Bad Girls Club Analysis

Introduction The film, Mean Girls, a 2004 American teen comedy, focuses on female high school social “cliques” and their effects. In doing so, the movie brings up various topics of sociological relevance, with connections to two of the main topics discussed in the first semester of this course. This film’s characters and world tie into modern socialization and gender issues, giving sociologists a satirical in-depth view of the social hierarchy present in today’s youth—particularly concentrated in young female teenagers. The movie addresses gender stereotypes, socialization and assimilation into a complex high school environment, self-fulfilling prophecy, and various other concepts important to the development of a social self for teens in the

The girls at North Shore High School are deviant in their unique ways and progressively overcome their differences and accept

By including young girls in the video, Greenfield successfully develops a feeling of guilt within the audience. Not only does she include multiple adolescent girls, but she also includes teenagers and young adults in order to provide additional perspectives on the effects of “like a girl.” Many humans feel a great amount of tenderness and understanding for girls, especially those who are young and self-conscious; knowing this, Greenfield makes sure to include multiple clips from young girls in order to remind the audience of the effects of their actions and comments. In so doing, Greenfield helps boost the confidence of women by generating feelings of regret and embarrassment in those who use “like a girl” in a negative way in an attempt to acquit their hostility. In other words, Greenfield reaches out to young girls in an attempt to build strength and convince them to continue doing what they love, despite what others say about

In this group we have people who present different types like the kid Brian who has to be really good in school because he has a lot of grade pressure from his dad. The rich girl Claire, who can’t escape from the group pressure of her friends. The athlete Andrew, who has problems with the expectation pressure of his dad. The rebel John who has a violent father and the black dressed girl Allison who is said because her personality isn’t accepted from her parents. So all this kids coming from a different background and all of them have their own problems and secrets.

Subcultures form due to our deep rooted preference for likeminded individuals and ideas. We hold anxieties about how people are different and we worry about our own status within society (Andrew Campa 2015 YouTube). Schouten and Alexander (1995) describe that “a subculture of consumption is a distinctive subgroup of society that self-selects on the basis of a shared commitment to a particular products class, brand or consumption activity” (43). It is through this continued communal consumption that an individual finds social validation for their beliefs, value and way of life. Popular culture has magnified high school subcultural identities. For example, Tina Fey’s Mean Girls (2004) is a critical representation of one of the most popular and long-standing subculture’s in mainstream society: the high school popular female social clique. The basis and inspiration for this movie was from Rosalind Wiseman’s self-help book, Queen Bees and Wannabes, which focuses on how high school girls form cliques that are permeated with aggressive behaviour. Mean Girls (2004) aptly portrays the complex hierarchal social dynamic of a subculture. The overall aim is to critically analyse Cady Heron’s socialization from

She employs many literary devices that support her specific claim in this passage as well as she provides many clear examples of how stereotypes have shaped young girls’ lives throughout the book. Through these examples she succeeds to use them as evidence so the audience does not conform to

The film Mean Girls, produced by Lorne Michaels and directed by Mark Waters in 2004 focuses on a teenage girl, Cady Heron, who experiences the drastic change of living and being home schooled in Africa to moving to America and attending a regular high school. While attempting to sabotage the plastics, the girls who hold the most popularity in the school, Cady unknowingly turns into one of them, leaving aspects of her old personality behind. By analyzing the film through sociological perspectives, the deeper meaning of the film can be revealed. Socialization Socialization is the process of connecting individuals to their community allowing individuals to experience new attitudes and perspectives.

It centers on females and how they act at that certain age. The four mean girls, Regina George, Gretchen Wieners, Karen Smith and Cady Heron represent the stereotypes of the popular girls of high school. The role of gender plays an important role in the movie. The movie discusses the aspects of how a “typical” teenage girl should be, in order for her to fit in.

