How can we describe this for viewers who might not have seen it? I think for viewers who've seen the original Mean Girls movie, imagine if you fed that movie to an AI and asked it to rewrite the movie with 2023 jokes in it for like Zoomer Kids. And also, like, aesthetic choices, and I'm not just talking about fashion more like there's a couple different places where it's obvious that people are making like TikToks about the events that have transpired.
Which I think is a really fascinating choice because one of the things about the original Mean Girls movie that's so striking if you watch it now is it came out in 2004, so it predated social media almost entirely. I think Facebook had been around for like two months when that movie came out. And so in the movie, this like burn book is so crucial because, you know, that was like literally how people recorded rumors. This pre-social media age.
But now with TikTok, it's like, how are we meshing these digital and analog forms of bullying together in a way that's going to make sense to kids today? Right. And so the other thing about the trailer, it's like all the different characters have been updated in some capacity. But Tina Fey is still there. Yep. And what, how would you describe what Tina Fey looks like? Tina Fey looks like she did in the first movie. She's I think wearing the same outfits. And she has the same lines.
Like they could have just stitched in scenes from the first movie for Tina Fey. She didn't update her wardrobe or her character or her dialogue. Or her glasses. No notes. Perfect. I am Anne Helen Peterson and this is the Culture Study podcast. And I'm Michelle Sisa. I'm a freelance journalist and I contributing writer to the wall risk. Is this a musical? It is a musical. And I want to ask when did you learn that this was a musical?
When did you figure that out? Because for me, it wasn't until like a month after I'd seen the first trailer. As will become evident when we answer the questions, I didn't know as a musical until I started reading the questions that were submitted. And all of like the first five were why doesn't this trailer admit that it's a musical? And there's a reason for that that I think is fascinating. We'll get there.
We'll get there. We should also establish how old we are because I think we're going to talk a lot about positionality when it comes to this movie. So I am got 42 and I don't have kids. What about you, Michelle? I am 36. I had to think about that. And I have two kids. And when the first Mean Girls movie came out, I was 17. And yet somehow in my head, that was only like 10 years ago. Yeah, it was 100% just 10 years ago.
And I had just graduated from college. So it was kind of that first foray until like being back into pop culture because at least my college experience was like an extraction from pop culture until like this nebulous area where you weren't connected with anything. I think that's changed a lot, but that was used to be the case. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about our relationship even more so to the Mean Girls from 2004. Do you like this movie?
Is it a funny movie? Is it a canonical movie for you? How do you think about it? So when I when the movie came out, I was in my last year of high school. So it felt like it was really like level with my demographic. I think Lindsey Lohan and I are the same age. I was also like kind of a ginger hair teenager with no social skills. So I really related to her. And and I remember being really funny.
Like I remember all these lines from Mean Girls still feel like they have some kind of caches or relevance today. Right. Like if you say, you know, stop trying to make fetch happen, I think probably 90% millennials will understand that reference. Right. But even at the time I remember there's many jokes about it that feel like they were dated or like kind of jarring then. Yeah. On it on a contemporary view watch are like shocking. Like what?
Like there's a joke in the movie about how the gym teacher is having an affair with two like Vietnamese students who are fighting over him. Do you remember that? Yes. They're boyfriend and they find out that they both dating him and they're like hitting each other and yelling at Vietnamese. And this is seen as like really funny. Wow. And also just like having like fighting over having a relationship with a gym teacher.
Like just holding it up. Yeah. And there's a lot of kind of homophobic jokes that you know the idea like it's okay to call your friend gay if you're doing it in a loving way. Yeah. And the whole like he's too gay to function joke at the time. Wow. It's really wild to think back on it and be like, yeah, this is this is 2004. Well, in the whole way that they play Lindsey Lohan coming from Africa is really the joke that she's from Africa, but she's white.
Yeah, like that's the joke. Like that's the duration of the joke is just that she's white. And that as a white teenager coming from Africa, she approaches the black students and the cafeteria and assumes that they speak Swahili. Like there's there's many layers to that. I think it's and there's like all sorts of weight stuff going on. Right. Yeah. I wonder how that's going to play in 2024. The the whole big prank being making Regina George gain five pounds.
Right. And hate herself. And then totally that she doesn't fit into her prom dress so that she's like too fat to wear her size four dress. Okay. My relation is that I think since I was coming out of college, like I think that I thought that it was like funny. I feel like I've always had this interesting relationship with Tina Fey where like I understood that she was supposed to somehow be like the avatar of white feminist humor, but then there was something weird about her like she's just too.
