Mean Girls And Clueless: Movie Analysis

The theme of struggling with identity, present in all three of the abovementioned films, is significant in characterizing the popular views of young women. In The Breakfast Club (1985), one of the leading characters, Claire Standish, is a spoiled, prim, popular princess at first glance. As the film progresses, the 1980’s cultural construction of young women begins to appear and as Claire comes forward with her sensitivity, stresses, and struggles she begins to rebel against the rules of detention by smoking marijuana in the school library and by kissing the “bad boy” that is serving detention with her. Claire’s rebellion reflects the adolescent angst present in the 1980s possibly caused by teenagers’ subjection to new music, more drug use and being further informed about diseases such as HIV and

In the movie Mean Girls (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEQV2OJVBx4), there is a scene where the Plastics all go to visit Regina George’s house (Regina is the Queen Bee of the Plastics). In this scene we meet Regina’s mom who greets the girls like they are all friends, she then proceeds to tell the girls that there are no rules in the house. This is apparent when we then see how Regina speaks to her mother, and how she treats others throughout the duration of the movie.

Female led films lack the opportunity of being successful because they are expected to appeal to everyone in society, live a hypocritical life, and the roles they have to play are according to the stereotypes.

In Hollywood film women 's roles have varied quiet considerably between genres, geographical placement, and period settings. These factors contribute to the different representations of women 's roles in the film they are present in. The roles are diverse going from the traditional maternal role to that of manipulative murderer. Women 's roles in movies can be almost equal to the male roles, and the co-stars are not given the majority of the acclaims just because they are male. Society has set certain standards that women are supposed to follow. The most common image of women is that they are very passive and try to avoid conflict in any situation. More and more in society women are breaking down the social barriers that confine them to their specific roles. The films Rear Window and Resident Evil show women in roles that are untraditional for our society. These two movies help to show how women are rebelling against social norms and that they are taking more active and aggressive roles. In film noir’s we can see women represented as the femme fatale, a woman whose mysterious and seductive charms leads men into compromising or dangerous situations. In action movies we see the heroine who is strong both physically and mentally, and has the ability to use weapons. Women seem to be more trapped than men because they are supposed to live up to society’s standards dealing with beauty and size, which are more physical characteristics. These specific guidelines have been set by

In the 1995 film Clueless, which is loosely based on Jane Austen’s Emma, shows the lives of stereotypical high school teens. This movie entails many interpersonal communication concepts. This movie included interpersonal concepts such as stereotypes, non-verbal communication, self-concept, interpersonal conflict, persuasion, verbal aggression, intercultural communication, perception, and physical appearance.

Based on Rosalind Wiseman's non-fiction book, Queen Bees and Wannabes, the 2004 movie, Mean Girls, was directed by Mark Waters and the screenplay was written by Tina Fey. Through the use of cinematography and music, the viewers were able to experience the real high school society. Mean Girls is about a sixteen-year-old homeschooled girl and her first-time experience at a public high school. Through his movie, Walters portrays the damaging effects of female social cliques on every student in high school.

“Cold, shiny, hard, plastic.”, one of the most popular quotes from the movie, Mean Girls. Mean Girls is a teen comedy film directed by Mark Waters and screenplay by Tina Fey. This film is loosely based on a book called “Queen Bees and Wannabees” by Rosalind Wiseman which is a self-help book that describes all of the cliques in high school and how they can have a huge effect on girls. But the movie itself is about the sociopolitical climate of the average American “high school”. The movie was made in 2004 and set in Evanston, Illinois, but the film was shot in Toronto, Canada. The film stars Lindsey Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and many more comedic actors and actresses. I chose to do an analysis on the movie, Mean Girls, because I wanted to see if people would agree with my perspective, which is that this movie does correctly show the real life mean girl situations and how girls can overcome the popularity contests.

The movie Mean Girls is set in a high school setting. The movie starts with a new girl coming to the school as a first time public school student. Cady, the new student, is immediately accepted into a group of friends, but later invited to another. The first clique she joins pushes her to become friends with the second group. This subsequently led to a typical high school drama scene. The ways these high school students go about their normal life seem very alike to the “typical” high school. Even though the movie Mean Girls by Mark Waters, uses humor to portray some questionable realism, it effectively depicts characteristics of ordinary high school life and uses realistic characters.