The main character, Cady Heron soon learns that it’s not about being popular and “plastic”, but it’s about being unique and real. Mean girls showed many teens across the globe to not let their high school bully pressure you into to not speaking, drugs, alcohol, popularity, etc. This scenario is not wrong when it comes to high school. Many teenagers like Melinda Sordino are struggling to speak up because of how peer pressure influences

There are a few perceptible reasons for girls to act out, but the intentions of such cliquey behavior is one of the world’s greatest mysteries. If the best politicians and diplomats are lost in understanding the social and political landscape that leads to power, how lost would you expect a hormonal teenage girl to be. The different roles Wiseman mentions are: Queen Bee, Sidekick, Banker, Floater, Torn Bystander, Pleaser/Wannabe/Messenger, Target. All of the roles are affected by some type of peer pressure.

Mean Girls, set in Illinois, depicts the socio-political climate of an American high school, with it’s protagonist, Cady Heron moving from Africa and homeschooling to be socialised in her new society. The antagonist throughout the film, Regina George, is portrayed as an authoritarian woman who has total control of the school (Mean Girls 2004). Regina is shown to engage with numerous sexual partners at the same time and promotes her liberation through wearing a tee-shirt with her bra protruding out the front when she finds two holes cut at her breasts; motivating a new fashion trend throughout the cohort (Mean Girls 2004, Robinson-Cseke 2009, p. 45). This depiction of a strong, independent woman aligns with ‘Post-feminist texts-films, books, magazines and television programs characterised by a model of young womanhood that is empowered, successful, entitled, independent, socially mobile and free to choose her destiny’ (Toffoletti 2008, p. 72). Post feminism is further reflected in the film through the power change which occurs, transferring from Regina to Cady, mirroring the transfer of power from second wave feminism to post feminism.

Authority gives a person the chance to feel superior, and as seen throughout this film, those within the position of authority will only then abuse this opportunity. Given the chance for people to gain authority or rather the sense of authority is enough to awaken the evil within. Within the movie, The Stanford Prison Experiment the guards were enabled to set a line of difference between the prisoners and themselves. They were able to make the prisoners feel weak or emasculated, forcing the students to strip and wear the assigned prison clothes that barely covered their genitals (Alvarez). Forcing the prisoners to wear these feminine articles of clothing and assigning them a number, gives the opportunity to strip away their personality and

They seem to solely skew towards television being the main cause of disempowered women. Without providing other influences on the stereotypes of women, the film’s views become bias. However, because teenagers spend 31 hours every week watching television, it becomes one of the leading causes of gender stereotypes. Also, based on the statistics provided of women being represented far less than men in America’s government, strongly supports Edelman ’s quote, “You can't be what you can't see.”

Girl, Interrupted is a movie that is meant to portray multiple different mental illnesses and how they affect a person’s life along with others. It portrays illnesses that affect mood, eating, and thought processes. At the beginning of the movie, Susanna tried to kill herself with Aspirin and Vodka, but claims she had a headache, and was rushed to the hospital. The therapist she met with 4 days after her incident referred her to Claymoore, a psychiatric hospital, to treat her depression. Right as Susanna moved in, she got cornered by Lisa, because Susanna took her best friends place in the room. Susanna’s roommate is Georgina, who is in the hospital for having pseudologia fantastica. Lisa starts to take Susanna under her wing and helps her to get to know the ropes. Susanna has sexual interactions with her boyfriend and with one of the orderly at the hospital in the same day, which is seen as promiscuous. Being promiscuous is a sign of her disorder (Mangold,1999). Once Lisa is moved out of the ward Susanna is in, the two of them decide to escape and sell Valium to get money to go to Florida. The first night after escaping, they stay at Daisy’s new apartment and Lisa and Daisy get in a big fight. The next morning, Susanna finds that Daisy has hung herself in the bathroom. Susanna is taken back to the psychiatric hospital and starts to see the doctor 3 times a week. Lisa returns also. Almost right after Lisa returns, Susanna is being let out from the hospital.

Despite their endeavors to escape their bondage, the women behind the bars could not escape because the men found alternative tactics to keep them in confinement. The bars strangle and cut off the heads of the women that climb out of the pattern, “it turns them upside down and makes their eyes white!” resonating to an envision of a crazy woman. The narrator herself is a great example of how effective men were at establishing alternative tactics like this. The narrator was classified as having hysterical tendencies, like most women of the nineteenth century, were when they complained of pain, anxiety, fatigue, or depression, as a source of suppressing their agency through prescribed isolation and prohibited writing.