The Breakfast Club Analysis

The movie The Breakfast Club may be just a film to some but to sociologists it can be looked at from interesting perspectives. Three main ones stand out specifically: Functionalism, Symbolic Interactionism, and Conflict Theory. Functionalism looks at the different parts of society and how they all depend on each other to make a society work. Next is Symbolic Interactionism, which focuses on how symbols and words shape people into who they are and how they depending on their interpretation on that certain subject. To wrap it up I will talk about the Conflict Theory and how it relates to the movie by giving the higher ranked individuals power over the ones among the lower classes.

Over the course of this film it follows five high school students that all had a Saturday School for a wrongdoing they had at their school and covers all the shenanigans that the group pulls throughout the movie. Each come from a different social class so the group does not have much in common. Now, a Functionalist would be able to look at how the group works by looking at it from two angles, Latently and Manifestly. Looking at the students latently one would observe how the students all end up becoming close after unexpectedly after attending Saturday School because of the somewhat similar …show more content…
This one became apparent when the principal, Mr. Vernon, showed his dominance to the students and even more specifically Bender. Since he was principal, Mr. Vernon felt that he had total control over because of his position. He taunted, threatened, and even egged on a fight with Bender, who was still technically a student in his school. The kids grew tired of his disrespectful attitude, and decided to make a stand against their principal. Mr. Vernon is the person with power that provokes the students, and the lower-classed students are forced to take action against what they believe is wrong of the person in control to be