Scene Anatomy 101: Mean Girls
Posted by George H. Sirois on 05.02.2006
There’s death in this one, but it’s not really death…
Welcome back, class! And in case you missed the previous column, we're talking with Susan Shapiro Barash, author of the new book, "Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth About Women and Rivalry." Good to have you back, Susan.
Thanks for having me back, George.
During her Q&A tours, Susan has brought up two movies as examples of the rivalry that occurs between women. The first one was Heathers, and last week, the two of us discussed a pivotal scene from that film. Not only did we see rivalry between young women being pushed to a satirical extreme, but we also saw many different elements in this one particular scene that can never be brought up in the movies for a very long time.
Between the year Heathers was released and now, a lot has happened in our society. As soon as Columbine happened, the chances of a film being made about a psychotic high school student and his girlfriend killing those who were more popular than them became pretty small. And with Hollywood in the midst of re-make fever, Heathers has the rare honor of being one of those movies that cannot be done over.
The interesting thing about this little quandary is that if someone wants to put together a story about a girl who strikes out against the popular bitch of the school, they can't tell the exact one that was told by Daniel Waters back in the late 80s. So that filmmaker is going to have to – gasp! – USE THEIR IMAGINATION and come up with a story that accomplishes what they want to do while staying within the parameters that society allows.
Enter Saturday Night Live head writer and actress Tina Fey! In her hand is the book "Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence" by Rosalind Wiseman. Oh, and before I go any further, let me just add that Ms. Wiseman gave Susan a very nice quote for her book, which is shown on the cover of "Tripping the Prom Queen." Tina Fey took some basic elements of the book and created the screenplay for the film that comes the closest to what Heathers could be in this day and age: the 2004 hit film Mean Girls.
The film stars Lindsay Lohan as Cady Heron, a home-schooled girl who has traveled throughout the world with her parents. The time has finally come for her to go to a public high school for the first time, and when she goes, she very quickly experiences all of the typical feuds and cliques that make up what happens between students of all ages and genders. She's equally fascinated and disgusted by the "survival of the fittest" attitude in this school, which is not completely unlike the laws of the jungle that she saw up-close and personal in Africa.
Like a moth to the flame, Cady is drawn to "The Plastics," the most popular female clique in the school. Cady's beauty catches the eye of the leader of the group, Regina George (Rachel McAdams), and she invites Cady into the group. However, on the other side of the spectrum are Janis Ian (Lizzy Caplan) and her gay friend Damian (Daniel Franzese), who are both part of the outcast species of the school and are determined to see Regina take a very steep fall from the pedestal on which she has placed herself.
Cady plays both sides of the field, staying friends with Janis and hanging out with Regina. But once Cady starts to show interest in Regina's ex-boyfriend Aaron, Regina immediately plays up her "charms" and snatches Aaron back, re-claiming her property. This becomes the catalyst for Cady to join up with Janis and Damian, and plot Regina's death. No, not her real death since that can't be shown here, but once a reputation is destroyed in a modern-day high school, that student is as good as dead.
Regina reclaims Aaron because she can't tolerate the thought that someone else has him, even if she no longer wants him. This is what i call "magical theft" in my study, where what another woman / girl has is worth stealing just because her rival has it. Grown women are as willing to steal husbands / boyfriends/ lovers as are young women in mean girls. In my study, over 70 percent of the women were familiar with this concept of thieving.
After many attempts at trying to smear Regina's "good name," the three of them are sitting in Cady's home, struggling to come up with another plan. Cady's starting to lose her confidence in this mission.
CADY: Guys, why did we think we could do this? We're amateurs.
JANIS: No, we just have to regroup. Think outside her box.
Damian is looking in Cady's kitchen cupboards for something to eat. He holds up a bar, not knowing what he's about to eat.
DAMIAN: What are Kalteen Bars?
CADY: They're these weird Swedish nutrition bars. My mom used to give them to the kids in Africa to help them gain weight.
