Social Psychological Concepts in the Movie Mean Girls Essay

Mean Girls is about a girl named Cady who joins an elite social group at her new school known as the Plastics. While socializing with the Plastics, Cady develops a new, mean girl, personality and ends up sabotaging the group’s leader, Regina, and becomes the new leader of the Plastics. Regina retaliates by spreading the burn book, a book the Plastics filled with insults and gossip about other students, around the school leading to a riot and Cady takes the blame. Cady realizes that her new personality is wrong and apologizes to the school, makes amends with her old friends, and forms a truce with Plastics who disband and become regular students (Mean Girls, 2004).

In the film “Mean Girls” there were many types of peer relationships expressed. Friendships are described as a reciprocal liking, trust, and loyalty between all participating dyadic parties. An example in the film is the relationship that Damian and Janis hold because they are loyal to each other and the liking is mutual. Peer acceptance is to the degree one is liked by their peers. In the film Aaron Samuels is very much liked by his peers. Perceived popular is a child that is considered popular based on their peers’ perceptions. Regina George is a prime example of teenage girl perceived as popular. When students described Regina George in the film these type of comments were made, “Regina George is flawless”, “One time she punched me in the faced. It was awesome.”, and “she always looks fierce.” Cliques are polyadic social groups that are voluntary. A main clique in the movie is “The Plastics” which consists of Regina George, Gretchen Wieners, and Karen Smith. These forms of peer relationships are a lot more complex than just a group of friends, these relationships of dynamic in early adolescence.

The culture, or characteristics that are within a group, at Northshore High School, where Cady starts attending, is based on material items of social status and popularity at the beginning of the film. The language the girls use towards one another is rude and meant to bring each other down. By the end, the culture has changed to more nonmaterial items, such as accepting people for who they are, and the girls address one another positively through compliments and smiles. This culture, along with other ideas, is something that Cady has to learn as it is different from what she experienced in Africa.

Damian. Janis is your average outcast teenager who loves to wear all black and Damian is flaming gay. One of the first scenes in the movie Janis gives Cady a map she drew of the lay out of the lunchroom. Each table is labeled according to the social group they identify themselves with. Some of the social groups she mentions include the “Asian nerds, varsity jocks, the unfriendly black hotties, girls who eat their feelings, the burnouts, and the worst of them all, the Plastics” (2004). Janis and Damian challenge Cady to “become one of the Plastics” so she can obtain the infamous Burn Book. The Plastics are the most popular girls in the school and the hottest and meanest of them was Regina George. Regina befriends Cady and she finds herself trying to acquire the label as an official Plastic so she will no longer be the new girl. Cady notices her classmates accept her new status and she uses this recognition in her favor. It is important to recognize that the behaviors of the Plastics are deviant and challenge social norms. Although this is obvious to the audience of the movie, the student body at North Shore does not recognize this because they are too distracted by the Plastics status quo. Cady’s primary deviance is seen in the scene where Regina invites her over to her house to hang out with the other Plastics. While hanging out, Regina shows her the Burn Book where she comes across a picture of Janis and her friend from math club, Kevin. The Burn Book includes

She finds herself wrapped up in the group of popular girls called, the Plastics. She begins to dramatically change the way she is dressses as well as the way she looks. Before becoming a plastic, she meets two students who aren’t in any type of clique because they don’t fit in. After spending time with the plastics, they show Cady the burn book. Every page is filled with insulting comments about every girl in the school such as Janis who is supposedly lesbian and Damian who is too gay to function. Once the book is revealed to the school, everyone begins to bash back at the plastics. The Burn Book is created by Regina George and the Plastics to gossip about other girls who attend North Shore High School. Once Regina found out the fake weight loses bars Cady gave her were actually weight gaining bars, she was beyond furious. Regina then put herself in the book and brought the book to the Principals office and said the only ones not in the book are Cady, Gretchen, and Karen so they must be the ones who wrote the book. Soon after Regina makes copies of the book and spreads them all over the school. As everyone is reading them, all the girls begin to fight with each other because they thought they wrote it. Throughout the week all the girls begin to ignore and make comments towards all the Plastics except for Regina. Everyone in the book begins to stay quiet as the three walk into the gym or in the

