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Mean Girls: Difference between revisions
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[[File:meangirls.jpg|
''Mean Girls'' is a fairly [[Troperiffic|trope-heavy]] comedy movie about a teen girl named Cady who goes to a school that is dominated by a [[Alpha Bitch|popular girl]] named Regina. Cady's [[Cool Loser]] friends Janis and Damian persuade her to [[The Infiltration|join]] Regina's [[Girl Posse]] for the purpose of spying on Regina. Before long, Cady ends up [[Becoming the Mask|identifying with Regina's whole value system]]. There's lots of bitchy backstabbing, lots of [[An Aesop|lessons learned]], and lots of [[Hilarity Ensues|funny situations]] along the way. Overall, it's something of a [[Lighter and Softer]] [[Spiritual Successor]] to the [[Cult Classic]] [[Black Comedy]] ''[[Heathers]]''.
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Has a [[Nintendo DS]] game adaptation and a [[Direct to Video|direct-to-DVD]] sequel.
{{tropelist}}
* [[All Hallow's Eve]]: The Halloween party.
* [[Alpha Bitch]]: Regina and, [[Becoming the Mask|later]], Cady. The whole movie is arguably a [[Deconstructive Parody]] of this trope, demonstrating how a girl can be so simultaneously loved, feared, and hated by the rest of the student body.
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* [[Badass Teacher]]: Principal Duvall. Doesn't do anything typically badass during the film, but sometimes sheer presence is enough: looking at the man, especially when he's giving a stern lecture whilst wielding a baseball bat, just tell me you wouldn't a) hang on to his every word or b) not want to take him on in a fight.
* [[Bare Your Midriff]]: Most of Gretchen's outfits do this.
* [[Based
* [[Beauty Equals Goodness]]: Subverted.
* [[Becoming the Mask]]: Cady's transformation into the [[Alpha Bitch]].
* [[Bilingual Bonus]]: Trang Pak and Sun Jin Dinh's dialogue becomes [[Fun
* [[Billing Displacement]]: When a ''Mean Girls'' game came out for the [[Nintendo DS]] in 2010, [[Lindsay Lohan]], the film's star, wasn't on the cover. The tabloids [https://web.archive.org/web/20140212145717/http://perezhilton.com/2010-04-12-fill-in-the-blank-330#respond had a field day with this.]
* [[Blatant Lies]]:
{{quote|
** Most of Regina's behavior fits this trope.
* [[Blondes Are Evil]]: Regina. Subverted with Karen, who is actually pretty nice.
* [[Blonde, Brunette, Redhead]]: The Plastics after Cady enters, {{spoiler|and especially after Regina leaves.}}
* [[Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress]]: Cady's Halloween costume.
* [[Bowdlerise|Bowdlerization]]: [[Tina Fey]]'s [http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/mean_girls.pdf original script] was rated R, and was filled with sexual innuendo, drug humor and "wall-to-wall titties" (Fey's words) in the vein of such teen sex comedies as ''Porky's'' and ''[[American Pie]]''. Several scenes that were in the movie were raunchier in their original form -- the "made out with a hot dog" line was originally supposed to say "masturbated," (and in fact, if you read the girl's lips when she says, "Made out with a hot dog? That was one time!" she obviously says masturbated, it's just dubbed-over.) Regina and Karen's Halloween outfits (already [[Stripperiffic]] in the final film) were basically bras and panties, and the scene where Gretchen and Jason are caught making out in the bathroom originally had Gretchen about to give Jason a blowjob. There was also a subplot involving an ecstasy-popping raver kid named Barry that was dropped from the finished product
:The script was toned down after [[Lindsay Lohan]] was cast in the lead role, due to the fact that she was then considered a [[Contractual Purity|family-friendly teen actress]] (which became [[Hilarious in Hindsight]] several years later after her scrapes with the law). Even then, the film had to be edited further to receive a PG-13, a lot of [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|crap got past the radar]], and an astute observer can spot some lines that were dubbed over in order to tone the film down.
** One could argue [[Tropes Are Not Bad|this is for the better]], as it makes Mean Girls more accessible to the teen demographic that can relate to the characters, and also makes it stand out from the pack of movies in the genre.
* [[
* [[But I Digress]]: [[Lampshaded]] in the Spring Fling scene.
{{quote|
* [[Butt Monkey]]: Regina George, the butt of all of Cady's (technically Janis's) tricks and pranks. [[Jerkass|She probably deserves it, though.]]
