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Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Ever had something you love dismissed because it’s “just” pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know it’s worth talking and thinking about. So do we. We're Tracie and Emily, two sisters who think a lot about a lot of things. From Twilight to Ghostbusters, Harry Potter to the Muppets, and wherever pop culture takes us, come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Deep Thoughts about The Breakfast Club
Don’t you…forget about misogyny…Don’t Don’t Don’t Don’t!
On today’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Tracie takes another look at the 1985 John Hughes film The Breakfast Club. Though this classic Gen X teen movie passes the Bechdel test and explicitly names the prude-or-slut trap of female sexuality, it also treats Claire and Allison like prizes for the boys in the film and assures the audience that we’re not so different from each other–by featuring a cast that is entirely white, cishet, thin, and able-bodied.
Sounds like your earbuds and my earbuds should get together and listen to this podcast.
CW: Discussion of on-screen sexual harassment, evidence of physical abuse, and suicidal ideation.
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
I'm Tracy Guy-Dekker and you're listening to Deep Thoughts about Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? Today I'll be sharing my Deep Thoughts about the 1985 John Hughes film, the Breakfast Club, with my sister, emily Guy-Burken, and with you. Let's dive in. Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture, what others might deem stupid shit? You know matters, you know what's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit. This show is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. If you enjoy it even half as much as we do, please consider helping to keep us overthinking. You can support us at our Patreon there's a link in the show notes or leave a positive review so others can find us and, of course, share the show with your people. Okay, so I know you've seen this film. I know you have, but tell me you know what's in your head about the Breakfast Club.
Speaker 2:So I saw the Breakfast Club. I was probably in elementary school. No, I came out when I was six. I know I didn't see it when it came out, but I wasn't. I mean, I was probably nine or 10. And so I took it as this is what high school is like. Looking back, I don't know that that was necessarily a bad thing to take from it. Yeah, obviously. Like you know, 27 year olds playing 16 year olds they weren't.
Speaker 1:They weren't actually. They weren't really. Molly Ringwald was 16 when it was filmed.
Speaker 2:No kidding, yeah, oh, that makes some aspects really gruesome. We will get into that, okay. So, um, all right. Well, the other thing is that John Bender was very much a part of my romantic instruction as a child. John Bender, mr Rochester and the Beast from the Beauty and the Beast were what I found romantic, and they all have a lot in common.
Speaker 2:For many years I thought of it as like a very well done Gen X era teen movie with a satisfying romantic subplot, and I've had to really reevaluate that, especially when I saw Molly Ringwald posting something about how her daughter, who was in her teens, wanted to see it. She was like, oh goodness, I don't know if I want her to see it and we'll have to watch it together because of, specifically, the underwear scene. And this is not the only John Hughes film with Molly Ringwald where there's a weird underwear scene. So that's something that I, like I've been wrestling with somewhat. I mean, we already talked a little bit about it, about this view of romance with Beauty and the Beast, so I'm excited to kind of get into that aspect of it as well for Breakfast Club. But why are we talking about this today? What's important to you about this movie?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you were six, I was nine when it came out and I probably saw it around the same time you did. So I was a tween or teenager, young teenager when I saw it and I remember thinking of it as like it was like a real movie that treated kids, you know, seriously, and I loved it for that. And I didn't I don't have quite the depth of affection for the Beast Bender Rochester character that you do, but I have some of it. And for our project I've really been thinking about what are like the Gen X films that were kind of foundational, and so this one came up. So that's why I wanted to kind of dig into it a little bit. So let me start with just a quick, like what happens in the movie which actually I'm going to be quick about it because it's sort of a slice of life film, like one day that every detail doesn't matter for the listener to kind of understand what the movie is about.
Speaker 1:The conceit is it's a Saturday at Schermer High School in Schermer, illinois and these five kids have detention eight hours on a Saturday in the library. So the five kids in detention are five. They each fill the stereotype. So there's the popular girl who's Molly Ringwald, played by Molly Ringwald. There's the jock, who is played by Emilio Estevez. He's a wrestler. There's the nerd, played by Michael Anthony Hall. There's the criminal that's the word that's used in the film. He's sort of the bad boy. That's John Bender, whom you mentioned. They bite Judd Nelson. And then there's the basket case that's the word used in the film. That's Allie Sheeby's Allison.
Speaker 1:The only other two characters of note. We do see each of the kids' parents very briefly, but the only. Actually we don't see John Bender's parents. We see some of the kids' parents briefly, but the only other two characters of note are Vice Principal Richard, dick Vernon and Carl the janitor. So Vice Principal Vernon is sort of classic love-to-hate authoritarian who really dislikes these kids, especially John Bender, and Carl is just an everyday guy doing his thing, doing his job.
Speaker 1:So the kids are in detention for the full day. Vice Principal Vernon is right there waiting for them to screw up and ends up giving John Bender an additional eight Saturdays of detention because they have a screaming match where Vernon feels disrespected and keeps like that's one more, that's one more, and in fact Brian keeps count of how many it is. But then Vernon gets distracted and he's off doing his thing. So the kids kind of are left on their own. They sneak out and go get weed out of John's locker and then they kind of hit a dead end. They think they're going to get caught. John Bender basically sacrifices himself and causes a big distraction to get Vernon to catch John Bender, while the other kids sneak back into the library John Bender.
