You Go Glenn Coco

“Mean Girls” is as complicated as North Shore High. None of the girls there seem to act of their own free will. Except Cady, but she loses that will as she befriends Regina. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. The screenplay for this film was written by the notable Tina Fey, who has been known to defend women’s rights, especially in the realms of comedy.

“Girls get a lot of mixed messages ­­– they are told, ‘Girl Power!’ and what does that mean? It means you wear a T-shirt that says, ‘Girl Power!’ but you call each other b******. You make fun of a girl for being a virgin and you make fun of a girl for having sex. There is no right place to be.” – Tina Fey

This philosophy definitely showed itself in Cady and Regina’s relationship. Regina noticed Cady because she was a pretty girl; she invited Cady into the group under the pretense that she has to look out for her fellow girl. In reality, she just thought Cady would be moldable since she’s never been to public school before. Then they proceed to do a multitude of crazy things, because they’re girls and that’s what they do. Cady follows along as they: write terrible things about other girls, gossip about each other, wear revealing clothing, and perform a ridiculously sexy Christmas number. McRobbie wrote about this in her article about Post-Feminism, “She seems to be doing it out of choice, and for her own enjoyment…perhaps as a test of [her] sophistication and ‘cool’.” Fortunately, they are each able to grow up a little by the end of the film. They may not be best friends, but they can tolerate each other without breaking into a fight.

                The other part of the film that troubles me was the use of the romantic interest – Aaron Samuels. I wanted everything to be right; I wanted it to be the perfect girl movie. But I would argue, and Mulvey would agree with me, that there is still a huge problem with male gaze in “Mean Girls”.  Mulvey finds that, in film, women have “functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the screen.”  In Media Literacy class we discussed how they achieved this in older films, the girl they wanted to show off would happen to be a show-girl or performer. They use similar devices in “Mean Girls”; they are the sexy royalty of high school. Oh and Halloween is as good an excuse as anything, “Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.” These excuses allow them to show leg and cleavage to all audiences both in the story and in the audience. I agree with Mulvey that the male gaze is definitely present, but that troubles me. Does Cady really have to end up with Aaron in the end? I wonder if audiences would have been satisfied if they hadn’t got together.

Other questions I have: Is it impossible to make a film without male gaze? Or a better question, is it possible to make a commercially successful film without male gaze? I don’t know the answers to these questions, though do I lean towards ‘no’ right now. We have a long way to go, but with creators like Tina Fey, we will move in the right direction.