Archetypes or Stereotypes in the Breakfast Club?

Welcome to another LINCOS AstroMovie review. [ Read or Watch the video here on Youtube.] Today we’ll be examining the 1985 cult teen classic, The Breakfast Club.  

If you’re old enough, you may remember how this John Hughes movie caught the imagination of teenagers everywhere. The Breakfast Club were a group of five mismatched Chicago teenagers that met one Saturday morning in detention. 

Each of the characters in the film embodies a stereotype that High School students anywhere in the US in the 1980s could relate to. And it may be that these particular stereotypes – if they are closer to archetypes, may actually still be relatable today.

However, this film is also a great exercise for beginner’s in astrology because it illustrates not only the planetary archetypes that correlate with these characters, but more importantly, it drives home the dangers of stereotyping and reducing people to a simplified typology. As the five students of Shermer High School begin to explore who they are, they discover even to themselves that they’re actually more complex than just the labels that they’ve been given.

What we can extract from this exploration, is that there’s a difference between an archetype and a stereotype. Archetypes are NOT people.  Never forget this, you budding astrologers out there. An archetype is a perfect, primal and timeless pattern that doesn’t exist on earth in any pure form. An archetype gives birth to many expressions on earth of its pattern. That’s why in this image the arrow starts above and comes down into a wide multitude of expressions at the pyramid base. But a stereotype is the opposite. It takes a complexity in humans or in situations and reduces it to a single trait or character.

Archetypes are represented in astrology through the Zodiac signs, which indicate when these primal patterns are missing in our lives. In other words, the signs are humanity’s various needs. The planet that rules its own sign is the agent in charge of fulfilling that sign’s need. You can see in this diagram of the traditional rulerships, which signs are ruled over by which planets. The other cool thing about The Breakfast Club, is that the theme of the movie as a whole is itself addressing an archetypal need: this is the Leo need for Identity. The film is about the students process of exploring that solar need. It’s especially clear at the end of the film, when the students are instructed by vice principal Vernon to write an essay explaining who they “think they are.” It’s interesting to me that John Hughes’s script doesn’t ask them to explain WHO they are, but rather who THEY THINK they are. It’s an important distinction because identity is not something that’s just given to us. It’s something we create through lived experiences and the interpretation of those experiences throughout our life. Since everyone is an amalgamation of different archetypes, it makes sense that the students don’t reply with individual essays. They come up with a collective essay written and read by Brian, who speaks at the end for all of them.  He says:

“You see us as you want to see us…in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct? That’s the way we saw each other at seven o’clock this morning. We were brainwashed.”

The question of identity formation, as well as the way in which we seek validation from others, is the function that the Sun serves within the psyche. In psychological astrology, it’s also understood that the needs of the Sun are most strongly felt during adolescence when we’re discovering who we are and assessing the ways in which people recognize and validate who we are. Each of  the students is fulfilling this need by examining the specific archetypal Zodiac sign, to which they’ve attached some significance and identified with.

The actor Emilio Estevez plays Andrew Clark, the jock in the group. He's in detention because he physically assaulted a nerdy, less popular kid. There’s a great scene of character-building when we see what each student brings with them for lunch. Through their lunches, we get a glimpse into the priorities of their family life. It’s these influences at home that tell us something about the direction that is shaping each of their self-images. Andrew brings a huge lunch bag with almost the whole pantry in it. His lunch is meant to build strength for the wrestling athlete that he’s expected to be.

Mars, planet of war and strength,  is clearly in overdrive in this character. He identifies with this archetype because he’s valued for his strength, his ability to defend and to dominate his opponents. He’s actually the only character in the movie who defends all of the others at some point in the story. But he also believes that it’s important to cultivate a competitive edge and physical dominance over others. This need to gain physical dominance over one’s body belongs to the Zodiacal sign Aries, which Mars rules over. Aries is the first sign in the Zodiac. So it designates any newly born entity, such as a baby or young child. It’s in these early years of life that we must all conquer the physical challenges of being in our body and in the world for the first time. 

But the Aries need is only the first, among many that we’ll encounter. So where does Andrew learn that this particular need for physical control is something to be valued and cultivated above all others? From his father who see at the beginning of the film telling him, that “he’s got to be number one! And that he “won’t tolerate any losers in the family.” Not surprising, Andrew's dad doesn't think there's anything wrong with what his son did to get into detention. His only crime was getting caught. So of course when Andrew is challenged by Bender, he becomes angry. “If I lose my temper, you’re totaled man!” Andrew embraces Mars as his identity so therefore everyone else sees him that way too. But as the movie makes clear, all of the kids are actually responding to archetypal demands that they are experiencing through their home life.

John Bender, played by the awesome Judd Nelson, is the outcast criminal type who actually becomes the trigger for much of the internal transformation that occurs with the students that Saturday.  In the lunch scene, Bender distracts from the fact that he HAS no lunch, by making fun of what everyone else has brought. We can surmise from the fact that he has no lunch, and from the fact that he finds the whole family caretaking ritual something to ridicule, that Bender is probably abused at home. In fact, he later makes that clear himself.

