Clueless and The Breakfast Club: Comparative Essay

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Clueless (Heckerling 1995) and The Breakfast Club (Hughes, 1985) both follow specific tropes surrounding the teen movie genre. As both are made to appeal to this specific audience, several tropes have been utilised in order to position these films as popular texts and appeal to it’s targeted audience; teenagers. While released 10 years apart, both films deploy the use of similar tropes in order to tell each respective narrative. The particular trope that’s associated with the teen film genre and these films is the Coming of Age Story and the High School Stereotypes, both of which are used in order to establish characters and tie together their narratives throughout each film.

The ‘Coming-of-Age Story’ trope revolves around a character maturing from childhood into adolescence. Generally in teen films, a time leap is used to show the mental leap from teenage immaturity to young adult responsibility. The 90’s hit, ‘Clueless’ which was inspired by Jane Austen’s classic ‘Emma’ follows the Coming of Age story specifically by popular, rich high schooler Cher Horowitz and her highschool counterparts. When transfer student Tai comes to the school, Cher takes her in and is set on giving her a highschool makeover, another trope utilised by Teen movies which showcases simply the transformation from mundane to attractive. The ‘Makeover Trope’ usually follows some type of montage of a change in appearance, which later on, generally follows the characters reform at the end of the narrative. This trope is a tool which aids the advancement of the ‘Coming of Age’ trope, where the characters realise at the end, that nothing had to be changed all along. In ‘Clueless’, Cher transforms Tai in a montage where the camera pans to show Cher and Dionne washing the red dye out of Tai’s hair, the application of makeup to Tai’s face as she has curlers in her hair in quick succession to the song ‘Supermodel’ by Jill Sobule. Shortly after there is another short montage where Tai attempts to ingratiate herself into the world of popular kids as they have a photoshoot. In this film, the ‘Makeover Trope’ is utilised as a tool to work in conjunction with the overall ‘Coming of Age’ trope, where director Amy Heckerling uses the film to give a focus on the self-doubt and insecurity teenage girls face in highschool. Although the film focuses on a particular white demographic of rich teenagers, it’s done in a way where ‘privileged’ females suffer under specific boundaries of gender roles. ‘Cher’s urge to constantly “improve” herself and others demonstrates how she sees herself as something that needs to be improved upon. She complains about “feeling like such a heifer” after spending the day eating candy and snacks, and after her friend declines her suggestions for sex, she worries that she wasn’t presenting herself as attractive enough’ (Casley, 2019).Towards the end of the film Cher realises her own virtues and seeks to “makeover” her soul, she examines the virtues of her various friends. “Then I realized all my friends were good in different ways,” she narrates, and we see a montage of Cher’s highschool friends doing what they do best. While at the beginning of the film Cher tried to change people, bargain her way to a better class grade, and help a lonely girl climb in social status, Cher abandoned her controlling nature by the end of it. She is now seeks to value them instead of changing people. The ‘Coming of Age’ trope follows fulfillment at the end of the film as Cher matures into a young adult following her highschool counterparts at the wedding of Ms. Geist and Mr. Hall’s, which everyone attends. The film is largely recognised and described as a ‘Coming of Age’ film and has been widely acknowledged within the teen film genre.

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‘The Breakfast Club’ (1985 dir. John Hughes) also ties in with the Coming-of-age trope, while it doesnt follow a large time jump in which the teen characters ‘grow up’, the trope is expressed through a changed perception of the teenagers and their struggles. The characters do this while having to deal with ‘clueless adults who don’t understand anything and are frequently hostile.’(Shmoop Editorial Team, 2008). When a group stereotypical teens, each representing a different clique of high schoolers spend a few hours together in detention, they realize that they aren’t all that different. The characters all begin to come of age by the end of the film as they start breaking out of their stereotypical highschool molds. At the beginning of the film The smug detention teacher, Richard Vernon, assigns the highschoolers an essay on ‘who you think you are,’ and verbally goes back and forth with rebel, Bender. As soon as Vernon leaves, the teen drama begins: Bender bothers Claire with inappropriate sexual jokes, gets on Andrew’s nerves, and insults Brian. The bickering goes back and forth for a significant time. Bender continues his rebel activities: He pulls a switchblade on Andrew, removes a screw that keeps the library door open, and gets himself more detentions. As the movie progresses, the teenagers realise that they are more alike than they think, each identifying with each other. This movie, similarly as ‘Clueless’ employs the use of the ‘Makeover’ trope when Claire the ‘princess’ had the idea to make over basket-case ‘Allison’. She effectively turns a girl who makes pictures out of her own dandruff into a feminine, appealing ‘princess’ of sorts. As a result, Allison walks slowly over to Andrew after now gaining the attention she’s never received to “Love Theme from The Breakfast Club by Keith Forsey”. This trope is utilised in a more entertaining way yet still furthers the ‘Coming-of-Age’ trope in which all the teenagers find themselves in each other, Allison the outcast finds herself for a brief moment in the shoes of a beauty queen, gaining the attention of her male counterparts. In his review of The Breakfast Club, James Berardinelli states that Hughes’ films don’t focus on the typical drugs, sex, and alcohol, but look at issues that many teens faced on a daily basis and how these issues shaped their lives. Brian at the end of the film writes the essay on ‘who you think you are,’ explaining that they all came to connect with each other. Each of them is a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a rebel, all together. Then Bender lifts his arm in defiance as he walks across the football field in one of the most iconic images from the movies of the 80s. Coming of age, according to the Merriam –Webster online dictionary, is the “attainment of prominence, respectability, recognition, or maturity”. As simple as this sounds, it’s generally occurs as a result of significant emotional disruption, which is why it makes such an important and captivating trope when portrayed through film. By the end of it, its visible that their changed perception of each other aided in overcoming the stereotypes that previously defined them. Both ‘Clueless’ (Heckerling 1995) and ‘The Breakfast Club’ (1985 dir. John Hughes) employ the use of the ‘Coming-of-Age’ trope paired with the ‘Makeover’ trope in order to depict teenagers experiencing ontological change in which they mature in order to complete their narrative and character arcs for the ‘Teen Movie’ Genre.

