Equilibrium - Cady is a typical girl. She is just starting at high school and t's a new experience for her. Everything in the school is very clique orientated.
Disruption (beginning of move out of equilibrium) - Cady is introduced to the world of the Plastics. Her initial task of just trying to get through high school is suddenly out of the window and now she has a new task - to ruin the Plastics, mainly Regina George.
Conflict (peak of the disequilibrium) - Cady is no longer pretending to be a Plastic, her friends have realised that she has truly become one. The Burn Book is revealed to the whole school and chaos erupts.
Resolution (beginning of move back to equilibrium) - Cady realises that she's done wrong and confesses to all of her wrongdoings.
New Equilibrium - Cady is back to just being a normal high school girl, but now all of the cliques have disbanded. People mix freely with one another regardless of previous social standings and high school life is now a lot happier.
I enjoy watching movies that have this structure. I wouldn't go as far as to say the structure of Mean Girls gives me pleasure, but I do find the idea of a disequilibrium being reverted back to equilibrium satisfying. It's not a complicated structure so I can focus on the actual storyline as opposed to having to keep up with the narrative style.
I find that most of the pleasures that I receive from the movie come during the disequilibrium when things aren't quite right. I think this is because these are the most dramatic and chaotic moments during the film and these are the scenes which I have the strongest reactions to, therefore these are the scenes where I gain the most pleasure. One moment where I gain visceral pleasure from the film is during the party scene. Cady is drunk and dressed in tight, revealing clothes and she thinks that this is going to impress Aaron. She doesn't realise that she is just embarrassing herself and I watch the entire scene in anticipation with a really uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach. I then find myself full on cringing when Cady throws up straight into Aaron's lap. When that scene is on, even now when I've watched the movie so many times I still find myself closing my eyes or looking away rather than have to endure such an awkward moment with her. Another visceral pleasure I gained the first time I watched the movie was when Cady follows Regina out of school as she's trying to apologise to her. One moment there are two girls standing in the middle of the street having an argument and the next one of them gets hit by a bus. I remember visibly jumping from the shock of that moment - it was completely unexpected. Now when I watch it I don't have exactly the same response because obviously now I know it's coming, I'm looking out for it, but I still find it amazing how strong my response was the first time.
I also gained pleasures through orientation and discovery. The movie was narrated and seen from Cady's point of view so therefore I learnt things about other characters as she did. There is no major 'whodunnit' type of moment anywhere within the movie, but things such as finding out that Regina is cheating on her boyfriend or that the school coach is having an affair with two of his students creates the suspense that would usually come with discovery but instead this suspense is created through the build-up of waiting for the other characters to learn what I and Cady already know.
As the movie is a comedy, I received a lot of emotional pleasure from Mean Girls. I was constantly laughing throughout. A particularly strong response that I had however was during Cady's prom queen acceptance speech. Cady is trying to make things right again after her fall from the top and show people that things like prom queen and king just aren't important. There are a few people that she points out from the crowd as looking exceptionally pretty at the prom and these girls are people that usually would not be at the top of the social ladder (one of the girls is disabled and the other is overweight). The counter-culture attraction of this scene is what draws such a strong response from me. In society, generally when people describe the perfect girl, they do not describe someone who is overweight or someone who perhaps has some sort of disability. The fact that Cady takes the time to specifically point out these people, the so-called underdogs of the school, and identifies them as being just as beautiful and worthwhile as herself and the other nominated prom queens always really touches me and it's one of the scenes that really made an impression on me the first time I watched the movie.
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