THE BREAKFAST CLUB: PLEASE FORGET ABOUT ME

I fear that I may be creating a lot of enemies with this blog post, but I’m going to take the risk. It is also important to point out that I am not necessarily getting enjoyment out of ripping apart what is known to be THE QUINTESENTIAL teen movie. Sometimes the truth hurts, and it’s painful to write about how I fell for the exact same stereotypical movie tropes as the rest of society. Like most viewers, the first time I watched The Breakfast Club was as a young teenager, and I just loved the authentic feel of the child-adult relationship. As I watched the movie through the years I began to enjoy it less and less. The sexism stuck out like a sore thumb, the stereotypical teenage anger felt exaggerated, and real young-adult troubles were either disregarded or normalized.

My growing apart from this movie is an example of how Bell Hooks’ Oppositional Gaze is sometimes applied before you’re aware that you’re using it. For many adults, watching this movie reminds them of their own teenage selves. The pleasure they get from viewing their “ideal selves” is addressed by Laura Mulvey in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Mulvey states “…the cinema has structures of fascination strong enough to allow temporary loss of ego while simultaneously reinforcing the ego. The sense of forgetting the world as the ego has subsequently come to perceive it is nostalgically reminiscent of the pre-subjective moment of image recognition.” (Mulvey 32) It’s quite possible that the viewers who really relate to this movie have falsely seen themselves within these morally unjust characters. So, let’s get down to the nitty gritty.

This film is famous for embracing stereotypes and not deviating from them. We have John Bender as The Criminal, Andrew Clark as The Jock, Brian Johnson as The Brain, Claire Standish as The Princess, and Allison Reynolds as The Basket-Case. These five high schoolers identify with one another despite their conflicting personalities. They all seem to blame their negligent parents for their shortcomings. Now, I could write a book on the dynamic between these five characters, but we’ll just focus on the problematic aspects right now.

The Breakfast Club blatantly promotes misogyny and sexual harassment. The interactions between John Bender and Claire Standish are the most contentious. There are upwards of five occasions on which John Bender verbally harasses Claire, hounding her to reveal her sexual history. He refers to her several times as “Queenie,” “Sweets,” and “Cherry.” His persistence is so invasive that to the viewer, it becomes common practice by the end of the movie. There are two particular scenes where Bender takes his vulgarity too far. The first is when he describes sexual foreplay to Claire even after she asks him to stop. He continues to verbalize his desire while scanning her body up and down. Here we have a clear example of scopophilia, the pleasure of looking. The second is more physical. It’s the underwear scene.

John Hughes must have something for Molly Ringwald’s underwear.

In this situation, Bender is hiding under a table and happens to get a clear view up Claire’s skirt. The next thing you know, Claire is crushing Bender’s head between her legs. The sexual pervasiveness and unwanted actions in today’s standards would earn that scene the title of sexual assault. But, then again, why would it be okay in the year of 1985? During the filming process, Molly Ringwald, and her mother, objected to the scene in its entirety. The scene managed to make the final cut, but its important to note that Molly is not the actress who is objectified. She wasn’t legally allowed to do it because of her young age. Personally, I am mystified by the fact that director John Hughes found it to be a significant enough event in the story to go to such great lengths to include it.

The worst part about this sexual harassment that continues for 157 minutes is the fact that Claire nonetheless manages to “fall in love” with Bender at the end. This young, insecure girl still had respect for her assaulter, propagating the belief that women must accept men for who they are. They must be the submissive in the relationship. Unfortunately I have been a recipient of verbal sexual harassment, and I can assure you that I have never felt the need to show him any appreciation or congeniality. Another astonishing event towards the end of the film is the transformation of the Basket-Case. Allison is often described as the least significant character of the group, but I find her to be the most interesting. That is until John Hughes destroys her uniqueness. Within the last five minutes of the film, Claire and Allison have a makeover session which leaves Allison walking out of the high school looking like a normal, pretty girl. As soon as Andrew Clarke lays eyes on her, he is smitten (even though he had gotten to learn more about her complexities within the past 8 hours and hadn’t shown an interest in her at all; in fact, he seemed slightly disturbed by her prior to the makeover).