She didn't seem to have any sort of mode of like self interrogation or growth. And I think that this is something that we're going to talk about is like I don't think that her humor has grown in any capacity. Yeah. We're evolved. I think that's a fair assessment. And so I think that something felt weird about that at the time. I also knew about that book that the original is quote unquote based on Queen bees and wannabes.
Because social order is something that has always been really fascinating to me. And that in fact, I felt like I was a student of social order when I was in middle school and high school. And so that idea that something was like laying it out so clearly and the difficulties of it.
Like that was interesting to me, but then I don't know that they make the movie so like satirical when it comes to these different groups and how they function and like how obviously bad the plastics are in all these different ways that I don't I don't think that it actually resonated with me or that I found it that interesting, but I thought it was funny. And obviously Lindsey Lohan is a charisma machine too. Yeah, it's really like peak Lindsey Lohan. She's so charming. She's so good.
She's like so believable in that role because I think she was a teenager when they filmed it. She's younger than her co-stars. And you know, it makes it very like sad in retrospect when you watch it and you know how poorly she's going to be treated by the media. In, you know, coming out of a generation of teen stars who were really like cannibalized by a media that loved to devour its young.
I feel like this is the last moment that she had before that happened. And so it is it's like watching early Britney Spears in that capacity too. Yeah. And then this is a more difficult question. So I really wanted to have you on the show and I was like, what could we talk about that's interesting. And this was your suggestion. So why do you think they wanted to talk about this? When did you first see the trailer?
I think I saw the trailer probably like two days before you sent me that DM. And I was like, this is what's been on my mind for the last 48 hours. Because I think that I'm not alone in having this experience as like a millennial who's moving into midlife. Or I can no longer tell reliably how long ago something happened because my like personal sense of time is moving at a different rate than reality.
So it was similarly like very darn to me to learn that lords album pure heroin came out a decade ago. No, I was like no. Stop lying. Yeah, 2013. And similarly like this week I've been trying to wrap my head around the fact that you've got mail is having its 25th anniversary. Which means that movie and mean girls are only five years apart. They're not. And yet those films feel like they're from different generations to me. Absolutely. One is my generation. One feels older.
Yep. And so I think it's just you know this movie to me feels like it's really capturing the millennial midlife crisis that occurs every time something like low rise jeans or uggs become popular again and we're like hang on. No. What's happening? And it's fascinating because you know I asked some of my friends what they thought about this movie. And by far the overwhelming reaction is like why are they remaking this?
Who is this for? Like is this supposed to be for us? Because it feels insulting. We're going to get to that with the tech. Yeah. Okay. So so I mean it's it's disorienting definitely to see to realize that like you've lived so long that the things that were original in your youth are being repurposed for a new generation that has like no cultural context for them. And and it really makes you feel in a very visceral way like you're old. Yeah.
And just that entire understanding of like what does it mean to occupy oldness. I saw someone post the other day about like how what we can do as millennials is like especially people who've entered into their 40s is instead of feeling like an old young you can feel like a young old. And that's a more interesting place to be interesting distinction. Yeah. So a young old is like your your young at heart but you're old in. Yeah.
In body and memory. Uh huh. Like. Alright. If you're if you've like already seen Mean Girls cycle through and be regenerated. Then you are old at heart. But if you can like I don't know if you are a game to question some of what's going on in it and also immediately recognize the Olivia Rodrigo song. You're also young. So we are young old. Yeah. I mean it's wild. It's uh it's funny that like having children didn't make me feel as old as.
Seeing a Mean Girls group. Wait a second. Didn't that movie just come out? It's great. Did it lords pure hero and just come out? Yes exactly. Yes. I think it also has to do just generally with millennials. We're somehow still doing all of the things. Like my student debt load is somehow still the amount that I thought it should have been at 30. So shouldn't I be young if I still have this much student debt or for like as a as a population like oh I'm still living in an apartment.
Shouldn't I be young? Yeah. I was recently doing a rewatch of girls. I also came out 10 years ago. Wow. If you can believe it. And when girls came out I was the same age as the character I'm not sure. And I remember it was supposed to be this kind of like you know encapsulation of how a certain contingent of like privileged white young women were living in their 20s.
And rewatching it now in my 30s I was like well I still feel like a lot of the supplies to the experience of my friends in our 30s like you know people are moving all the time they're trying to figure out their careers they're changing careers they're like flailing their way through relationships. They're you know sorting through their relationships with their parents as adults.
And you watch something like sex in the city which was supposed to be about women in their 30s when it came out and I was like I don't know anyone living like this like no you know we're in a Hobbes is supposed to be the loser of this co or and she's like a partner in a law firm.