Astrologically, he’s most likely the best embodiment of the Plutonian archetype. Pluto is a Chthonic underworld deity, which means he occupies the shadows and represents the darkest aspects of ourselves that we most bury. As an archetype, Pluto’s superpower is to unearth our ugliest and most repressed truths, so that we can transform them, often in the most unrelenting way possible.  In the same manner, Bender lives in the shadows of society; he’s the troublemaker that the rest of the school -- including the Principal -- believes to be a criminal. The deity Pluto possesses a helmet that renders him invisible. So too Bender has a lot of issues that he doesn’t like to disclose, preferring instead to point a judgmental finger at everyone else. And true to the intensity of Pluto, Bender spouts out some of the most hurtful one-liners of the movie. He says to Claire, “Oh, are you medically frigid or is it psychological?” Bender knows that sex is probably a sensitive topic to Claire, because she’s the most preoccupied with her appearance and popularity. 

Next we come to the stereotyped “nerd” Brian Johnson, portrayed iconically by a very young Anthony Michael Hall. His character best embodies the Mercury archetype, both in his rulership of Virgo, as well as of Gemini. Gemini represents the need for learning and communication. Brian is of course the most curious and inquisitive of the bunch: he belongs to “the math club, the Latin club and the physics club”- he’s also the only one elected by the group to write the essay they are given as a detention assignment. Virgo represents the need for improvement and secretly believes in perfection, although they may not cop to that. Because of that, Virgo also fears mistakes so they tend not to rock the boat. Likewise, Brian is timid and clings to the rules that offer security: “You know there’s not s’posed to be any monkey business, ” We also see his home life influences reflected in the contents of his lunch, which Bender sarcastically makes fun of: the perfect representation of all the major food groups, asking him if it was packed by Mr. Rogers. For all of you younger folks, Mr. Rogers was a fatherly character in a 1980s children’s series called Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. He was  known for his mild-mannered honesty and integrity and for teaching children the correct way to deal with problems. Bender ridicules Brian’s lunch because it reflects a caring home reality that is a far cry from his own.  But we also get a very clever clue about Brian’s homelife from the license place on his mother’s car, that we see when he’s dropped off at school. It says EMC2, which of course is the equation that Albert Einstein made famous.

Allie Sheedy plays the “weirdo” Allison Reynolds, who’s considered the “basket case” of the group. She clearly embraces her strangeness because it gets her the attention she desperately craves. Like all of the characters, she uses her particular archetype as a way of getting validation from others. So what astrologically is her particular archetype? It depends whether you’re a modern or traditional astrologer. Allison is not so much an outcast like Bender, but an outlier. She isolates herself, dresses in oversized black clothes, covers her face with her hair, wears heavy black eyeliner, and lurks quietly in the background as if she doesn’t exist. For lunch she drizzles and layers pixie sticks, Capt’n Crunch cereal and candy bars between two slices of bread. Later, she’s uses her own dandruff to create snow flakes in her art work. Clearly she’s not looking for social inclusion. In fact, Brian says to Andrew that she’s “clearly an Island herself.” This then indicates what is in my opinion, as a traditionally oriented astrologer, her most representative archetypal planet: Saturn, but more appropriately Saturn as ruler of Aquarius rather than Capricorn, the other sign it rules. Aquarius represents the need for inclusion and because it’s the 11th sign, it signifies our senior years, when we’ve lost many of our social circle and family to the passage of time. It’s during old age when we’re likely to feel most isolated and alone. Saturn, or Chronos, from which we get the word chronology, is father time. His color is black. But as ruler of Capricorn --the sign that occurs just before Aquarius -- he isolates in order to accomplish more ambitious goals, not as a consequence of getting old. As ruler of Aquarius, which is a more interpersonal sign than Capricorn, Saturn becomes aware of his isolation and of the need to be a part of a social circle. So Saturn attempts to fulfill this need by becoming a  part of social groups made up of those that are in one way or another sidelined; just like these teens in detention. Allison is coincidentally shown hiding behind and then dancing, near a large stone sculpture. This coincidence is another indication that the Saturn archetype is at play because large stones are associated with Saturn both in the Babylonian and Greek mythologies.

Modern astrologers may see in Allison’s eccentricity, an expression of the planet Uranus, which is believed to show the unconventional. But the perceived weirdness ascribed to Uranus doesn’t come from the deity itself; it comes from the fact that the planet Uranus is the only one that spins through the heavens on its side, orbiting the Sun at a 90 degree angle from its own access of rotation. But this fact wouldn’t have been known to the ancients, since this planet hadn’t been discovered yet. So I personally don’t ascribe eccentricity as an attribute of Uranus. For me, Mars, which is the representation of the principle of separation, is the planet that actually moves to the beat of its own drum. It’s provider of the Aries need for autonomy, because it has no problem doing its own thing and being the loner.

