Karma, Chaos, and Mean Girls
Is karma revenge?
There are many core aspects of Mean Girls that make the film a frequent topic of conversation: karma, femininity, sexuality, body image, jealousy, being a bitch, being a bad bitch, jealousy, and revenge. Specifically, revenge acts as the main motive for many of the characters throughout the movie. Their various methods of revenge tend to cause catastrophe not only to their victims, but to many other characters involved.
One of the first examples of revenge in Mean Girls surrounds the character Gretchen’s situationship with her love interest, Jason. Early in the movie, she tries to pursue him, but he blows her off to date an underclassman. Villainous icon Regina George chooses to defend her friend, and she calls the mother of Jason’s girlfriend to claim that her daughter has urgent STD results. Regina frames this as justice for Gretchen, however Jason’s girlfriend really didn’t have any fault in this situation; she was innocent. Personally, I’d call it jealousy rather than revenge– if revenge is an act against someone who hurt you, jealousy is an act against someone who has something you don’t have.
This leads us into the bulk of the movie, Cady’s revenge. Cady is the film’s protagonist, and her main motivation is Aaron, Regina’s ex, and her current boyfriend. Regina spends a lot of time flaunting her relationship with Aaron in front of Cady, showing off how attractive he is and flirting with him in front of her. In return, Cady brushes it off, plays it cool, and then kisses Aaron behind her back. Against his will, Aaron becomes one of the focal points of the two girls’ quarrels. Cady forces Regina against her own friend group, intentionally damages Regina’s already fragile relationship with her body, and ruins her relationship with Aaron.
While some of Cady’s actions seem justifiable, like exposing Regina’s infidelity to Aaron, or showing Gretchen and Karen just how cruel Regina is to them, there’s something detestable in the way Regina’s eating disorder is toyed with in the movie– continuous weight gain pranks can often cause lifelong psychological and mental damage. This version of Cady’s revenge seems more insidious than karmic, as Regina’s main crime against Cady was simply dating the boy she had a crush on. This narrative in the film demonstrates Cady’s motivation being more than just revenge– it also becomes simply being mean. However, there’s also this view that perhaps Cady was sent by all the mean acts Regina herself has done, and Cady becomes the face of justice to many.
The last example of revenge in Mean Girls we’ll look at is the revenge Janis enacts upon Regina. In middle school, the two were friends until Regina outed Janis as a lesbian (which is later revealed to be untrue in the film) and kicked her out of the clique. In return, Janis recruited Cady to invent a fake personality to befriend Regina and wreck her life. Super fair! When you accumulate all the evil acts Regina has done to others, such as punching people, turning her friends against each other, creating the Burn Book, cheating, and more, then Janis and Cady’s revenge may seem relatively deserved, even destined. Personally, I’m a fan of the belief that Regina is just a hyper feminine of Janis, which makes me lean towards Janis being a mean girl herself, and Regina having a bit of justified revenge as well. And maybe Janis received this karmic backlash in the falling out of her friendship with Cady in the latter half of the movie.
The more I thought about the cult classic, the more I thought about what defines revenge. Is fate revenge? Is Regina’s bus-crash incident revenge via destiny? For the writers, it seems being run over finally neutralized Regina’s negative karma enough that we could finish off the movie with positive sentiments about her. In fact, karma really acted as the final player for each character arc we see in the movie. Friendships are turned inside out, legs are broken, people are embarrassed, she doesn’t even go here! Each character transforms through chaotic karma wrought by their fantasies of revenge. My greatest takeaway is that revenge only wreaks havoc; karma’s got your back.