The iconic Mean Girls phone call scene is remade by creators with disabilities. Mean Girls premiered in 2004 and remains a cult classic to this day with iconic quotes, characters, and scenes. The movie has even inspired a Mean Girls Broadway musical, and a movie adaptation of the musical is in the works. Mean Girls was a dark coming-of-age high school comedy with a screenplay by Tina Fey.
Mean Girls told the story of Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) a sixteen-year-old student far more comfortable being homeschooled in Africa where she spent most of her life than the perilous world of high school suburbia she's forced to face. Cady becomes mixed up with the Plastics, her high school's most popular clique of mean girls, led by the purely evil Regina George. (Rachel McAdams.) There are many iconic scenes from the movie, but one fan-favorite is the four-way phone call between Regina, Cady, and fellow Plastics Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert) and Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried.) The scene shows the girls casually backstabbing each other and being caught in the act as the call quickly becomes catty chaos.
A group of female creators with disabilities made a perfect fan-recreation of the Mean Girls four-way call scene. Kiersten Kelly said she wanted to create content like the Mean Girls fan video to demonstrate that characters with disabilities can exist in media without being defined solely by their disability. Check out the great video in its entirety below via Kelly's Instagram.
Not only is the video a pitch perfectly awesome recreation of the original scene, but it also illustrates the creator's point perfectly. Diversity in mainstream television shows and movies is incredibly important, but it's vital to do it right and respectfully. All of the women starring in the video are women who just happen to have a disability, but they aren't defined as a character by their disability, just like Kelly notes in her caption for the video. One of the main themes about Mean Girls was Cady gradually realizing that she had allowed herself to be defined by others, and it wasn't making her happy. These creators embodied that theme in their own fantastic way, and hopefully, it will inspire others to do the same.
Regina George was hit by a bus in Mean Girls and broke her spine, but that didn't stop her from being Regina George, the queen of mean. Fetch may never happen, but representing characters with disabilities in tv and movies definitely can. After all, the limit to the endless possibilities with diversity overall in media doesn't exist and never should.
Source: Kiersten Kelly