In the climax of the movie, Cady shows high levels of aggression in terms of manipulating and spying on the “Plastics” which leads to her experiencing low peer acceptance resulting in peer rejection. This was shown when she lied and manipulated both Janis and the “Plastics” resulting in the loss of her friends Janis and Damian and also being rejected by the “Plastics” especially Regina. The fighting and manipulation gets out of control when the “burn book”, which is a book that includes cruel and fabricated rumors about students and teachers of the school, is found. Near the end of the film, Cady begins to feel empathy toward her classmates because she had observed and participated in peer rejection. She tries to amend her relationships by apologizing and taking responsibility for her

The film that I chose to do was the movie Mean Girls. This movie is filled with many funny characters and an amusing plot, but even though this movie has earned the crown of being the official “chick flick” it has a lot of psychological concepts that people really do not realize. However, when you really think about it, the movie has a lot to relate with when it comes to teenagers going into a new school because every teen that enters high school goes though the emotional and social stages of development. In this paper we will be looking at parts of the movie that focus on Cady and her stages of development as she goes through high school and deals with the Plastics, and then the Plastics themselves as well as certain aspects and things that revolve around them throughout the movie.

Cady Herron compares the girls behaviour, to something she would see back in the african jungle. The severity of this scene is quite extreme and could of caused the girls to have serious physical damages, and mental damages. To counteract this scene, The principle and teachers could of brought the girls on a personal level, by addressing the girls personally, which would of made the girls not feel part of the group, giving their personal identity and sense of responsibility back. Or they could of removed the girls from the group, separating them and giving them their identity and responsibility

It may sound strange at first to say that I would like to use this question as an opportunity to compare The Maltese Falcon to Mean Girls, but I feel as though the portrayals of women in each one of these films is worthy of comparison. Even though these films were released more than half a century apart, there are aspects of the films that are remarkably similar, namely the way women are portrayed within them and the ways men are (or are not) implicated in the misconduct of their female counterparts.

The film follows the life of Cady Heron and her encounters with a group of girls called “The Plastics”. Cady is often faced with the concept of “girl world”, which she is entirely unprepared to handle. Wiseman and Fey each put a unique

I chose the film Mean Girls because I have seen the movie before. I thought it would be easier to do an assignment on a film I have already seen so that I did not have to pay so much attention to what was taking place in the movie and instead focus my attention on the course concepts while watching the film again. Furthermore, I chose this film because I knew that a lot of conflicts took place throughout the movie, which is what needed to take place in order to write my film essay. To my surprise, I learned a lot about conflict and the specific components while watching Mean Girls. Applying the concepts in Interpersonal Conflict by Hocker & Wilmot to the film allowed me to better understand the concepts.

Mean Girls: The Adolescence Stage I will be covering the movie Mean Girls and some major things that the movie has in concepts of the development that occurs in the adolescence stage such as attachment, relational aggression, peer influence, and emotions. (Mark Waters, 2004) This movie is a comedy full of memorable quotes, witty characters that some can relate with, and a lot of laughs but realistic plot line, but what some people do not know is that some of the actions from the “Plastics” can ruin their reputation and life choices. Mean Girls is about a girl named Cady that has been home schooled in Africa all her life and is now attending a public school for the first time, where she runs into the “Plastics.” Being a teen is life changing

The girl was sweating hard, the others were too. They each felt as if they had run a marathon, they were out of breath and tired. The girl kept moving, twisting her leg into an unnatural position and reaching her arms farther than she thought possible, she twirled just as the woman had taught them, then she dropped to her knees and put her hands in a prayer position, using her toes she hopped back up and glided to the front of the stage where she knew she would be directly in the woman's line of sight. She waited for the queue and on the downbeat she bowed and then leaping into the air, she spinned a full three sixty and when she landed she put her face down and made sure her hands were back in the notorious prayer position. When she brought her head up and looked at the woman, the look she saw made her heart sink into her stomach, she knew what the woman was about say, but she prayed

Tragedy and comedy are used in Mean Girls in order to allow viewers to approach a new meaning about the characters and plot in the film.

To emphasize, in the columbia production “Mean Girls”, Cady Heron, a new student at North Shore High School, finds herself befriended by a group called “The Plastics”. A group of rich girls with attitude who decides Cady is they’re new friend. It does not take long for Cady to find out how her new friends earned their nickname. After seeing their true colors Cady and her real friends devise a plan to get ruin the mean girls once and for all. The plan consisted of Cady truly acting like a real plastic, failing classes, going after boys, and the most important being being mean. Sadly Cady quickly loses control and suddenly being a plastic starts to become more important than anything. It takes a school brawl to finally clear Cady’s eyes into who she had became. All in all Cady learned that popularity wasn’t so important, being yourself and following her goals is all that people really