Food In Film Part I

The Breakfast Lunch Club

It's pretty typical to appropriate sentiments from one's major into their non-major classes. I am no exception, even if the juxtaposition is with food (and writing) and film. I decided that this blog would be a great place to start parsing some of my feelings about the role of food in some of my favorite (or at least the most momentarily food-centric) films. 

I'll start with "The Breakfast Club" - certainly not one of the greatest films, but one of this film-junkie's first "favorite" films. The pretentious lens my undergraduate degree has provided me has caused me to reevaluate this film since I first watched it, circa age thirteen. While I once identified with the angst and crisis of identity construction depicted in John Hugh's "classic" (that's a term I use very loosely, film professors!), I now see it and think "Really? I'm supposed to pity the suburban, Reagan-era problems of this all white cast?" Especially when they spend so much of the film lamenting only being seen for their stereotypes (Jock, Princess, Basket-Case, Criminal, Geek) and yet spend so much of the film reinforcing that they are, indeed the epitome of those stereotypes? Please.

The lunch scene is the perfect articulation of this whiny narrative - while the letter that The Geek (Anthony Michael Hall, as Brian) drafts at the end lobbies for the school principal to see them for their truer selves, the lunch scene completely reinforces their self-perpetuated stereotypes. For those of you who haven't caught "The Breakfast Club" in its bi-weekly cable syndication, the embed lies above. And, for the sake of brevity, I'll focus on just a couple of the gang's lunches. 

We start with The Princess' (Molly Ringwald as Claire) lunch. She's having sushi - in case you didn't already know her parents' make the big bucks. When she takes out her meal, it's packed neatly into a Bento Box with chop sticks and some kind of wooden pedestal. She didn't just pick this up from the take out place. Her home is automatically hooked up with everything one needs to eat sushi. In 2014, sushi is a luxury I can seldom afford. It's not like I live near a bay (for the fresh fish) and credible sushi chefs aren't a dime a dozen in the states. I can only assume that in 1985, it was an even bigger token of class. The Criminal (Judd Nelson, as John) pretty much proves this postulation for me, as he has no idea what it is when Claire pulls it out of her knapsack, or Prada purse, or whatever. And when she explains that she's having "Sushi," she says it with the kind of condescension that indicates it's the most commonplace school lunch in the world. So she's totally rich and totally unaware that some people aren't. Not only is it a token that she's rich enough to afford the treat, but she's probably well traveled, too. And that takes some class privilege. Again, I'm operating under the assumption that sushi's popularity in America, for anyone other than investment bankers and their daughters, boomed pretty much during my lifetime. Either way, her palate is more distinguished than these other bumpkins - her blasé about the exotic meal suggests that she savors this treat pretty much all the time. "Why do people only ever see me as the bratty, popular princess?" cries Claire throughout the duration of the meal. I don't know, Claire. Perhaps because you brought a meal to detention that costs as much as John's whole outfit.

Then we have Sporto (Emilio Estivez as Andrew) eating approximately 5000 calories in one meal. If the picture doesn't illuminate the horse-sized-ness of his meal, it's a whole bag of potato chips, a family-sized bag of chocolate chip cookies, three sandwiches, a half-gallon of milk, and two pieces of hand fruit. The timing of his lunch reveal is integral to driving this point home. Just as he appears to retire his brown bag (which is actually a grocery bag, 'cause, you know, normal humans use a brown lunch bag, and his lunch wouldn't fit in one of those) beneath his library table, he pulls out the final two elements - the fruit. Now, I'm not trying to body shame the poor kid. His gigantic carb-o-load is in the service of his much acclaimed athletic contributions to the school. They make it sound like he plays roughly eight sports a season, so this massive lunch is completely appropriate for the two-a-day he's likely participating in once done with detention. We later learn that his participation in sports is exactly the pressure on him that fuels his angst, but it's another example of a lunch that utterly (or should I say udderly, because, come on, like a whole dairy farm was involved in producing his lunch) perpetuates the stereotype poor Andrew wishes he could escape. I wish I could tell Andrew that maybe it's all the sugar going to his head and not the pressure of athletic achievement that drives him to tape a guy's butt cheeks together.

Next we have The Basket Case (Ally Sheedy as Allison), ever proving her high-school label with this lunch. She takes out a nicely prepared cold cut sandwich (the parents that supposedly ignore her probably made it with love and care - what an ingrate), which appears to have mayonnaise spread on it. Then, she takes out a bag of cereal (I'm guessing Captain Crunch but maybe Pops?) and substitutes her cold cuts for dry cereal. Then, she takes a Pixie Stick and douses its sugar contents all over her sandwich, punctuating her creation of the weirdest meal in film history with a ceremonious crunch of her hand onto the sandwich. John doesn't even bother offering his until-now steady stream of mocking commentary. Everyone in the room simply gapes at this weirdo for putting cereal in between white bread. When she looks back at them, her expression seems to say "What? Nothing about this is weird" as she takes her first ravenous bite out of the sandwich - if you can call it that. Oh, did I mention that she tosses her cold cut onto a statue in the library? Rude. I'm a huge advocate for marching to ones own drummer, honestly I am, but if you're going to insist on eating Pops-and-Wonder-Bread-Sandwiches, there's really no use crying about your reputation as a freak at school.

So, on a cinematic level, the food in "The Breakfast Club" plays an integral role in characterization, whether helping to reinforce a character's class, athletic involvement, or quirkiness. But it also plays in integral role in advancing my pet peeve with this movie, which is that all the kids do is whine about being seen for what they repeatedly prove themselves to be.