The Breakfast Club (1985)

I've had some requests to repost my John Hughes reviews.  This is the first one I wrote in 2009.

 

Tribute to John Hughes: The Breakfast Club

August 7, 2009 at 1:51pm

The Breakfast Club (1985)

Favorite Quote This Time Around: “But face it. You're a neo maxi zoom dweebie. What would you be doing if you weren't out making yourself a better citizen?” ~ John Bender

Character I Most Identify With: Brian Johnson

I started with “The Breakfast Club” because I believe it is Hughes’ magnum opus. This film is genius from beginning to end. I remember a conversation I had with Christina Raab who said, “I think watching ‘The Breakfast Club’ changed my life somehow.” Yeah. If you get that, you really get that, and if you don’t, I don’t know how to explain it to you.

This viewing was different for me, though. For the first time I watched this movie through the lens of a professional educator. The last couple of days I’ve been sorting through student data for the upcoming school year. I have lists of names, student numbers, and test scores. With this information, I make scheduling and program decisions. I hate this process. I hate reducing kids to test scores.

Don’t get me wrong, once I meet them, everything changes and I try to customize my instruction to meet their needs as real people, but something has to be done before I actually meet them. I have to have a place to put them on the first day of school; a place to start.

Part of “The Breakfast Club” is about how adults don’t see teenagers as individual human beings. The system is set up to categorize them. I’m sure, left to their own devices, teenagers would categorize themselves, that’s what human beings do, but I’m not sure they would do in the same ways that adults do it to them. And so, as I categorize the human beings I have yet to meet I will keep this quote, shown at the beginning of the movie, at the forefront of my mind:

“And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're going through.”
~ David Bowie

And finally, what is up with Brian not getting a kiss at the end of the movie? Someone once said to me, “he gets to kiss his essay.” Yeah, that’s not quite the same as kissing a PERSON, even for a nerd. Lame.

This is my favorite scene.