July 29, 2006
Mean Girls to Win Over Toronto Academia?
Those of you putting off watching Mean Girls until those exorbitant movie rental prices come down ($4?! Ridiculous!!) can breathe a sigh of relief. A hot, fire-haired, pre-bulimic sigh of relief.
Every year, the University of Toronto presents a free film in the back field of their downtown campus. Past films have included Good Will Hunting - presumably fitting for the U of T crowd since it traces the intellectual and emotional growth of a surprisingly brilliant construction worker, and follows his loving but conflicted relationship with his Harvard-attending girlfriend. This year, though, they're screening Mean Girls: a film about catty, hot, morally-corrupt high-schoolers who are, like, totally mean to each other. U of T can justify showing the film because some of the scenes in the movie were shot on campus (most obviously, in Convocation Hall; other Toronto locations like Sherway Gardens are also pretty prominent). Either way, It's nice to see a big, self-serious university like U of T take itself a bit more lightly than we're used to. Best of all, unlike so many other things that the university does, this one's wide open to the general public.
Mean Girls is preceeded by "a Simpsons episode written by U of T alumnus Tim Long and an Odd Job Jack episode featuring the voice of alumnus and Tony Award-winner Don McKellar." We did some extensive research and narrowed down the list of possible Simpsons episodes to this list. Long's probably the funniest writer still working on the show, so it might actually be worth going early and suffering through an Odd Job Jack episode.
The screenings get underway at about 8:00 PM on Thursday, August 17th, right by Devonshire Place and Hoskin Avenue. Last year, about a thousand people showed up, and even more are expected this year.
|
Needless to say, the screening doesn't take place in France. It's at Devonshire Pl & Hoskin Ave. Our Google Maps plugin is being weird right now...
1) Good Will Hunting, which takes place at MIT, was also shot at the University of Toronto. That is presumably why it was chosen.
2) As mentioned, U of T stands in for Northwestern University in Mean Girls. The unusual, and pleasantly surprising, thing about this is that the movie actually uses both the interior and exterior of Convocation Hall – it's fairly uncommon for a location shoot to accurately match up the inside and outside of a building, but sure enough after the characters exit Con Hall you can see UC in the background.
3) Mean Girls is a fantastic movie, and forms an excellent trilogy with Dogville and The Weather Underground as having been the first set of recent films to examine what I believe is the fundamental question of contemporary morality: If "evil" inherently has an advantage over "good," in as much as "evil" is not bound by "fair play" or honesty, must those who profess to advocate for "good" cede the moral high ground in order to have a fighting chance against "evil"? And can that be done without becoming "evil" oneself, especially considering that, as much as such absolutes may exist at an abstract level, there is nothing that distinguishes one from the other, except for the way they conduct themselves in pursuit of their objectives?
4) The use of music in Mean Girls is spectacular. Almost every song works on multiple semiotic levels, and one piece of music in particular alludes to, deliberately or not, about a half dozen previous incarnations it has had during its evolution from its original 1950s version up until the Fatboy Slim remix used in the movie; it's a song with a dense and convoluted history, and in one brilliant sequence the film touches on and integrates elements of its past appearances in popular culture in both formal and thematic ways.
Good Will Hunting was shot all around Toronto, too. One of the interior shots that I remembed was shot in Central Tech. I still think the plot might've helped with the decision, too. ;)
Good analysis of the film, by the way. Perhaps the multiple semiotic levels of the film's soundtrack and its play on contemporary morality is what helped U of T choose it.
However, I think that "good" and "evil" are two terms that we cannot apply in this discussion of Mean Girls; any time we speak in moral absolutes we risk overgeneralizing a situation, particularly one as universal as the female protagonist's in the film. If the film has one lesson, it's that morality is entirely subjective - Lindsay Lohan's character, for instance, is consistent, though her actions would seem to make her seem less "good" and more "evil" as the film goes on. She eventually returns to what you've called "good" at the end of the film...but is she not the same character throughout?
And, at the conclusion of the film, although her character has arguably developed, it is not done conclusively enough, it seems, to fend off further reincarnations of the problem later.
And she's, like, totally hot too, which brings up issues of female sexuality which would require another discussion altogether.
I couldn't really concentrate when watching Mean Girls because I was too disturbed by Lindsay Lohan's unnatural resemblance to Frankie Muniz (Malcolm in the Middle). She even talks like him.
Seriously, it's creepy.
Why are you posting this now? The screenings start on August 17. Why not aim to make your postings a bit more timely? They'd certainly be more useful to your readership that way.
Some of our readers are busy, and knowing about stuff like this in advance might be more useful to them than telling them just a day before.
Besides, this is going to be a cool, free, wide-open event for anyone who wants to visit. The point is to get as many people as possible to come - posting early is a great way to do that.
What I'll do, though, is add it to upcoming.org calendar so that it'll appear on our 'Public Calendar' sidebar a day before the show, just in case anyone missed it. Cool?
Wow we can't win. When we publish an event the day before or the day of, readers complain about how we don't give them enough notice. When we post things in advance people gripe about timeliness....
Sorry to gripe. Consider it constructive criticism.
One way of winning might be to post it one week in advance, or at the start of a week. You're right that a day before is too late, but three weeks before is just enough time to forget. This, after all, is the appeal of weekly tabloids...
And, it must be pointed out, at least you *have* readers who care enough to gripe. As Wilde said, the only thing worse than having your blog griped about, is not having your blog griped about.
Boy Reporter...
Don't let anyone hurt your feelings. It is Toronto after all. We just love to gripe; it's in our water supply--that must be it!
Maybe it's in our pizza...