The Breakfast Club on the Brain

How movies make us grow up - plus a surprise at the end!

Winter 1985. Junior year AP English. Miss Phelps (not her real name) stands before the class, her tiny frame dwarfed by the lectern she seems determined to hide behind. She’s a pale, wispy woman, one of those faded people who make only the faintest of impressions when they make one at all. I had never heard of her before I was assigned to her English course, and now, after sitting in her classroom every day for five months, I still felt that she was somehow provisional, as if she might not actually exist. You couldn’t really see her while she was teaching, because aforementioned giant lectern. You also couldn’t really hear her. Her voice was low and barely there. She was right in front of us, but she managed to sound far away, and, looking back, I can see that she was. I didn’t know what burnout was at sixteen, but I know all about it now, and I recognize her today in a way I could not then. What we did understand: She was indifferent to us, to her job, to life. We accepted that, and met it with an indifference of our own.

This particular February day began like all the others. Miss Phelps wafted vaguely into position behind the lectern while the members of AP English paid absolutely no attention to her. Some kids did homework, some passed notes, some touched up their eyeliner, some put their heads down, preparing to sleep. And then it happened. From behind the lectern, Miss Phelps spoke. Clearly. With feeling.

“You must all see The Breakfast Club as soon as possible.” The voice commanded attention. We stopped doodling and doing algebra. We woke from our naps. “What was that, Miss Phelps?” Nicki, always the brown-noser, sat alert, pen poised to take notes. “Go see The Breakfast Club,” our teacher repeated. “It will change you.” And then she faded away again, and we spent the rest of the hour not listening to her wan, weary drone.

Over the past five months, we’d read Beowulf, Chaucer, and Shakespeare; Pope, Wordsworth, and Dickens. Miss Phelps had taught a couple of generations’ worth of juniors the same writers in the same order. She was buried alive under the weight of them, dying of boredom and suffocating in dust. The Breakfast Club brought her briefly back to life, 90 minutes of John Hughes accomplishing what decades of classics could not. She passed away a year or so later, lung cancer finishing what tedium had begun long before.

I don’t recall how I first saw the film, only that I did see it, and then I saw it again, and again, watching it so many times over the next year that I still have much of the dialogue by heart.

I thought of Miss Phelps the other day. I was snugged up on the couch with cats and comforter watching Pitch Perfect, Jason Moore’s 2012 musical comedy about a women’s collegiate a capella group hell-bent on winning nationals. This was for work — you know you have the right job when it includes such pleasures — and I was watching to see how the film arced Anna Kendrick’s character from inciting incident to final tableau. I’d seen the film a few years before, and I mostly remembered it. But I had forgotten something critical about the story of a loner who finds community and purpose when she joins her college singing group. I’d forgotten that Pitch Perfect is also a movie about The Breakfast Club — specifically about the power of this film to make viewers grow up.

I. Pitch Perfect’s love affair with The Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club makes its first appearance in Pitch Perfect when Jesse, Anna Kendrick/Becas’s would-be love interest, brings a DVD of the film to a lunch date. His idea is that they can watch it together, but Beca refuses. She doesn’t watch movies, she tells him. She especially doesn’t watch the endings of movies.

Some time later, Jesse tries again. He is hanging out with Beca in her dorm room. They are still just friends, but edging closer to more. She shares the music she’s producing with him, and he brings out the Breakfast Club DVD, determined to get her to watch the ending with him. He sells her on how it’s the best film ending ever; he tells her how Billy Idol stupidly turned down a chance to record the theme song that plays as the movie ends; he explains how the Scottish group Simple Minds got the job instead, and how that launched the band in the U.S. They watch together in the dark — but not really. Beca doesn’t focus on the film. She fidgets, makes jokes, and instead of watching the ending, she watches Jesse watch it.

Throughout Pitch Perfect, Beca’s problem is that she won’t let her guard down with people. She keeps them at a distance because she believes it’s the only way to be safe. When people try to get close anyway, she gets hostile. Eventually, she alienates everyone — including Jesse. And it’s at this point, alone on campus when everyone else is away on spring break, that she finally watches The Breakfast Club.

The Breakfast Club — a movie about five teens from different social groups who are forced to spend a day of detention together — enables Beca to vicariously experience the vulnerability she refuses to experience with actual people. The movie is a safe space — the characters can’t mock her or judge her or test her. She is instead free to watch them mock, judge, and test one another — and, eventually, to see them overcome their differences and become, at least for the space of an afternoon, friends.

Having lived through the stories of Claire the cool girl, Allison the goth geek, Brian the brain, Andrew the jock, and the hot waster John Bender; having watched them conclude that they are not so different, that, in their own words, “each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basketcase, and a princess, and a criminal,” Beca has changed. The ending of the film moves her to tears. And the tears mark a transformation.

Watching The Breakfast Club allows Beca to see that she can do things differently — and that she must. She has a heart-to-heart with her father. She asks her singing group to allow her back in. She apologizes to Jesse. Beca is a happier, kinder, more cooperative, more connected, more creative, more expressive person now — she choreographs a championship performance for her group, knocking out a solo performance of “Don’t You (Forget About Me”), Simple Minds’ Breakfast Club theme. In the end, she even gets the guy.

