Oh, no she didn’t!

Alison Farrington

Mrs. Robinson

English II

17 September 2008

Oh, no she didn’t!: The similarities of the Salem Witches and Plastics

Throughout history many victims have experienced the wrath of a clique.  The Mean Girls, a modern, popular teenage movie, opens in a way that relates to the Salem Witches.

Cady asked, “Who are the Plastics?”

“They are teen royalty,” replies Damien.

“And evil takes on a human form in Regina George,” Janis says in disgust.

            “She is queen bee, a star, those two are just her little workers. She always looks fierce, and she always wins spring fling queen!” Damien exclaimed (Mean Girls).

The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, takes place long before all of this evil high school leadership, but the Salem Witches in colonial New England also experience this evil leadership too but in different forms. Despite the fact that hundred of years stand between the Salem Witches and the modern day Plastics of Mean Girls, both used their status to abuse others: each group had a dictator, they succumb to peer pressure, and seem harmless but were essentially evil.

Throughout history dictators have arisen in many forms and in many ways.  In the play The Crucible, Abigail Williams is the main tyrant, like Regina George is in the movie The Mean Girls. These two girls run a posse of followers and are influenced by whatever their leader says. For instance, when Abigail says that Mary Warren is casting her spirits out into the court, the “Witches” repeat Abigail, and anger Mary Warren by repeating her dialogue. The audience of the court hears Mary Warren say one thing and the girls echo her. “Stop it,” Mary Warren screamed and the girls would echo back, “Stop it,” simultaneously. “Mary Warren, utterly confounded, and becoming overwhelmed by Abigail’s- and the girls’- utter conviction, starts to whimper, hands half raised, powerless, and all the girls begin whimpering exactly as she does” (51); this is shows how the gang of witches is a puppet and Abigail is their master. Regina George is know as the “Queen Bee” of the Plastics; one way that she is a dictator is when she creates unwritten laws on what the Plastics have to wear in a school week. For example, they only can have their hair in a ponytail once a week, they must wear pink on Wednesdays, and Friday is the only day they are allowed to wear jeans. Not only do the girls have to be controlled by a dictator, they also experience peer pressure.

Peer pressure is extremely common among teenage girls, and both the Salem Witches and the Plastics succumb to it quite often. For example when Abigail cries, “She made me do it! She made Betty do it.” Titutba is shocked and replies, “Abby!” “She made me drink the blood!” replies Abigail (23). This dialogue shows that “supposedly” Abby and Betty exploded under the pressure of Titutba and drank the chicken blood. Also in the play, most of the girls said they were persuaded to sign the Devil’s Book with their blood.  There is a similar event in The Mean Girls. One day after school, Cady became angry with her teacher, Ms. Norbury, and complained to her “frenemies” about the situation. This is when Cady was introduced to the Burn Book, which was a collection of harassing pages towards peers that they have had negative encounters with.  This book is how the Plastics vent about the people that they hated.  Regina, Gretchen, and Karen have all contributed to this book; so Cady felt obligated to do it also.

It is hard to believe that a few teenage girls could run the school or an entire village. This happened in both cases: both cliques appeared to be innocent in the beginning to the people surrounding them but in fact, they are secretly evil in their own ways.  For instance, Regina says in a mocking and snotty way, “Cady will you tell him his hair looks cute pushed back” (The Mean Girls video).  Regina and Cady were somewhat competing for Aaron Samuels, and what seems like a harmless comment was actually the opposite.  Regina was dangling Aaron in front of her friend on purpose.  Innocent? I think not! Later on in the movie Cady and her secret friends, Janis and Damien, try to screw up Regina’s life because they wanted revenge.  “All the fighting needed to be sneaky though,” says Cady. This statement alone will show how Cady is innocently trying to mess with Regina. The plan to destroy Regina’s life is when the trio gives an “amazing” face moisturizer to Regina one day at lunch for her pores, but in disguise it is foot cream. They also pull trick where they give Regina weight-gaining bars instead of the diet bars and deceives Regina by saying Cady’s mom eats these bars to lose weight.  The Salem Witches seem innocent when Abigail tells Reverend Parris, “we dance, uncle, and when you leaped out of the bush so suddenly, Betty was frightened and then she fainted. And there’s the whole of it” (9). This excerpt reveals that the dancing that the girls were doing was innocent and there was no true meaning behind it; but then we find out later on in the play that Abigail drank chicken blood and tried to cast evil spirits on Goody Proctor because she loves Mr. Proctor.

Although there are many similar characteristics of these two groups, one major difference is the time period that they lived in.  This time gap helped create different drama. The witches’ drama was about religion and modern day drama is now about “who is more popular.” With time citizens grew away from concrete deep problems like religion to shallow high school dilemmas. Even though years come between the two they have numerous similarities: each had a “Queen” of the posse, they both fell under peer pressure, and in some cases were portrayed as innocent but secretly were evil.

 

 

Works Cited

Mean Girls, Part I Video.  Retrieved September 17, 2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpceLiwn_Pw

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. Austin: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2005.

 

 

 

         

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