Can ‘The Breakfast Club’ Turn Down Our Political Temperature?

Can an 1980s movie help us have healthier conversations with friends and loved ones across lines of difference?

That’s the question raised by “The Breakfast Club,” which is coming back to theaters September 7 and 10 as part of its 40th anniversary celebration.

For decades, social psychologists have offered a clear solution to the problem of prejudice: intergroup contact theory. The idea is that, if I’m prejudiced against X group of people (whether because of their skin color, their religion, their politics or something else), then the antidote to prejudice is to put myself in a room with a person from X group.

This social contact will reduce prejudice and help me to see the humanity I share with my interlocutor. As researcher Brené Brown says, “people are hard to hate close up.”

The problem is that, when it comes to politics, intergroup contact theory can look like it breaks down. According to a 2018 poll, majorities of Democrats and Republicans agree: when we spend time talking politics with folks from the other side, we actually come away thinking that we have less in common.

Fifty-three percent of Americans described these types of political conversations as “stressful and frustrating.”

One of America’s most fundamental political divides. https://t.co/F3NcgQDPCA

— David Marcus (@BlueBoxDave) August 29, 2025

We’ve all been there. We’ve tried to have a civil conversation with our liberal cousin or our conservative uncle, only to come away feeling like we were banging our heads against the wall. We went in hoping to get to know our family member better, but left with a deeper sense of the divide between us.

But what if the problem isn’t the act of talking to each other, but how we talk to each other?

In “The Breakfast Club,” an iconic story of five teenagers from different walks of life who come together for one unforgettable day, the characters don’t spend time talking about superficial differences. They don’t argue over whose view of the world is right versus whose view of the world is wrong. Instead, they go deeper. They listen to each other’s fears and struggles.

If the John Hughes film were cast today, we would see more racial diversity as the film tried to capture a broader slice of American life. But despite being all white and suburban, the way in which the film’s characters interact with each other has an enduring takeaway for us in 2025.

They bare their souls to each other. That’s one reason that Eboo Patel, founder of Interfaith America,called “The Breakfast Club,” “the single most relevant movie about people from different identities getting along with each other.”

What if more of us took a lesson from these characters? What if when we came together with friends, family members and coworkers who voted differently from us, we didn’t focus so much on surface-level discussions about preferred policies and who we voted for?

What if instead we went deeper and practiced listening to the other person’s story and trying to see their shared humanity?

This isn’t an easy path. It takes courage.

In some ways, it’s a lot easier to keep the discussion surface-level than it is to reveal our hearts to someone who might hurt us. Our well-rehearsed partisan talking points can function as a kind of armor.

It especially takes courage to practice seeing the heart of our interlocutor, because that new perspective can change how we see the world. If we conflate our politics with our identity, that kind of new information can feel psychologically threatening.

But if done right, this kind of bonding can change our lives. It can melt the icy walls of prejudice and help us to see the humanity of people whom we might otherwise caricature or judge. It can give us a deeper understanding of ourselves and our world.

The act of truly listening to another human being can represent a profound gift, not only to our interlocutor but also to ourselves.

The high schoolers in “The Breakfast Club” spent a single day letting down their guard and baring their souls to each other, and their lives were never the same. Maybe we owe it to ourselves and to the people we care about to do the same.

Steven Olikara is the CEO of Bridge Entertainment Labs, Hollywood’s organization dedicated to “building a culture of courageous engagement and genuine connection across communities and renewing the promise of a diverse democracy.”