* [[California Doubling]]: As [[Roger Ebert]] [https://web.archive.org/web/20130225045705/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=
* [[Can't Believe I Said That]]: Invoked by Gretchen a couple times when insulting Regina. It's pretense, of course.
* [[Chekhov's Gun]]:
** Chekhov's {{spoiler|big yellow school bus}}, rather.
** Before the talent show scene, Janis tells Cady that "everybody in the English speaking world" knows the words to the song Jingle Bell Rock. Cady presumably used this information to save the act.
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* [[Corrupt the Cutie]]: This is half the plot.
* [[Curse Cut Short]]: Regina.
{{quote|
* [[Cut a Slice, Take
* [[Damn You, Muscle Memory!]]: Gretchen is forced to change her usual place in "Jingle Bell Rock". As a result, [[Epic Fail|she stumbles on Cady, then on the stereo that starts skipping, and kicks the thing on her crush's face.]]
* [[Dance of Romance]]: Subverted with Damian, then almost immediately played straight with Kevin.
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* [[Eating Lunch Alone]]: Occurs with Cady twice: on her first day of school, when she hasn't made any friends, and {{spoiler|after she's been kicked out of the Plastics and rejected by Janis and Damian.}}
* [[Even the Girls Want Her]]: Regina. Cady is also shown to have this kind of appeal later on as well.
* [[Fan Service]]: [[Bunny Girl|The Halloween party]], [[Sexy Santa Dress|the Christmas pageant]], [[Amanda Seyfried]] [[Wet Sari Scene|in a wet T-shirt]], [[Tina Fey]] [[Lingerie Scene|stripping down to a bra]]... this movie is in love with this trope. Even [http://images.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/mean-girls-mean-girls-200481_640_657.jpg the] [https://web.archive.org/web/20140406094134/http://blog.lib.umn.edu/raim0007/gwss3307_summer2008/mean_girls.jpg publicity] [http://youngpost.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/meangirls11.jpg shots] show about ten square feet of leg.
* [[Fake American]]: Rachel McAdams. (Canadian)
* [[Fallen Princess]]: Janis used to be popular, but her reputation was destroyed by a rumor and she now willingly embraces outsiderdom.
* [[Flamboyant Gay]]: Damian is "too gay to function," though to be fair he is only mildly flamboyant.
* [[Foreshadowing]]: A narrating Cady, with regards to her immediate crush on Aaron:
{{quote|
** Another one, foreshadowing the exact same event, comes at the very beginning, when Cady {{spoiler|is almost hit by a big yellow school bus}}.
* [[Former Friend of Alpha Bitch]]: Janis to Regina.
* [[Friendship Moment]]: Played straight with Janis's art, and played for laughs (though also rather sweetly) with Karen catching Gretchen in the circle of trust.
* [[Funny Background Event]]: During Cady's phone call with Regina, you can see Regina's little sister watching [[Girls Gone Wild]] and lifting up her shirt while cheering.
* [[Girl Posse]]: The "Plastics" (Regina, Karen, Gretchen, and later Cady) are unusually well-developed examples. There's also Trang Pak and her "Cool Asians".
* [[Heterosexual Life Partners]]: Karen and Gretchen.
** Opposite-Sexed Homosexual Life Partners: Janis and Damian.
* [[He Who Fights Monsters]]
{{quote|
'''Janis''': [laughs] Buddy, you're not pretending anymore! You're plastic! Cold, shiny, hard plastic! }}
** Of course, [[Hypocrite|Janis qualifies just as much]], and even caused Cady's example to start with.
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* [[High School Dance]]: Spring Fling at the end.
* [[Homeschooled Kids]]: Cady is one. The opening scene also parodies the stereotype of home schooled kids being either ultra-[[Nerd|nerds]] or [[The Fundamentalist|religious whackos]].
{{quote|
* [[Hormone-Addled Teenager]]: Most of them, but since the movie's a comedy it's mostly [[Played for Laughs]].
* [[Important Haircut]]: Off screen. After Regina spread the rumor in middle school that Janis was a lesbian, Janis dropped out of school for the rest of the year; when she returned in the fall, "all her hair was cut off, and she was totally weird."
* [[Incredibly Lame Pun|Incredibly Lame]] [[Visual Pun]]: At the Halloween party:
{{quote|
'''Cady:''' "An ex-wife!" }}
* [[Indulgent Fantasy Segue]]: Cady fantasizes about beating the crap out of Regina over a boy that they both like.
