I love this movie.
The 2004 film has now reached cult status and belongs in The Criterion Collection, which, side note, I learned earlier this week that there is no actual criteria for a film to get into—it’s more like someone likes it a lot and is like yes, it belongs here…..HOW DO I GET THIS JOB?!?
Anyway, the film is all about popularity, trying to fit in, jealousy, and everything else that comes with being a teenager in the land called high school.
I have always been obsessed with movies about the high school and early college experience, and how no one's experience is the same. I think a big part of that love comes from John Hughes and Amy Heckerling movies.
Heckerling was so making films like Clueless (Perfection), Loser (Incredible), Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Uncomfortable but great), and Hughes being somewhat of the godfather of the teen genre (a title I believe should be shared with Cooley High’s Michael Schultz) with The Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink, Ferris Buellers Day Off and literally any other teen movie in the 80s.
But Mean Girls? It became THEE millennial teen film. This one was ours. 90s teens had Heckerlings Cher Horowitz, 80s teens had Claire Standish. and we had Regina Fucking George.
A Chicago (well suburb of) girl who just was idk…mean and misunderstood.
One of my favorite memories is tied to this film. About 7 or so years ago, I went to a Mean Girls trivia day at the actual bar inside Dylans Candy Bar in Chicago with some friends, and on the tie-breaking question with our group and another, I won the trivia for us! We got to go downstairs to the candy bar and fill these tubs and bags with all the candy that we wanted, and it was awesome. I was drunk on Mean Girls-themed drinks and my love of film, and my obsession with this one in general came in handy.
So while you watch this film today (on a FRIDAY NO LESS) I wanted to drop something else related that I think is dope.
Chicago-based rapper Joseph Chilliams is an artist I adore. He’s part of Pivot Gang (we all know how I feel about Saba) and I’m not a music head girly by any means, but I know what I like and I LIKE HIM.
A few years ago, he came out with a four track EP called The Plastics, inspired by Mean Girls.
It’s….incredible. It’s full of callbacks to the film, and it’s not just some playful, stupid EP—it’s really fucking good. You can very much vibe to the tracks, and it’s a beautifully done ode to a film that obviously touched a generation.
Ugh, I love it when art inspires art, and I love it even more when niggas are inspired by art that wasn’t necessarily marketed toward them to begin with.
That? That’s fetch as hell
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