And then I watched the movies again today and I realised just how wrong I was.
This is still an article about rebels, incidentally. James Dean as Jim Stark, resisting his dysfunctional parents by drinking and wandering the streets late at night, holding a samurai-like regard for his honor, disillusioned with life and seeing no way forward... it's no wonder he's struggling. His rebellion is against the stoic, stiff-upper-lip nature of his family life: a father who prefers keeping a low profile to owning up to or pointing out problems; a mother whose first thought at any sign of trouble is to pack up and run; and a grandmother who argues with the both of them. It's a rebellion against the "ten years time" nature of the life being lived at that time, the notion that your youth is the best time and the mistakes made will make you a better person later in life.
The fight at the observatory is a scene I want to bring up, because it highlights the sort of rebellion which characterises Jim Stark: the rebellion against society's rules, which protect the villains and conspirators but do nothing for the victims. It's how he sees his father: hen-pecked, emasculated. It's how the culmination of the film brings it all to a close: with his friend Plato - victim of high-school bullies to the point that he brings a gun to protect himself - shot dead by the police. The observatory scene is Jim Stark's first point of rebellion in his new school: The Kids surround his car and wait for him to leave the observatory, looking for a fight. Because he tried to join them. This is a closely-guarded clique, where worth must be proven and everyone lives by a code of honor before reason. For anyone outside the clique, however, anything is game. Local bully Buzz slashes Jim's tyre to draw him in, ready to fight, and Jim's rebellion is to refuse that fight for as long as possible. He throws away his tire iron, and while he keeps the knife close he does not draw it until he is physically trapped, with no way out but to fight.
This is the society that Jim Stark rebels against: a society which gives you no way out beyond fighting back when threatened. A warlike, honor-before-reason society, whose rules jail the lone defender because the instigator has collaborators and Quislings who play witness to help their leader. Jim Stark's rebellion in Rebel is against the system of justice and social hierarchy imposed on him. It's a rebellion against the stoicism of fifties America - Jim cares deeply, he is an emotional character compared to his simpering father and the adrenaline-junkie Kids who threaten him. This rebellion against coldness drives the plot as Jim rails against his father's spinelessness and his peers' fatalism.
And what about The Breakfast Club? A Brain, an Athlete, a Basket Case, a Princess and a Criminal, fighting to be recognised as something other than the archetypes they have been assigned. John Bender, serial miscreant and originator of a million catchphrases, is our rebel of choice: the designated criminal, he's argumentative, brash and antisocial. But he seems to have all the answers. So what's he rebelling against?
He's rebelling against a system which ignores him and keeps him down, a system which puts him in Saturday detention for two months for no real reason. It's a system which forces Bender to respect his elders when he sees nothing in them worth respecting, as we see with Principal Vernon's easily pushable "image problem" button.
Bender's issue is, his rebellion is not centred around a figure of authority. He lashes out, raging against anyone and everyone, pushing and forcing them until they're forced in turn to push back. In The Breakfast Club it's Andrew, the athlete, who is first exposed to this; he rises to Bender's taunts and it ends up in a fight. One Andrew wins, but that doesn't become the point of the scene, because Bender draws a knife...
As I watched The Breakfast Club it became increasingly apparent that Bender isn't like Jim Stark at all, but more like Buzz Gunderson: he uses the rules of society around him to push at other people until they have no choice but to break those rules. Every interaction with Bender is a no-win scenario; either he pushes you until you break the rules, or he talks down to you until you believe your problems are worth nothing. He is constantly antagonistic, and the more I watch The Breakfast Club the more I hate his reactions to the other characters.
Consider the pivotal scene, after everyone has been smoking weed: they sit in a circle and discuss their problems and gifts. And Bender lays into Claire for being shallow and frivolous. This comes on the heels of a discussion about kids becoming their parents, and as Bender yells at Claire for what amounts to nothing at all, you can see the abusive father within him - he yells, he belittles her, for something he asks her to do. Bender's rebellion against society amounts to little more than bullying in many cases; his calls to Claire to be more than "a Princess" aren't rallying cries or explanations - they are not, as he says earlier, "being honest", they are hateful and spiteful because he has not been given the same position. I can see why he is angry - he comes from an abusive home, these Saturdays are his escape from that, and now he has to share them with a popular girl who has had everything in life handed to her on a silver platter. And she complains about it. In many ways, his anger is justifiable. But I always feel like he's trapping them in that situation, using his rules to turn on them and feel justified about it. His righteous anger in this scene, yelling at Claire for being vapid after asking her to demonstrate her "talent" (which turns out to be putting on lipstick without using her hands), is like pushing someone into a mud puddle and getting cross because they got their shoes dirty. His rebellion against social hierarchy and societal norms is fuelled by perceived injustices against himself, by other parts of society which Claire represents, and so he targets her with his anger.
The only moment I really feel like there's someone beneath that anger is when he is cornered and cut off by Principal Vernon, an individual who feels equally helpless against these kids and turns Bender's own rules around on him. His weapon is fear rather than anger; he's not pushing buttons, he's trying to get Bender to back down. And he's the only person who really gets through Bender's facade: threatening violence, begging Bender to hit him just to give him an excuse, he turns Bender's own rules-lawyering back on himself, never breaking the societal rules of the school but putting Bender into a position where he either has to break them himself - punching the principal, thus getting expelled, probably going to prison, proving he is a criminal - or declares himself a coward, and accepts Vernon's authority.
What's interesting to note about The Breakfast Club is just how much of a drag the Saturday detention is for Principal Vernon. He's not enjoying it any more than the kids - arguably less so, in fact - but the societal rules which allow him to threaten Bender also constrain him to managing these children on a weekend. Watching it again, I can understand a lot of Vernon's own anger - he's insecure, he remembers looking up to his teachers as a child and now that he is one, he's finding only disrespect - but he is still the bad guy. Even as Bender shows shades of becoming his abusive father, Vernon is already there, promising violence and sending Bender on another weekend detention for the most minor infractions. The only role models Bender has are his abusive folks and a headteacher who hates his guts; in a lot of ways, it's no wonder he's as messed up as he is.
The ending of The Breakfast Club never really sits right with me. I haven't even mentioned Allison here, but her makeover feels unnecessary and cliché; going from the Basket Case to the beautiful innocent girl at the end feels like a cop-out, some justification to give Andrew a consolation prize rather than accepting that he actually kinda like this weird, crazy girl who's just as broken as he is. And after the lipstick scene, I feel like Claire and Bender just aren't anything. There's something wrong about her wanting to be with him after he's spent almost the entire movie yelling at her. Bender's rebel streak isn't as tempting when he's turning it on everyone in sight, playing up his wounded act when someone isn't who he wants them to be.
I think The Breakfast Club and Rebel Without a Cause are similar in the ways they end; they're not optimistic about the future. In Rebel Plato is dead, Jim and Judy are traumatised, but Jim's parents are delighted because he's finally getting a normal life! Two kids are dead, but hooray! Our son is getting on okay! Similarly, Breakfast Club no longer feels to me like it's a happy ending. For that one brief snapshot, maybe, but all the things the kids discuss seem to be coming to pass. I figure they return on Monday, they don't speak to each other, they join their own little cliques. Maybe there are some furtive glances, some lunchtime dramas. But everything carries on as normal, because these are people who fundamentally do not get along. And I know that's the social hierarchies coming into play again, but those prejudices are hard to wipe away, and Bender antagonises more than he fixes. He is not a good person: in the long run, John Bender is less of a Jim Stark and more of a Buzz Gunderson, and I only hope his rebellion doesn't end in the same way.
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