For this week, I watched The Breakfast Club for the first time after many, many years. At the opening beats of Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” nostalgia predictably set in. The movie is, after all, a hallmark of 1980s popular culture. And I am a product, in so many senses of the word, of that decade.
Yet the nostalgia, a way of touching the remote past from a dissimilar present, faded quickly. So much about this film has permeated popular culture since its release. I found myself trying to identify among its now familiar and even trite aspects what was actually new and unique at the time. Pressure to get good grades? Oh, Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall), you sweet summer child. Sure, getting an F devastates many high schoolers today…but, for far too many today (one is too many, tbh), so does getting an A-. I watched this movie and sometimes remembered the past, but also sometimes confronted the present. Molly Ringwald herself did the same (well, she did it better) in a 2018 New Yorker retrospective in the wake of #MeToo.
I pat myself on the back: The Breakfast Club was an apt pick for savoring the view, for thinking about what a movie means, and how.
Anyway, hello, welcome, and thank you for stopping by. For new visitors, here’s what this situation is all about:
With Savor the View, we’ll watch, think, and talk about movies and the things that matter. A special welcome and thanks to our regular crew!
Each Monday, I share brief, spoiler-free remarks and questions to frame viewing a movie on our own.
Each Thursday, I share post-viewing questions to poke at the issues, ideas, quandaries, inspirations...whatever...that movie might have summoned (spoilers, ahoy!).
Paid subscribers can talk it all out in a weekly Discussion Thread.
Overview
The Breakfast Club (1985): National Lampoon alum John Hughes wrote and directed what would become celebrated as a refreshingly realistic engagement with teenagers’ lives. Such was his brand in the 1980s: working with young actors, crafting authentic dialogue, envisioning plausible teenage worlds rife with real feelings around real problems.
Relatable, as they say, because while many movies of the ‘80s also provided teenaged audiences with teenager-centered plots and casting, those movies often skewed fantastical. From Porky’s to Friday the 13th Part 2, young people on other screens were living lives that, at best (I’m being generous here), could offer their generation escapist entertainment. With The Breakfast Club, young people were taken seriously: they were bummed out by the things that young people really are bummed out about.
Centering and respecting non-adult viewpoints quickly and indelibly became a thing in film and television and has evolved ever since. Euphoria seems a long way from The Breakfast Club, but you gotta start somewhere.
The universal/general
The movie is premised on stereotypes. Which ones, why these specific ones, and while you watch, what works for you and what doesn’t with this narrative choice?
You’ve heard it said, “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes” before judging them. I feel like this is slightly Easter-eggish…but take note in action and dialogue when (at least twice) this precise quote seems explicitly relevant.
The specific/unique
Alongside the generalizations of stereotypes is the precise setting of a specific high school (Shermer High School in Shermer, Illinois) on a specific day (Saturday, March 24, 1984). How do these narrative choices at the story’s start shape your expectations of the movie?
What are this high school’s social hierarchies? How are they enacted and enforced? Why? With what effects?
Moods at times turn on a dime. So, pay attention! When and how do moods shift? Is it believable when it happens?
At some point, they will all start dancing. In the grander scheme of the story (screen time is expensive and must advance the plot!), what’s that all about?
The viewer is always present
Has this film aged well? Or not (Georgia state flag circa 1985, I’m looking at you)? In what ways?
I was struck that the parents all seem to accept that disciplinary action is warranted and their children should respect the process. How does this dynamic play for you in 2024?
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