Speaker 1:Then Vernon puts Bender into a supply closet as his punishment for solitary confinement kind of a thing, and actually goes to him, tries to get the student to hit him, which John Bender does not fall for that. And then, after Vernon leaves him alone, he climbs up and crawls through the drop ceiling ducts, I guess and rejoins the other kids in the library. They get high, they talk about life, they complain about their parents. Most of them cry at some point.
Speaker 1:And then Molly Ringwald gives Allie Sheedy's character a makeover and Emilio Estevez's character is instantly smitten now that she's more traditionally feminine. And at the very end Molly Ringwald sneaks out, goes to the supply closet and gives John Bender a kiss. They were supposed to write an essay about who they think they are of at least a thousand words. In the end only Brian the nerd writes one which basically says you know, mr Vernon, you think you know who we are, but you don't know who we are because we're all all of these things, we're all of a jock. A jock and a criminal and a basket case and a popular girl. That's not the word, princess.
Speaker 1:Princess, thank you, a princess and a nerd. So the you know the sort of moral of the movie is that you know you can't judge a book by its cover and actually the moral that you took away that the sort of lines between the social groups are arbitrary and false. So okay, so that's what we're working with here. So rewatching it now in my late 40s and thinking about it like the first thing you're struck with, honestly Still in your mid 40s For another six weeks Still.
Speaker 1:So here I am, in my 40s, looking back at this movie and the first thing I was struck with, honestly, was the casual misogyny, the casual homophobia, the casual fat phobia that is just thrown around, the casual ableism. We hear that the homophobic F word repeatedly and see it in writing once we hear the ableist our word at least once out of John Bender's mouth. We and John actually constantly insulting Molly Ringwald's character, claire, constantly. One of the ways he insults her he calls her fat. She is not fat. She says I'm not fat.
Speaker 1:And then he says there are two kinds of fat people. There's fat people who've always been fat and there's fat people who used to be thin. And then he does this thing like puffing his cheeks out, and he tells her that that's he can see her future. It is so gross in so many ways. There's and there's this casual homophobia that's thrown around between the Andy and John Bender about wrestling and about it. It's like used to insult one another and like it was hard to watch initially, like like in the first few minutes of meeting these characters I'm like why did I like these kids as I'm watching it now.
Speaker 1:And I have to say, like it does get better it in so far as like it was intentional right Because Hughes wanted us to see these kids as their stereotypes first, and so that's why he does what he does, like that was definitely an intentional move on the movie maker's part, so that was what I was first struck with. What I really want to get into with you is thinking about, with the romantic thing that you're talking about, but I think that's baked into some constructions of gender that Hughes to give him credit in 1985, when this was released, I actually think he was doing some subversion of gender roles that have been inherited. But now here we are, these 40 years later, almost 40 years later, it's not. It's not as subversive as I think we thought it was.
Speaker 2:Right. So here's what I mean he took as a given that we now really don't yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, agreed, agreed, and I think there were also some things that like, if we look at the individual, well, I'll show you what I mean. So I think giving Claire some depth was actually subversive in 1985 to take this like very popular girl. She is the prom queen, like by her own account and by everyone else's. The school would shut down if she didn't show up. And she's not an airhead. She really has some depth to her, has deep emotion and is a relatively fully formed character. I think that was subversive in 1985. Yes, yeah, I would agree with that.
Speaker 1:We also have in Allie Sheedy's voice some real subversion of the catch 22 the teenage girls are put into around sexuality Right. So there's this scene where Allie Sheedy claims to be very sexually promiscuous and then the other four kids are trying to get Claire to admit whether or not she has had sex before. She doesn't want to talk about it.
Speaker 1:And they really harangue her until she admits that she's a virgin. Then Allie Sheedy fesses up she is too, and says Allie Sheedy's, allie Sheedy's, allison says it's a double-edged sword If you haven't, you're a prude, and if you have, you're a slut. It's a trap. She says it's a trap and I feel like saying that out loud in 1985 is pretty powerful. That dichotomy, prude or slut, is absolutely the trap of female sexuality. And so, on the one hand, I want to applaud that. On the other hand, both of these two women are forced into a pairing by the end of these eight hours, forced by John Hughes, not by the characters. So it's you know. Claire faces insult and harassment and actually what might even be term sexual assault today, in that underwear scene by her romantic interest. So the underwear scene the kids don't like each other coming in, but they do show solidarity against Vernon. So that is the one. That's one of the first places that they start to show solidarity.
Speaker 1:Then there are other things that bring them together. One of the moments when they show solidarity against Vernon is after Bender has snuck back to the library through the ducts. He, like, fell through the ceiling. Vernon heard it and comes in and is like what was that? Ruckus and the other four kids are protecting the fact that Bender's there. He's under the desk. So he's under the desk where Claire is sitting and he looks up and realizes he has a clear view of Claire's crotch in her skirt and sort of like starts to lean in, forcing her to, like you know, crush his face with her knees. What's interesting about that scene? One of the things I mean. You note that Hughes puts that in other teenage come-age movies.
