The Visual Aesthetic of Teenage Social Hierarchy

By Jack Miller, Edited by Emma Smith

What comes to mind when you think about Hollywood’s standard representation of the American teen? Maybe it is the sturdy jock, clad in a varsity jacket. Perhaps it’s the popular prom queen, decked out in glinting formal wear. Or possibly it’s the rebel who ditches class, donning dark leather and spiky jewelry. Nearly every Hollywood portrayal of high school teens builds on existing stereotypes to help audiences place characters into distinct social groups. Whether it’s the people they hang out with, the after-school activities they do, or the things they value, high school-aged characters often separate into explicit social titles like “jock” or “nerd.” While these clique-driven categories may seem restrictive, countless films have used them to actually highlight the consequences of social divides. John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club (1985), one of the most rewatched teen films of the 80s, tells the story of five drastically different teens who are forced to serve the same Saturday detention. Each character is a different, easily recognizable archetype that the audience is already familiar with, from jock to nerd to popular girl, rebel and outcast. The grouping of vastly different characters makes more compelling their eventual realization that they have more in common than they thought. Created nearly two decades later, Mean Girls (2004) follows a similar narrative arc as Cady Heron becomes a member of the popular social group, The Plastics. She eventually realizes from the top of the social food chain that the divide between cliques at her high school is causing dissolution and tension. Both The Breakfast Club and Mean Girls utilize dialogue and action to place their characters into specific social hierarchies, but it is the visual aspect of costuming that becomes the most revealing in denoting characters are part of a specific social group. If the “jock” wore a cardigan and glasses or the “nerd” sported a football jersey in these films, their styles would not demonstrate the prominent and visible social divides within high schools that are being highlighted. The outward presentation of characters in The Breakfast Club and Mean Girls helps audiences place individuals within a larger social hierarchy. These films then use their visual presentation of social divisions to eventually expose the fallacies of high school’s hierarchical systems.

Filmmakers may choose to utilize the way a high school-age character acts or talks to associate them with a particular social group, but nothing helps determine where a character feels they belong as much as what clothes they wear to school. Take, for example, a quote that has woven its way into pop culture from Mean Girls. Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried), a member of the most popular group in school, the Plastics, chirps up at the lunch table: “On Wednesdays we wear pink” (11:53). The quote garners its meaning–and tremendous pop culture relevancy–because it makes clothing extend beyond the physical. The act of wearing pink for the Plastics is not the donning of specifically colored clothes but the proud declaration of membership in the most socially revered group at school. It becomes a tradition, a uniform, a broader symbol for their popularity and position atop the high school social food chain. 

The very concept of a high school food chain is reflective of high school’s unique opportunity for interactions between disparate social groups. Creators like Hughes as well as Mean Girls writer Tina Fey and director Mark Waters benefit from this. As Elissa H. Nelson–an expert on 1980s Hollywood and CUNY Bronx Community College associate professor–writes, “as people get older, their regular social associations are with individuals who share similarities . . . In high schools, however, teens can mix with people from a range of social strata, classes, and educational levels.” In very few other real-world environments do individuals witness such a broad range of social experiences happening under one roof. Hollywood seeks to incorporate the uniqueness of the setting into its fictional narratives because it can cast a wide range of compellingly distinct characters. And in a film, unlike real life, costume designers get to control every action and every piece of clothing a particular character wears. This means that each outfit plays a part in representing the social group a character belongs to.

