Analysis Four- Marxist Theory

Communism theoretically would be a decent idea.  There would be a classless society and we would all work along side each other and we would all get along and we, as a people, would be like the mechanical people in “It’s a Small World” and we would sing and dance and rejoice diversity.  However, that is not realistic.  As much as hippies will say that we are all one people and we should treat each other well and be equals, that is not what man truly wants.  Communism does not work because of the innate drive.  Humans are passionate and have drive. It is one of the attributes that defines humanity.  Within communism, there are only worker bees and queen bees.  If this sense of hierarchy sounds familiar, you probably attended high school in America.

In Mean Girls Regina George (Rachel McAdams) is the queen bee. She rules with an iron fist and keeps the worker bees in her place. Naturally, she rules alone but allows herself an elite inner circle of advisors, inclusive of Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert), Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried) and eventually Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan).

  While in the movie, Cady relates high school in middle America to living in Africa and seeing wild animals, it could also parallel communism.  Throughout several talking heads in the movie, you see the worker bees slaving over their queen bee.  Regina is praised, respected, and is both loved and hated.  She is above all else, feared as well.  As a ruler, this is necessary for a clear and concise rule.  Regina manages to master communism with herself as the unquestioned leader.  However, as history shows us, there is typically a rebel alliance that overthrows the communist leader.

 This alliance lies in Janis Ian (Lizzie Caplan), the “too gay to function” Damien (Daniel Franzese) and Cady.  Cady manages to abolish the communist hierarchy within the high school and instate a sense of democracy.  It didn’t hurt that Regina was hit by a bus and lost her spring fling queen to Cady, but she still lost power.

What really triggers the Marxist aspects in Mean Girls is the consumerism aspect.  The worker bees buy into what the plastics (the cool girls) buy and they become consumers to keep up.  In communism, the media and the government and natural sense of keeping up feeds consumerism.  Both the plastics and the government gives the worker bees the sense that they need things to keep up and be socially acceptable and a functioning part of their machine.  To make yourself normalized, you have to buy things. Within communism, it may be buying the acme products just to be the same, within high school its cargo pants and flip flops (“I saw Cady Heron wearing army pants and flip flops, so I bought army pants and flip flops” -Mean Girls).

Things for Regina and communism in general appear to be doing well for a while, but it just doesn’t stick.  The idea of the single ruler and the whole lower class worker bees will inevitably collapse because there’s always a group that fights them.  Inevitably, there will be a fight and the communist party will crumble.

Word Count: 584



Works Cited
Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.
Mean Girls. Dir. Mark Waters. By Tina Fey. Perf. Lindsay Lohan. Paramount, 2004. Film.
Varma, Sujit R. "Mean Girls (2004) - IMDb." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Web. 29 Mar. 2011. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377092/>.