Speaker 2:Also now considering the fact that Olly Ringwald was 16 and they have the camera.
Speaker 1:So here's the thing. This is what's interesting, because she was 16, it would have been illegal to actually use her body. It's a stand-in, so it's body double. The crotch shot that we see is not Molly Ringwald's crotch. Molly Ringwald objected to that scene. Molly's mom objected to that scene. While they were filming they had to bring in a body double for legal purposes because she was 16.
Speaker 2:And so they had to go through all that trouble for something that added nothing.
Speaker 1:And Hughes felt so strongly exactly that he needed that moment. Mm-hmm. That I'm like what, what, john, what the hell. Yeah. Like what actually are you trying to say here? And so once Vernon leaves and Bender kind of crawls out from the desk and Claire hits him like he's crawling, so she's hitting his back repeatedly and calling him names, and how dare you? And he says it was an accident.
Speaker 2:I should yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Or actually has every right to do.
Speaker 1:Let's put it that way there's no should in how you respond, but she has every right to do Right, right, and so it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just an accident, and like, come on, come on, you know it just. And so we have, on the one hand, allison saying it's a trap, and on the other hand, we have John Hughes going to so much trouble to make sure that the audience has this crotch shot moment. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:And I think that's the truth. Like today, I have a lot of cognitive dissonance around those two truths.
Speaker 2:You know, what's interesting to me is, I feel like. So last week we talked about Clueless and we talked about how there was a lot of like. Well, this is the cost of being a woman or being feminine coded in the world, and I had kind of forgotten about Allison saying it's a trap. But what's interesting to me is that I know I had no hangups in high school whatsoever about either being or not being experienced sexually, like it didn't bother me at all, like didn't care, didn't care about other people, didn't care. And I know that's not true of other people of our generation, although I feel like in general, like Gen X, women have fewer hangups than previous generations. But I did feel weird about not having romantic pairings, mm-hmm. So, and I did navigate the world as if my expectation was there will be some casual harassment yeah, because that's what I was taught Even among good guys, dateable guys, people who would actually treat me well.
Speaker 1:You know, that's an interesting point too, especially given your sort of like John Bender as part of the constellation of what you were looking for. Because when they do actually pair, clare seeks him out To be intense and douchey. He says are you lost? She comes up to him and kisses him on his like cheek, neck, not mouth and he says why did you do that? And she says because I knew you wouldn't. So it is significant in my mind that though Bender harassed her emotionally and actually sexually, she knew he wasn't going to actually touch her in that way. Right Like even the like crotch moment was sort of a moment of opportunity and not of design. He didn't go under that desk in order to do that. Yes, and so there's almost like an apology in that Like yeah, sure he acts like a jerk to you, but there is a line.
Speaker 1:He wouldn't cross that line and there's sort of like a like that's what makes it okay in the viewers Like I think that looking at it now, looking back on it, it doesn't feel okay to me. Now I'm like why would she even want him? But I think when I watched it as a 13 year old or whatever, and again as a 16 and whatever, like as a younger person, that was what made that romance actually make a little more sense. Subconsciously. I didn't consciously think that, but subconsciously I was like you know, because she made the move that made it not icky, mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Well, it emphasizes how much of what and this is this is the thing that I find attractive about these stories and these characters emphasizes that what he does is a performance to protect his soft underbelly. Yes, yes, and so, like the, the casual misogyny, the casual homophobia, just the way that he interacts with Vernon, all of that is to like it's a cat puffing up. That's not really who he is, and I think that there is some truth there. You know like the people do perform to protect themselves. The problem is that we were taught that that kind of casual misogyny and harassment indicated a soft underbelly rather than that just being who they are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a nice distinction. That's a nice distinction and I think that totally fits with this character as well, because the first moment he feels at all sympathetic is when he's so. First he's sort of making fun of Brian and imagining what Brian's family life is like, and then Andy says what about you?
Speaker 1:And he mimics his own father totally abusing him and then verbally abusing him, and then, when he's pushed because Andy thinks he's lying, he shows a scar where a cigar has been put out on his skin, and so the first moment that we're like really invited to sympathize with this character is to see exactly that. But this performance of the bad boy is because he's been abused. So I think you're exactly right, and he's not the only one. We see that each of these kids is performing to one degree or another because of their home life for each of them actually.
Speaker 2:And this movie is pretty quotable. There's a line that I actually use, that's like because it's quotable, but it also, I feel like, says it very quickly. When Andy opens up about his own father's abuse, that doesn't feel like abuse because it's his father wanting him to do his best. You know, it's like come on, we don't tolerate losers in this family, win, win. And we already know how horrendous Bender's father is.