Cady Heron is a 16 year old teenager who moved to a small town in Chicago where she also attended Northshore High School. She was homeschooled by her parents and they also stayed in Africa for about 12 years because of her parents job but since her mom got an offer in Chicago they have to move back. Since it was her first time going to a mainstream school, it was really hard for her to adapt especially her age. It would also be her first time dealing with a lot of social rules that many teenage girls deal with today. Her first friends that she met at this new school are pretty much complete outcasts, Janice Ian Dyke and Damien, later on she finds herself crossing paths with the three most popular girls in the school called, The Plastics. Regina George who’s “The Queen Bee” of the group, leading this group of 3 girls, tries to make Cady be apart of this clique by introducing her to their crazy rules and luxury lifestyles. She told Janice and Damien that

This genre is typically modern, perky and upbeat, but the common narrative in all of them is that it features a woman who is strong and she overcomes adversity to reach her goals. There is also a message of empowerment that also struggles with a romantic predicament and using comedy to poke fun at the male characters. Industries are still producing soppy romantic comedies for the female audience but the divide between the standard chick flick and romantic comedy is slowly disappearing. Similarly to the beginning of this essay it is evident that institutions are moving in the direction of women’s place in culture in relation to this film genre; women are usually shown as the super power since they are made to appeal to the female audience. However

Stephan Babich 's blog post entitled, "The Fall of the Female Protagonist in Kids Movies", and Richard Lawson and Jen Doll 's article, "The Lies Hollywood Told Us: Love and Romance Edition”, are rhetorical arguments that attempt to support a notion about an explicit aspect of motion-picture theatre. In Babich 's post, he writes about how women are hardly ever the protagonist in kid 's movies. The goal of his argument is to persuade avid animation movie watchers that future films should have a female playing the leading role. The main idea of Lawrence and Doll 's article is to convince men and women who frequently watch romance movies that they should not expect the romantic situations and endings that Hollywood

During the Silent Era of Hollywood films white, Northern European-American men were the ones that created and sustained the social norms that were common during that time. Women were looked upon as objects by men in some of the films, and then in other films women are portrayed as a damsel in distress. Like the directors and producers do not believe that women can stand up for themselves and they must depend on men to do everything for them. An example of when women are seen as an object to men in one of the films is in “Tango Tangles” when the leader of the band has sneaky feelings for the “hot check girl” and then two other men also develop feelings for the check girl.

White casts are the primarily casted in movies about high school. It was very interesting to see how in each analysis of these four movies there are parallel characters themes between the movies analyzed. The video I from my class presentation was a clip from Mean Girls (2004) that showed each of the social groups, or cliques in their high school from the perspectives of the “outsiders”; Janis and Damien. These groups were described as; “freshmen, ROTC guys, preps, J.V. jocks, Asian nerds, cool Asians, Varsity jocks, unfriendly black hotties, girls who eat their feelings, girls who don't eat anything, desperate wannabes, burnouts, sexually active band geeks, the greatest people you will ever meet, and the worst... Beware of plastics.”

Since the 1940’s, movies have predominately portrayed women as sex symbols. Beginning in the 1940’s and continuing though the 1980’s, women did not have major roles in movies. When they did have a leading role the women was either pretreated as unintelligent and beautiful, or as conniving and beautiful: But she was always beautiful. Before the 1990’s, men alone, wrote and directed all the movies, and the movies were written for men. In comparison, movies of the 90’s are not only written and directed by women, but leading roles are also held by older and unattractive women. In this paper I will show the variations and growth of women’s roles in movies from the 1940’s though the 1990’s.

Since its humble beginnings in the later years of the nineteenth century, film has undergone many changes. One thing that has never changed is the filmmaker’s interest in representing society in the present day. For better or worse, film has a habit of showing the world just what it values the most. In recent years, scholars have begun to pay attention to what kinds of ideas films are portraying (Stern, Steven E. and Handel, 284). Alarmingly, viewers, especially young women, are increasingly influenced by the lifestyle choices and attitudes that they learn from watching these films (Steele, 331). An example of this can be seen in a popular trope of the “romantic comedy” genre in this day and age: the powerful man doing something to help, or “save” the less powerful woman, representing a troubling “sexual double standard” (Smith, Stacy L, Pieper, Granados, Choueiti, 783).