Mean Girls = Julius Caesar

While watching the movie "Mean Girls" the other day, I noticed a lot of similarities between the movie's plot and the Shakespeare play Julius Caesar. Both plots revolve around hatred, jealousy, and backstabbing.   


The powerful group in the movie is the Plastics; they are three girls that rule the school and define what is popular or not.  The relates to the senator group in the play, the senators define what is okay in Roman society and what is not.  Regina is the leader of the Plastics, just as Caesar is at the top of the senators; they are both powerful and power hungry, but in a way that leads to their downfall.


The theme of jealousy is prevalent in both the movie and the play.  Pompey and Caesar's jealousy over a fling with Cleopatra and Regina and Cady's jealousy over the senior Aaron Samuels.  Cassius' jealousy of Caesar's power leads to Caesar's demise.  Cassius basically employs Brutus to help in killing Caesar and sways him to believe that Caesar is using his power wrong.    In the movie Cady is jealous of Regina's popularity and sways Gretchen to her side.  Gretchen begins to see that Regina uses her power to control others. She also makes a speech about Julius Caesar in her class, pretending to be Brutus:
     "Why should Caesar get to stomp around like a giant while the rest of us try not to get smushed under his big   feet. Whats so great about Caesar huh? Brutus is just as cute as Caesar. Brutus is just as smart as Caesar, and people totally like Brutus just as much as they like Caesar. And when did it become okay for one person to be the boss of everybody, huh? Because that is not what Rome was about! WE SHOULD TOTALLY JUST STAB CAESAR!!"


This shows how Gretchen's character is supposed to equal Brutus'.  In the end Regina cannot fall from popularity without Gretchen's help, even though Cady and her friends did most of the plotting.  Julius Caesar could not be taken over without help from Brutus, even though Cassius was behind most of the plotting.