The Emotional Legacy of <em>The Breakfast Club</em>
When John Singleton—the groundbreaking filmmaker behind movies like Boyz n the Hood, and the first African American to get a Best Director Oscar nomination—first saw The Breakfast Club in 1985, he was reviewing it for his high-school newspaper. “The various characters were teenage archetypes, but they were rooted in genuine human problems,” he later said. “I didn’t feel alienated by the fact that they were all white kids. They were just teens finding their way into adulthood—like I was.”
Six years later, Singleton made , a teen drama about growing up in South Central Los Angeles;writer-director John Hughes as a major influence. “He gave me a template,” Singleton has said, according to David Kamp’s essay in the new of the movie, which came out this month. Watching Hughes’s foundational tale of adolescent angst more than 30 years on, it’s easy to be put off by the homogeneity and privilege of its main characters: five suburban white kids in Chicago who spend the entire film fretting over their social status, overbearing parents, and existential fears. But undeniably laid the foundation for a whole new kind of teen drama—one motivated less by plot, and more by mood.