But really, who gives a flying fuck about her personality?

*Me internally*

Another frustrating aspect of the film is the dialogue between the five kids. I don’t believe there was a single civil conversation in the entire film. The only words that came out of their mouths were meant to be offensive or defensive, with the occasional offhanded comment by Brian. When they do try to become serious, its thrown to the side. Case in point: Brian’s struggle. The pressure he feels to excel in school is so great that he can’t deal with failing a project. He thinks that he needs to kill himself if he can’t be perfect. Rather than getting this young man help, they put him in Saturday detention.

After he tells the group of his predicament, the only thing stated is “Killing yourself is not an option” and within 35 seconds, everyone is laughing. Hughes’ attempt at digging deeper into the adolescent mind really scrapped the surface here. It had so much potential, and yet that is the last you hear of his struggle. It’s as if his suicidal thoughts just completely vanished by the final scene. And as if to seal the lack of depth in this movie, the conclusion of the girls love lives had to be the last thing on the viewers mind.

*Rolls Eyes*

These teenagers were meant to represent our former selves, the kids we once were. Over time they have morphed into images of what adults want to think of teenagers, not what the teenagers are actually like. The female characters are eventually “whipped” into their societal roles. They were dominated by their male counterparts. By viewing this cinematic story telling with the phallocentric gaze cited in Hooks’ text, you can come to the realization that this movie isn’t meant for teenagers. It’s meant for lost adults who want to remember their troubled selves in a different light.

 

 

Hooks, Bell. “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.” Movies and Mass Culture. Rutgers University Press. 1992. pp 247-253

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Feminist Film Criticism. Indiana University Press. 1990. pp

Ringwald, Molly. “What About ‘The Breakfast Club’?” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 17 Apr. 2018, http://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/what-about-the-breakfast-club-molly-ringwald-metoo-john-hughes-pretty-in-pink.32

 

Sixteen Candles and Objectification: A Look Back at the Problematic Past

If you’ve seen the movie 1984 film Sixteen Candles starring Molly Ringwald and directed by John Hughes, you know the film is a staple of the entire decade of the 1980’s. And you definitely know all about the teen heartthrob JAKE RYAN *heart eyes!!*

For me, I grew up watching this film hoping I would never wake up to my family forgetting my sixteenth birthday like Samantha’s family did in the film and I also spent my younger years wishing to cross paths with someone that made my heart flutter like Jake Ryan did for Samantha. I’ve seen the film numerous times, but it wasn’t until recent years that I realized the film was feeding into many of the negative stereotypes of women I had come to resent and that I needed to sit down and view the film from a new and critical perspective. I realized the film was constructed through the male gaze, was meant for male consumption, and portrayed women in whatever way necessary to appease the male viewer.

*world: shattered*

The film highlights a patriarchal influence in more ways than one, and Bell Hooks eloquently shows us the value in critical viewership through adopting the oppositional gaze when she asserts, “Even in the worst circumstances of domination, the ability to manipulate one’s gaze in the face of structures of domination that would contain it, opens up the possibility of agency” (Hooks 248).  Hooks articulates the concept that adopting a critical viewership can foster a larger change by promoting critical thought and creating a conversation around problematic elements. With this concept in mind, I would like to argue in this post that the film Sixteen Candles’harmful depictions of women constructed through the male gaze illustrate the need for adopting an oppositional gaze while viewing the film in order to begin to make reparations for the problematic ideas of women that have been perpetuated by the film.

On her sixteenth birthday, Samantha wakes up concerned only about whether or not her breasts have grown and if the center of her world, Jake Ryan, has come to love her yet. And, nope, the rest of her character arc doesn’t seem to deviate far from this narrow set of concerns.  

