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Examples Of Functionalism In Mean Girls

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Mean Girls is a movie filled with unique words and weird gestures that we as watchers can understand. Symbolic interaction theory emphasizes face-to-face interaction and thus is a form of microsociology. In our textbook, symbolic interaction is described as a theory that human interaction and communication is facilitated by words, gestures, and other symbols that have acquired conventionalized meanings.
An example that captures the essence of symbolic interaction theory involves Cady, Janis, and Damian at the beginning of the movie. Cady is a new student and meets her first “friends” in her first class of the day. Completely clueless about where classes are located, Cady asked Janis and Damian to show her to her next class. Instead of taking …show more content…

All individuals have certain social roles that when working together, form society, this allows for there to be inequality amongst individuals. Functionalism also says that social order is maintained through public consensus. So, the adjustments that the public makes in response to deviant behavior, allow for change within this theory. About Mean Girls, functionalist would view all the different groups in this movie as necessary to the functionality of high school. There are many different groups in the movie, for example the lunchroom scene shows us these separate groups. In the movie, the most popular group would be the plastics, with Regina George as their leader. Most people in the school seem to follow along and want to be popular like the plastics. Functionalist would not want any radical activity to change these rules, but the change must come from the entire high school adjusting the rules. A functionalist might also think that the role of the unpopular groups in school is to give credibility to the popularity of the most popular groups. These other groups in high school, such as the jocks and Asian nerds for example, serve functions in school that allow it to function normally. Throughout the movie we see the different groups in high school that relate to one another in a way that allows high school to function the way it

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