Mean Girls is a comedy film aired in 2004 this film captures the influences on lifespan development during adolescence. The main character Cady Heron was home schooled in Africa and now she must transition into high school where she is tested in different areas of her development. Throughout the film she becomes known as the new girl who is trying to figure out her self-identity. Cady integrates herself into a clique of girls known as the Plastics, soon enough Cady understands why they are known for their name. The Plastics run the school by the norms they have created and must always be followed otherwise it will lead into exclusion from the group. In order to be socially accepted social norms determining attitude, behavior, and status must …show more content…
Erikson’s psychosocial theory in which social interactions cause growth and change. Cady’s social interactions with others cause change with her autonomy. Cady loses herself by changing her values and character in the beginning of the film and towards the end of the film she finds self-recognition. Adolescence is a critical time during development because internal and external sources have a strong influence. Piaget defines schemes as determining how we consider information from the world into our lifespan development. Killen (2007), better explains how social constructions have influences on existing schemes “children justify acts as right or wrong first on the basis of consequences to the self (preconventional), then in terms of group norms (conventional), and finally in terms of a justice perspective in which individual principles of how to treat one another are understood (postconventional). This approach involved assessing an individual 's general scheme (organizing principle) for evaluating social problems and dilemmas across a range of contexts”. In the beginning of the film we see preconventional when Cady is faced with deciding what group she will integrate herself in order to fit in. The group she chooses whether it’s Damian and …show more content…
Klimstra et al. (2009), explains how certain traits may hinder or benefit lifespan development “Extraversion refers to dominance and activity in interpersonal situations; Agreeableness refers to the willingness to maintain positive and reciprocal relationships with others; Conscientiousness refers to organizational and motivational aspects of a person’s behavior; Emotional Stability indicates the ability to deal effectively with negative emotions; and Openness to Experience refers to how a person deals with new information at a personal and experiential level”. Extraversion is seen in the beginning; Cady is a very introvert person when she eats lunch by herself. Agreeableness is portrayed when she begins to agree to do anything to fit in and gain acceptance. Conscientiousness, she had a very good conscientious from starting off as a good daughter, student, and friend but she begins to lose sight of it all. However, gains recognition of her conscientiousness, self-identity, and overall self-worth in the end. Her emotional stability is weak because she gives in to her social norms that change her character. Cady’s openness to experience is high because she is not shy to new experiences out of the ordinary. Her experiences throughout the film hindered and benefited her moral character and her development. However, she gained a whole new perspective from her experience with
Ideology is “a system of meaning that helps define and explain the world and that makes value judgments about that world.” (Croteau & Hoynes, 2014). According to Sturken (2001), the system of meaning is based on the use of language and images or representation. Therefore, media texts come along and select what is “normal” and what is “deviant” to the extent that this hegemony of constructed meanings in the viewer’s head becomes “common-sense” (Gramsci in Croteau & Hoynes, 2014). From this standpoint, what America claims to be pop culture which is omnipresent in media internationally, is a representation, through “politics of signification” of what is right or wrong (Kooijman, 2008). An example of America’s cultural ‘manifestation’ is Mean Girls,
Released in 2004, Mean Girls is said to be one of the most influential and memorable teen comedies ever produced. With a witty screenplay, written by Saturday Light Live alum, Tina Fey, very freely adapted from the non-fiction novel, Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman, Mean Girls possesses a “zest and sing few high school comedies ever muster,” according to Rob Blackwelder of Combustible Celluloid.
The movie “Mean Girls” is based on a real story in high school social groups. Cady Heron was a new girl in high school. She has been homeschooled in Africa for her whole life, so she wanted to learn how people in school behave and socialize. It was difficult for Cady to adjust in the new school environment. Initially, Cady had difficulties finding a friend in the school. Her first day in school, she eats her meal in the restroom until she meets Janis and Damien. They encourage Cady to be a friend with one of the most popular group at school called the “Plastic”. Every girl in school envy them and with they would be a member of the group. Regina is the head of the group, and she does anything in her power to get what she wishes, and Gretchen and Karen are her followers. Most of the girls at school are obsessed with the idea of joining Regina’s group because they are royalty in the high school. Since Cady is a pretty girl, the Plastic group was threatened by her and wanted her to join them so that they can control her and the boys who pay attention to Cady. Cady joints them and they will succeed to changer her thoughts and actions. Consequently, she starts acting like them and hide her friendship with Janis and Damien who
Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial development is one of the best-known theories of personality in psychology. Much like Sigmund Freud, Erikson believed that personality develops in a series of stages. Unlike Freud's theory of psychosexual stages, Erikson's theory describes the impact of social experience across the whole lifespan (http://psychology.about.com). The stages I noticed the most during the movie were stage 5, Identity vs. Confusion, and stage 6, Intimacy vs.
In the film Mean Girls, teenager Cady Heron was home-schooled in Africa by her zoologist parents. When her family moves to the U.S., Cady finally gets a taste of public school and learns a vital lesson about the cruelty involved in the tightly knit cliques of high school. She eventually finds herself being drug into a group of “the worst people you will ever meet”, The Plastics; and soon realizes how they came to get their name.
