MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Both Mean Girls (2004) and Heathers (1998) portray high school as cruel and unforgiving, a place of power struggles ruled by a ruthless “queen bee.” In Mean Girls, Cady Heron moves to the American suburbs from Africa and is swept into the school’s most powerful clique. Similarly, in the cult classic movie Heathers, and its later musical adaptation aptly named Heathers: the Musical *(2010), Veronica Sawyer is given the opportunity to be a “Heather,” one of the highest status girls in her high school. In educational psychology, the term “social reproduction,” drawn from Marxist theory, is used to describe the replication of economic classes and social power structures within the school system. Both texts mirror contemporary societies and imply that it is impossible for a deviant individual to survive when power hierarchies are in place and enforced. They convey the message that young people must break down these inequalities in order for the largest number to be happy. *Mean Girls shows how limited social mobility can keep individuals in power, and how the hope of attaining power supports the existent hierarchy and prevents deviation from the social norm. Heathers focuses more on the emotional and psychological impacts when young people are forced to participate in power hierarchies. However, Mean Girls goes further in its critique of existing hierarchies. At the resolution of the film, the students have created a society where all students are equal, and when this equilibrium is threatened Cady and her friends mobilize to oppose the hierarchy’s reimposition. In Heathers Veronica claims the ultimate symbol of power for herself and works alone to redistribute power. Mean Girls demonstrates that an egalitarian society must be maintained by the entire populous, while Heathers shows a single charismatic individual enacting social change for the greater good.