It is not right to condone stereotyping, but honestly, if you have 1000+ "kids" in a school building that are interacting with one another, they will eventually disperse themselves according to some system of classification. Additionally, there will always be cliques. It's people's natural inclination to seek others that are like themselves. However, what matter is how the cliques treat each other, and how they treat other individuals.
Even though Mean Girls had stereotypes in it, I think that they were fairly accurate with the types of cliques that today's high schoolers would see/identify with: The Math Geeks, the Nerdy Asians, the "cool" Asians, the Plastics, the Jocks, The JV Jocks, The Band Geeks, The Stoners, The Art Kids...
When I think of other movies that have tried to portray cliques or types of people, most movies have done a lame job with depictions. I'm currently thinking of movies like She's All That and Drive Me Crazy...yes, I was once "into" those types of movies too. In those movies, cliques were not portrayed accurately. In She's All That, the main character [Janie?] is THE "nerd" in the movie...as if no one else in the school has her traits...At the end of movies like those, all the cliques "live happily ever after" and, somehow, every person in the school has knowledge of the same choreographed dance routine.
When I think of Mean Girls and think of my own experiences, I am glad to say that I do not really "connect" too closely to the movie. In high school, I had a circle of friends that were from different "cliques," sub-cliques actually... I never liked to clump myself in with one group; I've always been like that... In high school, I kind of travelled back and forth between "the Freaks" [dyed hair, punk music, Doc Martens, multiple piercings...though I had none of that] and the "nice" kids in my Honors classes.
There have always been cliques in school and there have always been girl groups in school. I think that "girl groups" and "girl world" is even more evident nowadays because of the emphasis on brand names and certain items: Coach purses, Abercrombie and Fitch, Lucky brand jeans, Ipods, ... While I realize that brand names have always been part of youth culture, it seems like they are more prominent in today's world- there's a greater emphasis on brands and brand-consciousness.
Overall, Mean Girls makes a good point- in the end, you don't have to be friends with everyone or even like them; you just need to respect people and their differences. If someone doesn't want to make fashion a high priority, who cares? If someone could care less about the school sports team, who cares? This idea though, respect people and their differences, is a hard concept for high schoolers... I even think it is a hard concept for adults.
On a last note, Mean Girls reminded me of the the 1980s movie, Heathers... the Heathers all wear different colored ties in their hair, but all wear the same style hairties. When they play croquet, each one has their own assigned color. Heathers ends quite differently than Mean Girls, but it still depicts the same kinds of ideas about cliques, girl "culture," etc. The cast of Heathers is cool too:
**future-arrested-on-shoplifting-charges Winona Ryder
**Christian Slater
**inspiration for the WE HATE BRENDA newsletter, Shannen Doherty
Heather Chandler: "You wanted to be a member of the most powerful clique in school. If I wasn't already the head of it, I'd want the same thing. "
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