In the recently-released You Again (pictured) Kristen Bell’s ex-geek-girl, Marni, finds out that her high school arch-nemesis, Odette Yustman’s eternally beautiful Joanna, is marrying her brother. Simultaneously Jamie Lee Curtis, Marni’s mother Gail, finds out that her darling daughter-in-law to be is related to her own high school arch-nemesis – the dazzlingly successful Ramona played by the dazzlingly successful Sigourney Weaver. Having proved less than popular at secondary school myself, watching this film gave me more than my fair share of high school horror flashbacks. It also made me think about all those on screen high school harridans who have over the years shown a tenacious talent for hitting the losers right where it hurts.
The origins of the on screen high school harridan are inextricably linked with the birth of the modern-day teen movie. Teen movies were, of course, around during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s but as the golden age of the slasher movie and the era of the video nasties approached young people made it clear that they no longer wanted to watch porcelain-faced figures (ironic considering the 80s was the decade that brought us Rob Lowe) Rock Around The Clock (1956) or insipid middle Americans bobbing along to the hit songs of Grease (1978). Two years before Grease grossed dollar one there was already a hint that the teenage tide was turning with the success of Carrie (1976). Sissy Spacek plays the unkempt outcast poised at any time in inflict bloody telekinetic vengeance on her less-than-genial classmates and Amy Irving plays Sue Snell: one of the original high school harridans. She takes the absolute sap out of Carrie when she starts her first period (we all have them Sue) and then plans an elaborate plot at the prom to cover Carrie in pig’s blood, humiliating her in front of the entire student body. This then leads to a lot of dead student bodies. Satisfyingly, Sue winds up crashing and burning (literally) in a car accident of Carrie’s creation.
Following the cult success of Carrie film-makers took note of the fact that a. the contemporary high school environment was rife with just the kind of hostility and conflict they needed for a good story and b. that the teenage audience, who had a large disposable income and a comparatively small amount of common sense, couldn’t get enough of it. Thus the teen film as we know it today was spawned.
To classify: the high school harridan is typically a rich cheerleader-type who needs taking down a pom-pom or two and the 80s was a decade littered with them. Perhaps one of the more memorable performances came from Kate Vernon as high class hussy Benny Hanson in Pretty in Pink (1986). She spends most of her time ridiculing Andie’s (Molly Ringwald’s) dress sense and draping herself repellently over James Spader and his oft-uncovered chest. Indeed his chest makes such a regular appearance that one wonders whether or not he ever learnt how to button a shirt up to the top. Rather than get side-tracked by Spader’s unripened form however let’s stick to the point that Vernon was quite detestable in this role. Her screen-time was limited but she made the most of it with her sneering looks and shameless swipes at what little was left of Andie’s self-esteem.
In Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985) Holly Gagnier is most insidious as Natalie Sans who tattle-tales to the Catholic school nuns about Janey (a pastel-clad Sarah Jessica Parker) missing choir practice and gets daddy to fix a dancing competition in which she and Janey are fiercely competing. On top of all this she is seen in some sequences sporting leather fingerless gloves and I just don’t think you can easily forgive a woman for that, even if it is the 80s. Molly Hagan also had a stint as the high school harridan in Some Kind Of Wonderful (1987). When her best friend Amanda Jones (Lea Thompson) agrees to a date with Keith (Eric Stoltz’s brooding, artsy outsider) she makes it perfectly clear that the pair do not have her blessing. Thankfully it’s a John Hughes film, nobody’s ever that horrible in a John Hughes film that’s how he makes us feel so good, and thus her tactics are fairly limited to hair-tossing and the proverbial cold shoulder.
Of course, unlikeable as they were, Benny and all the other teen harridans of the 80s cliques were pretty much paled out by the performance put in by Kim Walker in Heathers (1989). She’s the real reason we remember the 1980s as the decade of high school hell. Playing Westerberg High’s hottest Diet Coke head, Heather Chandler, Kim Walker struts mercilessly about the set sporting the scrunchy o’ power and a permanently raised eyebrow. A heart-breaking put-down always hovering on her lips this girl ruled the school and ate the Brownies and the Girl Scout cookies for breakfast. Wait, no. She accidentally drank bleach for breakfast. Tough break kid, would you like some Corn Nuts with that? Incidentally and with all joking apart Kim Walker’s real-life story ended in the most horribly ironic of ways. In Heathers she coined the very famous line “Did you have a brain tumour for breakfast?” Just over a decade later the actress actually died of a brain tumour herself.
Her legacy lives on, however, as Walker proved an incredibly difficult act for any future high school harridan to follow. The likes of Amber, Elisa Donovan, from Clueless (1995) were nothing more than mildly irritating in comparison to Heather Chandler’s capacity for cruelty and eventually it became clear that only the super-rich or super-powered could compete with her. The Craft (1996) brought us the first truly intimidating high school harridan in over 5 years with the indisputably unhinged Nancy played by Fairuza Balk. Nancy starts off as nothing more than a little bit on the pushy and short-tempered side but once she masters unnatural powers the true ugliness of her hidden harridan immediately starts to show. She tricks a boy into sleeping with her, turns her coven against the mild-mannered Sarah, Robin Tunney, and feigns the death of Sarah’s father in an attempt to coax her into suicide. The last time we see Nancy she’s restrained in an institution, ranting about the awesome powers she can command. She seems somehow less intimidating, however, when she can barely keep her eyes from rolling back in her head.
