Beyond the Bubble
Meta-Cognition and Peer Groups in The Breakfast Club
By Morgan McLean
December 11, 2007
In the 1980s, director and producer John Hughes introduced American pop culture to the “Brat Pack”, a collection of teenage actors featured in his numerous hit films. Although not his most successful work, Hughes’ 1985 release The Breakfast Club remains a venerable cult classic. Dead-on casting, edgy dialogue, and tight editing hallmark his rendition of five adolescents sentenced to Saturday detention at their Illinois high school. Cinematics aside, however, what rings true in The Breakfast Club is Hughes’ refusal to categorize the teenagers he depicts—a mistake that often plagues the movie industry. Hughes first erects the stereotypes of the characters he depicts and then sends them crashing down through the thoughts and actions of the characters themselves. He places faith in his characters’ mental capacity from the start by opening his film with a quote from David Bowie, proclaiming that teenagers are “quite aware of what they’re going through.” Hughes’ faith in his characters’ cognitive ability sets the tone for the entire film. By treating them as vibrant, inquisitive young adults rather than case studies or prototypical specimens, Hughes explores how their interactions bridge social rifts.
While The Breakfast Club touches upon the characters’ relationships with adults, it focuses primarily on the social groups to which the characters belong when the movie opens and how these boundaries are altered in the course of the movie. An overhead shot of the students seated in the school library for detention shows the “princess” seated primly with her hands folded at the same table as the “jock” sporting a letterman jacket. Behind them, the “criminal” lounges with his feet propped up, the “brain” clutches his backpack, and the “basket case” turns her back to them all—their actions at first confluent with their respective stereotypes. The “princess”, Claire, is the first to confirm that these visual divisions are realized in a social context by informing the presiding teacher, “There must have been a mistake. I don’t belong in here.” The “jock”, Andrew, responds to the taunts of the “criminal”, Bender, with “You don’t even count at this school.” The “brain”, Brian, explains his physics club discussions to Bender, who pointedly concludes to popular Claire, “So it’s sort of social. Demented and sad, but social. Right?” Claire responds disgustedly, “Only burners like you get high.” Not only are these characters aware of rifts between groups; they are active participants in perpetuating their existence. Bender, with his ‘bad-boy’ distinction, is the only character who feels comfortable illuminating the invisible yet salient boundaries he and the other students observe.
From the characters’ bickering, the viewer can conclude as Brown & Lohr (1987) and Coleman (1961) (as cited in Dornbusch et al, 1996) did: that these “adolescents…know how their social achievements will be evaluated by their peers.” This recognition of group boundaries and their accompanying implications demonstrates that these characters are capable of complex mental processes. They personify Lev Semenovich Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development in that their conceptualization of interpersonal relationships and human behavior is advanced. Lawrence Kohlberg, too, would agree that the characters have reached an awareness of the relative values of social groups.
Kohlberg also mentions, however, that adolescents recognize that boundaries between these groups are not steadfast. Hughes understood this as well. His characters, according to Tajfel and Turner (1979), follow social identity theory by “seek[ing] to differentiate their own groups positively from others…in order to enhance their own self-esteem” (as cited in Powlishta, 2004). Bennett and Sani concur: “one’s own social identity may be positive or negative depending on the evaluations of those groups that form one’s social identity”(2004). This classic in-group favoritism and out-group derogation behavior is tied to the identity formation of the characters—each is attempting to establish an identity that is prominent and salient to the others. Without the social groups present for which each is trying to confirm his or her identity, however, the characters flounder and bicker. They at first react explosively at being thrown into a new social context—but they soon realize that learning to cope with this new Saturday morning detention group is integral in making it through the day.
When the character Bender leads an expedition into the hallway the teacher forbade them to enter, all the students follow him. The “basket case”, Allison, asks repeatedly, “Where are we going?” to which Andrew and Claire reply, “I don’t know! Let’s go!” Bound together by circumstance, they all follow Bender until they see the teacher heading back to the library to monitor them. The film shows them sliding around corners together to try to overtake the teacher until they hit a latticed metal gate blocking their passage. Andrew vents, “Great! We’re screwed!” Bender shoots back, “Nope! Just me,” and proceeds to gallop down the hall singing loudly to attract the attention of the teacher, facilitating the getaway of the others. The students have begun to “define and see themselves less as differing individual people and more as the interchangeable representatives of some shared social category membership” (Bennet & Sani, 2004). This effect, called depersonalization, by definition occurs when individuals truly consider themselves a part of the same collective group.
Despite effectively joining a new group together, some of the students have trouble letting go of old groups and established identities that give them a sense of purpose. The Brian character asks them if “we will still be friends on Monday,” recognizing that they will have no impetus to speak to each other then. Claire replies, “You want the truth? I don’t think so.” The others protest, but Claire proceeds to detail hallway scenes in which encounters between the students take place, declaring that she and Andrew would not talk to the others if with their other friends. Claire insists that she is “being honest” and that Brian’s friends “look up to us”, to which Brian replies, “You’re so conceited, Claire.” Following Elkind, Claire executes classic adolescent egocentrism in believing that she has an imaginary audience—that she sits upon a pedestal above some of her peers because they admire her.