In Mean Girls, Mary Jane Fort, the film’s costume designer, opts for a bold first introduction to the Plastics by choosing to dress them in ultra-stylized gym clothes. Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert) wears her blue P.E. shirt cropped; Karen Smith has somehow found a way to cut off her shirt’s sleeves and turn it into a tank top; and Regina George (Rachel McAdams), the leader of the group, is pointedly wearing a sparkly “R” necklace that pops against the plain shirt fabric (7:27). In a sea of other students who are gearing up to engage in the typical, sweaty athletic activities of a P.E. class, the Plastics immediately stand out as more obsessed with how they present themselves. Mimicking how popular individuals are noticed by others in real world high schools simply by their recognizable appearance, Waters aims to steer the audience’s attention to the Plastics and their wardrobe by keeping the camera’s focus on them. It’s as if their distinctive outfits demand to be given priority in the frame’s composition, mirroring the way fashionable outfits stand out against more common attire. Rather than capturing Regina’s introduction like most other scenes in the movie, she is filmed in slow motion as she is carried like royalty and then set down by a group of five boys. The change in frame rate highlights her bright necklace and clean, poised appearance. Fort has taken a giant leap to suspend reality in conjunction with the manufactured slowness of the scene: Would Regina not want to safeguard her necklace in a gym locker? Would a P.E. teacher allow their students to cut the fabric of the required class uniform? How does Karen’s shirt-turned-tank top look so perfect–did she cut out those sleeves with scissors on her own? All these questions are ignored for the sake of highlighting the Plastics’ social status. They turn their gym outfits, which are usually baggy and meant for performance, into chic representations of who they are. Their unique, carefully presented style choices denote a desire to stand out and be seen as fashionable and popular. 

In stark contrast to the Plastics’ outfits, which scream stylized and trendy, the less popular and more rebellious Janis Ian (Lizzy Caplan) is dressed in a baggy top that boldly reads “RUBBISH” when she introduces herself to main character Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan). While the large block letters draw attention, it is unclear what exactly Janis is trying to say through her fashion choice–is she declaring that the reader of her shirt is rubbish? That she sees herself as such? Fort’s decision to introduce Janis with a loud but ambiguous style helps juxtapose her social grouping with that of the Plastics. While the Plastics turn their gym uniforms into conventionally appealing outfits, Janis opts to make hers a more undecipherable statement. The Plastics desire to be understood as popular through clothing that is tight and trendy; Janis doesn’t desire to be understood at all. This paints her as a rebellious character from the moment the audience meets her.

The Breakfast Club similarly depends on how the costume designer, Marilyn Vance, dresses the teen characters to emphasize distinct parts of their personalities. Though the audience eventually confirms the characters’ social standings through dialogue, by only looking at them in the opening minutes they can start to piece together where their interests and social loyalties lie. Claire (Molly Ringwald), for example, is dressed in a brown leather jacket and matching gloves as she sits waiting for the others in detention to enter the library. On its own, the outfit isn’t necessarily a clue as to what group she belongs to. But when other students start coming in, the outfit stands out as more trendy and upscale than the others, painting her as someone highly concerned with appearance–a member of more popular social standing. 

Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), meanwhile, enters with khakis and a sweater, clothes that are more formal than the typical high school student and markedly preppy. This correlates with his interests in academics and the tendency for his peers to view him as a “nerd.” John Bender (Judd Nelson) comes strutting in wearing a thick coat, a red scarf draped over his shoulders and black sunglasses covering his face. The act of wearing sunglasses indoors marks Bender as out of line with social norms and traditions. Bender also dons fingerless gloves and stocky boots, completing an outfit that showcases his desire for social rebellion rather than conformity. These three specific characters serve as examples for how presentation through dress immediately associates each individual with a particular social clique.

However, The Breakfast Club and Mean Girls are not only applauded for their clear portrayals of the social divides perpetuated within high schools. They are films that eventually topple the notions of these social hierarchies. In Hughes’ 1985 work, the five characters engage in open and honest dialogue about the pressures they face to conform to expectations. A contumacious social rebel like Bender and a straight A student like Brian really aren’t so different from each other, the group realizes. Though Bender’s parents are harsh and physically violent, Brian’s parents are demanding in a different way, hounding him over his grades. At the outset of The Breakfast Club, there was not only a theoretical divide between the stereotypical nerd and rebel characters but a tangible one too. Khakis and a sweater present Brian as put together, classy, and maybe a little bit unpopular. Bender’s choice of wearing sunglasses inside and his grungy fingerless gloves suggests his rebellious spirit. Perhaps Vance’s choices were made to emphasize the broader moral of Hughes’ work. The teens realize that assuming values based on social presentation can become dangerous. As American film scholar Timothy Shary writes in Teen Movies: A Century of American Youth, “One day of honest conversation has exposed the fallacies of facades they’ve erected to cope with their doubts, and the film ultimately suggests that all teens (and adults) could be unified in alleviating their collective angst if only they would abandon their fixation on assumed identities” (70). In some ways, the audience has not been primed for this conclusion. The five people who walked into the library at the start of the day looked so different from each other that it seemed impossible they would grow past their differences. The clothing they wore likely symbolized years of membership on a particular level of the social hierarchy. But within a day, they are able to relinquish those memberships, which were really just “fallacies of facades.” Social divisions are not real or tangible beyond external expressions. What keeps Bender from wearing khakis is a psychological mindset. What keeps Brian from wearing sunglasses inside is the same social-clique driven lie. Indeed, as his voiceover at the end so clearly claims, “we were brainwashed” (3:32). But if clothing items can be used to divide, so too can they be used to unify. Bryan does eventually wear Bender’s glasses inside (56:06). As the teens learn more about each other, the rules about what they can and can’t wear and who they can and can't be grow to become less fixed. External expression becomes a collective effort rather than a divisive one.