You just bought a very expensive apartment everyone has like very expensive clothes they're going to the Hamptons like you know the way I think our generation is aging is out of step with the depictions of that generation in a lot of media and that's a disorienting experience too. Absolutely.
Okay so our first question and this is the you know I kind of previewed this that this was the question that we received on mass when I first asked for questions and it's about the specific way that this movie is portrayed or not portrayed in the trailer so let's go this is from Lily.
I saw the trailer for the new Mean Girls film when it went viral towards the end of 2023 and it gave absolutely no indication that this was a film of the musical version and I then saw the full trailer in the pre role for the era's tour film which was great targeting. And it was much much more obvious that it's a film of the musical not just a remake of the original film and I'd love to hear you discuss the musical theater miss of it all.
Okay so I vaguely knew that there was a musical of Mean Girls and I think I knew that because a lot of films have been adapted into musicals in order to like. Because it's more of a sure bet on Broadway than an original production did you know that I didn't know that until I looked up I read the Wikipedia page for this review and in there it says adapted from the musical and I guess the the actress playing Regina George Renee rap is originated the role on Broadway.
So that was a revelation to me but it does feel like it was obscured deliberately maybe and the ads for this movie and I found a very interesting article in deadline about how studios do this they apparently test audiences do not like musicals so they don't want anyone to know that they're going into see a musical they want them to buy a ticket and maybe they enjoy the musical experience maybe they hate it but they've already bought their ticket.
It's the same with the Wonka movie with Timothy Shaman is also apparently a musical and they didn't make that clear in the ads either. And the color purple the new color purple is an adaptation of the musical. I will also say that what's interesting this is straight from the Wikipedia page is that the musical version of this it started to be developed in 2013.
It wasn't even like that long after the movie came out I mean a little bit but like not that long after and then it debuted in 2017 and now we have this movie in 2024. So we have this long like just dating like mean girls is just always pregnant like it's just about to always have a baby.
And so I don't think like someone woke up like in 2023 and was like oh you know what it's time for like you know everything else is rebooting let's reboot mean girls instead it's just been like this gradual trickle almost like star wars or something like that which I think is is more common. So okay when you rewatch the trailer with this knowledge that it's a musical I think you can kind of tell it's a musical. Did you notice any tells.
Yes I mean one is that there's a character saying dance break and then the characters break out into choreographed dances which happens I guess at least two or three times in the trailer. And that really took me back to do you remember like team movies when we were younger always had some sequence where characters would do a choreographed dance yes like it's just like going on 30 13 going on 30.
What's that move you know listen to Joan Hart and Adrian Graniere I only know because it's like a drive me crazy yes because drive me crazy was the single from that movie. I mean this is like a very 90s 2000s iteration of like a musical where they wanted to have a single that they could market from the movie and how do you get them song in the movie it's like a dance break in some way right.
Yeah exactly and so that I mean that brings us back to the question of why not use one of the songs from the movie in the trailer why use a live your Rodrigo you know less than we are to have her maybe the songs in the movie are not that cool. That could be it. Like this but in that case well and that's the difference right is so you have like musical theater type songs versus pop songs.
So like the version of musicals that we grew up with that were popular when we were growing up in like the late 90s early 2000s were movies with soundtracks integrated very forcefully like the soundtrack was a feature in and of itself both to be marketed but then also as a vessel to allow characters to dance or to express emotion in some way.
And I think that what we've seen whether it's through like this like trying to milk everything that you can get out of the IP or just like the repopularization of like Disney movies as musicals right like the live versions and all that sort of thing or even just the popularity of Hamilton is that now they're actual musicals but maybe that like that form is less palatable then the top 40 version. Of a musical yeah I think that's that's a very good theory and my.
Dumber theory is that by sort of trying to sneak the musical element past viewers what they're trying to capture is people who are like oh mean girls I remember that obviously that again with right with my kids.
And and people who know it's a musical who are like they're trying to bring these two groups together with one another's knowledge and maximize like the audience and the revenue for this sort of mutated Frankenstein piece of IP yeah I think that there's also like this nostalgia to some extent for those movies from the early 2000s like I've seen on tiktok a couple of people being like do you remember the bonkers dance movies from this time and specifically citing like the Julius.
The last is the last. Or just like not a good dancer.
I just saw that SNL there's an SNL skit performing the unforgivable dance that Julius does in like the climactic scene of that movie which is mostly just like shuffling her arms around because it's supposed to be modern dance right yeah yeah I think that that was like a revelation for every millennial who watched that movie and then later looked back on thought wait a second why didn't they cast someone to you who could dance why didn't they even get her a body double.