But Allison’s weirdness is not an embrace of her uniqueness. It’s actually a cry for attention. The scene at the beginning of the film where someone drops her off at school and then takes off, while she’s about to say good-bye at the window, is brilliantly descriptive of her likely neglect at home. It’s this neglect, that makes her character resonate most with the isolation and neglect attributable to Saturn. But Allison is no basket case, nor is she dumb. She probably possesses above average intelligence and astuteness, which definitely makes Saturn a better fit as a deity that represents Order and Civilization. Allison’s broad perspective and ability to perceive a problem in its entirety is evident in this scene: Claire is asked a “truth or dare” question about her virginity, Allison quickly perceives and declares Claire’s sexual dilemma: “Well, if you say you haven’t, you’re a prude. If you say you have, you’re a slut! It’s a trap.” Allison is probably the most insightful of the Breakfast bunch. And of the 5, Allison is the only one whom Bender not only refrains from hurting with is cruel comments, but  actually shows recognition to by throwing her a can of coke at lunch time. He probably recognizes in her situation, the same neglectful homelife that he himself has experienced.

This brings us to Claire Standish, the “princess”, played by Miss Pretty in Pink herself, Molly Ringwald. Wearing designer clothes and shoes, she of course embodies the planet Venus. Here again we have the character portraying aspects of both signs ruled by this planet: the money oriented Taurus, and the relationship-concerned Libra. Claire is stereotyped as the superficial, pretty rich girl, who cares only about appearances, her expensive clothing, and belonging to the “in” crowd. Like the planet Venus, her sexuality also seems to be a focal point for the others. Venus’ need to beautify is also represented in Claire’s actions when she gives her new friend Allison, a make-over she never asked for.

But what’s most significant to the theme of the film, is that Claire, like the others, expresses frustration about being typecast into an identity that she didn’t sign up for. She says while high on Bender’s weed: “Do you know how popular I am? I’m so popular, everybody loves me so much at this school. Do you have any idea how completely gross that is?” These kids are playing the roles that have been programmed into them by their environment, but they’re smart enough to recognize that they’re more than those roles. And this is a valuable lesson for most astrologers to learn. We are MORE than our charts. Our charts reflect an astronomical situation in the sky at the moment of our birth. This astrological circumstance expresses in our youth and we get marked by it. But those experiences are NOT who we are. But they will imprint upon us certain values that will make us think that’s who we need to become.  But once the characters through their friendships, begin to explore these foreign archetypal traits, they begin to understand the process of identity formation.

Couplings

An attraction also forms between the female characters and two of the males. Even in the couplings, there are astrological affinities to note. While Claire and Bender are arguing, we feel their sexual tension. It’s no surprise that Claire makes a move on Bender in the closet where he’s hiding -- which by the way is very apropos since Hades has the power of invisibility. But it’s an expected astrological match because the two deities they represent -- Aphrodite and Hades --  are indeed married to each other in the Greek mythology. There’s a causal connection between the principle of union and of intense personal transformation. Anyone who’s ever been in a long-term relationship can attest to that. Andrew and Allison also become coupled at the end of the film. Although his attraction to her made-up appearance may seem superficial, it actually builds upon a deeper attraction that was hinted at in earlier scenes between them. When she emerges from the bathroom after having had her makeup and hair done by Claire and without her shapeless black sweater, Andrew is obviously impressed but doesn't say "you look normal" or "you look less weird." He says, "I can see your face." What’s most important to him is that he can truly see her now that she isn't hiding behind her hair.

This coupling depicts an astrological affinity between Mars and Saturn that is pertinent to the film. In traditional astrology Mars and Saturn are often paired as the two malefics. In the film, both Andrew and Allison embody reasons for creating distance from others. Allison by isolating socially and Andrews by acting like a bully. Both planets represent different ways in which social detachment occurs. Mars signifies the principle of separation. This is why he’s responsible for securing autonomy for the sign Aries. But in the need of Scorpio to purge, he’s also responsible for securing and eradicating what’s toxic and unsustainable in our lives. Confronting toxicity is certainly something Andrews is capable of doing, since he confronts Allison’s own toxic behavior and gets her to open up. Saturn, as we’ve mentioned, isolates socially. So there’s an affinity in detachment for these two.

Lastly, Brian is left uncoupled at the end of the film. This is in keeping with Mercury, as the Greek Hermes, since he’s considered sexually androgynous or hermaphrodite.  The word hermaphrodite is rooted in the name Hermes because he’s able to bridge all dualities including gender. This makes him a capable psychopomp, which is a deity that can travel freely between the underworld and the world of man.  Single Brian is also a good representation of Mercury as ruler of Virgo the virgin, since he’s the only one who remains romantically untouched at the end.

The Breakfast Club may be somewhat dated as a film that speaks directly to current teen culture. But as a story of archetypes and identity formation, it remains quite relevant to our time. Archetypes are aspects of reality that are timeless. And although how we express them changes over the decades, the fact that we have to deal with them in the shaping of our identity will always remain true. In that respect,  our need for strength, independence, relationship, knowledge and healing, will always remain integral aspects of our identity formation. As astrologers, we also need to understand that these are not stereotypes that make up our personality. They are in fact archetypal pursuits of humanity.