The Breakfast Comedy

In the classic, 80s, coming of age story, The Breakfast Club tells a story of five kids stuck at school in Saturday morning detention. Each kid has their own story that leads to them finding a common ground. It's the high school story. The "nerdy" kid, who struggles with experiencing failure and admits to trying to kill himself. Quite the opposite, is the jock, the wrestler who faces enormous pressure to be his father and to show no weakness. Then there's the "weird" girl or the girl without a lot of friends. It is revealed that she is neglected by her family and shows up to detention because she has nothing better to do. The popular girl admits that she is pushed around at home by divorced parents, but does little to fix her stereotypes of poise, perfection, and modesty that so nicely allow her to ignore her fellow detention-mates during school. She does however break character towards the end when she kisses the bad boy of the group. He's a bully with problems of abuse at home. Together they are a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal.

Each character begins with a stereotype, but through the movie their deeper problems that I touched on above are revealed. They are able to connect over these issues through a comedic day of fighting, talking about sex and getting high in the library. By the end of the movie each character, more or less, has come into their own and learned something.

Ordinary, common people reach some kind of better place by the end of the story. This constitutes comedy as far as Aristotle is concerned. If anything, these characters are a little worse off than the average high schooler and make for even better comedic characters.

The question that stumps me is how much of a comedy is this? Is the teenage coming of age story truly a growth that allows for a comedy? It can even be argued that once these kids come back to school on Monday they will forget what they learned at detention and mold right back into their stereotypes. The Hollywood director wants the audience to think otherwise, but as a teenager that is supposed to relate to these characters I am conflicted. I try to think how much a Saturday morning sharing my deep secrets with strangers that I ignored for the last four years could change my life.

The iconic scene at the end when Bender, the criminal, walks away with his fist in the air seems to show growth. It leaves the audience with a good feeling in their heart, a feeling of inspiration, that I believe is enough for Aristotle. There's even romance when the athlete ends up with the basket case and the princess kisses the criminal.  This reminds us that we all have a chance at love, perhaps the greatest cliche a movie can have.

At the very least, I am confident when saying this is not a tragedy. These characters are seemingly rock bottom when we first meet them and there's no where worse for them to go. This is a feel good movie that brings everyone back to high school and reminds us that teenagers have feelings. I really want to think that these characters gained confidence and a sense of community after their day together. If that is how this movie was intended to make the audience feel, then that sets a good example for comedy by Aristotle's definition.