I'm sure there is a really good dance movie from the late 90s early 2000s and that center stage which is cast entirely with dancers and very few of them connect. And so I felt that is also that both I guess act and dance possibly yeah so I think that like what we're kind of talking around here.
Is that they wanted to like evoke all of these feelings around movies that we as an audience as millennials like things that would make us want to watch a movie even like leave our houses to watch a movie which is a tall order for many people in this demographic. But then they also want to attract this other audience like they're trying to they're trying to attract every audience it's trying to be more universal but then I think they kind of like what's that phrase split the baby.
Yeah and you know it it's interesting to like look at this Mean Girls like kind of marketing plan side by side with Barbie because it feels very similar in some ways right they're trying to create the same way. And to create this like viral sensation that's very unabashedly feminine that's kind of like supposedly subversive or sardonic and that that captures a lot of nostalgia that's that's like the formula they're going for.
But it doesn't really work the way Barbie works. Barbie had this enormously successful marketing campaign people were so excited about that movie in like a very uncentacle way. And Mean Girls feels sort of like it's in this uncanny value where it's like you know it's not close enough to the original it's not the original it's like jarring to those who remember the original because it's like a little bit wrong in every respect.
Yeah. And and I think for people who aren't familiar with Mean Girls like if you're 21 and Mean Girls came out when you were a baby you know does the scan for you does it like does it feel like it's a vocing an experience or a point of view that's like authentic to your. Adolescence I don't know that it does it's so it feels like it's you know it's kind of an awkward like dark twin of the Barbie effort.
And it both of them feel like they're their studios trying to figure out like how do we how do we market to women like what a women want to see how do we get all those girls in the theater. And you can see in the parallels between the experience how sort of condescending that strategy really is like how they how they're pandering yeah more so with with Mean Girls and with Barbie I think it kind of makes me feel offended as an audience to be like this is what you think I want.
Right well and even when you think of me when I think about the trailer for Barbie at least the one the first one that I saw was the like high Barbie high Barbie right.
And which is a weird trailer it does not follow the rules of a trailer and I think sort of like how the reason that the Barbie movie was so successful is because they let Greta Gerwig just kind of like go be weird right yeah like both Mattel did and the studio did like and and Margot Robbie did as a producer and the star like they figured out like we can we trust the audience to kind of roll with some of our weirdness here.
Which to be clear I'm not saying like Barbie is like avant-garde I'm just saying it's like it's a little off kilter in a way that I think is actually works really well. But this movie doesn't do that yeah and part of that is you know Greta Gerwig brought with her the cache of being Greta Gerwig and being a filmmaker and an actress who's like cultivated you know career being a little bit weird and a little bit off kilter.
And being a really interesting original filmmaker and what mean girls is bringing us is Tina Fey. And like does Tina Fey have that effect on audiences you know I think we're really seeing the limits of the Tina Fey market ability. Do you think that there is a hunger you know you were saying like it doesn't really speak to I think like teens experience of the world necessarily because it's so retrofitted on millennials experience of the world.
But I do think that there is a big hunger amongst that age group for various aspects of like Y2K culture right. But is that just the fashion you know we just taped an episode about the resurgence of early 2000's music and how part of the reason that that music is coming back. There's many different reasons that you can explain certain songs. But part of it is like those songs are easy to dance to like they're fun to dance to in a way that not a lot of music from right now.
This is fun to dance to and sometimes it's not to be a genius. That's a question. That was exactly like can you dance to really Irish like you get like there's just like a downbeat on a lot of stuff. Then do Alipa is like the rare exception there which to me do Alipa sounds like it comes straight out of 2003. Yeah. Like it is sort of just that cyclical trend energy right. Right.
Or like it's always inevitable that people get nostalgic or or rediscover something that was popular in the past and it becomes popular again because it was good 20 or 30 years ago. And whatever qualities made it good then are still appealing. Yeah. When I was in university we listened to Fleetwood Mac and that that was like very appealing to us because those albums are still great.
But I think where it gets sloppy is like you see sort of these big commercial ambitions for like throwing everything at the wall and trying to make it sell. Yeah. And that's where you start to feel pandered too I think like you can only revive things if they're worth resurrecting out of the ground. And I don't know that everything is I don't know that this particular franchise is.
Well, and I think you touched on something that's really crucial which is that I think that younger audiences might discover mean girls and love mean girls as mean girls. But that does not make millions and millions of dollars for the studio. Exactly. And you have to you know this is the like the marvelification of every sort of filmmaking endeavor now where it's less about filmmaker ambitions or audience desires.
