I have not seen The Breakfast Club to fully understand the context of the scene. Moreover most of my studies regarding food history lie in East Asia, but I can offer some comments on sushi in America. Sushi in the 1980's would still be considered a meal for an occasion, perhaps not as common a meal for the American culinary vocab as it is nowadays, sitting alongside staples such as pizza or tacos with its accessibility through restaurant takeouts or supermarket trays. Certainly, having a decently priced item such as sushi for high school lunch would draw the comments of fellow students.
Japanese food only began to become part of the public American conscious around the 1960's. Following the postwar economic boom years and America's involvement with rebuilding efforts, Japanese culture on a whole began to make waves in America. The worldwide civil unrest of the 60's allowed for American attitudes to broaden and diversify, by the 70's cosmopolitan and consumerist culture meant many educated and upper class families could afford to pursue more adventurous foods. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 allowed for, as its name suggest, more immigration and thus an increase in diversity. This then allowed for ethnic restaurants to open up, sometimes catering to ethnic communities but also for the local populace as well. While there wasn't as big of an immigration of Japanese as other groups during this time, the broadening of palates made the way for sushi to make its mark.
From the 1970's to the 1980's, areas of sushi consumption such as Los Angeles and New York saw the number of Japanese restaurants increase by as much as a factor of ten. Nationwide, in the 1990's to 2000's, this number increased 400 percent.
Raw fish was not the norm of the America diet, and appropriately was considered strange and exotic. However, increasing attention to health and diet as well the connotation of higher class food allowed sushi to draw a certain appeal. This paired with other avenues of cultural imports, period films from renowned artists like Kurosawa and the popular Shogun miniseries marked keen interest towards Japan. Within America's informal empire, Japan was a close partner. Cooperation and economic growth made the former wartime adversary into a respected global power.
Japanese aesthetics too were see as high class, refined, and cleanly designed, which only added to the sense of upscale participation in foreign cultures. Food writers and critiques could draw upon cliched imagery of the imagined premodern Japan to paint the exotic and foreign factors of sushi’s ingredients, preparation, and presentation. For example, Phyllis Richman wrote,
“sushi are highly developed examples of the art of simplicity, of such beauty that it can be appreciated even in the abstract."
and
“You feel neither stuffed nor hungry. And definitely serene.”
Reviewers of Washington's premier Samurai Sushiko restaurant saw comments like:
“an occasion of purity and subtlety, of contrasting sharpness and intensity, almost a ceremony”
and
“like eating in the middle of a Japanese brush painting” or “a small museum of Japanese arts.”
Another Post writer likened sushi as:
“an edible ikebana. A haiku in seaweed and translucent flesh.”
Karen Kenyon wrote on the San Diego restaurant Samurai:
“Walking into Samurai is like walking into a Zen poem... the feeling of harmony [that] exists in the balance of the Samurai warrior figure and the Japanese Geisha doll who stand and wait on opposite sides of the entry.”
Philadelphia food writer Elaine Tait described her meal at a Japanese restaurant as:
“serenely beautiful as a placid, lily-covered pond.”
All this romanticized imagery of the sushi experience tantilized the middle and upper class Americans. Etiquette to had to be followed as much as one might do in a proper French or Italian restaurant. Manuals described the proper ways of eating sushi. Jeffrey Carmel of the Christian Science Monitor in 1983 wrote:
“Before venturing into a sushi restaurant, it is a good idea to learn some sushi etiquette to avoid embarrassing yourself with soy-sauce-soaked rice balls disintegrating in your fingers and fish falling all over the place.”
Post critic Melissa Davis wrote of her experience"
“The Japanese think it is very funny if you try to bite sushi in half. It is rather like watching someone attack a Big Mac with a knife and fork. Not exactly gauche or rude, but amusingly ignorant. The first time I had sushi, the owner of the restaurant rushed frantically towards me and in sign language showed me how I was doing it all wrong.”
Diners could avoid such scenarios and show off their cultural capital and knowledge by "properly" eating sushi, dipping the sushi in a shallow dish of soy sauce, fish side down, and placing the whole morsel in their mouths.
Japanese food that was known to Americans prior to the explosion of sushi would have been cooked foods, such as teriyaki, tempura, sukiyaki, and the like. By understanding Japanese cuisine as grilled, broiled, boiled, or fried beef, chicken, and seafood, Japanese food was more relatable for the average American. Cookbooks thus omitted mentions of raw fish or sushi. Sushi then stood out and became prominent because it was so unlike any other food. It was raw, colorful, and embodied some premium aesthetic not found in most foods.
Eating sushi became a way to distinguish oneself, to let others see and know your education, economic standing, and openness to new ideas and cultures. In other words, you might be considered a sophisticated individual for daring to eat raw fish, at least, that's what many would have wanted to have been thought as. Poking fun at the consumerist class, The Yuppie Handbook listed sashimi among its “Things Yuppies Eat for Lunch.” Food Historian Lisa Heldke said:
“By sampling a cuisine none of your friends has tasted, you accumulate a bit of sophistication that you can bank, and invest later in a social situation in which it is important to raise your stature.”