Another ‘Teen Movie’ trope that these films follow is the ‘Highschool Stereotypes’ trope where the film has a cast where almost every member represents a stereotype of some sort. This trope is utilised to categorise subsets of highschool personalities into a tool that the teenage viewers can relate to. In ‘Clueless’ (Heckerling 1995) Cher narrates the different social groups of the high school, showing Tai “the ropes.” First, she points out the students running the TV station, who think it’s “the most important thing on earth.” She then points out the “Persian mafia,” a group of Persian male students, a group which Cher says she cant join “unless you own a BMW.” The portrayal of Cher Horowitz is a rich, self-centered and naive high school girl from Beverly Hills. Thanks to being an archetypal teenage girl, she is recognizable, she displays this in many different circumstances, for example in the opening scene she is socializing with her peers in the mall and other locations. She reflects on how her life is’ natural,’ showing how unaware of her surrounding world she is, fitting into the blonde, ditzy role. The narrative structure begins by introducing the characters and their stereotypes, the representations of the main characters are clear and easy to identify with, adding to the conventional structure that this film follows. The location of Beverly Hills aids in representing these teenagers, as the connotations of Beverly Hills are wealth and vibrancy. The location helps the representation of these stereotypes by giving the audience an idea of how the character roles will later play out.. These films are often set in or around high schools and places frequented by teens, such as shopping malls and themed restaurants. The soundtrack also appeals to the target teenage audience as it is upbeat and fashion orientated. Cher’s best friend is Dionne is very similar to Cher through their mutual worship of material things, being pretty and rich. Tai is the new girl that does not fit in, allowing Cher and Dionne to further play with the ‘Makeover’ trope. Travis plays the stereotypical skater stoner, Murray the standard popular, douchebag boyfriend, and Christian falls into the gay male trope in which he enjoys shopping, fashion and singers. All of these highschool stereotypes are employed in order to categorise each different teen ‘personality’. This is done in order to make the audience relate to the characters and further enjoy the film.

In ‘The Breakfast Club’ (1985 dir. John Hughes), the ‘Highschool Stereotype’ was paired with ‘Coming-of- Age’ trope by utilising each other as a tool to defy the standard teenage trope in a coming of age narrative. Each of the students in the film fulfill high school stereotypes, specifically, jocks, brainiacs, princesses, criminals, and basket cases. The film then aims to showcase how these teenagers are more than those stereotypes, what background raises these stereotypes, and how these societal expectations affect them as people. These archetypes have as a result of this film become a larger part of the culture. The jock, cheerleader, and social outcast, among others, become a familiar and pleasurable feature for the audience. ‘The Breakfast Club’ attempts to comment on these specific stereotypes by exaggerating them and giving a sense of substance to each by investigating these tropes in detail. An example of this is the ‘Nerd’ Brian, he participates in the standard nerd clubs: “the math club, the Latin club, the Physics club”. John Bender embodies the stereotype of the criminal. He is a rebel who aims to break the rules. Thus,allowing people to assume he is a bad person. However, the movie attempts to humanise and deepen this stereotype by providing Bender with story surrounding abuse and a father who believes he is worthless. The character Claire fits with the ‘Popular Girl’ stereotype, she wears diamond earrings, participates in the Student Council and has many friends, all of these working together to portray her as lacking substance and being privileged, she breaks this stereotype by showcasing her self awareness and voicing her dislike for the pressure she feels to conform. Andy is seen as the ‘Dumb Jock’ who uses his status to bully other people and uses brute force to get what he wants. The movie portrays Andy breaking his stereotype through the way he treats Allison and becomes vulnerable during the “confession circle.” Allison is seen as the ‘basket-case’ and is paired with mental illness due to her unnatural behaviour. The narrative attempts to break this stereotype by allowing her open up to the other characters, fall in love, and be given a makeover.

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