Game #11: Mean Girls

This Game is so Fetch

Some of you may not remember this, but there was a time when Lindsay Lohan was an actress. A very popular one.

Not only that, but she was a member of a cadre of teen actresses who specialized in doe-eyed, innocent-but-sexy, doesn't-know-they're-popular girls. People thought of her as a ROLE MODEL. Her star power couldn't be denied. Cast her as your lead and your movie was guaranteed to make money.

Now, ten years after this gem debuted in theaters, Lindsay's legacy is lost to us. Time has confirmed what we knew about this movie from the beginning: the real star of "Mean Girls" is Tina Fey, whose razor sharp dialogue now roams free throughout the internet, corralling disparate pieces of pop culture together to breed in meme farms across the web. 

How much of this movie do you have memorized? The answer may get you wasted.

"Mean Drunks": The Rules

For this game, drink vodka mixed with cranberry cocktail. Or you can drink wine in a juice box. Whichever has fewer calories.

Shut UP.

Easy Mode

1. Drink for Title Drops ("Mean Girls")
2. Drink when they drink.
3. Drink for Daddy Issues.
4. Drink whenever someone says “like”. There's a particular monologue that you want to pay close attention to.
5. Drink whenever somebody eats something. Half the scenes take place in the cafeteria.

Medium Mode
1.      Drink for a scene or quote that’s become a meme. Don't worry, we'll cover this.

2.      Drink every time you see someone wearing pink.

Hard Mode

1. Title Drops: Drink when someone says “Girls”.
2. Drink whenever someone makes or receives a phone call.

Or two, or three

The Players

For today's game, three of our veteran players welcome a new contestant, Disco Sheriff! Rest assured, we were perfect ladies.

There are no off screen players for this round. What, you think just anybody can sit with us? Playing this game is, like, a really big deal.

Proposed Product Vs. Finished Product

The Disco Sheriff brought along two things which cemented his position in our good graces: wine in a box, and the original script for the movie. As the movie began, he flipped to page one and began to follow along. We quickly learned from his observations that changes had been made.

Some are pretty standard; for example, Tim Meadows broke his hand before shooting, so they had to add in some stuff about carpal tunnel. But then we got to the first scene with the burn book. One girl's page describes how she once made out with a hot dog.

In the script, she masturbated with a frozen hot dog.

WHOAH.

"Yeah, Tina Fey has a different idea about what you can get away with when talking about high school girls," said the Disco Cowboy.

There's all sorts of stuff like this in the script. You can see why all got cut. Nobody wants to think of sixteen year old girls talking to each other as crudely as Fey had originally intended. Fey's vision may have been more accurate, but not friendly for the teen audience this movie was intended for.

Although...the frank, disgusting side of teen sexuality that got removed from Mean Girls kind of reminds me of another movie that came out around the same time...

Attention world: Girls do this crap, too. They're just better at hiding it.

Meme Central

I do have to say, though, the script is not hurt AT ALL by the semi-sanitization. This movie is chock full of gems of scenes, bouts of dialogue that have persisted for almost a decade. The internet reveres Mean Girls about as much as its spirit animal, the cuddly kitten. Mayhaps you've seen gifs like this? 

It took about a week after Les Mis came out in theaters for this to happen.

Or this?

NOTHING IS SACRED

Of course, none of these memes make sense. That's not the point of memes. But their very presence on the internet means that Mean Girls achieved a status reserved for epic masterpieces of a certain generation. The same people that blog about Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter or Doctor Who watch this movie every year on October 3rd. It is that iconic. So, the "drink for memes" rule can hit you pretty hard.

Fun fact: it might surprise you to know that one of the most famous quotes from this movie is not in the original script.

"No Glen Coco?" Seb cried. "Where you go, Glen Coco?"

I guess Tina Fey can't be responsible for everything awesome. Although she can get pretty damn close.

"Aw, blurgh!" -Pooh Daddy (upon her arrival)

So Much Paaaaaank

The "drink for pink" rule was made because I was curious about how many of these scenes take place on a Wednesday. I didn't take into account the fact that the Plastics sometimes wear pink on days other than Wednesday. I also didn't take into account that characters other than the Plastics wear pink.

See, pink is a power color in this movie. The Plastics wear pink the most often, to assert their dominance. But in some scenes, Tina Fey's character wears pink to show her assumed authority. When Lindsay Lohan starts to become Plasticized, she begins to wear more and more pink, every day. Then, when returning to her humbler roots, she forgets the color entirely.