Similarly, in Mean Girls, the social hierarchy is broken through an external object. Even though Cady has won Spring Fling queen, she decides to share the crown awarded for the title (1:28:42). While the scene is iconic because of Cady’s rebellious gesture, the use of a fashion object being broken works to impart a greater level of symbolism onto the scene. The crown is the result of Cady’s popularity and is as sparkly and noticeable as the Plastics are in the high school. But just like the Plastics, it is flimsy and, well . . . literally made of plastic. When it is broken and Cady tosses it to people of all social statuses and rungs of the teen social hierarchy, there is a physical demonstration of the film’s message that popularity comes at a cost. In this way, external markers of expression become more than aesthetic–they become symbolic of societal barriers being broken. 

Many dismiss teen films as simple and stereotypical portrayals of high school life. To put it more harshly, Frances Smith writes in Rethinking the Hollywood Teen Movie: Gender, Genre and Identity that “Part of the critical dismissal of the genre’s aesthetic and narrative concerns can be traced to the teen movie’s frequent designation as ‘trash’” (2). However, from a more in-depth look at how the use of wardrobe impacts symbolic representations of the social hierarchy overlaid onto students’ lives at school, there are clear visual intentions at play in the work of filmmakers like Hughes and writers like Tina Fey. Costume designers such as Mary Jane Fort and Marilyn Vance aim to outfit characters with styles that emphasize these intentions. Whether it is pink on Wednesdays, sharing sunglasses during a Saturday detention, or splitting a plastic crown into many pieces, the clothing characters wear and the objects they carry matter.

Works Cited 

Nelson, Elizabeth H. The Breakfast Club: Youth Identity and Generational Conflict in the 

Golden Age of Teen Film. Routledge, 2019.

Shary, Timothy. Teen Movies: A Century of American Youth. 2nd ed, Columbia University 

Press, 2023. 

Smith F. Rethinking the Hollywood Teen Movie: Gender, Genre and Identity. 1st ed., 

Edinburgh University Press, 2017.

Home, Sweet Home: Evolution of Home through Shared Memory in A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night and Happy Together

By Rhea Mehta, Edited By Alexis Lopez, Alison Church

As Zakir Khan proclaims in Tathastu, “When it comes to home, whether you leave it willingly or not, when you do, you never part ways easily. Like a fabric that is overstretched, you get torn away from it. And the loose threads will remain unbound forever. You’ll wear those wounds on your back forever, reminding you of being uprooted” (Khan 41:06-41:26). Although far more beautiful in Urdu, Khan’s message elegantly describes the delicate relationship between migration and home. The shared sentiment of any person who has been exiled, has had to flee, or has simply left a place, is the need to return home. But for those who have never seen it, what is home? In Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014), Iran is reimagined through the eyes of a generation that has little to no memory of it. Instead of trying to depict Iran in its most true, historical form, Amirpour morphs time and space to embody the characteristics of Iran that exist in the shared cultural memory of the diaspora. Alternatively, in Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together (1997), home is a low-hanging fruit, a clear memory that is crucial in guiding Fai back to Hong Kong. But Hong Kong’s own identity is fractured by its constant transitory nature. Wong Kar-wai shapes time and space to construct a temporary home, embodying the same transitionary qualities that Hong Kong represents. Both films construct the concept of home through memory, whether it be shared or individual, and connect feelings of nostalgia and belonging by emphasizing spaces of isolation and loneliness. By analyzing the scenes where the main characters find home, we can understand what home is and where it can be found.

