in-itself which powerful people like Claire must not engage in and must be held responsible when they do.
This ultimately makes “The Breakfeast Club” a life denying, moralist film. The ending leaves one depressed. What have the kids learned and what will really happen when they go back to school on Monday? It leaves us unsatisfied. The weird kids hook up with the cool kids as a defiance of sexual/ social expectations. The jock becomes a moralist, the popular girl is guilt tripped, the sigma becomes a pussy, the weird girl becomes more extroverted, and the nerd remains a lonely dork. A more Nietzschean ending may have gone like this.
Andy the jock maintains his strength. He recognizes that petty cruelty and bullying are ignoble and regains his feeling of power by finding his own goals, away from the pressure of his father.
Bender the sigma gains a sense of nobility and channels his strength into something higher, rather than being self indulgent and rebellious.
Allison the basket case, like in the film, becomes more feminine and sociable. She is more quiet and introverted and not so eccentric when she opens up to the others. Her arc is more about overcoming the neglect and loneliness of her childhood.
Brian the nerd learns to overcome his autism and feelings of resentment that come from powerlessness. He would be inspired by Andy and Bender to find a sense of egoism and will and develop himself into something strong-utilizing his intellect toward something he’s passionate about.
Claire, the princess, would learn to lighten up and become more free spirited. Rather than simply being “rebellious” and defying hierarchy, she can discover her own ego and sensuality through her strength. She maintains her honesty about the realities of social status and hierarchy, but recognizes that spontaneity and creativity are the real indications of power.