In order to envision this scenario, Claire must also have reached the formal operations stage of Piaget’s theory of development. For the adolescent in this stage, there develops a strong connection “between reality and possibility”(Berzonsky, 2000). Claire is not the only character to exhibit signals of formal operations—all the students speculate about the future. Andrew asks, “Are we really going to be like our parents?” Berzonsky continues that the formal operations stage enables adolescents to “think about their own thinking…and consequently they are aware that other people think as well”(2004). The presence of this meta-cognition allows the characters to weigh each others’ actions carefully and apply moral reasoning to their intentions. Bender yells at Claire for asserting that she wouldn’t speak to some of the other kids at school, reasoning that since she recognizes beforehand that this situation would occur, she knows what it would feel like were it to happen to her. The Brian character also executes a prime example of meta-cognition, divulging to the other students that “…when I step outside myself, kinda, and I look in at myself, you know, and I see me? I don’t like what I see. I really don’t.” Brian’s ability to view himself from a recursive perspective points to his burgeoning cognitive abilities. The Andrew character, too, exhibits the effects of meta-cognition in his declaration, “We’re all bizarre in different ways.” Hughes thus establishes the presence of complicated mental processes in his characters, rendering them sensitive and cognizant of the group structures at work around them.
The characters seek solutions to the myriad social and personal problems that the film addresses in belonging to a tightly knit group that is the Breakfast Club. Each of the characters in the movie strives to resolve conflicts in his or her personal style in order to maintain the group status quo. In studies executed by Amerikaner and Sutherland, among others (as cited in Berndt & Burgy, 1996) that placed adolescents with negative social self-concepts in counseling programs, the central element proved to be “the formation of cohesive groups of peers who learn about each other and begin to care for one another.” Berndt and Bergy (1996) themselves concluded that “[t]he participants show improved social self-concepts because they become friends with each other.” Thus, the characters cling to the group because they have a psychological need to be a part of it. Even snobby Claire changes her tune by the end of the film, applying makeup to Allison, who asks her, “Why are you being nice to me?” Claire replies, “Because you’re letting me.” Earlier in the film, Claire had complained that other characters “don’t understand what it’s like to have friends like mine”—but after spending a day with them, she considers them her equals because they all belong to the same group. By establishing that his characters abide by the tenets of social identity theory in regard to the group they form, Hughes confirms that their cognitive processes are in fine working order.
The characters presented in The Breakfast Club undergo a veritable transformation in a matter of hours due in large part to their categorization in the same group. Since Hughes awakens in his audience a real consideration of the complicated social interactions and cognitive processes of adolescents, the viewer is left to wonder how realistic it is to expect this newly minted group to last—to speculate how often, in the real world, groups are broken down and rebuilt so quickly in this fashion. After all, the characters are stereotypical adolescents at the beginning of the film—but by the end, the viewer realizes that they are each capable of complicated mental processes. When, then, would not every adolescent their age be capable of such—including those who are a part of the social identity under which they entered the film? Each adolescent with whom the five members of the Breakfast Club interact would also be governed by boundaries between social groups. The query, then, is would the Breakfast Club have formed in any other context? Hughes would suggest that it would have: the character Brian declares that “you can see us as you want to see us”, indicating their malleability; and the other four pair off into romantic interludes at the end of the movie. In the face of other adolescents, the characters would have to make a concerted effort to remain friends. Hughes demonstrates that the group’s longevity depends solely on the commitment of its members—if they find it fulfilling and convenient, they will remain a part of the Breakfast Club.
References
Bennet, M. and Sani, F. (2004). Introduction: Children and Social Identity. In In M. Bennet and F. Sani (Eds.), The Development of the Social Self (pp.1-28). New York: Psychology Press.
Berndt, T. J. & Burgy, L. (1996). Social Self-Concept. In B. A. Bracken (Ed.), Handbook of Self-Concept: Developmental, Social, and Clinical Considerations (pp. 171-209). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Berzonsky, M. D. Theories of Adolescence. In G. Adams (Ed.), Adolescent Devlopment: The Essential Readings (pp.11-27). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Dornbusch, S. M., Herman, M. R., & Morley, J.A. (1996). Domains of Adolescent Achievement. In G. Adams, R. Mantemayor, & T. Gullotta (Eds.), Psychosocial Development During Adolescence (pp. 181-231). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Hughes, J. (Producer, Writer and Director). (1985). The Breakfast Club [Motion picture]. United States: Paramount Pictures.
Powlishta, K. K. (2004). Gender as a social category: Intergroup processes and gender-role development. In M. Bennet and F. Sani (Eds.), The Development of the Social Self (pp.103-133). New York: Psychology Press.
