Opening Sequences and Characters - 'The Breakfast Club'

In this blog post, I am going to be analysing how the characters are introduced to the audience in the opening sequence of 'The Breakfast Club', and how the opening scene reveals their traits to the spectator.

As the scene begins one of the characters delivers exposition through a voiceover, allowing the audience to understand that a group of kids are attending detention on a Saturday. We hear the narrator describe the five different kids in simple terms such as the 'brains', the 'princess', the 'athlete', the 'basket-case' and the 'criminal'. 

This instantly marks each character out as different, creating expectations about their role in the narrative and how they may act based on each label, and invites the audience to think about how society categorises individuals at school on the basis of stereotypes. We are introduced to each character separately in the opening scene which may suggest they all live very separate lives from one another. 

Firstly, a girl arrives in a luxury car wearing stylish clothes, who the audience may assume is the 'princess' as her father reassures her by saying he will make it up to her. 

The next character we are introduced to is shown with his mother who is pressuring him about his grades, therefore the audience may assume he is known as the “brains”. 

It is obvious that the third character is known to be the “athlete” as his father doesn’t care about the detention only the fact that it may affect his career. 

The audience may predict the “criminal” is the guy who deliberately walks in front of the car and takes the chair from one of the others  as he’s warning the others that he has control and disobeys rules. 

Finally, the girl we see who doesn’t acknowledge anyone suggests she is the “basket case” as she is isolating herself from the others and acts mysterious and detached. Her figure behaviour and dark costume reinforce these ideas. 

In conclusion, we are introduced to five very different characters in this opening sequence, each embodying a distinct stereotype - with this reinforced by their dialogue, figure behaviour and aspects of mise-en-scene, such as the costumes they wear. This hints to the audience that the film could explore these characters in further depth to see whether there is more to each character than their labels.