“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.
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