In A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Amipour constructs a fictional Iran, melding together a shared perception of what Iran was and the American sensibility she grew up in to create a fictional reality. At its core, the film tries to mirror something it has never seen before. As Wiese explores in “Female Desire and Feminist Rage: Ana Lily Amirpour's Reworking of the Vampire Motif in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,” the mirror imagery is distorted due to the fictional, and even fantastical, nature of the setting and “the conditions of exile” which are “characterized by the fact that people can no longer visit their homeland in order to form a picture of the social reality there. Thus, the designed mirror image lacks the original in front of the mirror, just as the Iranians in exile lack Iran” (Wiese 10). Amipour tries to allude to images of Iran by using visual motifs such as ornaments, television programs, and shared practices like cosmetic surgery and using Farsi as the language of the film (Wiese 10). The way that Amirpour tries to make the USA feel like Iran is significant, as it stems from information that is shared between generations through stories and memories. It is by linking vivid memories passed down through the diaspora that Amirpour creates a space in between America and Iran: a space that looks like a suburban town in America, but through ornamentation and manipulation, carries the weighted memories of the Iranian diaspora. 

What, then, is home? If the space Amirpour has constructed is neither Iran nor America, what can be defined as home? The answer to this question lies within the scene in which the unnamed vampire, henceforth referred to as the girl, invites Arash, the protagonist, to her house. In the short five minute scene, the audience watches the girl guide a dazed Arash into her room. She rids herself of her chador, essentially removing her superhero cape, and lays herself bare for him. With every opportunity to kill him, she instead chooses to lay her head on his chest, swaying to the American music that plays from her record player while the disco ball bounces light off of the many posters in her room. The music playing in the background is Death by White Lies, which repeats the phrase, “Fear’s got a hold of me.” This is significant as it plays into the audience’s preconceptions that she will bite and kill him, almost foreshadowing it. Yet, the girl is afraid for a different reason: she has become used to bad, violent men, but is now faced, for the first time, with a good man who does not provoke her feminist rage. Moreover, Arash is dressed as a vampire, his costume reflecting the girl’s true identity. This shared trait, though it may only be momentary, allows the girl to feel emotionally closer to him. Furthermore, the use of lighting in this scene, which comes from behind the girl, illuminates Arash’s side profile and, when he looks up, his neck, which is particularly interesting. It seduces the audience with a promise of violence but supplants a delicate moment of acceptance. The setting is idyllic, the music is ‘romantic,’ and she is content. This is her home. This moment is vital within the narrative of the film because it seals the authentic relationship the girl desires– this is one of the only moments where the girl feels at home (Wiese 11). As seen in this scene, Amirpour crafts the idea of home through relationships, emphasizing those in which the girl is empowered in the dynamic structure, as she is with Arash and other characters like Atti. Amirpour places such emphasis on relationships more than she does space and time to define the lens through which she perceives home. 

Alternatively, Fai in Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together is obsessed with the physical place of home. Dictated in the past tense through his memories, the film chronicles his longing to return to Hong Kong from Argentina. Yet Hong Kong is not a foreign concept to Kar-Wai, or Fai, unlike Iran is to Amirpour. It is a space known well, a space that Fai believes is home. However, as the movie progresses, Kar-Wai goes on to deconstruct space. He adds a transient quality to the spaces that exist outside of Fai’s apartment, framing this singular spot as only a temporary home. This is shown through the cinematography: when they are in the apartment, the camera is not shaky or hand-held as it was previously, but has transitioned to a stable, calm presence. Fai is also bolder, arguing and talking more, expressing emotions that burst forth in moments of comfort. But Kar-Wai introduces Chang, who transforms their dynamic. While in the kitchen, the camera movement slows down, allowing Chang and Fai to create an intimate space within a place usually not considered home. Therefore, although Happy Together seems to chase a safe space, home is actually defined by the relationships. 