As viewers, we’re meant to spend the entirety of the movie under the impression Samantha exists only to visually appeal to and win the love of Jake Ryan. She doesn’t have any other meaningful endeavors throughout the movie having to do with self- love and acceptance or anything that would allude to the fact that her value as a character doesn’t derive from the approval of Jake Ryan. When (spoiler alert) she ends up with Jake Ryan at the end of the film, the iconic final scene of the two sharing an overdue birthday cake is meant to signify that Samantha has finally reached her only goal, to be the object of Jake’s affection.

Laura Mulvey touches on this phenomenon in her work Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema when she introduces the concept of “to-be-looked-at-ness”(Mulvey 33). She explains the common issues seen in narrative cinema where women serve to be the objects of male desire. The character arc of Samantha serves as the perfect example of this concept, as we see her value as a character dwindled to the role she plays in Jake Ryan’s life, and when we view Samantha’s character critically, we are able to gain insight into the patriarchal dynamics at play operating through the development of the film toward appealing to the male gaze.

At other points in the film, we see blatant objectification of women that distances the audience from the humanity of women and perpetuates harmful perceptions of them. In the middle of the film, Samantha is made to feel sorry for one of the characters deemed as a “geek” and ends up giving her underwear to him to show off to all of his “geek” friends. The iconic scene has been deemed as a “humorous” representation of “guy talk” but is really anything but.

This hypermasculine display is entirely frustrating, as it perpetuates the objectification of women by placing value on the ability to (appear to) have sexual relations with women and diminishes the value of the humanity and personhood of women. This phenomenon suggests ties to Mulvey’s writings on psychoanalysis and the idea of castration, as she engages the concept of female fetishism (and subsequent objectification) as an avenue to soothe anxiety of castration (Mulvey 35). We see in this display of fetishism through the spectacle of the underwear viewing while the intimate and eroticized details about Samantha are made for the entertainment and anxiety relief of males under the guise of comedy. The entire situation is devaluing to women, however, developing an oppositional gaze and viewing this critically can help us identify the problematic elements of the situation and start a conversation that helps to dismantle the harmful ideas perpetuated through the scene.

And when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, our beloved Jake Ryan fails woman-kind miserably.

To even further perpetuate the objectification of women seen in the movie, we see another example at Jake’s house party. Jake’s incredibly sexualized girlfriend for the duration of the film, Caroline, becomes incredibly drunk. After deciding to go and pursue Samantha, Jake decides to leave incapacitated Caroline with the same incapable underclassman that, just hours prior, had proudly displayed Samantha’s underwear in the school bathroom. (Seems like a great idea, right, Jake?) And with his final sendoff, Jake tells him “she’s totally gone, have fun.” Jake’s failure to treat Caroline with the slightest human decency in this instance is saddening and further perpetuates the objectification of women throughout the film.

Thanks for reminding us what rape culture looks like, Jake!

I haven’t even touched on the blatant racism in the film, and we can already clearly see there are various problematic elements of the film Sixteen Candles. Watching the film as the person I am today after developing so many close ties to it in childhood is difficult, I hate to see the aspects I once loved dissolving in front of me, but I would never wish to return to my ignorant state. Developing an oppositional gaze was pivotal in developing my sense of agency. Through stepping away from the position of passive viewer and employing the oppositional gaze, I have been able to find solace in the conversation that can be ignited by viewing media critically and calling problematic instances to attention. Laura Mulvey refers to film as “an advanced representation system” that reflects current societal conditions (Mulvey 29). And by developing critical viewership and taking on the oppositional gaze, we are able to change the world around us by drawing attention to the problems we see and starting conversations.

 

 

 

Hooks, Bell. “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.” Movies and Mass Culture. Rutgers University Press. 1992. pp. 248

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Feminist Film Criticism. Indiana University Press. 1990. pp 29-35