Mean Girls Versus Better Off Dead
Behind every angst-ridden teenager is an authoritative figure.
Dec 16, 2008
Better Off Dead is a satirical film based on the ups and downs of teenager Lane Meyer (John Cusack) in 1985. Mean Girls explores the jungle-like structure the high school experience can be like for Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan), who is stuck between popularity and just wanting to fit into social norms.
Better Off Dead's Nuclear Family
In Better Off Dead the concept of the nuclear family was still in tact. The father still had the superior role. The father telling the mother what to do around the house exemplifies this role. The mother seems pretty happy to be ordered around as long as she has a chance to play homemaker and create weird concoctions for dinner. This film showed that setting the table, feeding the family and being an overall homemaker was the natural thing to do, so the role wasn't taken as an effort on the part of the mother.
The Awkward Father
The parental figure that tries to connect with Lane (John Cusack) is the father. Although he awkwardly fails to get down to Lane's level of sociability, he tries to reach out. The father insists on getting Lane other girls to date after his girlfriend dumps him. The inadequacy of the father's connection with Lane is also compensated for the father trying to learn 80's lingo from a book.
In Mean Girls the writer, Tina Fey, decided to depict a more diverse outlook on how many different families there can be and how it affects each teenager.
Cady Heron's Parentals
The lead character Cady (Lindsay Lohan) is apart of a zany nuclear family. However, the only difference about this family is that the parents don't ignore the child and actually want to spend time together, despite Cady's ways of cutting the umbilical cord. They are inherently interested in Cady's first days at school whereas Lane was ignored. Although the parents are attentive they are clueless to the high school experience, sending her off to her first day of school with a bagged lunch as though she was a young child.
Regina's Uber-cool Mom
Regina George (Rachel McAdams), the antagonist of the film comes from a divorced family and lives with her mother. The mother, played fantastically by Amy Poehler is attentive but in all the wrong ways. She dresses up in juicy couture and other outfits that are seen appropriate attire for a teenager and not for a mother. It is announced that she had a boob job, and is into younger men. The parenting is almost nonexistent.
In order to stay "in" or "cool" with Regina's "friends", she tries to hang around them. She does use the lingo like the father in Better Off Dead, but it isn't for the right intention like in the 1980's film. Instead of laying down the rules, the mother advocates Regina's behaviors. While walking in on a heated make out session, she offers Regina condoms in the same sentence that she offers them booze and food. It's a satirical exaggeration of the modernized apathy of a mother, much like Better Off Dead was a satirical of the Leave it To Beaver mentality.
While these films do have differences, they do execute the domino effect a parent has on a teenager's life, and what that teenager might take from the lessons learned from observant behavior.
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