Speaker 2:Bender says sounds like your old man and my old man should get together and go bowling. Yeah, and that is such a perfectly written line because it's showing empathy and sympathy and solidarity in a very like specific way and while still allowing him the distance he needs, because he's already like we're different. But you know we're not different. It's just, it's why this movie was beloved and made so much money. And all of that is because, like John Hughes has it down, like that is excellent, excellent dialogue. Yeah, that's great writing. Yeah, and when I use that, it's when I hear about something awful happening. I'll be like, I'll say like sounds like your old man and my old man should get together and go bowling. Not that I'm talking about my actual man, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. I think that's exactly right, okay. So I'm trying to figure out what I want to talk about next and this isn't a fully formed thought, so maybe you can help me kind of round this out. Each of the three boys is given the opportunity within the dialogue, within the script, to have some real emotional expression through their own agency, right? So you know, bender does the thing I mean, he's invited when Andy says, what about at your house? But the thing about his dad, like he does that, he's not kind of goaded into it, and then we see real emotion from him. He like he expresses anger, he like throws books and he climbs up, like he climbs up onto this mezzanine area and just kind of brews.
Speaker 1:We see Andy at one point. The kids are all sitting around and Andy says do you know why I'm in here? And he tells the story about really abusing a nerdy kid and expresses deep regret and talks about the fact that he did it to try and impress his dad and how messed up that is. And he doesn't know how to apologize to poor Larry Lester who, whose bunsy tape together and he and he just, we see, like real pathos for me and me and that same conversation.
Speaker 1:Brian talks about why he's in there and in fact it he. He felt the pressure to like he couldn't make the elephant's trunk, turn on the light in the lamp and chop glass and he cries like from the this is like not gonna, he can't have an F and he knows his parents can't have an F.
Speaker 1:So he brought a gun to school. So I'm gonna put a footnote on the fact that we see real emotion from him, because John, who's almost immediately like, kind of dissipates the fact that we have suicidal ideation with laughter, which I'm just gonna put a parenthesis around that and say like that deserved a little more, and set that aside a bit.
Speaker 2:I will say though the four kids there didn't have any way of dealing with that or helping Brian. Yeah, the laughter is a catharsis for Brian. So, like Brian deserve better from the movie the kids by by laughing and they did the best they could and provided him with a, with a necessary catharsis. That was all they could do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and to be clear, if you haven't seen the movie, they don't laugh at him. He says he brought a gun to school. Allison asks was it a handgun? He says it was a flare gun and it went off in the locker and totally destroyed the elephant. And and the kids are just sitting there looking serious and then they start to sort of giggle because it was a flare gun. Yeah, so they're not laughing at him. They're not laughing at him.
Speaker 2:No, that's important to note and it is like objectively kind of funny that the flare gun went off in his locker which first of all it's a flare gun and then that it destroyed the elephant. There is something objectively funny about that. And getting helping Brian get to a point where he can see the objective humor in the situation that he feels such shame over, I think is again the best that these kids can do because they're kids.
Speaker 1:I think that's fair. I accept that, thank you. So Allison has some, expresses some emotion in weird fits and starts. She is, you know, she's the sort of basket case of the group and is not sure how to interact socially and clearly wants to but also doesn't want to, and so there's odd moments where she sort of starts to open up and then closes back up again. We see her cry when the five of them are sitting around talking, but it's actually she's crying not because of her own like expression, it's like because of the broader conversation.
Speaker 1:Brian's the nerd and he says what's gonna happen on Monday when we see each other, because I think of you guys as friends now, and Claire's like that's not how it works, right, and and and at that point Allison and Brian both cry and Claire does too, actually sort of about you know where they are, and Claire's not trying. She even says like I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm just telling you how it is, this is how it works. Claire has big emotions, but they are sort of harassed out of her, her big emotions, right, it's not about it's not. It's not like Brian sort of having an opportunity to express the shame Claire's bullied into crying and that distinction for her out of the group undercuts some of what I said from the very beginning about making this popular girl not the airhead.
Speaker 1:It's almost like we want to make the popular girl cry, we the audience, and I'm not even sure where I'm going with this, but I was struck by it when I was thinking about looking back at teenage strife. You can see, as an adult, I can see how low the stakes really were and also they seem huge and so I don't want to take that away. And I think that's part of what John Hughes gave us was he took the stakes seriously, not the way an adult is like yeah, yeah, I know it seems important, but when you're older you know it's not. He just took it seriously. These stakes are high for these kids Stepping out of it, acknowledging all of that and watching this group make this kid cry. I'm just holding that and wondering how much of that was wish fulfilled.
Speaker 2:It's interesting because it's the popular girl, not the BMOC, and Claire and Allison are prizes at the end for two of the boys who have an emotional arc, and Brian, I mean he gets to live as his prize at the end. I don't know, but there is very much a sense of like. Yeah, they're going to pair up because, like you know, okay, we'll let you see that these girls are human.
Speaker 2:But, you know, john Bender is the one who's really opened up, and Andy is the one who has really made it clear how difficult his life is, even though it seems like, you know, everything's pretty easy for him as a jock, and so they get these pretty girls.
Speaker 1:I think there's also something that, like each of those girls had to change in some way. Like Alice, sheedy's Allison is the most obvious because like she looks completely different. But Claire too, like really had in sort of like a Greece kind of a transformation right, and neither John nor Andy really do so, and you know, I mean you talk about it as a prize, I mean, and that's really underscored by the fact that. So at one point, john, because there's, there's there's some class stuff going on in this as well, where?
