Simple Terms, Convenient Definitions: Molly Ringwald and Class Negotiations

The Breakfast Club

Hughes’ second outing deals directly with the imposition of high school stereotypes and the embodiment of the archetypes that they ultimately represent. Five students from different backgrounds find themselves stuck together for nine hours during Saturday detention. Though they hail from disparate classes and identities (Princess, Athlete, Brain, Basket-case, Criminal), the characters are united by their mutual disdain for the institution that brought them together. Like a group of war prisoners trapped in an enemy camp, the rag-tag group of teens is forced to band together against their oppressor, the assistant principal Dick Vernon (Paul Gleason). Initially divided along lines of class and caste, Claire (Molly Ringwald), the princess, and Andy (Emilio Estevez), the athlete, sit together in the front row of chairs while Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), the brain, Allison (Ally Sheedy), the basket-case, and Bender (Judd Nelson), the criminal, sit alone, isolated from the group. They begin to bond over Bender’s shenanigans as he continually antagonizes Dick, initially just keeping their mouths shut but eventually venturing out of the library that they’ve been confined in to wander the halls. Bender’s brand of rebellion, brash, sexist, and violent, is the catalyst for the group’s transformation, forcing everyone out of their comfort zone and revealing truths they otherwise wouldn’t share. Thomas Leitch, in his essay “The World According to Teenpix”, reads this rebellion as a rejection of the corrupt and vacuous world of adulthood. The alienation, hypocrisy, and meaninglessness of the adult world, according to Leitch, is precisely what Hughes’ teens are challenging when they valorize “adolescence as an unchanging, self-justifying system of values which does not reaffirm or renew standards of maturity but simply marginalizes the adult world by ignoring any possible continuities it might have with the world of adolescence and setting goals which can be reached without growth or change” (45).
Class reconciliation in the film comes through the intentional working out of personal issues in a supportive group setting and by the end of the film the two characters who began the film as complete conformists, Claire and Andy, are romantically attached to the two most unconventional characters, Bender and Allison, respectively. It is worth noting that this transformation is made possible by Molly Ringwald’s character, who provides Allison with a makeover in order to feminize her appearance and make her more palatable. Transformation through acquisition is again the driving message of Ringwald’s presence in the film. Like its predecessor, The Breakfast Club works through class differences on a personal, individualized level while largely ignoring social/cultural forces but, in its construction of teenage humanity as a subculture opposed to dominant adulthood, the film manages to say something profound about adolescence and identity.

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