Balk’s stint as the high school harridan was followed up and bettered in 1999 with the release of Cruel Intentions. Although very little of this film is set in high school (they are on their summer holidays when our story begins) Kathryn, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, does everything in her power to manipulate the soon-to-be students of Manchester: Annette Hargrove and Cecile Caldwell. She takes her extra-curricular bitch duties very seriously orchestrating events so that both girls lose their virginity by her sleazy step-brother Sebastian (Ryan Philipe) whilst simultaneously attempting to destroy Sebastian’s reputation and covering up a drug addiction. Unlike a lot of the other high school harridans Kathryn is insidious through secrecy; she has everybody believing she’s the model student when really she’s a seriously sinful seductress. The scene in which Kathryn’s ploy is uncovered is a cinematic classic. The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony plays over a scene in which Sebastian’s journal is distributed around the school. Every seedy detail of Kathryn’s exploits are accounted for and her peers slowly shake their heads at her in disappointment as a single tear of shame snakes its way down her cheeks. A moment very few of us will forget seeing for the first time.
1999 was, in fact, a big year for high school harridans all round as audiences were also introduced to Courtney, Rose McGowan, of Jawbreaker fame and Taylor Vaughn, Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, from She’s All That. In a fight between the 1999 harridans I’d say that Courtney and Kathryn would probably team up to take Taylor out. Afterwards Kathryn would slyly slip a shot of poison into Courtney’s victory drink. Courtney may have been “Satan in heels” but she didn’t have the pristine education Kathryn had and thus might strike out next to an equally sassy evil genius with good references. In Jawbreaker Courtney slides seamlessly into surreptitious bitch mode after murdering one of her best friends, the Princess Di of Reagan High to be precise, and will stop at nothing to stay out of jail. Taylor famously reminded the newly-madeover Lainey why she avoids “places like these and people like you” by pouring her drink over her dress and, much like Benny did with Andie in Pretty in Pink, indicates that Lainey does not belong with her fold. Taylor is quite mean to Lainey, especially when she steals her would-be knight in shining armour – Freddy Prinze Junior – back for her own ends, but she doesn’t kill anyone which is why Kathryn and Courtney would easily have her head on a plate given half the chance.
Moving on into the noughties the most famous high school harridans around were undoubtedly the Mean Girls of 2004 with Rachel McAdams well and truly proving she’s much, much more than just the girl next door. Her character, Regina George, torments poor little Lilo to within an inch of her life. Which, admittedly, is quite fun to watch. Lilo simply doesn’t know what to do with herself as McAdams’s character systematically forces her to actually do some acting by distributing a slanderous document about her character, Cady, and the rest of her newly-acquired clique, “the plastics”, whilst simultaneously pinning the blame for the scandal on her. There’s even less rest for little Lilo’s acting muscles later in the script when her character grows as a person as she’s punished with a stint in the Mathletes. Indeed so demoralizing are Regina’s attacks that Cady eventually resorts to pushing her arch-nemesis under a bus, at least, that’s what I heard in the cafeteria.
Possibly one of my favourite takes on the high school harridan came in the same year as Mean Girls with the intermittently charming 13 Going On 30 (2004). In addition to being the only film I know of that features Jennifer Garner, Mark Ruffalo and Andy Serkis doing the Thriller dance it’s also one of the few films where the audience gets to see the harridan grow up (memorably, Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997) also had a go at this). Judy Greer who plays the adult version of the duplicitous and conniving Tom-Tom had her harridan orientation back in 1999 when she starred opposite Rose McGowan in Jawbreaker and in the final act of 13 Going On 30 she demonstrates beyond all reasonable doubt that she took plenty of notes on McGowan. The 13-suddenly-turned-30 Jenna, Jennifer Garner, is left in an emotional no-man’s-land as her childhood-nemesis-turned-best-friend sabotages her efforts at work, turns her not-quite-child-hood-sweetheart against her and, perhaps most cripplingly, fails to tell her that the Oriental-chopsticks-through-hair look doesn’t really work for her. All in all this results in a situation that requires far too many hyphens for anybody’s liking and an extremely lost-looking Jennifer Garner.
Here endeth the lecture on The History of the High School Harridan. If I go any further I will have no choice but to refer to the likes of High School Musical (2006) and I’m not in any way convinced that I can bring myself to do that, regardless of how underrated Zac Efron is as an actor. After all he will soon be replaced by some other fresh-faced newbie with a passable singing voice as for every year that passes a new class is born and an all-new high school horror adventure begins. Who knows what’s on the high school harridan horizon? If the past thirty years or so is anything to go by probably more of the same over-aerobicised, short-skirted reign of terror with a side-helping of lunch-time humiliation for the dorks. But hey, that’s high school.