To return to The Breakfast Club, Andrew C. McKevitt writes:
Like the other Japanese goods in this book, by the 1980s sushi not only had established a noticeable material presence across the United States but also had entered the American popular imagination. John Hughes’s iconic 1980s teen drama The Breakfast Club used sushi to highlight class distinctions among its detention-bound students. The snobbish wealthy girl explains to the troublemaking boy that she’s eating sushi—“rice, raw fish, and seaweed”— and the working-class delinquent responds churlishly, “You won’t accept a guy’s tongue in your mouth, and you’re going to eat that?” Hughes used the scene to demonstrate the expanding global cosmopolitanism of wealthy Americans, even to poke fun at the quickness with which the upper class adopts chic cultural fads, and to contrast it with the provincial sensibilities of working-class Americans.
All this points to illustrate the position of sushi in the 1970's and 80's, a high class exotic food that captured the imagination and romanization of the foreign and fanciful Japan. Sushi marked your class, both in the sense of sophistication and the socio-economic position. Since then however, sushi has steadily climbed down the ladder of social hierarchy. More restaurants, competition, and the creation of American sushi such as sushi burritos, california rolls, tempura sushi, and other curious items has pushed sushi into a more everyday sort of meal. While high class sashimi and omakase restaurants still exist, one can find a package of sushi even at convenience stores and supermarkets. Interestingly enough, Japanese officials have become "horrified with the liberties taken with their food overseas", so much that the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries created a “Japanese Restaurant Authentication Plan” for the 50,000 some sushi restaurants around the world. Agricultural minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka said:
"What we are seeing now are restaurants that pretend to offer Japanese cooking but are really Korean, Chinese or Filipino,” adding, with no intended irony, “We must protect our food culture.”
Indeed, most sushi and Japanese restaurants in the United States are not owned or staffed by Japanese, but instead of other Asians/Asian Americans. While the authentication program was abandoned over poor media coverage, it shows the changes in sushi landscape from the initial exotic luxury connotations of 70's and 80's to popular global staples of our present day. Much much more can be said about both sushi history and how it symbolizes and reflects the interactions of culture and Asian identity, but for now this should answer the question about the scene in The Breakfast Club.
References and Suggested Readings
McKevitt, Andrew C. "Authenticity in a Hybrid World: Sushi at the Crossroads of Cultural Globalization." In Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America, 154-76. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.
Bestor, Theodore C. "How Sushi Went Global." Foreign Policy, no. 121 (2000): 54-63.
Bestor, Theodore C. "Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World." Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 2004.
huianxin gives a treatment of sushi restaurants through the 1970s and 80s. I'll focus on sushi purchased in grocery stores, as well as looking at the context in which sushi is used in The Breakfast Club.
The Breakfast Club character Bender spends much of the movie harassing Claire about her personal life. Food analogies are used in this harassment a few times. In the first example, Bender asks another boy if he slips Claire "the hot beef injection" When Claire takes out her sushi lunch and explains that it has raw fish, Bender rejoins "You won't accept a guys tongue in your mouth and you're gonna eat that?" While prissy isn't used in the movie, Claire does declare, "I'm not that pristine!" This prompts Bender to ask, "Are you a virgin?" and to continue with a variety of questions about her personal life.
In large part, the reason for Claire to eat sushi was to provide further avenue for Bender's harassment, to provide another food analogy to sex. Molly Ringwald has written about the treatment of women in John Hughes' films: "It’s hard for me to understand how John was able to write with so much sensitivity, and also have such a glaring blind spot." "Bender sexually harasses Claire throughout the film. When he’s not sexualizing her, he takes out his rage on her with vicious contempt."
Beyond its usefulness as movie innuendo, was sushi takeout in the 1980s rare? From grocery stores the answer is certainly yes. In the late 1980s, America groceries were only starting to offer prepared sushi. In 1988 a supermarket trade magazine declared "several of the most innovative supermarkets [offer] catering... remarkable for breadth: from entire dinners, to tempting snack trays--goat cheese and croissants, for example--to fresh sushi, to Chinese food." In Houston Texas in 1991, supermarket chain Fiesta Mart reported that 6 of their locations were experimenting by offering sushi bars, pizzas and quiche. A few years later Houston based Randall's Food Markets reported selling sushi in 6 of their 72 locations.
Often this sushi was (and still is) provided by a partner company. Today's largest provider of grocery store sushi, Advanced Fresh Concepts, was founded only in 1986. In 1995 their reach was only 200 locations in 13 states. Included in their partners were Schucks, Dierberg's, Kroger, Simon David, Tom Thumb, Randall's, H-E-B, Vons, King Scoopers, Jensen's Finest Foods, Lucky Stores, Hughes, Sam's Club and Costco. At this time, grocery store sushi bars were called "the exception". Grocers commented that while "the margins are very good... the problem is that the volume is not very high." Others opined that the concept worked in "an area with a higher disposable income."
Indeed this points to trends still visible in sushi consumption today. Roughly 1/3 of Americans have never eaten sushi. Americans who are younger and those with higher education are more likely to buy it. It is much more likely to be bought by consumers on large shopping trips where 20+ items are purchased. Individuals on the coasts are much more likely to eat sushi, with 80% of individuals on the west coast reporting they have eaten sushi compared to 55% of Midwesterners. (The Breakfast Club takes place in a fictitious midwestern suburb).
My favorite indication of how rare take-out sushi was in the 1980s is how different Claire's meal is to a standard take away sushi lunch today. Sushi to go most often arrives in plastic serving plates, with soy sauce in individual packets. In the movie, Claire pulls out a wooden sushi board and pours soy sauce from a ceramic container! That's fancy.
References