Spectatorship

The Breakfast Club

1. The Breakfast Club is about 5 teenagers from different cliques who all get detention on the same Saturday afternoon. They work together to trick the principal so they can escape detention hall, and in the end they discover have a lot more in common than they thought.

2. YouTube Video and Film IMDB

3. This film communicated the perspective of people from different backgrounds working together to overcome conflict.

4. This movie does a good job of using setting, language and body language in order employ spectatorship. The writers want you to believe a group of stereotypically different students are trying to escape definition together. To make us accept they are all so different, when the students are introduced they are physically divided into cliques. They sit at separate tables and the characters deliver their lines directly to the screen. When the characters say their lines, they are shot individually and that reinforces the idea that they are different from one another. Throughout the movie, the characters slowly reveal stories about their lives. Eventually, they learn that they have a lot in common and all gain a new perspective on their classmates. As the students learn this, they are shot in the same frame and they are no longer sitting at the separate tables, in fact they eventually sit in a circle on the floor of the library. The perspective that they are individuals and very different from one another is slowly removed.


Back to the Future



1. A teenage boy, Marty McFly is accidentally sent back in time when he is on the run from Lybian terrorists. While he is in the past he has to make sure he changes nothing. Immediately, he prevents his parents from meeting and therefore alters the future. He has to get them to meet and fall in love. He also has the problem of needing to find his way back home. To get home, he gets help from Dr. Emmett Brown, the creator of the time machine. Dr. Brown doesn't know his time machine works. So Marty also has to get the Doc to believe him.

2. IMDB

3. The film communicates that time travel is possible.

4. The film-makers use spectatorship to their advantage by using a family photo that is used throughout the entire movie. Marty keeps a photo with him and depending on the decisions he makes, members of his family fade. This keeps the rules of time travel consistent and allows the spectator to accept them more readily.