What is going to happen if one puts in the same room tomboy metal guy, first princess of the school, honor and intellectual individual, school-champion athlete and the typical notorious subcultural kid ? That's right, one will get a Breakfast Club, which became in the late eighties as a sensation and certainly one of the best sections about Generation X, as well as a recognized standard of the youth cinema.
This movie is considered to be perhaps the most chaste and simultaneously trivial film about teenagers among their own kind. It is also needless to say that the script was written in just two days, so the whole crew was obliged to eat in the school cafeteria, but after worldwide recognition pattern has been rewritten for theater play, successfully extending to the present day. Speaking of theater, if, for example, Romeo and Juliet is the archetype of the history of unrequited love, the Breakfast Club is the archetype of stories about teens as if tracing for any similar story. Even though those five rebels have nearly nothing in common, each of them is a representative of a special ‘class’ of the school. “The Breakfast Club recreates the physical limitations, and the pressure-cooker atmosphere, of a solemnly therapeutic play” (Denby 95)
Bender is a typical local bully with his own home troubles and cigar burns on the skin. He is probably the most powerful initiator in the club. The Princess Claire has all the benefits, but terribly dissatisfied with her own created stereotypes about people and constant misunderstanding the opinion of a majority. A little further one can see the athlete Andy and his tragedy is closely interconnected with the expectations of a father and the same desire to change the future of the harsh old son for his own personal happiness. Lovely Alice, who creates worlds with a pencil, is overwhelmed with sincerity. Lastly, Brian is smart, but he has a weak spirit of the man who, in spite of all internal contradictions, plays the role of an ideal child.
Thanks to each other they realized their own troubles and weaknesses. Every character hides big problems inside each of these little creatures that they cannot often discuss it with anyone. By accident, being together in the same room, they can afford the luxury of one thing: to be honest with each other. Between them there is not a friendship, but a unity. This can be called as group dynamics - when before independent elements suddenly start to function as a single unit.
It is difficult to say that the characters somehow significantly changed. After the punishment, they will return to their previous lives where they have to make these possible changes. Reading Room has given them the opportunity to better understand in what way their life is not as it should be. So as a result, they may take advantage of this opportunity in the future.
Work Cited
Denby, David. "Snap, Crackle And Pop". New York magazine 18.7 (1985): n. pag. Print.
