by Emily Maesar, Staff Writer

In 2016, John Hughes’s film The Breakfast Club was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress. It will live forever, or for some approximation of it, in the National Film Registry as a beacon of cultural significance and as, ultimately, a pillar of 1980s teen films. 

In 2018, Greta Gerwig became the fifth woman to ever be nominated for best director for her coming-of-age teen film, Lady Bird. She ultimately lost, but the conversation surrounding women’s representation during awards season was brought back into the spotlight. 

And, at the end of 2020, I pitched this column. Comparatively, sure, those three events don’t really sit at the same table together. However, since I do not currently make media, they are all pretty significant to my life. Albeit in their own specific ways.

A little while ago, while preparing for this final column, I rewatched The Breakfast Club. It was a film that I’d first seen in college, a bit late to the game, but one that I’d already known so much through cultural osmosis. In fact, that’s how I know most John Hughes movies, if I’m being honest. I’ve still seen, numerically, very few of them in full. Anyway, I hadn’t seen the flick in a while, but I was hanging out with my friend and offered it as part of the hangout. And what’s neat is that he’d never actually seen it. He’d gone 30 years without watching it.

Which is how I was reminded that The Breakfast Club is fucking weird. Like, truly weird. Like the films I discussed last month, Dazed and Confused and Booksmart, it truly runs on vibes and vibes only. The plot, such as it is, is that the five main characters (who are all classic teen archetypes) are all serving a Saturday in detention. None of them are friends, or really even friendly, but they end up bonding over their shared day in hell.

The film is a wild ride of truly unconnected moments. Almost nothing feels like it’s the result of anything else, but it’s kind of perfect because of that. Even more so than in Dazed and Confused, The Breakfast Club really hits the liminal feeling that being in the not-so hallowed halls of an American high school emanates. Regardless of the day, but it’s certainly worse on weekends, school makes time feel like the ultimate flat circle, a feeling that Hughes really captures between the five teens throughout the film. 

Plus, as weird as the film is, it feels some kind of authentic. It plays on tropes, in both characters and relationships, but it does it with such precision that it would go on to define what the next 40 years of teen media would try to emulate. Like, it’s weird because teenagers are weird. They’re trapped in very specific circumstances, with specific people, in a specific place, their brains aren’t even fully developed, and they have almost no rights as individuals. Weird is the teenage gift. 

But I also remembered that Molly Ringwald was 17-years-old when the film came out, let alone when they filmed it. She was the youngest of the five leads, by far. Judd Nelson, her love interest, was 26-years-old when the film was released. Which… okay, cool. Don’t love that - I think it’s bad, actually! But, since we can’t go back in time and change those facts, they serve as a nice reminder of the age-gap obsession and over sexualization of teenage girls that remains pretty prevalent, even four decades later. 

The Breakfast Club firmly sits in the “this is how I view teenagers” camp. A lot of that came from Hughes making many teen films, but it was helped along by having a cast that consisted of an actual teenager and 20-somethings. Very few teen films from the 1980s feel even half as authentic as The Breakfast Club, especially with a modern lens. They might have been real and meaningful at the time, but I think the weirdness factor of this particular film has really cemented it in the teen film canon.

But do you know what else is weird? Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird. It’s not quite as random as The Breakfast Club in plot and action, but Lady Bird, as a character, is an absolute weirdo. And I love her. As did a lot of people, which is part of the reason why Saoirse Ronan got nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars that year.

And, like a few of the other films I’ve talked about over the last year, Lady Bird is a story out of time. It’s very much a reflection of Gerwig’s own girlhood and life, as she was a teenager during the awkward phase of us moving into the new millennium. It centers a coming-of-age story against a complex and emotional mother-daughter relationship. Not to mention it lives in the traumatic shadow of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, events from which America has yet to recover, and which have shaped media and the public in completely unknowable ways. 

As we watch Lady Bird in her final year at a Catholic high school in Sacramento, it becomes increasingly obvious that Lady Bird, as a film, is one of the most immaculately made teen films of all time. As she bounces between romances and friendships, the incredible joy and humiliation of being a theater kid, and trying to get out of California post high school, Lady Bird is the perfect example of teenage girlhood. Of a specific kind, for sure, but I think more teenage girls in America can relate to Christine than some of her other classmates. 

If nothing else were true and honest about Lady Bird, though, it would reign supreme simply for the love story at its center. Because there’s a lot of different love in this film, but none are so immaculately rendered like that of Lady Bird and her mother. And it’s the type of film that is able to have Lady Bird’s life outside of her family exist and be vital, while still circling that very specific relationship. Which, as many women will tell you, is often one of the most compelling relationships that many of us will ever have with another woman. Even us queer women. It’s one of those truly defining relationships, like parental dealings so often are. 

It’s there in the moving car, as Lady Bird throws herself out. It’s there in the Goodwill when she asks if her mother even likes her. It’s there after Lady Bird has sex for the first time and it’s terrible. It’s there when her mother drops her off at the airport without a word before circling back, having missed Lady Bird’s departure. And it’s there in the final moments of the film, as Christine leaves her mother a voice mail and we’re greeted with the driving montage. Oh, that goddamn perfect driving montage.

Lady Bird is a film that’s hilarious, heartbreaking, and relatable in all the terrible, cringy ways that good teen films have to be. It allows the protagonist to be selfish and mean and unthinking in ways that teenagers often are, simply because they’re young and they usually don’t know any better. But more than anything, it’s one of those magical stories that’s amazingly universal in its specificity. 

Also, Lady Bird might be one of the best films about feminine coming-of-age ever made. So, that’s neat!

And with that, I must take my leave! You Can’t Sit With Us has been a year-long celebration of teen films. It’s been a look at media that has shaped generations, of both audiences and creators alike. And it’s been an exploration, however slight, of what that media means about the people who make it. What they think about themselves, and what they think about contemporary teenagers. The films are often personal in ways most people don’t expect, and there’s a reason we always keep coming back to them. Being a teenager is a universal experience, regardless of if you want to forget it ever existed… or relive your glory days.

I hope you’ve had as good a time reading these monthly pieces as I’ve had writing them. I’m sure this will not be the last time I write about teen films, as a whole, and I certainly hope to make one someday!