Grade Level: SrH-Adult
Producer: Direct Cinema
Closed Captioned: |
Running Time: 50 mins
Country of Origin: United States
Study Guide: No |
Copyright Date: 2003
Available in French: No
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“Bullies” have traditionally been recognized, in schoolyard lore, as physically imposing and usually male figures. What about the relational aggression and other forms of bullying that take place between junior high and high school aged girls, which has been so long downplayed or overlooked? This form of bullying most often takes the form of verbal abuse or emotional manipulation and affects the lives of girls every day, sometimes with dire consequences in their personal and academic lives. Mean Girls: Mind Games emerges as the first documentary to address this important and timely issue. We follow five groups of girls in highly different school and life situations, all affected by this form of social bullying. Through rare and candid inside views of the world of adolescent girls and their social interactions, we get a glimpse of the tremendous effects of this type of aggression on all of the girls involved, effects which go beyond the realm of the social and encroaches on academic performance, home life, and even future goals. The girls' individual stories, coupled with the expert commentary of Dr. Nicki Crick, the first researcher to study relational aggression in girls and Rachel Simmons, author of the New York Times bestseller Odd Girl Out: The Secret Culture of Aggression in Girls, guide us to understand the scope of the problem and the social and cultural reasons that this type of aggression is peculiar to girls of this age. |
