The movie follows Cady Heron as she tries to navigate her new school’s social dynamics without sacrificing her sense of self. In 2004, Mean Girls took a broader view of this fraught space. It also pits women against each other, presenting romantic pursuits as a zero-sum game. For Clueless, the mall provides the raw materials for life-changing makeovers that might help characters win love. “Considering how clueless she was, Tai certainly had that damsel-in-distress act down,” Cher observes wryly. Before Cher knows it, the boy she’s been flirting with abandons her to save the day. In Clueless, one frightening scene injects life-or-death stakes into the locale when a group of boys dangle a girl over a second-floor railing. “Yeah, toward the mall,” her stepbrother sneers. In a typically witty exchange, Cher’s father scolds her: “I’d like to see you have a little more direction.” “I do have direction!” Cher protests. In 1995, Heckerling returned with Clueless, a riff on Jane Austen’s Emma that stars the well-intentioned and overbearing Cher Horowitz, a Beverly Hills teen intent on playing matchmaker for those around her. The 1990s and early 2000s brought a fresh wave of memorable mall scenes, but the scope of female characters’ motivations remained narrow. “Just take his order, look him in the eye, and if he says anything remotely funny, just laugh like you’ve never heard anything so funny.” If the mall allows young women to grow, scenes like this suggest such development must occur in reaction to men. “Go for it, he’s cute!” one server urges another.
Fast Times opens on a group of teenage waitresses as they game-plan an interaction with an attractive customer. In terms of movie influences, the spirit of Amy Heckerling’s 1982 classic, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, is palpable in Stranger Things’ mall scenes, especially when the camera lingers over the food court. Throughout Stranger Things 3, Starcourt invokes and transcends tropes associated with malls in teen pop culture, offering evidence of the show’s empathy for its female characters along the way. Rather than portraying the girls as materialistic or silly, the scene depicts Eleven exploring her taste and identity for the first time-no small thing for a character who was nearly nonverbal in Season 1. By the end of the sequence, Eleven has traded her worn button-down for an on-trend jumpsuit splashed with geometric shapes.īut the show understands that a makeover can mean more than impressing a love interest. Most mall montages focus on transformation, and Stranger Things is no different. On-screen and off, places like Starcourt served as a rare middle ground between school and home, offering teenagers independence and a chance to experiment, via stores selling clothes and accessories, with self-expression.
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It was inevitable that Stranger Things, a show steeped in 1980s culture, would add to this canon with its own montage.Įleven and Max’s shopping scenes map onto a rich history of malls in movies and TV shows such as Clueless and Mean Girls. Before consumers started flocking to the internet two decades later, Hollywood sought to capture the role that malls played in American teens’ lives. Their fictional hometown of Hawkins, Indiana, is changing, too-thanks to a flashy new shopping center called Starcourt, which arrives just as the United States is experiencing a historic boom in mall construction.
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Netflix’s nostalgic sci-fi series introduces significant changes in Season 3: It’s the summer of 1985, and the nerdy kids who once played Dungeons & Dragons have blossomed into mall-going tweens, albeit ones who face supernatural monsters and Soviet agents along with the typical pains of growing up. Not Mike,” Max explains gently, referencing Eleven’s adoptive father and boyfriend. “You just try things on until you find something that feels like you. “How do I know what I like?” the young, telekinetic girl asks. Finally, Eleven pauses to stare at a mannequin. Her friend Max (Sadie Sink) steers her to The Gap and watches Eleven touch everything in sight. When Stranger Things’ Eleven (played by Millie Bobby Brown) sets foot in her town’s brand-new mall for the first time, she is equally overwhelmed and dazzled. This story contains spoilers for Stranger Things 3.
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