Mean Girls & 10 Things I Hate About You are adolescences films and for it to be successful it must appeal to teenagers. Both films are cautiously constructed through themes & issues, film codes, and most prominently are the characters. It is important to catch our attention fast and surrounded by humour and surprises throughout the entire film. The film successfully exposes teenagers and their issue at school with what values they hold therefore attracts teenage audience. Both adolescences films have very comparable storylines and conventions used as it’s both a new kid entering school, clueless of what’s happing around them and the desire for popularity. Film makers used correct film codes and issues to efficiently appeal with teenagers.
Film makers appeal to the teenage target audience as both films relate to them through the construction of characters. Characters are the most verisimilitude aspect of both films. They create the realistic real world of school and “girl world” by the way the characters are constructed and appeal to there appearance, values, and attitude. We relate to characters due to the influenced of the way the characters are shown to us, either as a queen bee or a wannabe therefore they must hold the values teenagers either share of challenge. We also appeal to Cady’s appearance and the action she does, this is shown when Cady challenge her characteristics of being a “home school jungle freak” and making us look down on her and she’s not stereotypical like everyone else. It takes the clichés and stereotype away from Mean Girls and creates an appealing and unique character and making it interesting to teenagers. This shows how characterization is a key technique to be appealing to teenagers.
Films use themes and issues that the target audience can relate to. Teenagers like to watch situations that could happen to them or that they would like to be in which relates us with the characters and their feelings and thoughts. They must use teenage themes and issues of school, family & friends, and dealing with parties and parents at the same time. These themes are particularly significant for an average adolescent lifestyle and hence in a way appeal to them aswell as getting a message across. Both films disguise these themes and issues in relationship to teachers at school and showing that girl world for Cady is like the wild. Mean Girls purposely showed the resemblance between the wild and school as when Cady often has fake illusion and flashback of the wild by fighting Regina as if they were like tigers in the real African wild. Mean Girls clearly shows a message of life at school is like surving in the wild and teenage audience engage with the films.
A key aspect that all adolescences value is the importance of music. Music is the strongest film technique used in Mean Girls, but is poorly demonstrated in 10 Things I hate About You as it is a older film. The music in the film is constructed in a way to reflect Cady’s feeling and emotion for us to empathy with her feelings and thoughts. For example throughout the movie film makers keeps referring back to her African music, and when it’s a highly suspense scene the fast paced pounding drum beats was played in the background. But when ever we refer to the “plastics” especially Regina who’s the “Queen bee”, the music is always hot-teenage party music, showing how wild and socialized the “plastics” are. Music is a simple technique but can strongly appeal to teenagers if the songs are chosen correctly and effectively in order to set the atmosphere and emotion of characters aswell audience.
Mean girls and 10 Things I hate about you successfully constructed a film which replicate upon the reality of teenage world but the unrealistic ideas that could be entertaining. Film makers take every feature possible in film techniques in order to appeal to their target audience, from using the characters values to the audio codes. It forces teenagers to engage with the film and characters and the conflicts which are raised. Film makers in both films successfully explore the issues and characters that teenagers can find interesting and appealing.