Mean Girls Psychology

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.

Mean Girls is your classic high school drama movie. Its about how the new girl at school named Cady Heron joins the popular group called “The Plastics” to sabotage them. Cady becomes friends with a gay guy and his best friend, which they then convince her to join “The Plastics” to ruin their reputation at school. The high school is filled with many tight knit cliques that consume the whole school which they try to get rid of. The plot of the movie involves many things that a feminist might find offensive

The film Mean Girls is an American comedy movie for teens that illustrates the mainstream high school experience in the west. The main character, Cady Heron is a sixteen-year-old girl who is a new student at bob school in Illinois. Cady moved from being home-schooled in Africa, and therefore is unaware of the environment and lifestyle at a public high school. Cady then meets Daemon and Janis, who are part of an outcast group. Janis and Damien expose Cady to the norms of their school, talking her through cliques, and most importantly introducing her to “the plastics”, a group that Janis and Damian hated.

Matching to a group’s standards is an operation of conformity, whether that is beliefs, attitudes, attire, or behaviors. The impulse to conform is heightened, when in small groups or society. As simplypsychology.com understands, that conformity happens while real or imagined pressure is felt. Actually, conformity can occur alone or amidst others. ______________________________________________________________________________

Imagine living in Puritan New England, near the end of the seventeenth century, specifically a small village by the name of Salem. While life in Salem is usually peaceful, in the year 1692, a series of events, summarize to be the Salem Witch Trials, would become famous for the death and destruction they caused. The playwright, Arthur Miller, investigates motive and blame connected these trials in his play The Crucible. Miller uses dialogue and plot to show that it was mainly hysteria caused by self-preservation that is to blame for the event in the play. One of the most prominent examples of this is the girls who accused others of witchcraft in the court, specifically Abigail.

Cruelty is a recurrent theme in literature that often acts as a critical factor in a novel’s development. In Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, the occurrence of cruelty is seen to be gradually increasing as the story goes on from accusations of witchcraft that lead into chaos and death. Through Miller’s depiction of the merciless accusations and murders of innocent people, cruelty reveals a high extent of people’s animosity and vengeance that is greatly influenced by the attitude of the surrounding atmosphere. The accusations first began when the girls who were caught “dancing” in the forest were under pressure to confess what they were truly doing.

I myself do believe that one bad person can rub off in a community. For example, back in Salem, four girls started telling people that they were bewitched by people they hated and other people went along with it to either keep themselves alive or to get rid of other people they hated. It shows that where one person goes bad others can and will follow. If Abigail had never forced the others to follow her lead and either tell the truth or convince everyone that they were just dancing in the woods then everything would have been just fine. She should have realized all the problems it would have caused when she started all that, but if she did, she probably wouldn 't have cared either way.

In the play “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller, fear, jealousy and greed play a significant role in the Salem witchcraft hysteria. What possessed so many Salem townspeople to accuse their friends and neighbors of performing unexplainable actions upon innocent lives? Many based their claim on the feelings they had for their neighbors. Those feelings may have been hatred, or even love for them. Individuals then began to fear what so many were pushing to be the truth, they feared for their lives and safety of their family's.

In The Crucible, there could be many suspects to blame for the innocent deaths that happened in Salem. Proctor could be blamed for the innocent deaths because he lied about his affair with Abigail. Speaking of Abigail... in my opinion Abigail Williams is the one to blame for the innocent deaths because of the lies she told, the accusations she made, and the affair she had with John Proctor. Abigail Williams told many, many lies in The Crucible. The reason the witch trials began in the first place was because of the lie she told about being in the woods.

Is Scapegoating The Solution? “A society that is under stress will always scapegoat a group of people or one person.” (Moyer, Bill. “Interview with Margaret Atwood”) . People seem to assume when something is going wrong or is about to go wrong they can just cover it up by blaming someone else for the problem.