The Breakfast Club, 1985

March 17, 2022 | JOHN MCGOVERN

Social Contract Theory, according to Thomas Hobbes, says that unless there is an agreement among people in a society to act according to certain rules, that people will behave in a primitive way. The theory says that once there is a social contract, it tells people how to behave morally and politically. It is essential to the survival of the society so that people treat each other in acceptable ways.

One of the main focuses in The Breakfast Club is how there are people from different cliques, living their lives separate from other cliques, and as different as the students are from each other, when they are under the same roof for detention, they, over time, discover similarities with each other.

Hobbes’ theory discusses how people need to agree on how to behave and treat each other in order to survive. The students in the film, while very different from each other, become curious about each other. There is one kid, named Bender, who people agree is part of a group of kids who do drugs, called stoners. He begins a discussion about family life and assumes that the nerdy kid has had a happy family life with perfect parents, which probably changes his morals and the way he participates in society. He assumes the same about the sports kid, too. According to shmoop.com, “Bender doesn't think anyone else around him has suffered the way he's suffered, which is why he doesn't want to hang out with them anymore. He doesn't realize that Brian's nearly attempted suicide, and that Andrew's deeply conflicted about his own dad's competitive, athletic obsession.” Bender has a bad home life, which he thinks is the reason for his behavior, but the sports kid admits that his father makes him feel pressured with expectations. Bender admits that society sees him as a criminal, and his character is symbolic of the anti-conformity that is in individuals.

As they get to know each other, it forces them to look at themselves and their membership in the particular social group they associate with. In general, there is safety within the cliques. They have a certain security and a way that each behaves. Those behaviors may be judged by outsiders or seem superficial to the other groups, but they don’t matter. Within the social group, as long as they rules are obeyed, there is stability.

Ally Sheedy represents the outsider, who doesn’t belong in any clique. “Allison, is the only character who doesn’t appear to have a social group; hence is safe with no one and feels utterly and completely alone, afraid of everyone and everything " (Fruhling). Her character demonstrates that Hobbes’ theory is correct. She may be a student, but her behavior is almost primal. She lashes out indiscriminately and her fashion sense is her own choice. She remains introverted until the detention members start to make up their own social contract. According to Fruhling, “The Social Contract is broken. None of the characters is required any longer to hate any of the other characters, because they have rejected the social contracts of their groups that they once relied on for safety and for their own identity, essentially forming a new Social Contract between the five of them in the process, just as citizens have overthrown oppressive governments and regimes in every great revolution in the history of civilization itself.”

The end of the film implies that they have created a new social contract. They vow to get along and the audience wonders if peer pressure will really allow them to break the social expectations of their established contract to include their new friends.

References

Zachary Fruhling, Philosophy and Film: The Breakfast Club

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