The American High School. Let’s face it, much of what Western culture has learned about the yanks has been through the cinematic corridor of the high-school. From Breakfast Club, Porky’s, Animal House, Pretty In Pink, Scream right through to American Pie and Screwballs all we’ve accrued in apple pies, sneakers and pantyhose has been at the perennial behest of the now legendary ‘teen comedy’. And Mean Girls is a variant on the same: life’s a jungle and the cruelty of school is something to be survived. Scant sociological merit? Do me a favour. Culture has learned more about rigid social mores, codes, tribalism and behaviour from films like these than it ever did from Peter L. Berger or Thomas Luckmann.
Anyway, this month sees the release of the soundtrack to the film of the same name: ‘Mean Girls’. And its pretty much what you’d expect. Especially if you’ve seen the film. It’s bright, it’s breezy, it’s sassy and marvellously well heeled. Pink does ‘God Is A DJ’, Kelis whips up a ‘Milkshake’ and the ‘attitude’ continues with Boomkat’s cover of Blondie’s punk-rap ‘Rip Her To Shreds’. Moving from the schoolyard to the Freudian landscape of soul, however, sees the entrance of the more sexualised Peaches and Anjali and Misty Canyon: a transformation as remarkable as any seen in the film.
Best of all though? The Donnas’ take on Billy Idol’s ‘Dancing With Myself’ – with innuendo as sweet now as it was in the nineteen-eighties.
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