This Game is so Fetch
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
- Drink for Title Drops ("Mean Girls")
- Drink when they drink.
- Drink for Daddy Issues.
- Drink whenever someone says “like”. There's a particular monologue that you want to pay close attention to.
- 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
- Title Drops: Drink when someone says “Girls”.
- Drink whenever someone makes or receives a phone call.
The Players
Proposed Product Vs. Finished Product
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...
Meme Central
Fun fact: it might surprise you to know that one of the most famous quotes from this movie is not in the original script.
I guess Tina Fey can't be responsible for everything awesome. Although she can get pretty damn close.
So Much Paaaaaank
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
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
So, there's something for everyone in this movie, is what I'm trying to say.
The Hierarchy
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).
So What?
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.
The Results
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.