A gripe about the Breakfast Club

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Am I the only one who gives a damn about the fact that the movie was set in a Crapsack World where EVERYBODY over eighteen is an amoral scumbag? The kids themselves are only slightly better, and even they come across as a bunch of Jerkasses. Allison actually lampshades it: "When you grow old, your heart dies." Bender's response: "Who cares?"

I guess what I'm saying is that The Breakfast Club is too overheated in its caustic cynicism and themes of moral and existential nihilism. It's pretty much confirmed by the above quote, the absence of any authority figure with a shred of decency or characters driven by selflessness, leaving a sour taste in my mouth. This is coming from a guy who enjoyed To Live and Die in L.A.. At least that movie had reasons for being bleak.

Same reason I couldn't stand reading The Catcher in the Rye. Even at the height of my teenage angst and cynicism, I wanted to punch Holden Caulfield in the throat.

Oh, and To Live and Die in L.A. kicks ass.

I remember reading the book and thinking how crazy everyone in the class was for seeing him as some kind of hero. I finished the book only because I thought that he was going to come to some horrible end or attain some clarity of vision that would provide some deep moral lesson.

<spoiler alert>
Nope. He walks away as whiny and irrational as he starts. Even as a weird outcast teenager, I really disliked this guy. I certainly didn't connect with him. All I took away from this book was to be more discerning about what I read.
Hours out of my life that I'll never get back.
</spoiler alert>

I generally don't like the characters in "the classics". Give me a good Robert Heinlein character and we'll get along fine.

Holden Caulfield: hero? For what? Pointing out that a lot of people are phonies? Who didn’t know that before age 10? The closest I can come to finding him likable is as a disturbed young man who just needs a hug. I was surprised to find that people identified with him, because I suspected that Salinger intended for him to be so unlikable, to be some kind of undesireable product of the society that created him.

If you haven't seen the South Park episode “The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs,” you should give it a watch. It’s about people reading too much meaning into books that don’t deserve it, and they have the guts to call out The Catcher in the Rye specifically.

<raises hand>



We had to study it in junior high and there was a very strong James Dean kinda thing with him. He was "so cool" and "so like us". I thought he was an idiot. Needless to say, I did really poorly on my tests and exams that semester. I used to get into a lot of fights with teachers when they'd ask "what do you think...." or "what was the author thinking..." and what they really meant was "Try to guess what I think..." In my senior year, the english prof wrote the final exam loaded with these kind of questions. I got pissy and responded with a critical analysis of the exam itself and my opinions on the downfall of the educational system. I failed and got condemned to summer school. It ended well, though. Halfway through, I got a letter that I passed and didn't need to complete the summer school program. My principal had escalated the issue to the regional school board and got them to assess the paper against the stated course goals. Though I failed to answer the questions, I apparently proved competency and passed with flying colors.

Let's see Mr. Caulfield pull that one off!

Oh, believe me, I understand the whole rebel James Dean “f**k authority” thing. I was considered an outcast even to the outcasts. I was constantly depressed and angry, I hated all of my teachers, I hated “the system,” I thought everyone older than me was either an idiot or an as*hole or both, and I was always in detention.

But even I thought that Caulfield was such a whiny tool that Salinger must have intentionally made him so unlikable, almost a caricature of teen angst, that he wanted young readers to think, “Look, do you really want to be like this dipshit?” Thus my surprise when I learned that I was supposed to identify with him. Gross.

And good job with that paper.

I think I was the only one in my high school class who outright hated that movie. We watched it at a school event, and I was outright appalled that everybody was being so mean, and breaking so many rules, and oh, there's one person I can maybe barely relate to...No! Why are they doing that? But I thought I could relate to...but they...and he...UGH! That movie gave me nightmares.



