Critical Review of Personal Film Spectatorship - Uses and Gratifications and the Identification Theory

The Uses and Gratifications Theory suggests that we as an audience are in control when viewing a piece of media and that we use certain areas of the media to satisfy our own needs and gratifications. The four main areas in which the theory suggests we can gain gratification from are surveillance, social interaction, entertainment and identity. Relating the theory to Mean Girls, I think that it is possible for the audience to receive gratification from the film in all four specified areas and I know that I personally was able to.

Surveillance
The movie gives an example of life in a high school. Of course, a lot of the elements are hugely exaggerated but the audience could still use the movie to get a general idea of experiences that take place in high school. I know that I personally structured my idea of high schools based on what I saw in the film and although a lot of what goes on in the movie I have never experienced myself at school (e.g. burn books, inappropriate teacher/student relationships, etc) some aspects I have found to be true to some extent. Whilst I think that 'cliques' may be too strong a word, people often do tend to go around in their specific groups at school. One thing that I really took from the film the first time I saw it was the idea of bullying and how something you say to someone can really affect them. One thing I noticed was that most of the back-stabbing in the film was done by girls. I went to an all girls school from Years 7 through to Year 11 and I experienced 'bitchiness' first hand; it really is a problem that more schools should try to tackle - just like they do in the film.

Rumours played such a huge part in Mean Girls - everything that everyone thought they knew about other people at the school had all come from rumours. I really learnt the importance of being careful about what you say to people and not taking everything you hear about other people whole heartedly. There was one scene in the movie where all the girls in the year were sat down together and made to talk abo I went to an all girls school from year 7 to year 11 and I understood how bitchy girls can be.

Social Interaction
I gain a lot of social gratification from this movie. It is the kind of film that discussions can be based off of very easily. All of my friends have seen Mean Girls - it's just one of those movies that is put on at sleepovers. There are so many memorable quotes and jokes that my friends and I often use for a quick laugh. In fact, during a lesson at school, my group used the Kevin G rap from this movie as a basis for a rap of our own but with the theme of road and environmental safety. My friends and I were socially interacting with one another to create the rap but there was also further interaction between us and other students in our class with whom we shared the rap. In some ways, this links in with theorist Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture theory; my friends and I used the original film text and created our own creative response from it.

Entertain
I always watch Mean Girls when I'm bored or just in the mood for a laugh. Also, I use this movie a lot as a method of escapism. When I'm feeling upset or just generally down it's easy to forget about whatever it is that's going on in my life and just get lost in the comfort of such a familiar movie. Cady's life gets completely out of hand as the disequilibrium is reached in the film and I receive gratification from the fact that even someone as beautiful as Cady, who's life was so seemingly perfect, can go through issues like self doubt and social acceptance just like me.

Identity and the Identification Theory
I think my last point links with the identity aspect of the uses and gratifications theory. I can identify with the character of Cady Heron because she is a girl in high school just trying to find her place. They don't make her seem particularly heroic at all in the movie, they show the flaws that she has just like any normal girl which makes it easier for me to identify with her.
Regina George (antagonist), on the other hand, is this beautiful, rich, somewhat untouchable girl. She is portrayed as 'perfect' and as I don't see myself in this way at all I found it very difficult to identify with her. What her character did enable me to do was highlight a lot of negative traits that I myself never want to have. Throughout the movie, Regina is horrible; spreading rumours about people, knocking her supposed friends down at any given opportunity and just generally victimizing everyone around her. It's as though the character was specifically made to personify all of the negative behaviour you could ever expect to find in a school and I think this made her flaws a lot more obvious to me as a spectator. The characters Gretchen and Helen are both just as guilty of talking about people behind their backs, but because this is really the only main flaw of theirs throughout the movie (as they are generally not mean to people, unlike Regina) I didn't really take so much notice of this the first time I watched the movie. The fact that Regina's entire character seems to be just made up of bad traits makes her more recognisable as a villainous character and this therefore made it easier for me to identify the negative characteristics of hers that I wanted to make sure I never have.  

The Identification Theory is based on the idea that we align ourselves with one (or more) characters in particular when watching a piece of media (i.e. film). There are certain characters that we identify with when watching a movie whether it's because we like them, or dislike them, or feel sorry for them. Film theorist Murray Smith breaks down our identification process into three more precise concepts; recognition, alignment and allegiance. It is these three concepts that he believes make up the systematic reasoning as to why we have emotional responses to fictional characters.

Recognition is the WHO. It refers to the emotional engagement we have with the character. It's the spectators' ability to put themselves into the position of the character in order to understand and feel what they're experiencing. The characters we as individuals specifically choose to engage with often depends on our own personal identity.
Alignment is the HOW. Murray refers to this concept as "the process by which spectators are placed in relation to characters in terms of access to their actions, and to what they know and feel". It refers to the actual techniques used to make us want to identify with specific characters. For example, larger allotted screen times, excessive use of POV shots and camera angles used can all have an affect on us as spectators.
Allegiance is the WHY. It refers to the reasoning behind why we choose specific characters to align ourselves with; the moral evaluation of characters by spectators. Murray claims that "to become aligned with a character, the spectator must evaluate the character as representing a morally desirable set of traits in relation to other characters within fiction".

