Back in the day, I had a couple of nodes which detailed, at great length, precisely what was wrong with the ending of that marvelous movie, The Breakfast Club. Those nodes are long gone, short and pointless rants that they were. But I was recently reminded of the validity of the argument when I watched the movie with a small group of friends. As three of us sat down to watch it, one of our number (not me) brought it up.
And as another two joined us some way in to the film, one of those two then brought up exactly the same point. So maybe, since nobody's actually mentioned it elsewhere in this node, it's worth repeating, possibly only to reinforce the thought that's crossed most of our minds, and let us know we're not alone.
Ally Sheedy's character, Alison, spends most of the film establishing herself as what we might call, in our facetious little way, an 'individual'. She doesn't really care too much for what her peers think, except possibly insofar as to ensure they reject her. Black makeup and clothes instead of the de riguer 1980s primary colours; stony silence; pixy-stix and corn nut sandwiches; dandruff snowfalls to round off an idyllic drawing...
It's easy to see, from our point of view, that she's the anti-hero. She's the underdog, the counter-culture icon that we all identify with. It's easy to see that now, but it should also have held true in the film's original context.
And it's this that makes it such a betrayal when, at the end of the film, Alison gets a Pygmalionesque makeover (which now looks horribly dated), and tries to catch the eye of the young Emilio Estevez.
Apart from the plain and simple fact that this makeover is nothing short of an aesthetic tragedy (classic, timeless smoldering dark eyes and eyeshadow, cruelly replaced by an 80s palette married to an alice band and a bob) there's an element of class betrayal involved. Emilio Estevez's character is a sports type. A wrestler. He's clearly not 'one of us.' Alison, however, is. Earlier in the film, we all cheered when Alison ridiculed him, or at least gave a satisfied smirk.
It's submission, it's conformity. What we all inherently rebel against. It seems so wrong. But in a way it's fitting; other characters in the film cope with various forms of disappointment and disillusionment in their lives. The scene between Carl the janitor and Mr. Vernon, for example, shows that striving for impossible goals such as success and respect, is ultimately futile.
"Ferris Bueller's Day Off is the Liberal Party, and The Breakfast Club is the Republican Party of 80s movies: Ferris is all about rebellion and getting what you want. The Breakfast club is about giving in and conforming."
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Or perhaps Alison herself said it best...
"It's inevitable. When you grow up, your heart dies."