And more about I think like these studio ambitions to have these big meaty andlessly replicable pieces of IP. Yeah. That you can turn out every couple years. And I think that you know something I didn't know until I was doing some reading and preparation for this episode. There was a mean girl's sequel. They came out a couple years after the original that had Tina Fey in it. And I think it was kind of a flop like it got bad reviews and went direct to video in the parlance of the time.
And and so you know it's like. This is always sort of the ambition of a film if it does well as like how can we do more of this thing. Yeah. How can we how can we multiply it. And that can be sequels that can be sort of a fast and the furious style universe building or it can be I think this like effort to sort of retool the original for contemporary sensibility.
In a way that kind of reveals like the limitations of the original right like you can't just layer more diverse characters and like contemporary jokes. Onto a scaffolding that's kind of fundamentally regressive from from a contemporary cultural perspective. I'm trying to think now of anything that has done that successfully. I did not watch the babysitters club reboot but I think that people really appreciated it from my sense.
Like something that is reimagined it in a way that is not just like repeating the regression. Yeah, I watched the first season of the babysitters club reboot and I found it very charming. And I think it actually channels some of the millennial and the staget well there's like really good stent casting of Alicia Silverstone. Yeah. One of the moms. That's great.
But you know that's that's sort of the same problem with the sex in the city reboot too is they've attempted to like retrofit diversity and inclusivity onto a show that was like fundamentally about very privileged white women. Yeah. And it's it's bizarre to see the results like you can't just sort of glue these things on top and and hope the audience as well accept it. And like so bizarre that that becomes the reason to watch it is to watch like how bizarre it is as they tend to retrofit it.
Melody just came into the chat and mentioned the League of our own a League of our own that reboot. Which I think works. I don't think that the race element of that reboot works as well as they want it to work right there like oh let's have a subplot where we have a black baseball star who is trying to like be part of this league in campy.
What works really well is the very explicit queerness which was there in the you know it was in the original movie and they're like oh yeah all these girls are probably gay right. And let's be male based protein probably has some queers. Yes true. Even in the 1940s getting you imagine and so I think that that part actually worked well because they were making something that was implicit explicit.
Yeah well and often I mean something that I found jarring thinking about remix is how often they're not more progressive or more feminist than the original. Like the one that drives me wild is Jurassic Park which was an important movie in my childhood and Laura Dern is a great character that maybe you know she's like a scientist she runs her on hiking boots she has like a wild adventure in that movie and well. Neil yes great style great perpetual Halloween costume potential.
And meanwhile Sam Neil is forced into this role of caregiver he's shepherding these two children around he's like discovering whether he wants to be a father he embodies this role that's usually played by women in movies. And then when they were made that you know 20 years later we get Bryce Dallas Howard in a white skirt suit and high heels like learning how to embrace femininity.
Yeah and like Chris Pratt's like teach you that maybe she wants to just be like a girlfriend and a mom maybe it was wrong of her to focus on her career. And that that feels like an example of you know sometimes we're going backwards with these remakes so like what are we trying to do here. So I want to get like segue here into an explicit line from the beginning of the trailer. We've talked about some of the stuff to do with this but I think this is like we should address it head on.
This is from Natalie can we talk about the decision to include the line this isn't your mother's mean girls in the trailer. I feel like half the audience for this movie will be women in their 30s who loved the original movie when they were in high school myself included. Of course there are people in their 30s who have teenage children now but it honestly just feels like we're being called old and out of touch. So why risk alienating half your audience before the movie even comes out.
So I wanted to do this question because I think it allows us to talk about who is this movie even for. And how studios oftentimes make these movies or create content just generally where like who are they thinking of what is this imagined audience who is this for why are they trying to market to everyone and thus no one with this film what do you think is going on here.
Again, I think I see little echoes of like the Barbie marketing strategy here where I think that marketing campaign and to be clear like I have lots of critiques of the movie itself but I think the marketing campaign is like inarguably incredibly successful. And what they did was really played on the fact that people had a lot of criticisms of Barbie you know they're like if you hate Barbie you should come see this movie.
It's not just for people who like Barbie it's for people who think they hate Barbie and to me it feels like this is like trying to attain a similar like cheeky vibe of being like oh you think this is for your mom it's actually for you. But again the problem there is like who who are the moms and who are the presumably daughters in this you know in this audience persona because again yeah I don't think many of the teenage viewers of Mean Girls have teenagers themselves now.
Some do and I'm sure they'll make great tiktoks about seeing the film together. But to say this is not your mother's Mean Girls suggests there's something about it that's new and different and like more with it than the old one. They're tiktoks. They're tiktoks. Yeah it's suggesting that this one is going to be like edger and you know more contemporary with the tiktoks.