Suddenly, the light bulbs go off over all three of their heads. We then quickly cut to the next day in the cafeteria. Cady is at her usual spot, sitting next to Regina opposite the other two Plastics, Karen Smith and Gretchen Wieners. This right here is something that neither of the other two Plastics – especially Gretchen – likes. These two were next in line and Cady just pushed them out of the way and got to sit next to Regina. How dare she.
Of course, what neither girl knows is that Cady is only sitting closer to Regina so she can be destroyed.
CADY: They're these weird nutrition bars my mom uses to lose weight.
The words "lose weight" immediately strike a chord with Regina. Just like her 1989 counterpart Heather Chandler, she is about to ingest something immediately without looking at what it is she is either eating or drinking.
REGINA: Give me it.
Regina takes a bite, and then looks at the label on the Kalteen bar wrapper.
REGINA: It's all in, like Swedish or something.
Cady struggles for a response. Anything to keep the illusion going.
CADY: Yeah, you know there's some weird ingredient in them that's not legal in the U.S. yet.
Regina's not much of one for doing her homework, but she definitely knows her weight-loss products.
REGINA: Ephedrine?
CADY: No.
REGINA: Phentermine.
CADY: No.
Cady pushes out another response.
CADY: It burns carbs. It just… burns up all your carbs.
Regina takes another bite, as she once again speaks about what she wants more than anything. The one thing that will make her feel truly beautiful.
REGINA: I really want to lose three pounds.
Regina then looks at her Plastics, waiting for them to fall in line and chime in agreement. Of course, she's waiting for a response that she really doesn't want to hear, since that would mean her underlings would tell her how fat she is.
Regina epitomizes the queen bee or prom queen — she abuses power and intimidates but all the while, her crowd pleases her.
Gretchen and Karen snap to attention.
GRETCHEN: Oh, my God, what are you talking about?
KAREN: You're so skinny.
Then there's the other side of Regina's predicament. If the girls tell her how perfect she is, she knows that they're just saying it to be nice and they don't really mean it.
REGINA: Shut up.
Regina takes another bite of the Kalteen bar, content with what her new friend Cady has given her. Surely she wouldn't lie to her, would she?
This scene actually shows Cady to be a more vindictive person than Veronica Sawyer ever was in Heathers. Veronica says flat out that it is one thing to want someone out of your life, and something else entirely to serve them a wake-up cup filled with liquid drainer. It wasn't even her idea to kill Heather Chandler; she just wanted to make her throw up.
What Cady wants – and remember, this is all over a boy – is for Regina's power, her popularity, and her stick figure body to all be laid to waste. This makes up everything that a high school student wants to be successful: beauty, power and popularity. In the "survival of the fittest" world of high school, all three elements go hand-in-hand, and to sabotage Regina like this is just like serving her a cup of liquid drainer. The only difference is that Heather's death was sudden. If Regina doesn't catch onto Cady's scheme, she is condemned to a slow and painful death in the eyes of the students that fear, envy and worship her.
And it's this vindictiveness that makes Cady the meanest girl of them all in Mean Girls.
Cady's trajectory in this film is interesting, since she begins as an innocent and emerges the cruelest of the group. It really becomes a cat fight between her and Regina. It's only when these girls are called on it that they are forced to shed this deadly competition and to treat one another with respect. However, to varying degrees, there are women who are locked in such rivalry their entire lives. What begins in junior high can last a life time, unless there's a cataclysmic event, such as in Mean Girls, or a kind of personal epiphany. This, of course, is the hope, that these jealousies can diminish and women can embrace each other's differences (Think of the scene in Mean Girls where Regina dictates what color they can wear on certain days. This kind of ‘twinning syndrome' needs to be dispelled.)
I want to thank Susan Shapiro Barash for going on this little trip with me through these two scenes. Hopefully you'll stop in again and we can do another scene in the future. And once again, make sure you go to amazon.com or any other online bookseller or bookstore and pick up your copy of "Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth about Women and Rivalry."
Next week, we'll dissect a scene from a film that dares you to expect the impossible.
