Man-Candy, Hot Body, and an Army of Skanks: Mean Girls as Revisionist Text and the Teen Film Genre

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Notes

Notes

1 Karlyn, Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers, p. 81.

2 Lewis, The Road to Romance and Ruin: Teen Films and Youth Culture, p. 2.

3 Driscoll, Teen Film: A Critical Introduction.

4 Shary, Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen.

5 Ibid., p. 76.

6 Driscoll, Teen Film, p. 61.

7 Shary, Teen Movies, p. 74.

8 Driscoll, Teen Film, p. 59.

9 Shary, Teen Movies, p. 75.

10 McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism.

11 Driscoll, Teen Film, p. 62.

12 Ibid., p. 61.

13 Karlyn, Unruly Girls, p. 89.

14 Fox-Kales, Body Shots: Hollywood and the Culture of Eating Disorders.

15 Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body, p. 186.

16 Cady does re-enter high school in heels, a mini-skirt, makeup and curled hair after shopping with the Plastics. However, her makeover is never addressed by the film’s narrative. It is assumed either Cady mimicked the plastics style after going shopping with them or that the Plastics gave her an off-screen makeover and fashion tutorial. What is essential here is that the makeover scene is absent, deviating from one of the most entrenched tropes of the infiltration subgenre.

17 Shary, Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in American Cinema since 1980, p. 74.

18 Behm-Morawitz and Mastro, “Mean Girls? The Influence of Gender Portrayals in Teen Movies on Emerging Adults’ Gender-Based Attitudes and Beliefs,” in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly.

19 Tasker, Working Girls Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema; Brown, Dangerous Curves: Action Heroines, Gender, Fetishism and Popular Culture.

20 Shary, Generation Multiplex, p. 82.

21 Lewis, Road to Romance and Ruin, p. 2.

22 Lenos, “In Focus: Clueless,” in Cinema Journal.

23 Shary, Teen Movies; Shary, Generation Multiplex; Kaveney, Teen Dreams: Reading Teen Film from Heathers to Veronica Mars.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joseph Walderzak

Joseph Walderzak is a professor of film studies and communication at Adrian College and Macomb Community College. His scholarship on gender and class in film and television has been published in journals including Studies in the Fantastic and Supernatural Studies, as well as appearing in a number of anthologies.