The Breakfast Club Essays -- Art

The Breakfast Club just about 150 years ago, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., evince the following sage scarcely regretful observation in his book The Professor at the Breakfast table Society is always trying in some way or other to grind us down to a single unwavering surface. Unfortunately, this is still true today. Last week I saw the exposure The Breakfast Club written and directed by John Hughes which expressed a similar theme. Fortunately, youth of every age ar rather aware of what they are going through and have the ability to halt the fast imposed on them by the socialization process which begins in the home and is reinforced at coach, not and by students and parents but t for each oneers like Mr. Vernon as well. In The Breakfast Club five disparate personalities, each secure in his identity and yet filled with insecurities, throw away a lazy Saturday confined to Detention at Shermer High schooldays in Shermer, Illinois, for various and sundry school violations. Yet each showcase has a troubled life as foreshadowed by his very posture in Detention. Families mold, intentionally or not, their children into teensy reflections of themselves. School, thru peer pressure, thru the various donnish and social clubs, and thru the imaginary audience, serves to enhance the socialization process begun at home. Students are labeled and are not allowed to change their worlds. Students hang out only with people who look, dress, and live like themselves.There are nerds, freaks, cholos, etc. Theres the Math Club, cookery Club, Latin Club, Physics Club for students who belong. Mr. Vernon, the teacher in charge of the students, unwittingly assigns an essay with the subject who am I. Unwittingly because as Carl, the keeper and the eyes and ears of the institution, reveals that the students havent changed but that he, the teacher, has changed. Perhaps Mr. Vernon should answer the question himself. The characterisation then proceeds to answer the question thr ough the actions and dialogue of the protagonists. My favorite character (and yours too) is John Bender, the criminal, as portrayed by Judd Nelson, the leader of the notorious Hollywood Brat Pack. John is the main character in the pictorial matter and functions as the catalyst or the instigator. One by one, he shocks and exposes each students insecurities. John is living proof of the creed, If a child lives with hostility, He learns to ... ...e place that reads EMC 2 for energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. And when he gets an F in Shop, his self-image cant accept it. He takes a gun to school intending to shoot himself but gets caught. In the most important environment of a students life, even one F is not allowed. The school reinforces what the parents expect. Even his little sister echos the mothers sentiments when she admonishes him to find a way to study in Detention. It is from the Brains come out of view that we realize that you (Mr. Vernon/the school) c ome upon us as you want to see us. We were brainwashed, he writes in the collective essay. In the end the students, by revealing their fears and expressing their emotions, overcame the limits set by family and school, the ones that spit on them . They realized that they are immunized to authority and that they can change their worlds, that they have multi-faceted personalities. And so do Holmes, Hughes, and Bowie. Even a criminal can win the heart of a princess. John Bender was a better teacher than the system for he taught the Princess, the Jock, the Basketcase, and the Brain who they really were, and most importantly, who they were not.