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* [[Informed Judaism]]: Gretchen mentions receiving Hanukkah gifts.
* [[Inventor of the Mundane]]: Gretchen's father invented toaster strudel.
* [[In
* [[Jerkass]]: Regina George.
* [[Karma Houdini]]: Janis, who, despite influencing and encouraging Cady to join the Plastics specifically to damage Regina, gets zero comeuppance when she reveals it to the entire crowd of girls following the revelation of the Burn Book. In fact, she gets ''applauded'' for it! Cady, in the meantime, is treated as a bitch by everyone because of what she's done, even though Janis admitted that she was the mastermind behind all that!
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* [[Lucky Translation]]: Karen goes to the Halloween party dressed as a sexy mouse. In the Italian version, when asked what she is dressed as, she answers "Sono una topa". "Topa" means "female mouse", but is also a slang word for female genitalia and a rude compliment to a pretty girl.
* [[The Makeover]]: Caddy goes from normal student to "plastic".
* [[Make Way for
* [[The Mall]]: Janis works here. Cady also compares the kids hanging out here to the wild animals she grew up with in Africa.
* [[Meaningful Name]]:
** The name "Regina" is Latin for "queen." (Her last name is "George", bringing to mind [[George W. Bush|a certain President]], or [[wikipedia:George III of the United Kingdom|a certain king]].)
** And in the same vein, it's surely no accident that on many different occasions, a character will mispronounce Cady's name, thinking it's pronounced "catty."
** Janis Ian shares her name with the singer of "At Seventeen", a song about discovering that the "pretty girls" get the love. The real Janis Ian is a lesbian, and was the musical guest on the first episode of ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'', [[Shout-Out|the show screenwriter Tina Fey first became famous for]].
*** As an aside, Tina Fey later sang a bit of "At Seventeen" in an episode of ''[[30 Rock
* [[Minion
** Gretchen isn't all that malicious either, just desperately insecure and hungry for attention, which makes her extremely prone to gossip and over dramatize things ("Pusher? Like a ''drug pusher''?"). Makes more sense if you consider that in the original script she was described as ugly.
* [[Misplaced Wildlife]]: During Cady's party, Aaron sees a picture of Cady back in Africa riding an elephant. An ''Asian'' elephant.
* [[Must Make Amends]]: This is pretty much what the [[Three Act Structure|third act]] of the movie is about.
* [[My Card]]: {{
* [[My Nayme Is]]: It's spelled "Cady," not "Katie."
{{quote|
* [[Naive Newcomer]]: Cady.
* [[Nerd Core]]: Kevin's rap.
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** ''KEVIN''!
* [[Never Say That Again]]: "Stop trying to make 'fetch' happen!"
* [[No Dress Code]]: The plastics get away with performing in a school pageant wearing sexy Santa outfits that are closer to lingerie than costumes.
* [[No Social Skills]]: Up until she came to the school, Cady lived in Africa and was home schooled, thus winding up with absolutely no clue about how things worked in 'Girl World'. Her parents appear to be clueless every time they appear. Here is an unusual case where we get the message via dialogue rather than non-verbally:
{{quote|
'''Dad''': She went out.
'''Mom''': She's ''grounded''.
'''Dad''': [[
* [[Not So Different]]: Though Janis wants revenge on Regina, she's as spiteful and manipulative as she is when it comes to Cady.
* [[Pair the Spares]]: Mocked. Janis and Damian kiss at the dance for a second, then quickly separate from each other in disgust.
** But then arguably played straight when {{spoiler|she hooks up with Kevin at the end.}}
* [[Parents Walk in At
{{quote|
* [[Peer Pressure Makes You Evil]]
* [[Pink Means Feminine]]
* [[Playing Gertrude]]: 32-year-old [[Amy Poehler]] playing the mom of Regina, despite being just five years older than Rachel McAdams. [[Tina Fey]] even mentions this in one of the [[DVD Bonus Content|featurettes]]. Justified, in that a) she's Regina's ''step''mother, and was probably picked up as a young trophy wife, and b) it's implied that she has had excessive plastic surgery, her "hard-as-rocks" boob job being just the tip of the iceberg.
