Breakfast Club Post

[spiceblueeyes]

Okay, I haven't posted in a long time. I've been reading, and doing some lurking, and some commenting, but no posting because I haven't been writing. It's just been a crappy couple of months for me. I got pretty sick, the stay-in-bed-all-weekend-and-not-eat-anything kind of sick. My great-grandmother, who is 97, broke her leg and went to the hospital. She couldn't have surgery because she kept having mini heart-attacks. My Grandmother got an infection, and then had a bad reaction to the antibiotics she was given. My Grandfather was diagnosed with prostate cancer. My mom's friend had a double mastectomy, and her cancer didn't go away. My surrogate sister is possibly finding out that her fiance has a gambling problem, and my brother stopped caring about school and is failing some of his classes.

Bad semester so far.

So when I did my homework assignment for my English class this week, and the words flowed really smoothly, I was pretty excited. I thought I did a good job, and it's certainly the best bit of writing I've done in the last few months. I haven't been inspired, but this morning I was. So I'm posting what I wrote for my homework assignment, cause I'm kinda proud of it. We had to write about the movie The Breakfast Club, it was an open-ended assignment, so we could write about whatever we wanted. It's under the cut for those who may be interested in my view of this classic Brat Pack movie.

Have you ever told a stranger a truth that you would never tell someone who knows you? You tell them, you may talk about it, share similar truths, or different ones, and then walk away never to see each other again. I’ve done this a couple of times. In our society the exchange would often be too uncomfortable to attempt. We don’t like to show what we perceive as weakness (and often our secrets are things we view as such) to the world at large. However, in the right moment, with the right person, it can feel really good. It has a freeing, or cathartic effect. There is a sense that you’re not alone, because you just shared something personal, and possible painful, with someone else and they understood. This is how I view The Breakfast Club.

 People in the class were saying that the characters were “stereotypical,” and the whole thing was “cliché.” Yeah, so? There is a reason this movie had such a big impact, that so many people, myself included, love it. Yes, they are stereotypical, but while these generic, cookie-cutter walking clichés are representative of broad generalizations and certainly not able to correspond exactly to individuals, they are accurate. I can’t help but reiterate that there is a reason that this movie is a cult classic. Those characters in the movie have become archetypes because of their resemblance to reality. All stereotypes have a root in truth, it may be a very small root, and it may be born from maliciousness or ignorance or observations, but they come from something real. The idea of a jock, real, a spoiled little rich girl, real, bad boy, real, little rich girl falling for the bad boy, real. It happens. Not as often as the stereotypes indicate, but variations on these themes rule our lives.

 I want to mention that my favorite scene in the movie is the dance montage. All of the characters are dancing, and at first they are each shown dancing by themselves, but when the song says “we are not alone” they begin to be shown dancing together. That is really when they become a group, and that is what, to me, the movie is about. Adolescence is a time when most people feel alone, like nobody else can understand. The characters in this movie come together, share secrets and intimate truths about their lives and they realize that they’re not alone. On Monday at school they’ll ignore each other, walk away, and their secrets will be safe because they won’t interact again. There is a cathartic comfort in that. The fact that all the characters are stereotypes just makes the movie more relatable, because most people can relate to one or more of the characters, and so if they aren’t alone, then maybe you aren’t either.

A clip of the dance scene with the music is here, the lyrics to the song can be found on the side.

Also, a great example of sharing secrets with strangers, for those who may want to try it, or just want to know other people's secrets is postsecret.com.