Cady Heron
In the movie Mean Girls, Cady is the character with whom I find myself aligning with most readily. Voice overs from her character are used to narrate each scene so I immediately see every scene from her perspective. The voice over really allowed me to put myself in Cady's position and empathise with her, even during times in the film when she was clearly in the wrong because although her actions and behaviour were often wrong, the voice overs allowed me to hear how sorry she was for her behaviour. There is a particular scene in the movie just after the burn book and all the horrible things written in it have been put all over the school. Cady is given the chance to own up to her part in it, but she doesn't. Now, if we were to just watch the scene, it would look like she was just being cold and uncaring. But with the voice over we hear the reasons behind why she doesn't initially own up and I can understand her point of view more and I find myself empathising with her.

I think the fact that I fit the movie's target audience is a huge factor as to why I am able to empathise with Cady so readily. I am a teenage girl around Cady's age, I have experienced high school, I recognise the difficult positions you can find yourself in and I understand how hard it can be to risk your peers friendship by doing the right thing so naturally my allegiance is with her throughout the film as she struggles to do the right thing.

As Cady is the protagonist of the film, naturally she is the character whose actions and feelings are made most available to me as the spectator. She has the most allotted screen time which automatically makes me feel closer to her than to any of the other characters and I get to see a lot of the scenes from her point of view. The combination of the voice overs along with the point of view shots used aligns me more with Cady's character than any other.

Whilst Cady isn't exactly the most moral character in the entire movie (examples of more moral characters would be love interest Aaron Samuels and maths teacher Ms Norbury) it is because of this that I find myself wanting to align myself more with her and this is where the Identification Theory is not always accurate. Sometimes I find that the characters with the most morally desirable traits are quite annoying and too perfect for me to want to align with. In a scene towards the end of the movie when all the girls are doing an apology exercise to help them express their thoughts to one another, most of the things the girls are apologising for are really quite nasty things but I understand that sometimes people do say nasty things that they later regret and I respect their honesty. One girl takes the stand and as she starts talking we realise that she has nothing to apologise for but is instead pleading with the others to be nicer to one another and to let things "go back to the way they were in middle school" when they all got along.

In hindsight, this character probably has better morals than most of the other girls in the room, and it certainly did make for an entertaining scene, but as I was watching the movie I couldn't identify with her at all because she just seemed too moral. It seemed so unnatural. Sometimes it is easier for me to identify with the characters whose flaws are shown or whose morals I see are challenged throughout the film because it makes them seem more like me - I'm not perfect. My allegiance to Cady does change a little towards the middle of the film as it reaches it's disequilibrium when we realise that Cady has become one of the mean, popular girls that she was initially trying to tear down. At the start of the movie, Cady was always dressed comfortably and casually in the same sort of clothes that I would wear, and this made her a desirable ally compared to the Plastics and their girly, tight pink clothes. But somewhere towards the middle of the film, suddenly Cady's clothes too start getting girlier and tighter and, let's face it, sluttier and she does become a lot harder for me to align myself with.

In previous scenes, when Cady had found herself in an altercation with anyone, I would usually find myself siding with her. However, at the end of the party scene when she has the argument with Janice and Damien (when she is dressed in her tight, revealing dress) I side with Janice because she is right; Cady has changed, and I can't identify with anything in her new character - she's just nothing like me.        

There is one other character that I identified a lot with in the film, despite her only being shown for about five seconds. One issue touched upon is the idea of stereotypes. On Cady's first day of school, the principal comes into her classroom to let the rest of the class and her teacher know that there will be a new student joining the class. The principal mentions the fact that the new girl is from Africa. Now, despite the fact that Cady is standing directly by the principal and we can assume that the teacher, Ms Norbury has never seen her before, automatically it is the single black student in the room that she turns to and welcomes. The scene is humorous as the girl, who wasn't paying attention, suddenly realises that she is the one being spoken to and responds with "I'm from Michigan", but I think it's a pretty important point. I can relate, being black myself, and having had a similar experience to the girl. When I was a lot younger, a girl in my class couldn't understand why I wasn't white yet I could still be classed as a British citizen. I remember her saying over and over again "but black people are African and white people are British". She wasn't being offensive, and I didn't take offence, but it really made me realise that citizenship and how it's gained isn't something that is explained a lot at schools - it was my parents that told me about it. Furthermore, later in the movie, there is a scene in the canteen with Cady and the plastics when one of the girls asks her "if you're from Africa then why are you white?". It's a common stereotype and error made, particularly by young people, that all Africans are black when this is really not the case. Nearly 10% of people living in South Africa are white. This stereotype is only touched upon in the movie, but I think that it's good that it was included at all. People need to be more aware.