But it's confusing because the imagery in the trailer is like so dead on the original like the you know the pink outfits the like get in loser line. Yeah and so it's you know it is trying to have a both ways is trying to like capture the nostalgia and maybe neg elder millennials into going to the theater and proving that they're still cool.
Yeah embrace new edging mean girls and maybe it's trying to appeal to teens but if I were teenager I'd be confused either because I don't know what the original mean girls was about. And I wouldn't know how this one is different from it or maybe you just like don't watch trailers at all because watching a trailer is like a very. Elderly I think that that's like a practice yeah that's something the old school.
I think teens watch them on tiktok where they shop as ads between like the skincare videos. That's true. I think to you know there are these parts of the trailer that are trying to be edgy like so John Ham plays at health teacher is my understanding. And there's a part where he's like he's supposed to be teaching sex ed and it's like we're going to talk about you know I don't know normal stuff and then also like 15 and I think that the implication is like oh wow like.
Culture isn't what it used to be when that seems like a I'm misunderstanding to right like school hasn't actually like the way that people talk about sex in school hasn't actually changed if anything. It's become more regressive in many places like you're not talking having a sex ed talk at all. So that also doesn't seem to like align with what is happening in high schools either.
I think it's also the dissonance of the original movie which you know had some jokes that felt like they were aimed at an audience of like middle age comedians like Tina Fey like like the joke about the gym teacher having to like teenage Vietnamese girlfriends felt like a joke. And it's so funny right there like no this is weird and we don't like it. I sometimes I think about who came up with the marketing copy for something like this.
And this isn't your mother's mean girls seems like something that was not necessarily in the pitch but that's some executive was like you know what we should market this as not your mother's mean girls. Yeah, it feels like often the marketing copy for movies is by someone who has not seen the movie and maybe has not seen any movie. And maybe doesn't know any women or teens or months.
Yeah, which again is like the problem of so many movies that feel aimed at women and especially aimed at this like ambiguous audience of Millennial women where it's like what are they. What if these mysterious ladies want some of them don't have children some of our interested in their careers like who are they how do we sell to them. Oh, we don't know anything about them let's make something from 2004.
Yeah, I think next we should talk about something we've been circling a little bit this is about Tina Fey who wrote the screenplay for both versions of this movie. And she also wrote the book for the stage musical let's hear from TJ. Why is Tina Fey uncancelable she has repeatedly included races under tones in her jokes for 30 rock, Kimu Spid, etc. But none of them seem to hinder her success. What's her secret. This is a question I have about a lot of white female.
Communions and actors in their resilient uncancelability. I mean Amy Schumer's comments of late about Israel Gaza is another example of a kind of public conduct that I think would not be tolerated by anyone who wasn't white.
Yes, absolutely. And I think this is the kind of like white feminism plague of the early 2000s that maybe you know is the specific nostalgia that mean girls the reboot is dusting off, which is that this like insulation rapture on white women, you know, that they've been oppressed on the basis of gender. So they have a license to the edgy, you know, that kind of like ranch feminism idea that like we're just doing what men have done for ages and if you recommend us for it, then that's just sexism.
And I think Tina Fey has has really like ridden that wave for most of her career. And I am a little bit surprised it hasn't run out for her yet. And on apologetically too, I think that's actually part of the reason why she has remained uncancelable. She doesn't actually address people's critiques of her.
Yes, I think that's a big piece of it too is, you know, this idea of cancel culture. I always find is a little bit disconnected from the reality because many people just, you know, they ignore the criticisms and they keep working. And at a certain point, the narrative changes it like evolves to be focused on what they're doing now or it picks a different target. And really by not responding, she's she's managed to control that narrative or keep it focused where she wants it to be focused.
In a way that I think actually resembles how most white men and some men of color, but have negotiated different criticisms of them. So thinking about like Mel Gibson, who like should be so canceled, like should never.
She should be so far down the whole of cancel ability, like that there's no way that he could climb out. And yet here is appearing in like mainstream movies, like, I don't know. And I think so much of it has to do with do you make money and do you have the protection of other people in power in Hollywood.
And so Tina Fey is really strong connection to Lauren Michaels, who I know was a producer of this stage play and I am guessing still has a producer credit on this on the film production, like she's always going to be able to get this made. She has this connection and the protection of Lauren.
Yeah, it's true. Though it's also interesting to consider like what behaviors, especially in, you know, in female celebrities are considered condemnable. And I feel like racist jokes are is not one of them, but like think of when owner riders shoplifting scandal that doctor for years and canceled.
