Mean Girls

Title: Mean Girls
Director: Mark Waters
Authors: Tina Fey (screenplay), Rosalind Wiseman (book)
Cast: Lindsay Lohan (Cady), Rachel McAdams (Regina), Tina Fey (Ms. Norbury), Tim Meadows (Mr. Duvall), Lacey Chabert (Gretchen), Amanda Seyfried (Karen), Lizzy Caplan (Janis), Daniel Franzese (Damian)
ASIN: B0002IQJ8W (DVD)

Plot Summary: Cady was raised in Africa by her well-meaning yet clueless zoologist parents. Upon relocation to American suburbia, she finds herself totally clueless about how to fit in socially with her peers. She initially becomes friends with two other outcasts, hip, sardonic Janis and her friend Damian, a boy she describes as "almost too gay to function." Cady is soon adopted as a pet project by the popular girls in her class, whom Janis describes as "The Plastics." She initially does so with the intention of bringing down Regina George, the leader of the pack and Janis's former best friend. However, in the process, Cady gets drawn into their web of backstabbing, lies, and passive aggression, unwittingly becoming just as vicious and shallow as they are and abandoning her old friends. When Regina finds out about Cady's plot to ruin her, she makes the contents of a secret "slam book" the Plastics keep public, and the entire school is thrown into pandemonium. Cady eventually mends fences with Damian and Janis, but not before she and the entire school makes an effort to get past its mass avoidance of direct confrontation.


Critical Evaluation: This movie is largely based on Rosalind Wiseman's Queen Bees and Wannabees, a non-fiction self-help book for parents describing the interactions between adolescent girls and offering strategies on how to help girls survive them. Although Tina Fey's screenplay adds humor, recognizable characters, and a coherent plot to Wiseman's framework, it is ultimately the interactions between the girls in this movie that we notice: their fights over boys, ruthless enforcement of social hierarchies, use of gossip as a tool for bullying, and ability to turn on each other at a moment's notice. While the situations in the movie, not to mention the characters, are often exaggerated, the social issues they examine are entirely genuine, and will no doubt bring up uncomfortable memories for female viewers of any age. That said, its upbeat ending implies that a sincere move towards open dialogue will go a long way towards fixing the unhealthy ways young women have of interacting with each other.


Viewer's Annotation: Cady was raised in the wilds of Africa, but now her parents have brought her back to American suburbia. She initially sets out to infiltrate the most popular clique of girls at school, but will she do so at the expense of her own identity, values, and sense of honesty?

About the Authors:
Rosalind Wiseman grew up in Washington, D.C. and attended Occidental College in California, graduating with a bachelor's degree in Political Science. In her subsequent work as a martial arts teacher, she became concerned about the social problems facing girls in contemporary society, and has published a number of non-fiction books dealing with the subject. She currently lives and works in Washington, D.C. with her husband.
Mark Waters was born in Wyandotte, Michigan in 1964. He has been married to Dina Waters since 2000. His other directed films include the remake of Freaky Friday, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.
Elizabeth Stamatina Fey was born in 1970 in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. A veteran of the Second City improvisational comedy troupe, she worked as a writer and performer on Saturday Night Live before leaving to write and star in her own sitcom, 30 Rock. She is married to composer Jeff Richmond, with whom she has one daughter.

Genre: Fiction, Comedy

Curriculum Ties: Anthropology, Sociology, Women's Studies

Booktalking Ideas:
Discuss book in relation to movie, compare and contrast if time permits.
Viewing Level/Interest Age: High School

Challenge Issues: Offensive language, sexual content, homosexuality.
One of the high school teachers has multiple affairs with (presumably underage) female students. One of the secondary characters is gay; he is not depicted as being sexually active, but he is open about his sexuality and his friends accept him for who he is. Although the teacher's behavior is shown by the movie to be inappropriate on a number of levels, the movie does not pass judgment on the girls he sleeps with, preferring to have them work through their mutual jealousy before finally making up. Throughout the movie, both adults and teenagers use offensive language, although not as much as in R-rated movies of the same genre. As this movie's overall message is one of tolerance and open communication, both the girls who sleep with the teacher and Cady's gay friend are signs that people should be accepted as they are, and not as we feel they should be.

Why I Chose This Movie: Although this movie made me laugh, there were scenes in it that made me extremely uncomfortable. This discomfort had less to do with the behavior of the Queen Bees than it did with the behavior of those around them, who either enabled, encouraged, or otherwise turned a blind eye to their behavior in hopes of gaining some reward. The fact that it was able to do this to me almost two decades after my adolescence is, in my opinion, indicative of this movie's quality as a survival manual for girls in high school.