The other day, I wrote on The Hours, which had obvious ties to Mrs. Dalloway. But, The Hours isn't the only film that has similarities to Mrs. Dalloway. In fact, though it is seemingly incredibly different from Mrs. Dalloway, The Breakfast Club has many similarities to the novel.
First, there's a similar theme to both books. In The Hours story of Virginia Woolf writing Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia mentions that she aims to tell the story of a woman's life in one day, which the novel certainly comes close to. In the book, there are several scenes where we see how people perceive Clarissa, while she shows Clarissa is very different than people's perceptions of her, and leaves us to decide whether this is a good or bad thing. The Breakfast Club tells a similar story: five teenagers judged by their outward appearances rather than who they truly are. Throughout the movie we learn that they're not just "a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal" as the movie claims. There's a reason they got that way, and that's what the whole movie explores, much like in Mrs. Dalloway. Be it parents who are incredibly strict, abusive, or ignore their child, there's a definite reason for the way each of the teens turned out, and through their arguments, heartfelt discussions, their "crimes," and even just the way they fidget when they're bored, we get a definite sense of how they followed the path they did. And much like in Mrs. Dalloway, they don't necessarily seem to regret the path they chose, but they do seem to be bothered by the fact that their options are so limited.
Much as with the way Virginia Woolf depicts the characters by showing their side of the story in Mrs. Dalloway and making almost every character likable in some sense as a result, in The Breakfast Club we see the same sort of thing. At first all the teens can't stand each other, much less being stuck in detention together, but through a common enemy (the principal) and after many arguments, they start to at least understand the others' points of view, even if they don't embrace it themselves. They even become some sort of friends by the end of the day.
At the end of the day, though we feel a lot has happened throughout Mrs. Dalloway, nothing really changes, and we are left with a sort of unresolved ending as Peter sees Clarissa as the book ends. In the same way, the end of The Breakfast Club still has a sense of incompleteness. Yes, the characters come to understand each other, and Bender ends up with Claire while Andrew ends up with Allison (who also gets a makeover), we can tell that the not much has changed. Bender still has two months of detention to work off. The characters, as we can tell, aren't just going to ditch their friends and hang out together, and in fact, they agree the popular among them would likely not even greet the others if they see each other in the hall. The characters haven't really changed; they won't stand up to their parents or teachers or peers any more or less than they already had. The end definitely shows this, as Claire uses her charm to get Brian to do the essay for all of them "since he's the smartest." We get the impression this is neither the first nor last time she'll use this technique. And Brian still ends up alone, writing the essay.
The essay is a final point of absurdity—as the teens say in the movie "Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did was wrong. But we think you're crazy to make an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain... and an athlete... and a basket case... a princess... and a criminal.... Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club." It certainly is crazy. It takes Virginia Woolf an entire book to describe Clarissa, and they're expected to describe themselves in 1000 words? The Breakfast Club aren't the only ones who would think that that is crazy.
And, of course, the "essay" in question is a form of *punishment*, and the kids know it--they aren't *really* being asked "who they think they are" by someone who cares, and their co-written letter points this out ironically by "claiming" all the labels they've never chosen for themselves. There's not much difference between this "essay" and the old "write 'I will not talk in class' 50 times" punishment satirized in the opening credits to the Simpsons.
ReplyDeleteAnd you're right that Woolf would surely find such an assignment absurd, even as she might take the deeper project of self-knowledge and reflection quite seriously. The irony in the film is that the kids *do* learn a lot about who they are and how this identity is shaped by their social context more than their own will; this lesson *was* produced by detention, but not in the way the authorities intended. (They *break the rule* of detention in order to get at more self-understanding.)
This is a very good point. The way the punishment was written is exactly that, as a punishment, and any deeper meaning was sucked out of it. They also know that the principal's already decided what kind of students they are, and he's not trying to look deeper. Perhaps Woolf would say that searching self-identity will not find it as much as other experiences, and a combination of thoughts and experiences. We get the impression that Mrs. Dalloway would be a very different story had it just been Clarissa sitting at her house, not interacting with anyone, and thinking. Experiences, and the way someone reacts with others are integral to someone's identity. So perhaps in an attempt to avoid it, The Breakfast Club gained additional understanding by fighting with each other, such that by the end they were truly vulnerable.
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