Mean Girls: Difference between revisions

* [[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.}}

* [[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.<br /><br />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.

* [[Heel Face Turn]]: Cady at Spring Fling, and all the Plastics at the end.

** Arguably before that, when {{spoiler|Cady takes the blame for the Burn Book}}.

* [[Hidden Depths]]: Gretchen {{spoiler|confesses to Cady that she's secretly miserable as Regina's friend and has to pretend to like and not like certain things to get Regina's approval.}}

* [[High School]]

* [[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| "[[As the Good Book Says|And on the third day]], [[God]] created [[Cool Guns|the Remington bolt-action rifle]] so that [[Somewhere a Paleontologist Is Crying|Man could fight the dinosaurs]]. ''<[[Beat]]>'' [[Heteronormative Crusader|And the homosexuals.]] ''Amen!''}}

* [[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:

** 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]].

* [[Minion With an F In Evil]]: Karen seems to be remarkably lacking in actual ''meanness'' per se; in nearly all respects she comes across as a [[Dumb Is Good|good natured ditz]]. In fact, her only real defining characteristic, besides being [[The Ditz]], is that she remains a loyal friend to Gretchen even through Gretchen's [[Villainous Breakdown]].

** 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.

** But then arguably played straight when {{spoiler|she hooks up with Kevin at the end.}}

* [[Parents Walk in At The Worst Time]]:

* [[Peer Pressure Makes You Evil]]

* [[Pink Means Feminine]]

** 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.}}

** Possibly just a commentary on how American teenage girls obsess over getting thin the fast and easy way rather than via actual healthy living.

* [[Running Gag]]:

** Cady's "[[Digging Yourself Deeper|word vomit]]". In one scene, [[Vomit Discretion Shot|it becomes actual vomit]].

** {{spoiler|[[Look Both Ways|Big yellow school buses.]]}}

* [[Sexy Santa Dress]]: The skimpy dresses that the girls wear for a Christmas pageant.

* [[Shout Out]]: As noted [[Meaningful Name|above]], [[Named After Somebody Famous|Janis Ian is named after the singer of the same name]], who was the very first musical guest on ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'', [[Tina Fey]]'s former show. (Ian's hit song "At Seventeen" even plays in a scene.)

* [[Stepford Smiler]]: Gretchen (the "one small step from a complete nervous breakdown" version, rather than the "empty inside" version).

* [[Suddenly Sober]]: Cady at her house party.

* [[Suck Out the Poison]]: In voice over, Cady claims this is the correct response to being bitten by a snake. It's a metaphor, but [[Did Not Do the Research|she should still know better, with zoologists as parents.]]

* [[Suspiciously Specific Denial|Suspiciously Specific English Paper]]: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPDt6cMYvoM Oh, Gretchen].

* [[Tomboyish Ponytail]]

* [[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!"

* [[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]].

* [[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.

* [[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]].

* [[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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