Today is October 3. If this date means nothing to you, it’s because you haven’t spent hours watching the adventures (and other grime) of Cady, Regina and her gang. And that you probably haven’t seen a movie Mean Girlsbetter known as Lolita in spite of me in France.
This comedy directed by Mark Waters and written by actress and comedian Tina Fey conquered theaters in 2004. The story is quite simple: Cady Heron, after having spent all her life in Africa, ends up in a high school in Illinois . The new girl, embodied by one of the icons of Disney studios, Lindsey Lohan, then finds herself navigating in a new environment much more dangerous than the animal kingdom: the different high school clans and their codes.
Quickly, the comedy for teenage girls will become a classic of the genre, on the same level as clueless Where 10 Things I Hate About You. So much so that on social networks, every October 3, we celebrate the Mean Girls Day : the opportunity to share excerpts from the film, memes and gifs from the film. The date chosen is linked to one of the scenes of the film, where we hear Cady explain in voice-over: “With Regina’s blessing, I started talking to Aaron more and more. On October 3, he asked me what day it was”. A scene that will mark the beginning of adventures and revenge for the heroines.
Why is the film still cult, almost 20 years after its release?
There are movies that stick in your memory for years after you watch them. Admittedly, these are not always the Palmes d’or or the greatest auteur films, but they are often comforting films, which bring back good memories. Typical soundtrack of the 2000s, iconic costumes (“on Wednesdays, we wear pink”) and a happy ending to make the greatest romantic comedies pale: Mean Girls includes all the elements of a hit teen movie.
But its appeal, even twenty years after its release, plays as much on nostalgia as on the sheer nastiness of the characters portrayed on screen. The film’s tipping point rests on a Halloween party, “the only night of the year when a girl can dress like a tramp and the other girls can’t tell her anything”, where Cady’s humiliation will transform her … in real life mean girl.
Mean Girls was released in theaters in 2004, the same year as the launch of Facebook and the beginning of Web 2.0, known as the social web for its possibility of interaction. In the years following the release of the film and its broadcast, excerpts and quotes from the film invaded the web, in blogs, on Facebook, Tumblr and then on Twitter. “So Fetch”, “I’m a mouse, duh”, “On Wednesday we wear pink”… So many expressions that have become essential online.
As the new platforms developed, fans started investing in them, creating Instagram and Tik Tok accounts to continue fueling the success of the film, constantly (re)discovered by new viewers from new generations. Beyond its cult (and hilarious) scenes, Mean Girls has become a reference for many young adults, and for good reason: as soon as it was released, the film clashed with other cultural productions reserved for teenagers of the time.
Mean Girlsfeminist teen movie
By its tone, Mean Girls is a UFO in the universe of teen movies from the early 2000s. If the basic ingredients are there (a romance, adventures, important secondary characters, a successful soundtrack, and a happy ending, all in a high school universe), Mean Girls has always been a bit out of step.
The film was inspired by a book published in 2002, titled Queen Bees and Wannabes and written by Rosalind Wiseman. In this book intended for parents, the author explains how clans and bands of students function in high school, and how to survive in this “world of girls”. Low self-esteem, jealousy, arguments to obtain male validation and physical complexes: in less than two hours, Mean Girls skims a lot of subjects that torment teenagers, all with a caustic tone and schoolboy jokes. If only by the description of the “Plastics”, or the holy trinity of popular girls.
Throughout the film, scene by scene, Mean Girls talks to teenage girls about issues that concern them, to move towards more sisterhood between young girls after gratuitous wickedness and power struggles. Despite their differences in popularity, their physique or their sexual orientation, they are united by the fact of being young girls, in a society that imposes ever more injunctions on them, and that they end up imposing themselves on each other.
Already in 2004, we were discussing (and thank you Tina Fey) eating disorders, LGBTphobia, the impact of overconsumption on American society, racism, or even the absence of sex education in schools. Unpublished subjects in the audiovisual landscape of the time, and all the more in the productions intended for the teenagers, whom one for a long time believed scatterbrained. Almost twenty years later, some things have not changed: the successful broadcast of Mean Girls on the Netflix platform shows that beyond simple teenage comedy, the film has entered pop culture.