As defined by Aristotle, a comedy is the story of the rise in fortune of a sympathetic central character. 

Cady Heron, the “central character”, or protagonist, is a classic example of a comic hero. She isn’t necessarily the most liked person by other characters in the movie or by viewers, but she does display a “minimal level of personal charm” and sometimes sparks sympathy from the viewer. Cady moved to the Illinois suburbs after living and being educated in Africa for many years. She starts to attend high school and faces all the typical stereotypes of high schoolers, including facing some very mean girls. The characters that embody the basic high schooler stereotypes (jocks, nerds, popular kids, etc.) are “ordinary people ” at heart, or at least that’s what the director aimed for them to be. Although these characters might have some relatable qualities, I have never met anyone who is outrageous and obnoxious as most of the characters in this movie.  These ordinary people allow the viewer to compare and contrast the actions/words of the main characters and see them in a different light.

In my opinion, Mean Girls touches on multiple different types of comedy, including farce, romantic comedy, and satirical comedy. I think that, in some sense, this movie is making fun of the ridiculous stereotypes that high schoolers feed into and how popularity is shown to be so much better than it actually is. The movie also has a romantic aspect of it, as Cady has a big crush on Aaron Samuels, one of the most handsome, popular guys at the school. Even though I have watched this movie hundreds of times (probably) and can recite all of the lines, I never truly understood that Mark Waters (the director) was trying to prove a point about human nature. Waters is using exaggerated versions of normal teenagers to show that being mean and feeding into stereotypes and materialism gets you NOWHERE, and kindness can go such a long way.

When I took a deeper look into analyzing this film, everything became clear. This movie, although funny and entertaining, wasn’t only made for pure enjoyment or humor, it was made to show that our generation is getting quite ridiculous in terms of social expectations and actions. If everyone chose kindness instead of cruelty and backstabbing in the movie then all of the characters would have gone a lot farther and achieved a lot more (yes, I know it’s necessary for the plot).