The movie Mean Girls is a perfect example of many social-psychological principles. Three of the major principles that are seen in the film include: conformity, in-groups and out-groups and prejudice. Cady Herron, a naïve sixteen-year-old who has been homeschooled her entire life, is forced to start as a junior at North Shore High School because of her family’s job relocation. Throughout the movie, you see Cady struggling to maintain acceptance in the school’s in-group known as The Plastics.
The film relates to the term sociological imagination. There is a divergent gap between looking attractive and not meeting those expectations of the image created. It is the willingness to see how one’s personal problem falls along with universal issues. Since women aren’t thin, have sizable boobs, and an admirable face it makes them less likely to be acknowledged by others because they aren’t model figures. Max Weber believed cultural relativism was extremely important, because of cultural relativism a woman’s behavior is based on the society in order to be recognized. This results in starvation, getting sick and feeling depressed since they aren’t replicated to the models on the magazines. Moreover, they lose massive money to get the surgery
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. “The plastics” were the leading group of the school, consisting of three popular, attractive girls, Regina, the leader of the group and two other girls, Karen, and Gretchen. “The Plastics” then scouted Cady since she had been attractive, and got the attention of popular boys, in which Janis and Damien originally supported in order to manipulate and plan to destroy “the plastics” through Cady. Cady’s exploration with social psychology is shown through her being unaware of everything at her new high school; social psychology concepts that are shown throughout this storyline are implicit personality theory, norms and group schemas, gender roles.
Throughout the movie “Pleasantville”, there are numerous social issues. This paper will look at and identify some of them, as well as defining the basic social issues and how they relate to the movie.
Conformity is present in every group situation with adolescents. Adolescents are always looking to be a part of a group, usually conforming to the standards of the group. Adolescents often conform because they want to have the approval of the peers that are well liked or “popular”. A great example of adolescents and conformity is in the chick flick ‘Mean Girls’ through the different cliques in high school and how it affects the peers themselves. Caty, the main character, is faced with several difficult situations where she decides to conform with her high school peers getting her in trouble that becomes hard for her to escape. Caty begins the movie with a real genuine friendship with Janis and Damien, two individuals who struggled with popularity because they were considered the “outside” group. However, the popular girls, infamously called the “Plastics” try to recruit Caty into their popular group, but only because she is considered one of the prettier girls in the school. The ring leader, Regina George, of the Plastics is the most popular girl in school who is really hated by alot of peers because of her horrible attitude and how she
Like a rat placed inside a maze to be examined by a scientist, the cast members of the reality T.V show “Bad Girls Club” are placed in a house to be examined as a psychological experiment. The popular reality T.V show “Bad Girls Club” is a show that follows the lives of seven self-proclaimed “bad girls” as they live in a house together. The supposed purpose of this show is to not only watch these bad-mannered women fight, bicker, and argue, but it is also to watch these women mature and step away from their “bad girl” personifications. In order to frame the show of its experimental ways, the show even includes a life coach that is supposed to “help” the women grow out of their “bad girl” ways. But what really is the true objective behind the
Youth culture can pertain to interests in styles, music, clothes and sports. It also pertains to behaviours, beliefs, and vocabulary; this refers to the ways that teenagers conduct their lives. The concept behind youth culture is that adolescents are a subculture with norms, morals, behaviours and values that differ from the main culture of older generations within society. For instance, young men and women, teenagers in this case, are mostly represented as unpredictable and not easy to understand. In the film, Mean Girls directed by Mark Waters (2004), adolescents are represented as bullies, who use manipulation to achieve what they want and are two-faced with the people around them; they are constantly stereotyped as a high social group like the plastics and a low social group like the mathletes; also they are presented as young people that fall under peer pressure, and are overly concerned about their appearance and about being socially accepted.
All of a sudden, I found myself thinking sociologically when I was watching the movie “Mean Girls,” because it reminded me of the cliques and peer groups that were in my old high school. The movie is about a teenage girl who ends up becoming a part of this clique full of mean girls and after an incident she sets out to try and ruin the leader of the clique’s life. It was the cliques and peer groups that made me start thinking sociologically, because it made me look back and see how much I have changed since I came to the University of Kentucky, and left my old clique or peer group behind.
The most influential agent of socialization I the family. In this chapter this is shown, generally the kids in “street” families had the tendency to act similar to their parents. “The kind of home he comes from influences but does not determine the way he will ultimately turnout,” (105). The kids would be quick to hit someone else if they did not get their way, they would yell and argue in very unorderly fashions, just like they had seen their parents do or other adults they had been surrounded by. Aside from family peers are also a strong agent of socialization, especially in a system like this in which children are raised through accomplishment of natural growth, in which they are surrounded by other children in all their free time and often times children not in their age group.
In Girl Rising (2013), reveals how gender discrimination negatively affects the future of many women and continues to be prominent in society through forced marriages, extreme poverty, and/or labor obstacle.
The movie Mean Girls can be decoded in many ways because there are multiple meanings to this movie. This movie portrays the general stereotypes of teenage women. Cultural theorist, Stuart Hall, presents the idea that movies and medias are encoded and decoded a certain way. It is the audience’s job to decode it. Some meanings are considered to be very easily found and the audience decodes the meaning of the movie the way it’s suppose to be.
She only spent time with her friend Damian and she did all that she could to stay clear of Regina. She talked about her conflict with Regina instead of confronting it, yet once Cady arrived she was ready to change her style to a dominating style so that Regina could finally be taken down (Hocker & Wilmot, 2014, p.
Movie Summary: In the movie Mean Girls, Cady Heron is experiencing her first year in school despite being 16 because her parents are research zoologists and homeschooled all her life since they were in Africa on an assignment. Consequently, she had very little contact with people her age let alone western culture and was not aware of the dealings of high school or adolescence in general. As can be expected it was hard for her to adjust to this new life where adults don’t trust her and she is restricted by unfamiliar rules. She feels lonely until she becomes friends with Janis and Damian, who guide her and teach her about all the cliques in the school.
Being raised in US we are taught to act in different ways depending on the scenario. Often many behaviors and lessons are learned through experiencing everyday life . Sociology has become a way to understand and theorize how factors effect society and how usually it come to be. There are ways in which particular learned behaviors play out differently for example learning to tie shoes compared to learning to rob someone. It is often thought that behaviors are learned. Sometimes that learned behavior is committing a crime. Movies often display fictional stories that have a questionable reason for the way the characters are acting. Movies play off of stereotypes and prejudices. Precious ( Lee Daniels. , 2009) is a movie in which the main character
The sociological concepts within the movie tells us a lot about the society in the movie. Society’s idea of coming of age was mentioned a few different times throughout the movie. For example, in the movie the boys kept talking about leaving grade school and were