That is why I did so poorly in my AP Literature English class my first semester, as well. I actually gave thoughtful opinions on the books that I read, or at least, they were opinions that were well thought out, but they so differed from the norm and from the standard interpretation of the books that I consistently got bad grades on my papers. When I started answering questions the next semester with what I felt were "stock answers" and didn't really think too hard beyond what my teacher thought I should think, my 70s became 90s. Though I should note that my teacher that year was very competent and even though he did not agree with me 90% of the time (20% of the class was poetry, and I was better at poetry for some reason, possibly because it's more structured), he did not penalize me for disagreeing with him or with my classmates. Most of the points he took off were because he could not clearly see my train of thought when I thought of things that he did not, but he was able to make the connection between my steps with the ideas he had already encountered before. I have an awful tendency to skip steps and I am bad at showing my work, both in math and in language.

^ That’s what drove me crazy about English classes. We would read a popular classic, the teacher would ask us for our interpretations, and then “correct” us when our interpretations didn’t match the popular consensus. Here’s an idea: why don’t you grade me based on how well thought out and reasoned my interpretation is, even if you disagree with it, not based on how well it matches up with what the literary establishment thinks the book is about? I can also relate to giving the answers that I thought were expected of me, but I was (and remain) so poor at reading people that I could never tell what the “correct” answer was.

I agree about English class. I also had trouble because I'm a writer but my stories were downbeat. My teacher often seemed to be grading my short stories on the content instead of structure or grammar.

I'm so glad that I found you people!! !!

It never dawned on me before, but there were certain people who seemed to "get me". (Like the principal who took my paper to the school board without anyone asking him to). In retrospect, I wonder how much they suspected or knew about how my brain worked or if they were closet aspies themselves. I wonder if they had suspicions, but just never wanted to say anything. It certainly puts a different twist on some of my memories of childhood.

I remember giving a presentation in an electronics class where I was describing a circuit. For that particular circuit it just naturally made more sense to me to discuss it in terms of gaps flowing from the positive to the negative (I don't remember why I thought that, it just seemed right). The entire class started murmuring and giggling because I "screwed up" so badly. The prof just smiled from ear to ear and quieted the class down and told me to proceed. I was convinced that I had done something horribly wrong, but I was too far along to recover. After the presentation, the teacher launched into this whole discussion of "hole current" and essentially vindicated me. I had a lot of situations where I came at things from a different perspective and most teachers punished me for it. This guy always used it as an opportunity to explore. I think that's one of the main reasons that I went into electronics and computers. He had a profound impact on me.

On the flip side, that English prof made me hate writing or expressing my thoughts on paper. It took years to recover from that. Only CompuServe's CB (one of the first commercial text-based chat services) saved me. It drew me out of my shell and got me a lot more comfortable with writing (as you've probably noticed; perhaps a bit *too* comfortable

I actually enjoyed "The Breakfast Club". Then again, to each his own.

I'm just appalled because there isn't a single character to root for in the movie. On one hand, you have completely morally repulsive adults, and on the other, a bunch of young as*holes.

In a way, it was ahead of its time. Look at today's entertainment, from sitcoms to reality TV to movies. Every character being an obnoxious as*hole is what people want. There's no other explanation for why Two and a Half Men is so popular.

I really don't think it was meant to be the type of movie where you 'root' for anyone and I don't think they were trying to say everyone over eighteen is an amoral scumbag just certain ones.

I don't understand how you can think that characters like Allison and Bryan are as*holes?

i walked away from the breakfast club with a different message. you have a group of kids, each covering the different social groups, each flawed, each broken in their own ways, and then you have the adults. the gateways who try to shape the kids into being what society expects them each to be.

at the end they decide to walk their own path .

i found it a very uplifting movie

The Breakfast Club is so cliche, so unlike the real high school experience that it's comedic over anything else. Whatever drama the movie is supposed to have is over the top (for example, Claire is really embarassed that she hasn't lost her virginity yet - and she's still in high school!). And consider that the Brat Pack were in the majority of teen movies released throughout the 80's - some of the same teens in The Breakfast Club are also in Sixteen Candles.