Speaker 1:John Bender really rags on Claire for being rich like hard. So like she brings sushi like in a bento box with a separate little soy, like she like has the full sushi experience for her lunch and attention in 1985 in Illinois, chicago I mean it's it's a Chicago suburb Sushi would have like he really would have had no idea what it was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, he. And he says he's like what is it? She has to explain that it's raw fish and rice and and he's seaweed and yeah, yeah, so. And so he gives her a hard time about being rich there and then later he says, like after she's already crying, he says those are nice earrings, there Are those real diamonds, and they're, they're like large, ish, stone studs.
Speaker 1:The final scene as they're all saying goodbye, claire and Bender are kissing, and then she opens his palm and puts one of her diamond studs in his hand and then closes his palm around it and then gets in her dad's mercy. So talk about a prize, like a literal diamond that she gives him as a prize, which is a diamond that he has teased her about. So there's this transformation that is required of these two girls, that the that the boys aren't asked to make. They're asked to open up and put down their performance a little bit or put down their masks. Some they are asked to do that and they do, but they're really not fundamentally asked to change. I mean, andy says how do you apologize for something like that, about the reason that he's in detention, and we're left with like, oh yeah, he feels bad but there's nothing he can do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, and Brian is friends with Larry Lester, so like because Ryan say like that was you yeah, how do I make this right with your friend? Yeah, he has someone there who can help him. Yeah, and there's no like. Okay, you need to say you're sorry and he likes crawlers. Yeah, which would not be enough, but that would be like what a 16 year old could handle. You know, yeah.
Speaker 1:So you know, there are these structural things about gender that remain, like they remain in place in this movie.
Speaker 2:I do want to say so, since you brought up like class, and that appears to be like you know, what I learned from this as a little baby, emily, was that these clicks, these social distinctions, are kind of meaningless, but the class distinction is not meaningless. And all five of these kids are white. Yes, all five of these kids are straight. All five of these kids are, like presumably random Christian. Whatever fish you know celebrate Christmas. They do mention it, yeah, and so Able bodied.
Speaker 2:Able bodied, thin, neuro, typical, thin, I mean. So well, okay, I could make an argument that Allison is not neurotypical but does well enough to mask Like. I mean she can handle herself for the most part in social situations, not as well as she would like, but not in a way that would immediately clock her as neurodivergent. So I appreciate what Hughes is saying, which is that these clicks don't mean anything. But the thing is there are distinctions between kids that are, because they're distinctions in our society, that shouldn't mean anything but do in the same way that, like you know, class distinctions shouldn't make a difference. And he's trying to in some way say that like. Doesn't Bender say like I'd be great for pissing off your parents.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he says so. The big complaint that Claire has about her parents is that they use each one, uses her to get back at the other. And so he says you know, you said your parents use you to get back at the other. Wouldn't I be amazing in that capacity, or something like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that is kind of one of those like we're going to rely on these distinctions that will matter very much to your parents but don't matter to us because we have a connection that doesn't have anything to do with those class distinctions, even though with the nearing and all of that, yeah it does. But that's like that's something that I remember gosh in my 20s going like everybody in this movie is white and like clearly this is a very wealthy school district. They've got like random sculpture in the center of their ginormous library.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the foreign language lab where Andy gets high and there's like a music lab in the where they so they're listening to music and they dance, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So like okay, fair enough that in a district like that it's likely that the it is mostly white mostly white, but that that's something that I think is is interesting and I would love to see like I have thought this about several movies and like foundational pop culture in our society. So, for instance, people say, like friends is actually just living single which came first and living single was about black friends. I would love to see these like movies that are supposed to be universal, from our childhood, remade by people with a different life, circumstance and and and experience. So like what if you know a director were to remake Breakfast Club and have a majority or all black cast? What would the differences be?
Speaker 1:Interesting. The the jock the yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, because we're taking, we're given these stereotypes and and like advise that these are universal, and that was one thing that I was misled on, like it's not that there weren't popular kids, it's not that there weren't bad boys, not that there weren't jocks, but no one was any one of those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's one thing that like, looking back on it now to the nerd, there's only the one nerd and he's the boy Right. So like where do I self insert? Because I sure as heck wasn't Claire, but neither was I Allison. It was like I was sort of like a cross between like a second tier Claire and a Brian, because because I was a nerd but I was a popular nerd, I mean I was still a nerd, so I wasn't like the prom queen, but like I had like friends in lots of groups and so how do you like? I mean, but that's the thing with anything that does the stereotypes is that no one is one dimensional. So yeah, I think that's a really important point and that that was the point, but then it was undercut a bit as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so people always used to tell me that I looked like Ally Sheedy and the breakfast club I remember. So I, because of that, I always kind of identified with her. But same thing, like I'm shy, but I was never so as quiet as she is, like, and like there's a point where she squeaks and like and leaves out the desk, she eeps and, like, puts her head on the table.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like I've never been that shy and yeah it just it doesn't, it doesn't fit, and like the thing is, I don't think there's anyone who who like, oh, that's me, that's me, right, of course. Of course the idea that there is some universal message from this film when it ignores the life experience of people who are not white, white, straight, cis, evil body, yeah, evil bodied Christian.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So I'd like to. I'd like to talk about two more things, and then we can see where we go. One is that this film definitely passes the back del test, no question. And I'd like to talk about actually one moment where it's passing the back del test, which is during the makeover. Claire is giving Allison a makeover and Allison says why are you being so nice to me? And Claire says because you're letting me, and what that message is about, how teenage girls interact is like really sitting with me after this rewatch, like I don't know if John Hughes is right about that.
