The Breakfast Club Characterization Task by ZANE TEETER

Claire

zteeter145 — 2024-10-02 18:37:45 UTC

A very popular, high class girl who wears fancy clothes and eats fancy food. She comes off as stuck up, but she proves on multiple occasions that she can be kind when she needs to be. Her parents constantly use her to get back at each other, and she is often caught in the middle of these conflicts, leading to a bad home life.

John

zteeter145 — 2024-10-02 18:41:57 UTC

A person who is known for being a criminal and incredibly annoying to everyone he speaks to. He doesn't care what others think of him and will make uncalled for comments all the time and do things that repeatedly land him saturday detention, but the truth is that he only acts like this because he has an incredibly abusive homelife. He also has no sense of boundaries and will do incredibly out of pocket things like it's nothing.

Brian

zteeter145 — 2024-10-02 18:46:54 UTC

An incredibly smart, yet introverted student whose parents demand absolute perfection from him. He is such a perfectionist that when he gets a single "F" on a project, it drives him to attempt suicide. A with the other characters, he has a bad home life due to this.

Andrew

zteeter145 — 2024-10-02 18:51:38 UTC

Andrew is a varsity letterman wrestler who is fairly popular and comes off as the most "normal" member of the group. However, his problems arise from him never really thinking for himself, and going along with what he thinks other people want from him. His dad wants him to be a wrestler? He becomes a wrestler. His dad talks about his glory days as a bully? Andrew becomes a bully.

Allison

zteeter145 — 2024-10-02 18:55:02 UTC

Allison comes off as an absolute nutjob individual who will do some really weird things and never follow social norms, and hardly speaks at all for the first half of the film. Her story is that her parents never really cared about her and always ignored her, so she had to learn everything on her own, hence why she acts so weird all the time.

V.P. Vernon

zteeter145 — 2024-10-02 18:58:24 UTC

Vice Principal Vernon is a no-nonsense individual who is the antagonist of the movie. He generally expresses distain towards everyone at the Saturday detention, and he crosses boundaries he really shouldn't cross when bender pisses him off too much. He believes that kids are getting more arrogant with time, but the truth is that he originally took the job because he thought it would be easy, and when it wasn't he grew into a bitter vice principal.

Claire - Static/Dynamic

zteeter145 — 2024-10-02 19:03:07 UTC

I believe Claire is a static character. While she does go through the same learning to open up to others thing that every other main character in this film goes through, her character from start to finish is mostly the same, the only real difference being that now she likes John.

John - Static/Dynamic

zteeter145 — 2024-10-02 19:05:57 UTC

John Bender is a dynamic character. While he doesn't go through any major changes from start to finish, John loses a lot of his arrogant/annoying attitude as the film goes on, and by the end of it he's not doing nearly as many out of pocket things as he was doing at the beginning. You can also tell that John actually grows to care for the others, despite him not showing it outwardly, as he chooses to sacrifice himself so that the others don't get in trouble when they leave the library to look in his locker.

Brian - Static/dynamic

zteeter145 — 2024-10-02 19:14:15 UTC

Brian is a static character in the film. While at the end, he's reached a point where he is laughing at his own failed suicide attempt, he never underwent any significant changes to his character and stayed the same from start to finish.

Andrew - Static/dynamic

zteeter145 — 2024-10-02 19:18:50 UTC

Andrew is a static character. Aside from Vice Principal Vernon, he undergoes the least amount of change throughout the film, and I can confidently say he was almost the exact same character in the opening scene and the final scene.

Allison - Static/dynamic

zteeter145 — 2024-10-02 19:23:47 UTC

Allison is a dynamic character in the film. Her character's story is one where she not only learns to open up to others, but she also learns to let others help her and finally makes some friends. She still follows absolutely no social norms from start to finish, but by the end she chooses to let Claire style her and make her look incredibly pretty instead of the incredibly odd appearance she had before, an indicator of her change as a person to let others help her, which makes sense given she never really had parents to rely on in the first place due to her always getting ignored.

V.P. Vernon - Static/dynamic

zteeter145 — 2024-10-02 19:31:25 UTC

Believe it or not, but I actually think V.P. Vernon is a dynamic character, in a fairly simple way. He starts out as your standard stickler for the rules no-nonsense person of authority in the film, but as it goes on, and the group (especially John) continues to perform more shenanigans, he becomes more unwound as the film goes on, becoming angrier, more unforgiving, and he begins to cross lines he shouldn't cross due to his resentment, like threatening to beat up John, or looking into confidential files to try and figure him out. Vernon is convinced that with each and every year, the kids get more arrogant and crazy, however by the end his beliefs are shifted after the custodian suggests that maybe they aren't getting more arrogant, and that instead he's just hating his job more and becoming more harsh on them with time.

Allison - film technique

zteeter145 — 2024-10-10 17:41:28 UTC

Costuming - When Claire gives Allison a makeover, it also serves as a visual representation of Allison's change as she opens up to others, and stops hiding behind baggy clothing.

VP Vernon - film technique

zteeter145 — 2024-10-10 17:45:45 UTC

Camera angle - For most of the film, when VP Vernon is speaking, he is portrayed with low angles and medium/long shots that make him seem more powerful and authoritative, however when the janitor talks him through his moment of self reflection at the end of the film, all the shots used are eye level and more close up, showing his realization of why he's the way he is in a way that makes him more down to earth.

Brian

zteeter145 — 2024-10-10 17:47:44 UTC

Non-diagetic narration - The fact that the essay he wrote for the group is narrarated by him at both the start and end of the film, I believe, is an indicator that his character hadn't changed throughout the film and he would've wrote the exact same thing early on in the detention as he did near the end

Andrew - film technique

zteeter145 — 2024-10-10 17:49:26 UTC

Andrew's film technique best portraying his lack of change is the lack of costume changes. He is wearing the exact same clothes from start to finish, which is a strong indicator that there is no change in his character

John - film technique

zteeter145 — 2024-10-10 17:52:26 UTC

John is portrayed as a big, obnoxious character throughout most of the film, with him often stealing the show, but I think the film technique that best displayed his change was in the scene where VP Vernon threatened him, where high angles were used to make him seem a lot smaller and weaker than he was for most the rest of the film, and after this scene he's not as crazy for the rest of the film.