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Mean Girls Subculture Analysis

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Subcultures form due to our deep rooted preference for likeminded individuals and ideas. We hold anxieties about how people are different and we worry about our own status within society (Andrew Campa 2015 YouTube). Schouten and Alexander (1995) describe that “a subculture of consumption is a distinctive subgroup of society that self-selects on the basis of a shared commitment to a particular products class, brand or consumption activity” (43). It is through this continued communal consumption that an individual finds social validation for their beliefs, value and way of life. Popular culture has magnified high school subcultural identities. For example, Tina Fey’s Mean Girls (2004) is a critical representation of one of the most popular and long-standing subculture’s in mainstream society: the high school popular female social clique. The basis and inspiration for this movie was from Rosalind Wiseman’s self-help book, Queen Bees and Wannabes, which focuses on how high school girls form cliques that are permeated with aggressive behaviour. Mean Girls (2004) aptly portrays the complex hierarchal social dynamic of a subculture. The overall aim is to critically analyse Cady Heron’s socialization from …show more content…

As brand communities are based on the collective appreciation of a certain brand we could not view the Plastics as a part of this kind of community since there is no focus on a brand, rather a lifestyle. To label the Plastics as a subculture did not suit either since it is experience based and are escapist from mainstream norms which is the opposite of what the Plastics are since the High school subculture identities that are shown in Mean Girls (2004) reflect popular culture. Referring to Figure 1 in de Burgh-Woodman’s (2007) article, the subculture of consumption is comprised of the following eight

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Conformity is present in every group situation with adolescents. Adolescents are always looking to be a part of a group, usually conforming to the standards of the group. Adolescents often conform because they want to have the approval of the peers that are well liked or “popular”. A great example of adolescents and conformity is in the chick flick ‘Mean Girls’ through the different cliques in high school and how it affects the peers themselves. Caty, the main character, is faced with several difficult situations where she decides to conform with her high school peers getting her in trouble that becomes hard for her to escape.

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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.

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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 Plastics, who represent popularity, high economic status and the acclaimed standard of beauty, are one of the meanest cliques at North Shore.

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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. Socialization Socialization is the process of connecting individuals to their community allowing individuals to experience new attitudes and perspectives.

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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. In my sociology class I learned that a peer group is a “group of individuals who are often around the same age and are linked by common interests and orientations.”

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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,

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