Speaker 1:And the fact that he thought that that was the case, that girls didn't let one another be nice, because of these lines, these click type lines, it just it feels really sad to me that that's what we think of teenage girl culture.
Speaker 2:I have trouble with this because I I mean, you've got a daughter, I've got two sons. I just met up with some friends this past weekend for breakfast. One of my friends has a son and a daughter and the other one has two daughters and they were talking about like there's been some bullying and in particular we're talking about a Girl Scout troop where each individual girl is just kind and bright and fun and funny and delightful, but in the group it becomes this toxic mix. And so one of my friends was saying like yeah, after this season we're not doing Girl Scouts anymore because of how unpleasant this becomes. And very odd for me to hear. That's not to say that my kids don't experience bullying as boys. It's just, I don't. It's a one on one thing If there's any bullying, there's no. Like this mix becomes toxic.
Speaker 2:And I'm reminded of Pat Noswalt, the comedian, talking about his daughter, saying that like he really doesn't believe there's differences between boys and girls.
Speaker 2:But there was a point where his daughter got really upset and she was little I mean, she was tiny, like four or five because her best friend who has this gorgeous, long, shiny, curly hair. So the friend drew this picture of the friend with long hair, what her hair looks like, and Alice with like a bob, which is what Alice's hair looked like. And Alice was very upset about it and was crying, and so she ended up like here I drew a picture of me and this friend send it to her mom and she drew herself with long hair and her friend is bald and so and so and this is, you know, a comedy thing that he's talking about it's from several years ago, because I think his daughter is probably 14 or 15 at this point. He was saying like it really does seem like boys when they have a conflict with another boy, they wrestle it out, they like there's some sort of like explosion and then it's over, Whereas he feels like girls are like soooob.
Speaker 2:And I bring that up because I was so surprised by it.
Speaker 2:Like you know, first of all, pat Noswalt's very progressive comedian.
Speaker 2:He's very much a feminist and a feminist ally and all of that, so like for him to tell this story and for him to be like this is the experience I've had.
Speaker 2:I'm like it's not that I don't believe it, I definitely do, but it wasn't my experience as a kid and I don't have kids who are girls, who live, you know, navigate the world in that space now. But I do wonder, you know, like I don't think that this is like inherent to you know, x chromosome, but I do think that centuries of women being socialized to feel like there can be only one and that, you know, looking at other women as competition for scarce resources, because that was actually the case for so long that we are somehow teaching little girls and young women that you can't be nice to each other and so you need to like if someone's being nice to you, you need to stop it, because that's got to be like suspicious, there's got to be nefarious purpose behind it or something. So I do think that there is something to what Hughes is saying in that interaction between Claire and Allison, and it's very sad, well, and even in the interaction, right like Claire's making Allison look more like Claire.
Speaker 1:Yes, so you know Allison was wearing makeup that she had put on herself and presumably I mean she says she likes it. Claire says you look so much better without that black shit on your eyes and Allison says hey, I like that black shit, right Like she was wearing like really heavy eyeliner and Claire, like pulls her hair back and puts blush on and less hazardous and skin, we're white instead of black.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so even within the movie and the being nice it, it's about making not just a makeover, but a makeover in my image from Claire. So it's complicated, it's complicated, yeah. So the last thing that I wanted to name is that that I did not remember at all until I rewatched it is that the, the movie actually has an epigraph. That's what it's called at the beginning. Like there's a quote is from from Bowie these children that you spit on as they try to change their world, or immune to your consultation.
Speaker 2:They're well aware of what they're going through.
Speaker 1:They're quite aware of what they're going through.
Speaker 1:They're aware. I think it's just aware they're aware. Okay, yeah, so I didn't realize that, that was, I didn't remember that. That quote sort of framed this movie and I thought that was. I noted it. I noted it. That's the message and if we put principal Vernon then back into the picture with that epigraph in mind, like his story arc is that he dislikes all these kids. He has this weird pissing contest with John Bender. He looks in their confidential files. Carl the janitor catches him and then asks for 50 bucks to stay quiet about the fact that Vernon's looking in their confidential files.
Speaker 2:Wasn't he looking in the teacher's confidential files, though Not the kids.
Speaker 1:It's not clear. Like he says a name which is not one of the kids names, he says Terry. So possibly, though certainly like context wise, you're led to believe it's the kids files.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, it would make sense that there would be in the building where, as a teacher's files would be, would not be in the building, they'd be like right, they would HQ.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he does say a name, though that's not one of the kids names.
Speaker 1:So maybe, but definitely, carl catches him and asked for 50 bucks to stay quiet. And then the two of them sit around drinking beer and Vernon says you know, what really scares me is that when I'm old, when we're old, these kids are going to be in charge and they're going to take care of me when I get old. And Carl, the janitor, says I wouldn't count on it. Yeah, so with that Bowie quote, like the commentary on Vernon and the commentary on the way that adults treat teenagers by forcing them into these pigeon holes, is very clear. I mean, maybe I hit you over the head, clear, and for that I think I think Hughes deserves a box. Right, I think that actually, like as I just said, like when you are a teenager, having a grown up be like these things that you care deeply about don't matter, doesn't help.