Through these relationships, Fai creates his own sense of home, the connection standing in for the physical location he pursues. As Kar-Wai explains, “[T]his film is not merely about two men, but about human relations, human communication and the means of maintaining it” (Siegel 279). I would argue, however, that this film is actually about three men. While Po-Wing allows Fai to understand why space is transient, with their toxic relationship and toxic sensibilities, Chang allows him to feel comfortable with another person. The emphasis on relationships and the transient nature of space is demonstrated in the scene where Fai stops at a shop in Taiwan that is owned by Chang’s family. It is in this moment that Fai understands what home is and to what extent his relationship with Chang has influenced his life. Beginning with a shaky handheld camera guiding the audience to watch an array of local restaurants with flashy neon signs, Chang is drawn into a warmly lit and bustling establishment. The camera is framed from the perspective of someone in the stall, perhaps alluding to Chang’s presence in the scene. The people working in the restaurant, Chang’s family, immediately welcome Fai in, and as he watches them scamper around, he is filled with a sense of warmth. The handheld camera movement gives the scene a feeling that is akin to a home video. In the moment where he stands by the phone, the camera frames him as an intruder in the space just as a spout of steam arises from the food. Waiting on the woman who is getting him water, supposed to be Chang’s mother, he is framed by amber lighting and soft steam, which creates a sense of warmth for the first time in the film. The blurry focus and warm lighting also suggest that even though he may not be in Hong Kong yet, this small shop in Taiwan has the same sense of belonging and home he is chasing after. At that moment, the voice-over recounts how lucky Chang is to have a place to return to. But what Fai fails to understand is that it is not the place that matters, but the people. This moment is one of the few in the film where Fai doesn’t seem alone. 

However, the importance of relationships is not the same between the two movies. This is because unlike A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Kar-Wai’s film does not deal with exile as much as it deals with displacement. As Marc Siegel explores in “The Intimate Spaces of Wong Kar-wai,” Happy Together doesn't paint a portrait of Buenos Aires; instead, “it uses certain Argentine spaces in order to localize Hong Kong concerns and perceptions” (Siegel 278). Argentina is never considered home, even when formations of a safe space emerge within it. Kar-Wai even confirms this, stating that “[I]t's more like I'm remaking Hong Kong in Buenos Aires” (Siegel 278). Kar-Wai does this by scattering transient spaces like bars, fast-food joints, and other small locations around the film (Siegel 278). These spaces are not only parallels to Kar-Wai’s other films but also reflections of the transitioning nature of Hong Kong itself (Siegel 278). Here, Kar-Wai used his personal memories of things he related to, which held allusions to Hong Kong to create a world that mirrored one he intimately knew. 

In conclusion, both A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night and Happy Together explore displacement and belonging: two key worries of the diaspora. They contextualize the concept of home through space and relationships, allowing for a thorough realization of what or whom home could be. It also traces how being far away from home emphasizes relationships and a shared culture of memory in order to keep the diaspora alive. Although each film deals with a different degree of separation between place and recreation, through thematic and stylistic choices, both filmmakers sketch portraits of their memories in new spaces, reimagining what home would look like in another world.

Works Cited 

Wiese, Doro. “Female Desire and Feminist Rage: Ana Lily Amirpour’s Reworking of the Vampire Motif in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.” [Sic] - a Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation, No. 2., 12, 2022, https://doi.org/10.15291/sic/2.12.lc.3. 

Siegel, Marc. “The Intimate Spaces of Wong Kar-Wai.” At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World, edited by Esther C. M. Yau, NED-New edition, University of Minnesota Press, 2001, pp. 277–94. JSTOR, 

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttv5g1.17. Accessed 9 May 2023. 

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Dir. Ana Lily Amirpour. Perfs. Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Mozhan Marnò. Film. VICE Films, 2014. 

Happy Together. Dir. Wong Kar-wai. Perfs. Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu-wai. Film. Golden Harvest Company, 1997. 

Tathatsu. Dir. Zakir Khan. Perfs. Zakhir Khan. Online Stand-up Comedy Show. Amazon Prime, 2022. 

https://www.amazon.com/Tathastu-Zakir-Khan/dp/B0B8QTZSDM/ref=sr_1_1?keywords= %22Tathastu%22&qid=1683525810&s=instant-video&sr=1-1