Mean Girl at Ridgemont High

Mean Girl at Ridgemont High

Adrian Sanchez

Rowan University

PSY 09210- Adolescent Development

Abstract

        Two movies which depict the era as best as possible, Fast Time at Ridgemont High and Mean Girls, from the 1970’s and 2000’s prospectively. Adolescents is the main topic in each movie, and it follows their high school year. In each movie, the characters take different paths and that helps them find their identity. In the span of one school year, the characters learn a lot.  Such topics that they are impacted by include identity crisis, self-esteem, risk taking behavior, parental types, teacher impacts.  

Mean Girl at Ridgemont High

High school is a very important timeframe for an adolescent’s development. In Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Mean Girls, the adolescents are well depicted in their eras. There are many conflicts, resolutions, and learning experiences that occur in their time in high school. We can see these adolescents tackle key items such as finding their identity, how they deal with parents, teachers, new risks, sexual experiences, peer pressure, and many risk-taking behaviors.  

In Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the movie follows many different characters concurrently. Their lives all intertwine at some point, but overall it grasps the different type of high school students. Stacey Hamilton life is the most followed of all, she is an innocent 15-year old and looking for relationships. She is a virgin and wants to find the right guy, but she is nervous about sexually activity. Her brother is also a vivid character, Brad Hamilton, he is a hard worker and works at some local food places. Mark Ratner is a nice boy who falls in love with Stacey, also a virgin he is too shy to make it clearly be seen. Mark’s friend Mike Damone is a sly, shady character who scalps tickets.  Charles Jefferson is the star football player. The most infamous character of them all is Jeff Spicoli, who likes marijuana and has constant funny interactions with his authoritarian teacher Mr. Hand.

        The story follows their lives, and tries to depict many of the conflicts and troubles teen face in those years. Stacey Hamilton loses her virginity to a 26-year-old, mainly due to peer pressure from her friend Linda Barrett. She also later becomes pregnant from Mike. This angers Mark because he loved her, and Mike knew it. Brad finds out after he realizes she lied about needing a ride to the bowling alley, but actually goes to the abortion clinic. He is there to help her when Mike doesn’t. Jeff Spicoli is always late for class, eating in class, and not obeying the rules. This completely anger Mr. Hand who is extremely strict, and cannot understand why he continues to be a distraction. The teens seem to be concerned with sexual activity, drugs, work life, parental communication, and the overall chaos of that time frame.

        Even though Mean Girls was filmed some 30 years later, it has some similar characters and cliques. The main character in this movie is Cady Heron, who just transferred to the school from South Africa. So, she is in for a culture shock of both America in general and the overall dynamics of high school culture. She makes two friends the first day of school, Damien Leigh and Janis Ian. Later she becomes friend with Regina George and asked to join her clique called the plastics. They are the most popular girls in the grade.  Damien and Janis encourage it so they can spy on the plastics and gossip about it. The big dilemma is that Cady is in love with Aaron Samuels, who is Regina’s ex. So that is forbidden territory, and Regina gets back with him. Cady tries all she can to get back at Regina while still being her friend, but over time she becomes a real plastic. It turns into chaos as she grows away from Damien and Janis, and practically destroys Regina. In the end, she gets in trouble for a book that talked bad about the other classmates and teachers. She ends up winning spring queen, and winning the mathletes competition. She apologizes and makes up for all her faults, and order is restored in the end. There are many topics that go on here that affect adolescents, such as bullying, parent-teen conflict, underage alcohol consumption, teacher/student relationships, and popularity.

        Adolescents face many new pressures when they enter a new school, especially high school. This was a cultural shock for Cady, who came from South Africa. There, her parents were zoologists and she grew up in a very warm upbringing. She had great character, ambition, and overall happiness. Still, as the days went by in high school, this changed. She went on to purposefully fail her math class, so her crush, Aaron, could tutor her. She lost the ambition she once had, and overall cheerful demeanor. She essentially became a plastic girl, which were full of narcissism. That is have a self-centered and self-concerned approach toward others (Santrock, 2017.) This is why the movie was called Mean Girls, due to these girls, who were downright ruthless. They caused many problems and pain for others.

        This change in overall demeanor in Cady, could be described as an identity crisis. It can be described in Erikson’s fifth developmental stage, which is identity versus identity confusion. In this stage, individuals are faced with deciding who they are, what they are all about and where they are going in life (Santrock, 2017.) She did not realize how far she had changed until she lost everything. She lost her close friends, the trust of her parents, and respect of peers. Her mother even says to her “Who are you?”.  Still, she owned up to her mistakes, and came full circle. She found out that she was truly that original charming, innocent girl from South Africa. She finds her identity truly who she was originally, and her past year was only a phase.

        Similar to Cady, Stacey from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, was looking to find herself. She was a nice sweet innocent girl, but peer pressure seemed to change that. Her co-worker and friend, says that she needs to lose her virginity. So, she decides to see an older guy, and he takes her virginity. It was a one-time thing. She goes on a date with Mark, but he becomes very uneasy when they begin to kiss. He essentially runs away. She is hurt by this, and it lowers her self-esteem. She then has sexual intercourse with Mike and becomes pregnant. This worsens her self-esteem, especially when he fails to help with the abortion. She is a bit lost, still with her brother’s acceptance and help, she gains self-esteem. So much that her and Mark start talking. She learned a great amount about herself that year. She learned that she was the nice innocent girl who dreamed a nice boyfriend like Mark all along. She was nice unlike her friend Linda, who peer pressured her to be more sexually active, yet did not know much about true relationships.