Speaker 2:Well, and even the just as we find out that every single one of these kids is struggling with their parents. And I'd be curious to watch it now as a parent of a kid who's on the cusp of teenagerhood, because my sympathies have changed as I've watched movies like I saw myself as kids for a long time. Now I see myself as a parent. When I was teaching I remember I don't know if I watched it again or I was just thinking about it I was just like, yeah, vernon's awful, like it reinforced how terrible he is. Once I was a teacher because, like you, are the grown up in the room and you always remember that Right.
Speaker 1:He does not remember that he's the grown up in the room and in fact I mean with Bender in particular like having seen like literal physical abuse that this young man has is enduring and then is punished for it again, and the way that Vernon tries to go to him into hitting so that Vernon can beat it, you know, tries to go, Bender, into receiving additional physical abuse.
Speaker 2:When I first started teaching, I had a colleague who was a guidance counselor at the school who had gone to that school as a high school student and had had his entire academic career as a guidance counselor at that school, and he was a bit of a bully really, even as a guidance counselor. When I first got there and met him, I thought he was amazing because he was very individually involved with the students in a way that seemed very nurturing. Turns out that he was really kind of reliving his high school years and making himself big man on campus as staff, and so he would do things like have groups of students who would come to his house for like meetings to talk about like college planning and stuff like that, and one of the kids, for whatever reason, would get cut out. But instead of cutting this kid out which is not great anyway he would just change what day of the week they meet and not tell the kid.
Speaker 1:So the kid would show up on the wrong day.
Speaker 2:I mean like, or he wouldn't tell the kid when the next meeting was, or whatever, which is basically like Bullshit, like that high school bullshit ghost and and he also, he was not. He was not physically abusive at all, but he was a very big man and he used his size to be intimidating. All this to say that Vernon is not a caricature. There are real administrators and teachers like that in every high school in the nation and, horribly, in every middle school and elementary school too. Yeah, so there is nothing sympathetic about Vernon.
Speaker 2:I do wonder if there is any way to find the other parents sympathetic. Just that, as a parent, I know that you think that the baby years are the hardest because you're sleep deprived and there's this like helpless being relying on you. But as your kid gets older, it's it gets harder because, like, the choices are so much less clear. Like you know, crying baby you get up, feed it, change it easy. You know there's there's like a list of five possible things that the baby might need crying 16 year old, floundering 16 year old so much harder. Yeah, so that said, that, like how each of these parents are described sounds awful. I mean, it really sounds awful so that's interesting.
Speaker 1:So Andy's and Bender's dad's the bowling dads definitely I have a hard time finding any sympathy for either of them. Claire's parents I actually do feel like I have some sympathy for them, like they're in a loveless marriage and they're not behaving well. A few people do in love with marriages and actually you do see Claire's dad in the car as he's dropping her off and she's like I can't believe, you can't she's sort of a root of salt in that moment I can't believe you can't get me out of this.
Speaker 1:You know she skipped class to go shopping. That's why she has detention and he's, like you, skipped class, like you know, like he actually, in that brief interaction you do see some affection and him trying to help his daughter take responsibility. Like I do have some sympathy for her parents, allison's parents. She gets dropped off, she's in the backseat, she gets out without saying anything and then she like starts to like move toward the front of the car, to like interact with the parent who's driving and they drive away and the thing that she accuses her parents of is neglecting her. They ignore me, that's what she uses, and so it's really hard to know about her parents, I think, and Brian's parents.
Speaker 1:You know, having been the straight-A kid who thought my parents can't have an F, I'm not sure that that was actually true. Now we do also see Brian's mom and she's real mad and you know she says you find a way to study. He was paints her as not sympathetic in that moment and also, like, I think the pressures that high achieving kids receive from their parents are often seeds planted by their parents, but maybe not quite as robust from the parents as they think. So I think there could be a opportunity for sympathy of Brian's possibly do Brian's parents know that the flare gun unclear, unclear because that's if, if she knows, if she knows that it was suicidal ideation that was happening and she's behaving that way.
Speaker 2:No, sympathy no sympathy.
Speaker 1:I take back everything I said.
Speaker 2:I'm assuming she does not know. Both of my kids have inherited my anxiety. It happens and both of them feel very like, feel a great deal of pressure to do well, which is not coming from me or their father. We have actually, like my spouse has actually said to my eldest, you should fail something. It is one of the best things that you can do, because that is when you learn. So I am definitely sympathetic to that because there's like wherever the kids picked it up, the idea that they need to do well and that it is life or death. That said, if my kid were in Brian's situation, I would not be saying you find a way study. I'd be like can you please find a way to take a nap? Yeah, right, but there's also a big difference between 1985 and 2024.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah well, we've talked about this movie a lot, so let me see if I can sum up much that.
Speaker 1:I brought and that you helped me. Let me sum up. So the Breakfast Club 1985, john Hughes, passes the backdale test. Good.
