Blog #2: Mean Girls
The film Mean Girls is considered to be a teen drama, and stars Lindsay Lohan as an intelligent sixteen year old named Cady. Cady has just moved from Africa where she has been homeschooled, and is now entering public high school. She becomes friends with two individuals: one a gay male named Damion, and the other a lesbian female named Janis. Her new friends give her the nicknames for each of the school's cliques including: "sexually active band geeks, varsity jocks, girls who eat their feelings, girls who don’t eat anything, Asian nerds, and plastics." After giving each of the groups either degrading or stereotypical names, Janis decides that it would be best if Cady became close with the most popular group of girls in the school called the plastics. To the entire school, the plastics are viewed as mean, stupid, and slutty. The sole purpose of the plastics is to draw attention from males in a sexual manner.
For a film made for teenagers, there are some pretty condescending messages. Not only does this movie teach young teenagers to judge and label people, but it also gives women a bad name. In addition to giving women a bad name, Mean Girls gives the lesbian community a repulsive name. The most prominent lesbian in the entire movie was responsible for plotting against the plastics, as well as labeling the cliques of students with such condescending names. The only instance in the movie when women had a positive reputation was when Cady joined and competed with the mathletes. Overall, this movie gives the entire women population a negative reputation.
According to the representation test, Mean Girls would receive a "C" rating. Within the first twenty minutes of the movie, women are represented as sexual objects. During the majority of the time, all of the women go to great lengths solely trying to impress males. On the other hand, males do not have stereotypical roles in the movie. Damion for example is gay, and Aaron is dumb. Society has engrained into our minds that men are supposed to be very masculine, and a hell of a lot brighter than females. Lastly, Tina Fey wrote mean girls, which is a bonus on the representation test.
I think that the representation test is a pretty fair way to judge whether or not a movie is inclusive and non degrading to women, men, LGBT people, and disabled people. Although the "People with Disabilities" and "LGBT People" columns seem to be short when compared to all of the other columns, I believe that they are equally represented. These two groups of people make up less of the population than all of the other groups in the test. In addition to this, I believe that since the film industry entails such a strong male presence, it is acceptable to contain more check points about women in the film industry than any other category of people. The only potentially negative comment I could possibly think of for this representation test is how the number of points correlates to a letter score.
I have watched Mean Girls multiple times but after reading your post I see the movie in a different light. I was blind to the fact that it puts such a negative connotation on lesbians and gays. I never viewed Janis as a repulsive person because I always viewed myself on her side since the plastics were so mean. But after reading your post I can see how people can tie lesbians to a negative name.
ReplyDeleteYour blog is very interesting because it shows that even when directors make a film that is almost entirely about females, it can still not pass the test due to its sexualizing of women. Also, although they due feature members of the LGBT community, they do not portray them in the best life and they are definitely reduced to their stereotypes.
ReplyDeleteI have watched this movie over and over again, but never really thought how degrading it is to women, especially to young women. It is the opposite of how women should be perceived. It also reflects poorly on the LGBT community. After reading your post and learning about the Rep Test it really opened up my eyes to this movie and how much negativity it has to women and LGBT.
ReplyDeleteI have watched this movie over and over again, but never really thought how degrading it is to women, especially to young women. It is the opposite of how women should be perceived. It also reflects poorly on the LGBT community. After reading your post and learning about the Rep Test it really opened up my eyes to this movie and how much negativity it has to women and LGBT.
ReplyDelete