Stereotyping In John Hughes The Breakfast Club

High school can be a dreadful place for many, and for some it is an amazing experience. The hallways are filled with people of all sorts of backgrounds and numerous social circles. Every individual has his or her rank on the totem pole of popularity. John Hughes’ movie The Breakfast Club exemplifies these diversities and social circles as five teenagers form a new bond one Saturday in detention.

The beginning of the movie sets a clear distinction between each individual and his or her role in the school. The first psychology theory of stereotyping is introduced immediately. The narrator calls the five students, “ a brain, a beauty, a jock, a rebel, and a recluse” which all indicate a personal classification into different categories other than by their names. On page 460, a stereotype threat is a fear that individuals are

This is referring to psychological distancing from the parents in the teenage years where the child is becoming more of an adult, and he or she wants more control over what to do with their own life (p 541). Even though each kid seems to be a far stretch from another, through peer interaction they find themselves strangely related. This interaction from multiple viewpoints allows each kid to see a moral understanding of the others (614). As they bond together, a new friendship is sparked in what continues to be the breakfast club. In The Breakfast Club, the largely based stereotypes are brought to life not by the kids, but by their environments in which five opposing students collide into a similar fate. This new experience creates a bond between the five kids that goes on to help nurture and support each kid while breaking down the judgmental wall of stereotypes. In the world today, many view individuals as a reflection of the present while much of them comes from the