Yeah, she was canceled for doing a little shoplifting, which, you know, arguably a victimless crime against a large corporation. And certainly I would say like a lesser harm than propagating racist jokes in your right. Also, just her way, like for me, I think the difficult thing with Tina Fey or the reason why why she's so resilient is a lot of the ideologies that she's promoting are a little bit more pernicious like it isn't as obvious.
Some of it's obvious like in chemism and like in 30 rock, especially when you revisit 30 rock. But then some of it to what is the name of the movie she was in. She's a journalist in the Middle East. Whiskey Tango. Whiskey Tango. Fox trot. Totally forgettable. And it's all about her going to like be a journalist in Afghanistan in 2003, like of course this movie is going to be kind of fucked up, right?
And that's the sort of thing that like no one is there is no enduring conversation around this movie and all the different ways that it was fucked up. I wrote about it at the time and I would have to go back and like read the article to remember all of these ways. But I just remember that like this movie is not so offensive that it's causing an uproar. But that doesn't mean that it's still not offensive.
Yeah, well, and something that is disorienting, you know, I think we've talked about like the disorientation of seeing artifacts of your youth. Dust it off for a new generation realizing the time that's lapsed.
But something that's unsettling from like this point in your life when you're looking back on cultural conversations is realizing that there's this narrative that like things used to be different, you know, that we're in this in this woke culture now where like certain kinds of jokes are not okay, but it didn't used to be like that in the early 2000s, which is the kind of thing I remember hearing in the early 2000s about like racist jokes in the 90s.
It's just eternally renewable argument that like, you know, back in the day, we didn't know this was offensive or like people had a better sense of humor they could take a joke. And I don't I don't actually think that was true, like I think in 2004 people were capable of, you know, noticing and condemning when something was like homophobic or racist.
And so it's this sort of useful defense that's trotted out and it is a little bit unsettling sometimes to see, you know, people who are in their teens are early 20s now who are who are sort of believing that things are different than.
You know, the other example that I keep seeing people talk about lately is this nostalgia of a cultural unity after 9-11 right and how you know how the whole country came together, which is such a revisionist narrative that exclusive experience of, you know, in particular Muslims and and Arab Americans who are not part of that unity and who are really targeted in that period and in this current period, but.
You know, it's it's really weird to see, I guess, things that you remember happening and like conversations you remember having been sort of a race for the convenience of saying, you know, what I did then was was fine, it was all good. It's not fair to retroactively critique me for something that was acceptable. It's a real revisionist history.
This is actually a great way to talk about our next question, which is all about like why reboots, why this nostalgia for, especially I think this particular time period right now, but. A lot of different time periods as well, like the 90s, so okay, this is from Anna. There are so many throwbacks for millennials and I don't think other generations had this trend. What is happening with us to drive this?
I would just say that it's easy and understandable that we as millennials think that there are a lot of throwbacks for us. You know, the most throwbacks in the whole world is boomers. There is so much boomer throwback content that happened over the course of the 1980s and 90s and we don't realize it.
We didn't understand it because it wasn't our stuff, right? A lot of it, I think, was slightly rejiggered, so something like you've got mail, which is a remake of content that maybe might have been part of. Various boomers growing up understanding or like even nostalgia for things like, I don't know, like happy days in my mind, I thought happy days was like made in the 50s. It was not.
And I mean, prior to me, girls, Lindsay Lawrence, two of us roles are usually where remakes, right? Freaky Friday was a remake. And the parent trap was a remake and she's fabulous in both those movies. But those were also remakes of sort of like Gen X era films. And so I think like rebuts are a timeless, timeless cultural phenomenon.
And it makes them feel more frequent now is also just like the pace of remakes, like the what's happened in studio filmmaking feels like it's changed a lot where there's this like, sort of frantic pace of like recycling IP in order to like maximize its value. So that's why we get like a new Spider-Man movie every two years and a new Marvel movie like every time I turn around, there's a new one.
It feels like it's happening more frequently, maybe because it is happening more frequently, but the phenomenon itself is not unique to millennials, I think, it's just that we're seeing it happen on this like really rapid iteration. Yeah, and it's risk minimalization as well, right?
I think a lot of studios because of the way that Hollywood is organized now only want to pour money into projects that they feel like have a guaranteed audience and some capacity and blockbusters are one of those things. And then the other thing that they're willing to quote unquote risk money on is stuff that is oriented towards women, but with existing IP.
So Barbie makes sense here and Mean Girls makes sense, but like it's just to me, it just feels very condescending, it feels very like pedantic like that we wouldn't like people wouldn't embrace new stories in any way. And I think that's, you know, you see sort of a similar phenomenon in publishing to where there's a lot of emphasis on promoting like a few big titles every year.