II Story as Chemistry Lesson: Oxytocin and Emotional Maturity

Watching The Breakfast Club all the way to the end signals Beca’s maturation. Sticking with the movie is a leap for her; it shows how far she has come, how she can now see hard, emotional things through to their conclusion. That’s the obvious part. The less obvious part: Watching the movie all the way through actually catalyzes Beca’s maturation. The Breakfast Club does not simply symbolize Beca’s coming of age — it also triggers the neurochemical process that makes her grow up.

This process centers on oxytocin, a neuropeptide commonly known as “the love hormone” and “the moral molecule.” Oxytocin has a wide range of functions, playing a pivotal role in romantic attraction and orgasm, childbirth and parent-child bonding, and prosocial behavior such as trust, generosity, and empathy. It’s broadly associated with feelings of wellbeing and connection. And, critically, oxytocin is highly responsive to storytelling.

Oxytocin molecule. Source: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Oxytocin

Neuroeconomist Paul Zak has found that stories change brain chemistry, raising oxytocin levels in ways that make people more empathetic, generous, and giving. For example, in one study Dr. Zak showed subjects two short films about a boy dying of cancer. One had a strong narrative arc – a classic hero’s journey – and the other did not. The unstructured video truthfully documented the boys’ life – but truth alone was not enough to move viewers. What moved viewers was truth structured as a story.

Subjects’ oxytocin levels rose significantly during the film with a strong narrative arc – and not so much in response to the unstructured one. And that difference predicted differences in how subjects behaved later on. After watching the films, subjects had the opportunity to give money to a stranger. Those with elevated oxytocin levels — the ones who had watched the structured story — gave generously. The other subjects did not. “These findings suggest that emotionally engaging narratives inspire post-narrative actions,” Dr. Zak wrote.

We are accustomed to think of stories as “escapes” from reality. But, as Dr. Zak’s study shows, stories are critical to our ability to experience reality as real. Story moves us more than facts alone; story helps us feel facts. And in so doing, story makes us want to take positive action in the world.

In another experiment, Dr. Zak showed subjects a series of PSA announcements urging people not to drink and drive, text while driving, or use drugs. He injected half with oxytocin beforehand, and gave the other half a placebo. After the screening, the subjects were offered an opportunity to donate to causes associated with the PSAs. Those that had been injected with oxytocin gave to 57 percent more charities, gave 56 percent more money overall, and reported 17 percent more concern for the people in the ads. The oxytocin group also reported a greater experience of “transportation” by the stories told in the PSAs – a finding that suggests oxytocin is part of a feedback loop: it is not only released by the brain on story, but it also enhances the prosocial impact of story. 

We can “change behavior by changing our brain chemistry,” Dr. Zak notes.  And that is exactly what we see in Pitch Perfect. At the start of the film, Beca is a huge oxytocin avoider. She does not trust, does not want to trust, does not want to connect. She has been hurt a lot and it’s easier to hold herself apart. The Breakfast Club gives her a safe place to try out what it’s like to connect with others, care about them, and stick with them when times get tough.

When we watch Beca cry at the end of the movie, we are watching oxytocin flood her system. We see her defenses melt, and witness her capacity for empathy turn on. Afterward, like one of Zak’s subjects, Beca is inspired to take action. She immediately sets out to make things right with friends and family, apologizing for her behavior, becoming closer to others than ever before, and leading her singing group to the championship.

III Better Living Through Better Storytelling

Pitch Perfect was released in 2012, the same year Paul Zak published his book on oxytocin, The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity. My guess is that the filmmakers didn’t set out to make a point about the neurochemistry of becoming an empathetic adult. I’d bet the house that they were not familiar with Zak’s work on how, in flooding us with oxytocin, stories can move us to become better citizens of the world.

And yet, the movie somehow knows the science anyway. It understands, instinctively, that storytelling helps us negotiate the fearsome difficulties of forming social bonds, that it pushes us to grow as people while also easing the pain of that growth. It’s a wonderful coincidence that isn’t a coincidence at all. Science is catching up to what we’ve always known about story, showing us the “how” behind the “what,” explaining, at the molecular level, why stories are so important to our ability to live meaningful lives.

Along the way, the new science of story offers a tantalizing prospect. The more we know about how brains respond to stories, the better we can become at storytelling. Humans have been telling stories for tens of thousands of years. And now, for the first time, science is offering us the opportunity to become much more effective storytellers, to study what works and what does not, to test hypotheses, and even to measure brains on story in real time. For me, that opportunity is also a mandate: develop a scientifically grounded understanding of how we might tell stories that actually solve problems in the world. This substack is built on that mandate. So is the work of our nonprofit, the Story Incubator Writing Lab.

As polarization, tribalism, hatred, and bad faith gain ever more traction, the need for anti-partisan storytelling grows more urgent every day. What does that look like? How might it work? We have our theories. Now, we also have a way of testing them.

As I type, we are launching our own original research study into how movies can activate people’s desire to come together — despite their differences — to create positive change in the real world. The details are under wraps for now. So please stay tuned. We absolutely cannot wait to share more in the coming months!