* [[Popular Is Dumb]]: Karen obviously, and arguably Gretchen and Regina who seem somewhat unastute. Regina, despite being able to manipulate most of the female half of the school into becoming her pawns, frequently shows herself to be rather [[Book Dumb]].
{{quote|
** Don't forget that, as a rule of Girl World, you have to dumb yourself down to appeal to boys. It's more than likely that, with the exception of Karen, all the girls are [[Obfuscating Stupidity|pretending to be much dumber than they actually are]].
* [[Professional Butt-Kisser]]: Gretchen. At the end of the film, Gretchen {{spoiler|joins the Cool Asians now that the Plastics have broken up, and attaches herself to Trang Pak the way she did Regina. Her last scene has her brown-nosing in Vietnamese, with her hair straightened to look more like her Asian friends.}}
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* [[Too Much Information]]: "Somebody wrote in that book that I'm lying about being a virgin, 'cuz I use super-jumbo tampons, but I can't help if I've got a heavy flow and a wide set vagina!"
* [[Truth-Telling Session]]: Regina escalates the battle to such an extreme level that it can best be described as "going nuclear."
* [[Twisting the Words]]: Regina uses this to undermine people's confidence: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex51QJfN1d8 "So you agree? You think you're really pretty?"]
* [[Verbal Backspace]]: Principal Duvall, [[Running Gag|repeatedly]].
{{quote|
* [[Wet Sari Scene]]: How Karen "predicts" when it's going to rain.
* [[What Could Have Been]]: In the original script Gretchen was envisaged as plain-to-ugly (with a "sniveling whiny face") and part of the in-crowd solely for her wealth. Obviously this was dropped when the very pretty [[Lacey Chabert]] was cast in the role but traces of the original perception of the character can still be seen in the film in Regina's obvious surprise that Gretchen was nominated for Spring Fling Queen.
** The film was a lot filthier before it was PG-13ified. See [[Bowdlerise|Bowdlerization]] above.
* [[Wild Teen Party]]
* [[With Friends Like These...]]: Regina to Karen, Cady, and (especially) Gretchen. "Frenemies" indeed!
* [[You Are the New Trend]]: Regina. One scene has Janis cutting nipple holes in Regina's shirt in the locker room to try and sabotage her wardrobe. Regina wears the top anyway and the next day, every girl has the exact same nipple holes in her shirt.
* [[You Fail Geography Forever]]: In one scene, the characters go to Old Orchard Mall (technically "Westfield Old Orchard"), a Chicago-area mall known for being a large, ''outdoor'' mall. Its stand-in was Sherway Gardens in Etobicoke, Ontario, a more conventional ''indoor'' mall.
----
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* [[Avoid the Dreaded G Rating]]: The sole reason this film was not aired on [[Disney Channel]] as an original movie is because of the amount of tacked-on profanity.
** They aired it on [[ABC Family]] instead.
** And later on E! under their "Movies We Love" banner. . .
* [[Broken Aesop]]: The moral of the story seems to be "don't be a follower," but in the end, Abby decides to attend Carnegie-Melon instead of her original goal of NYU just to stick with Jo, who in turn based her college decision solely on it being the school her dead mother went to.
* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: The paranoid neighbor. Specifically his security cameras.
* [[He Who Fights Monsters]]: Tyler points out in one scene that Jo is acting a lot like Mandi.
* [[Hey, It's That Guy!]]: A lot of the actresses have been featured on Disney Channel at one point (Save for [[Claire Holt]], who was in [[
* [[Incredibly Lame Pun]]: The "Anti-Plastics". Noted as such by Jo in voice-over
* [[Irony]]: That a girl named Chastity will sleep with [[Anything That Moves]].
** Until she learns what her name means that is.
* [[Lighter and Softer]]
* [[Manipulative Bitch]]
* [[Polite Villains, Rude Heroes]]: Mandi and Tyler (see next trope). Only those two however; Mandi's horrible to everyone else.
* [[Sibling Rivalry|Step Sibling Rivalry]]: Mandi and Tyler, though oddly the dislike comes entirely from his side and Mandi, despite being a bitch to everyone else seems to have some sisterly feeling for him, even declaring him off limits to Chastity and calling his father (her stepfather) "''our'' Dad". He's also the only character she's never directly mean to.
* [[Shout-Out]]: Why does it feel like the football game between the Plastics and the Anti-Plastics is an homage to ''[[The Longest Yard]]'' (of all things)?
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[[Category:Notable Quotables]]
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