And then there's, you know, all these other books that get basically no promotion, but maybe once in a while one of them reaches some kind of like mainstream success, like bottoms was a real breakout, I think, and a great movie for women or that reached a lot of women, but didn't get that kind of studio support.
And so, you know, you have these like few big films that get all the resources and then a bunch that are kind of left a fan for themselves that that might just enter because an audience discovers them. But what Hollywood has lost and I think what a lot of creative industries have lost is that middle layer, you know, like a movie like you got mail.
The whole long calm genre is kind of depleted now because there are these mid budget mid tier movies that are not big enough to justify thinking that kind of money into a marketing budget, but they're not small enough to get made maybe by like an indie director. So, yeah, I think a lot of that now that energy has been moved into streaming for better and for worse.
And it makes me sad because I love going to the movie theater, right? I love going to see a mid budget movie that's not a blockbuster that's not necessarily a prestige picture because that's the other thing is like I don't. Not everything needs to be like something that has these like blockbuster performances where people wear a lot of makeup in order for me to like it. Like, I want that middle tier and it feels like no one is listening to the millions of us who are so hungry for it.
Well, and I think again, that's that's sort of what energy mean girls and you know, it's it's kind of parallel Barbie we're trying to do is get people to go to the movies by promising them like a moment like a really. Yes. A really experienced based, you know, movie going trip because it's true that the movie theaters and the studios are competing against the comfort of streaming where you can be at home on your couch.
You know, looking at your phone without anyone giving you a dirty look in the theater. You can be like a total slot with no respect for the conduct of society. I don't. But a theater hopefully you're still muting your phone. And so you have to be like promising people not just a great movie, but like an experience that makes it worth dressing up going to the theater, going with your friends like planning a date around it.
And I mean, I think the other movie that did that well in the past, I don't know if the third one was successful as much, but magic Mike as a franchise. Yeah, was a cinematic experience like I've never been in a theater where so many people were hooting and hollering at the screen. I know. Well, and that movie too, I think took women's pleasure seriously. And like took some risks in terms of like the jokes and even like the cinematography and like the first one particularly is dark.
And I kind of like how it's like, oh, like this all of this like sexiness. And then also this is dark as shit because like the life is dark. These are movies about the first one I think is about the 2008 recession in the New York. And and the newest one is also about like the current recession and like the economic challenges of being like in some ways an age and creative in a depleting industry. I think that they're great movies about the economy that are also about women's pleasure.
We should do an episode just to read like we just watch all three and just go like deep. And you said, oh my god, I think they're incredible cultural artifacts. And and they're an example of how you can make a movie for women that's not just like what a women like they like pink. They like jokes about how other women are mean to them. This brings us for a circle because I don't know if Tina Fey actually likes other women.
Like I think she likes Amy Polar, but I don't know if she likes other women. I think Channing Tatum loves women likes women is friends with women. Dates smart women is engaged to another smart one. Like you know, like I think that there's just this I like women that like escapes from him without him even trying. Where I take them collaborating with Roxanne Gay, you know, yes, that is a man that's from Tina Fey ever ever.
Yeah, and I think that's you know, that's sort of the central tension in trying to update something like mean girls, which I don't know that this trailer suggests they've done well, which is that in the early 2000s, it was still, you know, sort of part of the culture to be really caddy about other women. And that's part of what mean girls was sort of trying to subvert by talking about how girls should be nicer to each other and not write mean things in this burn book.
But it was still sort of the, you know, the foundation of the story like 2000 and four was when we had Jessica Simpson on newly wed and the promise of that show was people making fun of how she was like hot and stupid because she thought that Tina was the chicken of the sea. Yes, and you know, and Paris Hilton's like the simple life was on TV. Then like it was a time where the idea was like look how many dumb women there are and you're smarter than them so you can make fun of them.
And I don't know that that scans very well in 2023. I think we've moved past that idea that like making fun of, you know, dividing women into these camps of like smart, hot and dumb are good way to entertain and connect with each other.
So we purposely wanted to focus on the trailer because we wanted to make this episode accessible to everyone not just people who could get out of their houses and watch this movie in the theaters. But we would love to hear your thoughts once you have seen the movie. You can find us and this discussion on the sub stack page. Now Michelle, if people want to hear more from you, where can they find you on the internet?
They can find me at unfortunately, I'm still on Twitter at Michelle Cisa. I've on Instagram and you can find my writing on the wall, whereas as well as the narwhal where I edit stories about indigenous led conservation. And you know media being what it is in 2023. My violin is kind of all over the place. Amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
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