Critical Investigation - First Page Changes

“Stop calling each other sluts; it makes it okay for boys to call you that”

To a large extent females in teen movies are seen by audiences to be bimbos and sex objects. This could be due to the way they are represented by the producers and the costumes that they are dressed in, which are mainly revealing, sexual and provocative. A vast majority of the time, “female stars are constructed to appeal to male desire” and therefore in order to appeal to a traditional male audience female in teen movies are represented as passive objects. Laura Mulvey argued that “Hollywood cinema objectified women in an image for the pleasure of men” . This idea is evident in the 2004 movie, ‘Mean Girls, which follows the protagonist on her journey to becoming a ‘plastic’. The plastics, as the main protagonists of the narrative, are shown to be complete opposites. Regina George is constructed to be the ‘femme fatale’ of the movie, with ‘her lackies’ Karen Smith (the ‘bimbo’) and Gretchen Weiner (the ‘sheep’) following her every move which suggests the idea of a young women being more like a child wanting to be exactly like her favourite ‘Barbie doll’.

At the start of the movie, it is evident that Karen Smith, the first of the plastics that we are introduced to, is a bimbo. The scene depicts the ‘plastics’ partaking in a physical education lesson where Karen runs to catch the ball but ends up accidentally hitting it with her ‘boobs’ instead. Another female character, Janice, who contrastingly is shown to be a gothic, more ‘masculine’ figure, tells the protagonist: “That’s Karen Smith, she’s one of the dumbest girls you’ll ever meet.” The closes up shots of this group of friends sitting on the grass depict them mocking her and what she did to the character Damien in their English class. “She asked me how to spell ‘orange’!” This denigrates her in a sexist way and reinforces her status as the bimbo.

Further, an enduring common stereotype of a young female is the ‘bimbo’, which is typically denoted through, blonde hair, flashy make-up, large breasts, mini skirt and high heels. Also, she is seen to be uneducated, helpless and stupid; this appeals to a primary audience of males due to predatory male desire, which reinforces the idea of Mulvey’s theory of the active, controlling ‘male gaze’. Females in teen movies are more frequently given the passive roles rather than the active whereby, “In the past, lead roles for women have always seemed scarce compared to males” This argues that female actresses had limited roles.

http://dominantroles.blogspot.com/
Laura Mulvey (1975),"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
Mean Girls Dir. Mark Waters (Viii). Perf. Mark Waters. Paramount, 2004.
Mean Girls Dir. Mark Waters (Viii). Perf. Mark Waters. Paramount, 2004.
Laura Mulvey’s (1975),page 145