I’ve never actually watched Mean Girls in the past, but visiting this title blindly brought me lots of nostalgia for the time period. I was 9 years old at the time and the 3rd grade was a magical time filled with Pokémon cards and birthday parties. Mean Girls is a timeless piece, yet you can tell its age through the fashion and alternative rock soundtrack. It made me recall my own time in high school, where not much social things happened in my life. I just went to school and back, but looking from an outside perspective, I could see all the social dynamics playing out. It was like in the movie; there were many cliques and the teachers were really contemptible.
The movie follows Cady, in her first year in a school. She is confronted by the full fledged of American culture and teen angst. She ends up trying to end the popularity of a girl named Regina, the head of the Plastics, the most popular group in school. She gets consumed with trying to overthrow the group and she ends up losing sight of what’s most important. The next thing you know the burn book is out and about for everyone to see. Things get so out of hand that Regina gets hit by a bus! In the end however Cady takes responsibility for all the damage she did and realizes that it is better to not look at people’s flaws and accept everyone as equals.
One of the massive topics that were tackled in this movie was feminism. There was even a joke about how a true feminist would not date your friend’s exes. But in all seriousness, there seems to be an issue where the girls like to put each other down in the movie. There was a whole book called the “burn book” where a collection of gossip was kept. There was also a scene where they were defaming themselves. This seems to be an issue in society, where women are ashamed of themselves. talked to a lot of female friends about this issue. Putting people down is wrong in general, there is no just way. Revenge is never sweet, and it seems to run rampant in the female community. Girls want to feel better about themselves so they put other girls down. The main issue they said was competitiveness. It is a constant struggle to be the very best. But regardless of other people and their pursuits, the best viable option main thing is to be yourself, and not focus on other people’s lives. This statement was prevalent in the scene where Cady was competing in the math competition and she said “Calling someone ugly doesn’t make you prettier, calling someone stupid doesn’t make you smarter… all you can do in life is solve the problem in front of you.”
From a racial standpoint, the movie did not go in depth about black issues or racial issues in general. Sure there were the one or two cliques that were POC, but it did not go into depth about those specific microcosms. The movie only tackled universal issues dealing with competitiveness and discrepancies.
Looking at the movie from a technical perspective, Mean Girl relies heavily on parallelism. There was a scene where in the beginning and the end of the movie where she ate in the bathroom. This symbolizes that the series of events have run full circle. There is also a scene that is set up where people are being interviewed about Regina in the beginning, and then later on the same thing happens for Cady when she joined the plastics. Basically it represented Cady replacing Regina. Then there were parts of the movie that seemed to have a deeper meaning behind them. Take for example Cady falling into the trash can. I feel that meant she had officially become the trash, she had become the plastic. Another act that seemed to have a deeper meaning was the part where Regina was hit by the bus. I felt that it represented Regina was being thrown under the bus for all the problems that happened in that high school, when in all honesty everyone was to blame for the gossip against each other.
In the end, this movie was a great nostalgia trip filled with laughs. The cinematography shouted comedy and so did all the acting from all the upcoming and current stars at the time. I enjoyed the message and the iconic moments. I hope that in the future teens will still be able to enjoy this movie for its timeless charm.
