2024-01-23 15:02:02
Anyone who grew up with American films must imagine high school as an inferno – a playground for the mean, the mean and the nasty. And that’s exactly what “Mean” means in “Mean Girls” (2004), that turn-of-the-century classic in which pink-clad teenagers make each other’s lives miserable.
The comedy that etched itself into cultural memory much like the high school college exegesis “Ten Things I Hate About You,” “Legally Blonde” and “Gossip Girl,” no, like glitter stuck to it after a party , based on Rosalind Wiseman’s parenting advice book Queen Bees and Wannabes (2002), a guide to the complicated behavior of female cliques. In 2017, the successful Broadway musical “Mean Girls” was released, which in turn provided the template for the new film “Mean Girls” that is now being shown in cinemas.
Nasties are recorded in the “Burn Book”.
Quelle: Jojo Whilden 2023 Paramount Pictures/Jojo Whilden
Hardly anything has changed under the direction of Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez: Again we watch Cady move from Kenya to the USA with her mother and, after years of homeschooling, have to find her feet at a new school – with everything This includes: When she enters the cafeteria for the first time, backpacks and pills are moved in a flash, signs that Cady doesn’t need a complicated interpretation course for, and consequently eats alone in the toilet.
In order to please her crush Aaron (Christopher Briney), Cady pretends to be stupider than she is, even putting up with bad math grades so that she has a reason to ask him for tutoring. At a Halloween party, Cady is the only one who dresses up in a scary instead of sexy way, for which her friends accuse her of lacking feminism.
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There’s the gossip in front of lockers that stops when the school diva or high school crush turns the corner and turns the hallway into a catwalk. There is the maneuvering through the various cliques, from the athletes to the nerds to the “Plastics”. And there’s the graduation party, where Cady accepts an award, which she emotionally breaks into pieces to share with everyone in the room.
With scenes like these, “Mean Girls” has shaped its own genre, representatives of every generation know the dialogues by heart, every cafeteria, classroom or gymnasium film scene after 2004 had to quote them or at least relate to them in some way. Of course, Tina Fey knows this, who already wrote the script for the original, and who in the new version also seems to be as closely tied to the old script as the Plastics are to their clothing rules (only pink on Wednesdays, jeans only on Fridays, braids only once a week ). Smartphones are present, but they pale next to the destructive power of the legendary “Burn Books”, a blasphemy book that collects photos and mean descriptions from classmates and teachers.
“Sexy Santas”: The Plastics at their school performance
Quelle: Jojo Whilden 2023 Paramount Pictures/Jojo Whilden
The only thing new is the faces – at least some of them. Although Cady is played by Angourie Rice (The Beguiled) instead of Lindsay Lohan, Lohan appears in a brief cameo for nostalgic effect – a scene for which the actress was reportedly paid $500,000. Tina Fey can also be seen in the same role as the math teacher Ms. Norbury as in the original, as does Tim Meadows as the school principal Mr. Duvall. Singer Reneé Rapp (who also starred in the Broadway musical) seduces with a devilishly charming smile in the role of Regina George, the leader of the Plastics clique. As the camera glides reverently up her toned body, she sings, with an energy only villains can muster, that she wants to watch the world burn and grind everyone under her Louboutin heels.
Devaluation of female talk
But “Mean” also means average, mediocre. And that raises the question of whether – 20 years after the original – average young people today still meet within the system of suspicion, fraud and competition depicted. Does Generation Z still have much to do with the toxic femininity denounced here?
Christopher Briney as heartthrob Aaron
Quelle: Jojo Whilden 2023 Paramount Pictures/Jojo Whilden
And is a film that portrays women solely as bitches, cheaters and liars who all quarrel over the same man and can only become school stars through spitefulness even suitable as a feminist cult object? The message “Be nice, not mean,” which can hardly be surpassed in terms of pedagogical bravery, did not deserve an originality award in 2004, but in 2024 it seems hackneyed at best. Wouldn’t a feminist ode to the unifying, emancipatory function of gossip be more surprising than the unimaginative devaluation of female talk here?
More interesting than the same grueling battles for popularity and the dream man would have been examples of sisterly solidarity (as in “Barbie”) or funny genre subversions (as in “Bottoms”, “Lady Bird”, “Juno”). The devastation caused by bullying could have been taken to a radically metaphorical level, like the South Korean zombie series “All of Us are Dead.” But as the musical adaptation goes about it, the farce seems too moral to be really fun and too stale to be really moral.
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In order to display embedded content, your revocable consent to the transmission and processing of personal data is necessary, as the providers of the embedded content require this consent as third party providers [In diesem Zusammenhang können auch Nutzungsprofile (u.a. auf Basis von Cookie-IDs) gebildet und angereichert werden, auch außerhalb des EWR]. By setting the switch to “on”, you agree to this (revocable at any time). This also includes your consent to the transfer of certain personal data to third countries, including the USA, in accordance with Art. 49 (1) (a) GDPR. You can find more information about this. You can revoke your consent at any time using the switch and privacy at the bottom of the page.
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