We are still living in the world of the Plastics: in the 14 years since Mean Girls first arrived in cinemas it has spawned a straight-to-DVD sequel disowned by all the original cast and crew, two video games, literally thousands of Buzzfeed listicles, Taylor Swift, and now a Broadway musical written by the film’s creator Tina Fey. On the internet, Mean Girls battles only with Friends and The Simpsons to be the most referenced cultural product of all time. Yet those shows had hundreds of episodes; Mean Girls squeezes so many perfect gags into its 97-minute running time that whenever a character speaks, it’s basically a catchphrase. “She doesn’t even go here”; “Stop trying to make Fetch happen”; “You smell like a baby prostitute” … I could go on.
It is not merely Fey’s brilliant screenwriting that sets this film apart as a high-school classic. Unlike The Breakfast Club, Heathers, Thirteen or Clueless, it’s not enamoured with the internal politics of high school. At the beginning of the film, Cady – who was previously home-schooled in Africa – is presented with the cafeteria’s strict social hierarchy: varsity jocks, unfriendly black hotties, girls who eat their feelings, girls who don’t eat anything, and the Plastics – the coolest girls in school.
It plays into that feeling everyone has at school: that they either are cool, or that they wish they could be. But soon after you leave school, you realise that everyone sucked: their clothes, their affectations, their terrible taste in music, the belief that you and your friends are the first people to do everything you’re doing. It doesn’t make any difference whether you were popular or not; schoolkids are probably the lamest demographic ever.
Mean Girls quietly goes about exposing this. The Plastics wear cheap makeup and pink track pants, yet tell everyone else what’s fashionable. The teachers, unable to control the student population, are revealed to have messy and miserable personal lives. Kevin G tries to offset his nerdy mathlete vibe by performing a gangsta rap at the school concert. Even the outsiders, Janis Ian and Damian, who consider themselves gatekeepers of the system, become obsessed with trying to overthrow it. The journey Cady goes on is not a transformation; she doesn’t end up cooler than she was. Rather, it’s a realisation that everyone sucks the same. When the Plastics’ bitchy Burn Book is revealed to the school (“Amber D’Alessio: made out with a hotdog”; “Kaitlyn Caussin is a fat whore who no one likes”), it shows that nobody is safe from the rampant bitching of insecure people trapped in a hell of their own making.
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That’s why – spoiler alert – Mean Girls has the perfect teen-movie ending: Regina, queen of the pink-loving Plastics becomes a lacrosse jock, channelling her bitchy anger into athletic prowess. Kevin G and Janis cuddle up, having given up on trying to prove themselves. Regina waves cutely at the nerds. By the end, Cady hasn’t just found her place; she’s realised the entire regimented structure of high school doesn’t matter. And what is coming of age if not the realisation that everything you thought mattered six months ago is actually nonsense?
What’s your favourite coming-of-age film? Let us know in the comments and we’ll publish a selection of your highlights to the final piece.
