Identity - Mean Girls

Good-morning everyone. Today, I am going to talk to you
about identity. To me, Identity essentially is characteristics
by which something is uniquely recognizable. It is made up
of many different things; some you can’t change like your
DNA or background, and others you can for example where
you live or your hair color.

The self-selected text I have chosen to talk about today is
mean girls.. The film is about a girl named Cady, who is
homeschooled up until the age of 16. During her first year
of highschool, Cady becomes close with classmates Janis
and Damien. Together, they form a plan, for Cady to befriend
the schools most popular clique ‘the plastics’, with members
Regina George, Gretchen Wieners and Karen Smith. Their
goal is to exploit each member’s secrets and act as Janis’
personal revenge on Regina.

The first aspect of identity appears on Cady’s first day of
school.   Entering as an outcast, she is depicted as nice,
innocent and simply unknowledgeable on what its like to go
to school. She looses her assumed identity through situations
she has never been in before. Cady states “I have never been
in a world where adults didn’t trust me” this shows that Cady
is out of her comfort zone and is confused by the drastic
differences between homeschooling and actually attending a
public school. The film continues to show clips of other
instances, where teachers distrust Cady, with the camera angles
facing up, as though they are looking down on her. This
technique allows the audience to understand how Cady
is feeling.


Throughout the next few Scenes, Cady becomes torn as to
which identity she wishes to pursue; a plastic, an art freak
or a mathlete.   Both ‘the plastics’ and ‘the art freaks’ claim
that joining the mathletes would be social suicide. Cady
revaluates the situation and abandon’s the mathlete signup to
go home and start on her Halloween costume. She is overly
excited by the fact that she was invited by her crush, Aaron...