Gen X Mother and Gen Z Child on "The Breakfast Club"
I spoke with my Mom on the phone as I walked from my Tuesday morning class back to my dorm. While the point of my phone call home was to interview her about one of her favorite movies from her childhood, “The Breakfast Club.” The initial conversation led to really interesting sub-conversations about her childhood compared to mine, suburban dysfunction, high-school stereotypes, and the auteurism and artistry of John Hughes.
After quarantine, my mom and I became extremely close. When we’re together at home in Brooklyn, it seems as though we’re constantly engaged in a conversation. My favorite times to talk to her are when she’s cooking dinner for my family, making art in her basement studio, or in the mornings when she drinks her black tea and I have my non-black coffee. I caught her at a time when she was in her studio working on an art piece that I’m eager to see when I return home. She was clearly engaged in her art and in the zone to discuss art as she made her own. I spoke to her on speakerphone, and I could hear her moving around the studio creating her vision.
“I was 12 when “The Breakfast Club” came out, and it was an important movie throughout my adolescent years,” Manju Shandler says in response to me asking her what movie greatly influenced her. “It was the movie we watched at all the sleepover parties, and I remember feeling like the characters in the movie were accurate to the kids I knew from my school. I personally resonated with Allison, the misfit. I liked seeing a weird character in a popular movie. Not to mention that the library they’re in for the majority of the movie looked just like my junior high library.”
My mom has never been a real cinephile. She likes movies but claims that she’s a book person. I argue with her that you can be both, but as I talked about the aspects of the film that spoke to her, she came to terms with the fact that this movie influenced her a lot more than she initially thought. “I think what’s really great about that movie is the characters and the writing. You grew up in Brooklyn, where everyone is kind of a misfit, but in the suburbs, those movie stereotypes are really happening. When that movie came out I had been the new kid at least ten times because my parents were hippies and could never settle, and I was living in an extremely cookie-cutter suburban area. I felt like I never fit in that environment, I never knew what was cool and what wasn’t. Those social tropes may be foreign to you, but in the suburbs, the pretty popular Molly Ringwald girl would not date the Judd Nelson guy.” My mom told me stories from her time in high school, and how seeing a movie about suburban dysfunction was comforting.
After my conversation with my Mom, I was excited to rewatch “The Breakfast Club.” My parents had shown me this movie when I was about ten, and I actually remember not liking it. I felt like I had seen those characters and tropes before, and that the conversations seemed forced. Upon rewatching, I take back what ten-year-old me thought. While the characters are stereotypical movie characters now, looking back in cinema history they were some of the first of their type. So when my mom was watching the movie, it was probably pretty amazing to see real teenagers on screen. “It was a move that felt like it spoke to the American experience of being in high school. John Hughes created something really original, he really understood the teenage mentality,” said my Mom. After watching, I could finally grasp what she was talking about.
The writing, performances, and soundtrack of “The Breakfast Club” are all phenomenal and memorable. My mom was quoting iconic movie lines throughout our conversation while remembering each of the main character’s costumes and the songs of “The Breakfast Club.” I have never seen my mom remember a movie so well. “John Hughes put his finger on the pulse of something I was experiencing. And you know what, I know this interview is for a film class, and I think John Hughes is completely an auteur,” says my Mom, laughing. She knows in this class we discussed auteur theory. She jokes about him being an auteur, but she’s right. An auteur is a director whose influence is so great they are considered the author of the film, and John Hughes fits that criteria.
John Hughes is such an important figure of the 80s, his movies are incredibly specific to him and to the time they were made. My mom emphasized throughout our conversation that what he did with teenage movies was really different than what had been done before, and she’s right. Before the John Hughes era, movies about teenagers were not the movies that teenagers wanted to see. “Splendor in the Grass”, “Rebel Without a Cause”, and “The Last Picture Show” are all movies about teenagers, but they’re not the kind of movies that teenagers want to see. John Hughes’ relatable characters, funny dialogue, and perfect display of teenage angst and anxiety make him not only the author of his films but an icon of the cinematic arts.
