Mean Girls Subculture Analysis

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, 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.

In “Subculture: the Unnatural Break” (the sixth chapter from his book Subculture: the Meaning of Style), Dick Hebdige claims that subcultures represent a rupture between the processes that lead from reality to media representation, challenging therefore the codes of language and discourse and losing their disruptive power once they get assimilated. The reaction to the punk subculture in Great Britain in the seventies is used to prove Hebdige’s thesis. The idea of social order is identified with language and discourse. The codes that shape language are often violated by members of subcultures such as punk.

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 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.

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

Popular Culture I Öğr. Gör. Gülbin Kıranoğlu The Capitalist and Patriarchal Elements in the Products of Popular Culture Betül Kılıç 110111077

SOC 306I March 12, 2016 Film Analysis: Mean Girls SUMMARY The movie that I have chosen to write a Film Analysis on is Mean Girls, which stars Lindsay Lohan and Tina Fey. The film tells the story of a girl named Cady Heron (who is played by Lindsay Lohan) and her family whom just moved from Africa to the U.S. Cady was homeschooled for nearly all of her life until she came upon her first public school; Northshore High School. As she starts her first days of schools, she finds herself with two, who can be seen as, outcast friends named Janice and Damien. They both take Cady into their group and become friends. They guide her around the school and and inform her about the “groups” and “cliques” in the school ranging from jocks to mathletes, she especially points out one group in particular, “The Plastics”.

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.

Love tends to effect each character’s action differently. For example, love is what motivated the plot of the story “The Valley of Girls” by Kelly Link. For instance, the Olds observed society and performed actions to make sure their children are aligned with success. Love and social status is what makes these people relate, or correlate with each other; it reminds me of a government politically develop by love and society. In “The Valley of Girls” by Kelly Link, from Teenagers and Old are motivated by two specific motives, which are love and social status.

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.

Stereotypes and a false representation of characterization are both used throughout the film about the role that women play in society. In this

It can be contended that varying contemporary texts which have been created for both children and young adults endorse post-feministic values and the importance of adhering to a consumer culture. The text Pink by Lili Wilkinson (2009) can be viewed as promoting post-feminist ideals through the inferences of dialog between characters; specifically, through the protagonist Ava. Additionally, the film Mean Girls (2004) mirrors similar ideologies as Pink which portrays a post-feminist society, revealing issues which individuals face once gender equality has largely been achieved. Both of these texts have been created for a young audience and utilise various narrative strategies to convey their ideological position. Accordingly, this essay will

People are immersed in popular culture during most of our waking hours. It is on radio, television, and our computers when we access the Internet, in newspapers, on streets and highways in the form of advertisements and billboards, in movie theaters, at music concerts and sports events, in supermarkets and shopping malls, and at religious festivals and celebrations (Tatum,