Mean
Girls is a classic teen comedy film. The screenplay was written by Tina Fey. Her inspiration was the novel Queen Bees and Wannabes, written by
Rosalind Wiseman. The main character of
the movie is named Cady Heron. In the
beginning of the movie, she is an innocent girl from Africa. During her high school years, her family
decides to move to the United States.
She begins to attend North Shore High school and is struck with culture
shock. She is forced to adapt to her new
lifestyle as quickly as possible. The
most popular group in in the school is nicknamed the Plastics. They take Cady under their wing. Then, the ring leader of the group betrays
Cady. Cady makes it her goal to get
revenge on her.
Tiny Fey’s purpose for writing Mean Girls was to show viewers how much
a person can change depending on their surroundings. Her audience is teenagers and parents.
In this paper, I will analyze the
transformation of Cady. I will also look
at the difference between Cady’s parents and Regina’s parents, and the effects
they had on their children. To conduct
my research, I will use the USC upstate library data bases. I will try to find information about modern teenagers
and compare it to the ones in the movie.
I choose to do my pop culture analysis on Mean Girls, because it is one of my
favorite movies. It also references many
social issues in society. Some of these
issues include girl on girl crime and the morality of teenagers.
My claim for this assignment will be that Mean Girls accurately depicts teenage
life. My data is that in most high
schools, there is a group of popular kids who practically run the school. There are also multiple cliques that are
defined by the similar interest of the people.
My warrant is that recent studies have shown the usual tendencies of
high school students. Most of them show that
teenagers in Mean Girls and teenagers
in real life are not that different. Teenagers
are easily influenced and guidance is essential to their development. Some people could say that the movie is just
a work of fiction and does not represent modern life at all. While this could be partially true, it is difficult for
a writer to write about something that they do not know about. There had to be some background information
for this movie to be made.