“Mean Girls” begins as Cady Heron moves back to the United States from Africa where her parents were animal experts. She has an awkward first week of school where she begins to crush on a boy named Aaron Samuels, meets Janice and Damian who show her around campus because no one really wanted to get to know her on a personal level. Janice and Ian begin to spill the dirty secrets of the school including “The Plastics” who are a superficial infamous group who put everyone down. “The Plastics” infiltrate an operation to make Cady one of them, but little do they know that it is all an act to show how fake they are, thanks to Janice Ian. Because Janice and Ian told Cady of all the bad that “The Plastics” hold, she had a schema that Regina George who is the leader of “The Plastics” and her crew, were bad people and that high school was all about popularity. The reason why Janice placed this schema was because she and Regina George used to be friends back in the day. Schemas can be bad or good, but in this case, it was quite bad. It was an act of vengeance. Although the schema may have made Janice and Damian despise “The Plastics,” it made Cady Heron want to be like them. Prejudice is found within “The Plastics” because they don’t just let anyone join their group, the gi...
Everyone loves popular girls that are hot and sexy like Cady in “Mean girls”. But these popular girls can also be mean. So how do these girls develop their personality? Erickson answers this as having to go through eight stages of psychosocial development going through differences between an individual and the society. Unfortunately Cady an innocent little girl at the beginning of the movie developed though the three of the eight stages of Erickson theory involving trust v. Mistrust, t a sweet that turns her personality from an innocent girl to a mean, popular girl.
Mean Girls tells the story of Cady Heron’s transition from 12 years of home school in Africa to public high school in the United States when her mother gets offered tenure at a nearby college. Upon her arrival, Cady bonds with Janice and Damian who are considered apart of the “out crowd”. Janice and Damian give Cady the scoop on all of the social cues and how to navigate her new territory. When she is invited to join the most popular clique in the school, “The Plastics” Cady is placed in the middle of revenge and is encouraged to invade the lives of the girls to steal their secrets and eventually uproot their lives. Although this movie is primarily focused on revenge (which can be correlated with coercion, the least ideal form of leadership)
Both Erik Erikson’s (1963) theory and Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby (1973) theory support the idea that early life experiences impact the person across their lifespan. Both theories believe that personality begins to develop from a young age and therefore occurrences in early life can have lasting impacts on the developmental of an individual. An individual’s social and psychological development is significantly influenced by early life and childhood experiences. The experiences an individual has as a child impacts on the development of social skills, social behaviours, morals and values of an individual.
In our modern world, sociology has a tremendous impact on our culture, mainly through the processes and decisions we make everyday. For movies and television shows especially, sociological references are incorporated throughout the storyline. A movie which includes many sociological examples is Mean Girls. Mean Girls is a movie based on the life of home-schooled teenage girl, Cady Heron, who moves to the United States from Africa and is placed in a public school for the first time. Cady finds herself in many uncomfortable scenarios and has to deal with the trials and tribulations pertaining to everyday high school issues. Her experiences involve interacting with high school cliques, such as ‘the plastics’, weird high school teachers, relationships,
The film Mean Girls is about a young girl, Cady Heron, born and raised in Africa by her zoologist parents, who were also her homeschool teachers for sixteen years. When Cady moves to the United States, she enrolls in a public school for the first time. Here she realizes that high school students have the same hierarchy as the animals she observed in Africa. The lowest ranking group in this high school hierarchy is the outcasts, who also happen to be Cady’s first friends in the U.S. The highest on the high school food chain are the “plastics”. The “plastics”, are the most popular girls in school. The plastic’s notice Cady’s charming personality and stunning good looks and invite her to join their clique. In order to avenge her first friends,
As preteens and teens push for increasing independence from their parents, they tend to turn to their peers for guidance, acceptance, and security. For those who are low in self-esteem and confidence, their safety lies in fitting in and having a place to belong. Most people find a group in which they connect with in a healthy way while others make their way in cliques that give them security but at the price of their own values and individuality. The movie Mean Girls portrays how high school female social cliques operate and the effect they can have on girls. I will argue how if one doesn’t have a strong sense of self-identity, the opinions of others will become their identity.
...s a classic that shows just how nasty adolescent girls can be under typical circumstances. Nearly every character at one point shows adolescent egocentrism. There are numerous lifespan concepts covered throughout the movie. Cady Herron is a perfect example of how tough high school can be for an adolescent girl going through multiple changes. She goes through a lot more than the typical adolescent girl. However, I think she shows how staying true to yourself is important when going through high school. The "plastics" do a great job of displaying different relationships with peers. They have strong relationships with each other, but struggle to form these relationships with anyone outside of their group. All in all, Mean Girls does a great job of displaying parenting styles, egocentrism, relationships with peers, self worth in relationships, and juvenile delinquency.
Who holds the key of power in your life? Is there a person or group of people that you are allowing to dictate your life choices? The movie Mean Girls brings to life the everyday peer pressures teenagers deal with. Main character Cady Heron experiences peer pressure for the first time, from multiple classmates. Although it is said that a person can not be persuaded to do or say anything without their consent, is this really true? Cady deals with situations in which she is being pressured from two sides of the spectrum. In the end she realized what was happening to her, but the peer pressure she endured impacted the entire school.
The first stage of Erikson’s theory occurs in infancy, which occurs roughly from birth to 18 months. Infancy is an important stage according to Erikson’s theory. In this stage, the individual learns how to trust other individuals. If all the individual’s needs are met in this stage...