Why 'Mean Girls' Still Matters, 10 Years Later

Why 'Mean Girls' Still Matters, 10 Years Later

  
Today is the tenth anniversary of Mean Girls. The film, directed by Mark Waters and written by Tina Fey, opened on April 30th, 2004 and earned a surprising $24.4 million over its debut weekend. The Paramount Pictures release had garnered solid reviews and eventually went on to earn a terrific $129m worldwide off a $17m budget. The picture of course lived on via DVD and endless television loops. Ten years later, Mean Girls still ranks as one of the very best films ever made about high school girls. More importantly, it is worthwhile in both the story it chose to tell and who got a career bump. It was a female-centric comedy, with copious well-written female characters, where romance wasn’t the central issue and where the main female characters were not man-hungry lunatics. And it was the women associated with the picture who got career boosts. Ten years ago, Mean Girls was a great movie. But that it now counts as an important movie is arguably not entirely worthy of celebration.

I would never ever call any actor failing to get consistent high-quality work a good thing, but it is notable that it was the girls, rather than the boys, who got career boosts. It helped launch the careers of Amanda Seyfried and Rachel McAdams, while giving ever-more credibility to a pre-30 Rock Tina Fey. It launched Lindsey Lohan into (perhaps premature) stardom. Even Lizzy Caplan eventually became a cult favorite in the indie crowd. But the men associated with Mean Girls didn’t get any real bump from the picture. There aren’t a ton of men in the film in the first place, which is something else worth noting. Conversely, Jonathan Bennett (as Lohan’s crush and eventual squeeze) and Daniel Franzese (as Lizzy Caplan’s gay best buddy) didn’t exactly shoot to the upper ranks of Hollywood, while Rajiv Surendra basically never acted again. Tim Meadows, already a longtime Saturday Night Live veteran, works relatively steadily but was (make of this what you will) still willing to reprise his role as the principal in the direct-to-DVD (and terrible) Mean Girls 2 in 2011.

The break-out stars of Mean Girls were the girls themselves, which is rarer than you’d think. What makes Mean Girls interesting from a narrative point-of-view is that it’s a female-centric picture that tells what would usually be a male escapist fantasy.  If you’re wondering why film critics often seem to judge female-centric films on a harsher scale than male ones, it’s partially (aside from the whole “we judge female characters in a different morality scale because girls have cooties” bit) because of the difference in what qualifies as a female escapist fantasy versus a male escapist fantasy. To put it (very) simply, one variation of the male escapist fantasy usually involves selfish men who learn to be a little less selfish and get respect and a hot girl as their prize (Die Hard, Transformers, Iron Man, etc.). 

The female escapist fantasy is more along the lines of female characters indulging in their own selfish desires without being judged or punished. Think Twilight, Sex and the City, Labor Day, or the million romantic comedies that are about a woman’s relentless pursuit of guys.

In simplistic terms (I wrote about this in far more detail this one back when I first started blogging), one indulges in a guy’s desire to be the hero without changing too much about himself, while the other indulges a woman’s desire to not be the responsible party and throw caution to the wind. Men, who are expected in society to be selfish, are given a selfless arc while women, expected to be the caregivers and the selfless ones in society, are given films that celebrate a little selfishness. One is about selfish people stepping up for the greater good of others while the other involves selfless people being allowed to be selfish for awhile. Thus romantic comedies often seeming celebrate the selfish female lead while male fantasies celebrate a selfish boy becoming a slightly less selfish man through a hero’s journey. If you’re now screaming at the screen that “Wait, girls want to be the hero too!” and/or “Not all men are selfish pigs!”, I agree with you. And that, I’d argue is part of what makes Mean Girls resonate beyond merely the hearty laughs and sharp character work. It acknowledges both of those primal truths.

It’s the rarest of rare things, a female-centric film that operates as a traditional male-escapist film yet tells its hero’s journey without resorting to giving the female lead a weapon and screaming “Empowerment!”. Lohan’s lead grows up just a little, sacrifices just a little, and becomes a better person while also snagging the token hot guy at the end. It’s a female centric film that operates on the rules of male escapist fantasy. It is an empowering film not because the female lead kills people, is in an arbitrary position of authority or even stands up to men in authority, but because it is a female comedy about women and about issues arguably specific to young women as they grow up in the educational system. It is the very definition of nutritious and delicious. It would be a great film if it were merely hilarious. It would be a worthwhile film purely for its thematic elements. But that it has both is what makes it a genuinely important motion picture.

What’s also notable about the ten-year anniversary of Mean Girls is what’s dispiriting about the ten-year anniversary of Mean Girls. One of the reasons we’re still talking about it is because there were so few other films like in over the last ten years. The success of Mean Girls didn’t see a stampede of female-centric comedies. In fact, give or take an occasional Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Mean Girls arrived right on the tipping point of when female-centric mainstream cinema truly started to become a niche. As the DVD market slowed down and studios began chasing the four-quadrant global blockbuster, which usually male full of dudes with one or two hot girls to put on the poster, the kind of female-centric film that might make $150 million worldwide became an afterthought in the industry priority list.

In the late 1990′s and early 2000′s, we saw mainstream female-centric comedies like Bring It On, Legally Blonde, and Dick and didn’t give it much mind. Even the 1980′s had films like Dirty Dancing and Working Girl as a matter of course, or gender-neutral adventures like Space Camp (three guys, three gals). 

Today a film like Mean Girls would be seen as a genuine aberration and some kind of cultural milestone by virtue of its very existence, which is beyond sad. That Mean Girls is as good as it is should be celebrated. That Mean Girls became something of a remnant of a bygone era should be mourned. Ten years later, Mean Girls remains one of the great mainstream comedies of the last decade. It inspired a legion of catchphrases and gave a boost to nearly every single female in the cast (Lacey Chabert was the unlucky one). It was not just a great film and a genuinely laugh-out-loud comedy, but it is a shining example of the fact that female-centric films that don’t revolve around men or even stereo typically male-centric war/action scenarios can make money and can have an impact on the cultural zeitgeist.

It is everything we claim we want in our female-centric pop entertainment, in terms of quality, in terms of gender representation, and in terms of how it tells its story. It is not a story about a “strong-willed and independent female” in a male-dominated landscape. It is a story about a bunch of distinct, three-dimensional, and explicitly fallible female characters going through their own respective journeys with boys on the side if present at all. I adore Mean Girls and consider it a genuine “modern classic.” 

My generation grew up with the blazing feminist and progressive Dirty Dancing. The last generation grew up with Mean Girls. I sincerely hope the young women of today get a “new classic” of their own to grow up with. Or, even better, more than just one. Ten years ago, Mean Girls proved female-centric comedies could be critically-acclaimed, make real money, and make stars out of its female leads. Today, I still challenge Hollywood to do better.

Cr. Forbes