"Hey," Seb said at one moment, "That chick has pink hair."

She must be the baddest bitch of all.

Rich-Ass Bitches

Maybe someone can answer this for me: is the Evanston public school district really wealthy? At the end of the movie, Regina George is said to channel her anger constructively by playing lacrosse. 

I never had a lacrosse team at my school. Neither did Seb, or the Disco Sheriff.

"We played it in P.E," said Pooh Daddy, befuddled by our own befuddlement.

Boo. You whore.

Hello, Mr. Principal

Seb and I have seen this movie a lot since we've known each other. One day, we realized that we had become adults. Because instead of being attracted to Aaron Samuels, we found ourselves lusting after Principal Duvall.

Aw, yeah

There's a shot in this movie, where Tim Meadows is wearing that same wife beater and sitting in a chair with his legs spread open, staring broodingly into the sea of distraught teenaged girls. I have to try and describe it to you because the internet refuses to give it to me. Perhaps it knows that there's too much sexy in that one screenshot for my feeble blog to sustain.

So, there's something for everyone in this movie, is what I'm trying to say. 

Everyone.

The Hierarchy

Hard Mode, you're supposed to drink every time someone says the word "girl". This actually doesn't happen all that much, because the main characters in this movie use much more colorful phrasing when addressing each other.

Best as I can figure it out, there's a hierarchy when it comes to the terms girls in this movie use for each other. At the bottom, there are innocuous slurs: "bitch" (or "biotch" if you're feeling fancy) and "skank" can mostly be interpreted as friendly, affectionate names, especially within a close clique. "Slut" can go either way, based on inflection and context.

But if you're calling somebody "whore", you generally mean it rudely. And if you call someone a "C***", well, you're just asking for trouble.

I bleeped out "C***" because there's only one instance in the movie where it's used, and it is also bleeped out. Where, you ask? In this beautiful moment (skip to 1:22).

By the way, Principal Duvall calls his female students "young ladies."

He is such a MAN.

So What?

We've established that this movie is funny. We've established that this movie is popular. But where does its durability come from? Why exactly do people hold it in such high esteem? What makes it special?

The concept of the Queen Bee isn't exactly a new one. The "mean popular girl" is a trope that's been used for decades. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sabrina the Teenaged Witch, As Told by Ginger...they all had their own versions of Regina George, but each of these examples portray these girls as a different class of woman, as two-dimensional examples of petty behavior and immaturity. You don't want to be her, the show seems to say. There's nothing on the inside. After high school, she'll mean nothing to you.

Mean Girls treats these girls differently. They are real and true threats. Their brand of 'meanness' has lasting consequences and devastating effects. More importantly, this movie shows the seductive side of the Plastic lifestyle. The clique is loved and feared equally, loathed and envied. They can't be ignored. And they can't safely be taken down. To dethrone a tyrant, you must stage a coup of epic proportions. And usually, no high school kid is organized enough to pull off a coup.

High School is a battlefield. This movie not only acknowledged this fact, it gave us the weapons of humor and wit to get through it. So thank you, Mean Girls, for taking high school girls and their high school problems seriously. No matter who you were in high school, you can see yourself in this movie without judgment. And that's fantastic.

Even this kid gets a chance to shine. Seriously, thank you, movie.

The Results

At the end of the movie, we took a trip down memory lane and talked about which cliques we belonged to in high school. Some of us fared better than others.

Let's face it, you'd probably have just as much fun watching this movie sober as you would drunk. And if you dislike this movie, alcohol probably won't make the experience any better for you. But if you're dead set on drinking, here are some extra rules for your customizing pleasure.

Drink whenever they say the word "mean".

I picked the wrong word in the title to focus on, because I am slow and foolish. They use the word "mean" a lot more than "girl". Throw in "fat" for good measure if you're extra daring.

Drink whenever Cady makes a reference to Africa or "The Animal World".

Cady's "interesting character trait" is that she grew up in Africa, a trait given to her so that she can draw parallels between high school and the Sahara. Drink if her parents reference Africa, too.

Drink whenever a side character is given an iconic line.

One more video clip. Any more, and I might as well just put the entire movie up here.

Thanks for reading! Remember, if you have suggestions for movies we should watch, put them in the comment space below! 

THIS IS THE LAST ONE. I SWEAR.

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