Speaker 1:There were some ways in which this movie was in fact subversive in the best sense, in 1985 and looking at it 39 years later, it was less revolutionary than we thought, or maybe more precisely, we've come so far now that the subversion of 1985 is not far enough. So we see Hughes telling us that these stereotypes and these clicks are false and we have a lot more in common than than than the opposite. We see him giving us a much more fully formed Claire Sandish, the super popular girl then we might have expected from 18 movie in 1985. And then he undercuts that by abusing this girl throughout the movie, by with her you know their fellows and then having her seek out a pairing with one of the people who insulted her the most. She also is forced to change for that pairing, as is the only other girl in the cast, allison, who needs to look more like Claire in order to be romantically acceptable to Emilia Westavez's jock big man on canvas character. We see performance of gender and performance of self from each of these kids, especially the boys, I think, but not exclusively in the voice of Alice, she's Allison. We hear a just concise presentation of the catch 22 of female sexuality if you do, you're a slut, if you don't, you're a prude. It's a trap that is undercut by the fact that the romantic pairings are then just the happy ending. Assumed that's the happy ending, exactly this the romantic pairings.
Speaker 1:We noted that, though Hughes was trying to give us like a diverse cast of characters, all five of them are white, cis, straight, able-bodied, thin, neurotypical passing. I'll say so, though there was a. There is a diversity, there's also a lack of diversity. One of the main kind of intentional lessons of this movie is about the ways that adults condescend and thereby abuse kids, teenagers in particular. That is conveyed through the epigraph from Bell we, through the person of Vernon, of Richard Vernon, who, you know from experience, is not a caricature and through the way that the kids talk about their own parents. What am I forgetting that we spoke about?
Speaker 2:the lesson that this movie and others other stories like it taught baby, me and many, many other people that a performance of antagonism is actually guarding a soft underbelly, rather than the possibility that the misogyny and the antagonism and the aggression is just who the person is, which is exactly how people can get stuck in abusive relationships yes, thank you, that's you said that very concisely earlier as well like the fact that those two things can coexist but they are not.
Speaker 1:That the correlation is not causation right, like just because someone is antagonistic doesn't mean that they're protecting it. A soft underbelly, yeah, who? Anything else you want to make sure that we underline before we wrap, just thinking like don't mess with the bull, you'll get the whole arms.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mess with the bull, young man, you'll get the horns. And and actually the actor does this thing with his pinky and his index finger out like yeah, he did, like he points with that, and then he shows it in like front and back. It's yeah weird and like it's meant to be ridiculous and it succeeds. The director oil choices on that were really well done, like his mannerism is so unsympathetic and that was.
Speaker 2:I do also want to say like this is like fluff. Basically, there are things that don't necessarily make sense in the film. Like Bender, being able to get through the ceiling doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like he knows how to get there.
Speaker 2:Blair got to the closet. Where he was doesn't make sense, but the one that had that really got me because I didn't get it as a kid was when Claire puts the lipstick in her cleavage and then is able to, like, perfectly, put lipstick on. It is not physically possible. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't think that's physically possible. Anyway, that's a little thing. But because I remember, because you know I'm like a child looking at this, first of all I didn't understand why that was like a skill, like I couldn't get what she was doing, that was so interesting. And then when I got like oh cuz, it's cuz, she's got cleavage, like I remember being like, but my head doesn't go down that far, like my boobs aren't up here she also says can't.
Speaker 2:Seventh grade, that's where she learned how to do it which is like so okay, she developed early, but still, anyway, I just I just need to highlight that, like John Hughes got a lot right about what it is to be a teenage girl, he got that wrong he got that wrong.
Speaker 1:Okay, so what are you're bringing me the next time? What are we gonna?
Speaker 2:time we are going to be talking about my deep thoughts on Rocky Horror Picture Show yeah, exciting, yeah, exciting.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm looking forward to that, and before we do that though, I understand you have some listener, I have two listener comments this week.
Speaker 2:The first one is from Jen regarding the Twilight episode. So she told me I've recently fallen into the a court of thorns and roses trap. Are you familiar with those books? They're very big a moss, is the author, and they are huge right now. So Jen says this series feels closest to the hoopla around Twilight back in the day and while it seems we've learned some lessons, it's not a chastity tale, thank God, and the protagonists have much more going for them than just the guy. It seems we have more, still more, have more to learn, because these guys are still so controlling and age differences of decades. You know, two steps forward, one step back. Then I also have a comment from Megan regarding the Buffy episode. She said thank you for this.
Speaker 2:I listened on a long drive yesterday. I needed a reminder to go back to Buffy. I also needed help processing the recent news about Josh Whedon. It completely changed my feelings about Sarah Michelle Geller not doing any guesting on Angel. My only quibble about that episode is that season six and seven, buffy isn't yet a fully formed human. No one in their early 20s is. She tells Angel that herself she's cookie dough, not fully baked cookies.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that. Thanks, megan. Yeah, thanks. Well, listeners, if you want to share your deep thoughts about our deep thoughts, please do. You can email us at guygirlsmedia at gmailcom or you can go over to our listener forum on our website and we will link to that in the show notes. So until, next time hey you, yeah you.
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