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June 25, 2004
mean girls
(kabui 8, with christine and maggie)
the thing about this movie is that it was homophobic, racist, and mean. just plain mean. sure, it's in the title and you should expect it, but those girls were just awful, and when the main character, the one you're supposed to be rooting for theoretically, becomes a horrible person you're kind of left with nothing to appease you in the film. it was detrimental to the plot. and speaking of the plot, where was it? lame excuse for a plot really.
then there was the bus thing from felicity and final destination. clincher. stupid. maybe not for people who didn't see it used in felicity or FD, and maybe it's a ploy used in other visual media before those, but either way it equaled lame.
and then the trite moralistic ending coming during the mathelites competition was completely ignorable. her voice over about problems and answers and the moment, balanced against the guy dressed up as a girl on the other team (presumably for funding reasons) was just a pathetic attempt to win us back over with her conversion. but words in one ear and out the other, no attention was being paid by me at that point to anything she said.
and why, but oh why, did the boy take her in the end? heh. i really quite like lindsay lohan, (as i've said before), but i didn't particularly like her in this.
Posted by michele at June 25, 2004 10:43 AM
Comments
I was struck by how non-mean a lot of the supposedly mean actions were in the movie. The entire dastardly plot to take down the popular girl was based on nutrition bars and beauty products. Laaaaame.
There seems to be a different level of acceptable racial slurs and stereotypes for Asians, particularly in Lorne Michaels productions. There was some other teenager movie that I thought had a really racist element to it, but I can’t remember it now.
I guess this was based on a non-fiction book about high school, but as my good pal Fitzpadrick remarked, the insights it gives into the culture of high school are kind of trite. The map of school indicating where different cliques eat lunch? Someone made one of those in Mr. Nesheim’s Psych class in 10th grade. And the jungle thing was not very interesting.
Tim Meadows was good. Naming a character “Janis Ian” was not.
Posted by: sean at June 25, 2004 11:30 AM
sean, i love that you saw this movie.
oh yeah the jungle thing. little miss afica. the boy must fall in love with her because in her room there’s a picture of her as a kid riding an elephant. she’s so ‘different’ than other girls he knows. heh.
Posted by: michele at June 25, 2004 11:38 AM
was the other racist teen movie “the hot chick”? with the half-black-half-asian girl with the korean stereotype for a mother? “ling ling! you forgot your bling bling!”
Posted by: holohan at June 25, 2004 04:10 PM
That’s the one.
Michele, not only did I see “Mean Girls”, I am now the owner of “The Lizzy McGuire Move” on DVD, thanks to my sister’s semi-serious birthday gift. Also, thanks to Monica, I have learned much about the still-simmering Lohan-Duff feud. This is my life.
Posted by: sean at June 25, 2004 04:25 PM
you should see saved!, if you haven’t already. it also does some cultural sterotypes. but it is being obviously sarcastic.
i kind of want to see the lizzy mcguire movie again just so i can be mad again at how she and gordo don’t make out more. we should watch it, sean. also when more episodes of the lizzy mcguire show come out on dvd and i get them from netflix, i will let you know. because this is also my life. :P
Posted by: michele at June 25, 2004 04:29 PM
Posted by: sean at June 25, 2004 04:32 PM
i find that if you scream over and over again at the top of your lungs for a few minutes you end up talking just like lindsay lohan.
lohan means “small lo” in gaelic.
Posted by: (ho)lohan at June 25, 2004 04:35 PM
Posted by: michele at June 25, 2004 08:13 PM
Hey, Mean Girls was an incredible movie. Though, I agree the jungle thing wasn’t perticularly interesting! Especially when you watch it for the fifth or sixth time and the repetition of the immature jungle-freak thing gets on your nerves.…..anyway, I enjoyed it but there was one racist part, when those two Oriental girls are arguing over who the Health teacher and the rest of the boys prefered. Then all of a sudden one of the girls, most likely chinese, said ‘Nigga Please’ I giggled obligitary I mean what else can I do? Oh, Well there are more serioous problems going on…I think the world should take more care of the KKK (the idiots who only like American southerners) and then we should worry about the offense Lindsay Lohan intentionally/unintentionally puts in her teenage films,
Posted by: Shanaqua at December 2, 2004 05:06 AM
Posted by: LUCY at December 2, 2004 05:07 AM
Actually, more subtle forms of racism are the real problem these days. Its so much easier to be racist and say “you just didn’t mean it” or ” I didn’t know”. The KKK isn’t the threat it once was. People don’t tolerate them like they used to. Its racist enough that the movie is about a white girl from Africa. God forbid they made a movie about a black girl from Africa. Just so everyone knows, white people aren’t from there originally, it was colonized by them. Colonization is a really bad thing.
Tina Fey is so very overrated.
Posted by: Kitty at July 18, 2005 01:05 PM