Apart from being one of the most overt pieces of capitalist propaganda to wield pop culture in recent memory, the Mean Girls x Wal-Mart commercial is a stark reminder not just of Gen Z contempt for millennials, but for their simultaneous desire to emulate them. After all, there’s a fine line between hate and love, as it is said. And, to quote Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan), it’s not millennials’ fault that Gen Z “is like in love with them or something.” At least, if one is to go by the obsession with their era (even when trying to deride it through an over-the-top condemnation of skinny jeans and side parts).
Within the absurd universe of 2023-era Mean Girls, Gen Z is somehow the spawn of Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert), while Cady (Lindsay Lohan) and Karen (Amanda Seyfried) don’t seem to have any clear claim on children of their own (unless it’s the other two members of Amber Wieners’ Gen Z clique). And maybe Cady is too busy “nurturing” youths in her role as a guidance counselor anyway to bother with children of her own. Which brings us to a scene designed to make her look out of touch in an “old” way rather than a “cute” one (as she did in 2004 whilst talking to Aaron Samuels [Jonathan Bennett]). Since everything is “cute” when you’re young enough…as society has drummed into our collective minds by now. This occurs when, sitting behind her desk dispensing “guidance” to a duo of mean girls, she once again says, “Grool.”
The duo looks at her like she’s a “Martian” (as Regina called her) after she utters, apropos of nothing, “Grool.” At least when she said it in the actual movie, it was a conflated response to Aaron declaring of his Halloween party invite, “That flier admits one person only, so…don’t bring some other guy with you.” She started to say “great,” then “cool”—ergo, “Grool.” But how would these Gen Z putas living their far more “glamorous” life be expected to know anything about that “lore.” So naturally, they look up from their phones long enough to respond with disgust, “Huh?” and “What’s ‘grool’?” Cady assures, “It’s nothing.”
Almost as “nothing” as Gen Z claims millennials are to them despite constantly turning to Mean Girls as a behavioral bible and/or source of 00s yearning/“aesthetic” inspiration. And in the Wal-Mart commercial, that emulation comes both behaviorally and sartorially as Gretchen’s daughter and her friends wear the same pastels and plaids as the original Plastics did. Even though Cady was sure to tell us at the end of Mean Girls (after Damian [Daniel Franzese] delightedly warns of a freshman trio of girls, “Check it out, Junior Plastics”), “And if any freshmen tried to disturb that peace…well, let’s just say we knew how to take care of it.” Cue Cady imagining a school bus running the trio over and then assuring, “Just kidding.” But, of course, there are surely many millennials by now who have had such violent and hostile fantasies about cartoonishly ageist Gen Z. Particularly since, as we see exhibited by the Gen Z Plastics of the Wal-Mart commercial, they’re essentially grafting what millennials did while simultaneously critiquing them. Mainly for being “old” and for having never experienced the horrors of modern-day smartphone/social media life in their teens the way Gen Z is now.
To that point, Gretchen has happily taken on a Mrs. George-esque (Amy Poehler) persona by becoming not like a regular mom, but a cool mom as she sets up the ring light and camera to film Amber and her bitch friends doing limply-executed dances, presumably for TikTok. Amber then snaps at her mother when she says, “This is gonna be so fetch.” Amber’s response? “Stop trying to make fetch happen, Mom. It’s still not gonna happen.” Gretchen looks deeply wounded by this, for surely it’s gotta sting more coming from her daughter than Regina George. Her daughter, mind you, who knows nothing about millennial culture because not only did she not live through it, but everything about it has been diluted and bastardized by TikTok. Including Mean Girls itself.
This usually extends to the oft-referenced Winter Talent Show scene, which is recreated here as well (albeit with “smart” flat-heeled boots in lieu of stiletto-heeled ones). Even though Gretchen (and Cady/Karen, for that matter) would have needed to get pregnant right after high school, circa 2007-2009, to have a high school-age daughter. The probability of this seems rather unlikely (unless you’re Lorelai Gilmore), considering her Type A personality and “good” college/“respectable” career path. Even if having kids and marrying a “similar-minded/pedigreed” man was also at the forefront of her mind, that wouldn’t have been until, realistically, at least her mid-twenties. But, for the sake of capitalist propaganda, we must suspend our disbelief as Gretchen (joined by two more children who also appear to be Asian, which means she definitely didn’t marry Jason [Daniel DeSanto]), Cady and Karen watch a “less hot version” of themselves perform the same song and dance that they did “back in the day.” To far greater ennui…even though Gretchen takes over for Mrs. George on the filming front.
By the end of the commercial, the movie has been so perverted from its original self that the Burn Book pages plastered all over the school have been transformed into ads for Wal-Mart Black Friday deals instead of salacious pieces of gossip (many of which wouldn’t fly in the Gen Z climate of the present, where jokes about people being fat, or slutty, or statutory rapists would probably be deemed too insensitive).
And yet, while millennial messaging has been “massaged” to suit a Gen Z demographic in this commercial (not just with the Burn Book being nothing but a “coupon book,” but also Gretchen having her son play with a Barbie), it is still Gen Z trying to be “analog” in the end by engaging with printouts. This being just one of the many ways, throughout the commercial, in which they’ve surrendered to their worst, most “cringe” fear: “being millennial.”
