"Mean Girls" movie reference in essay

Hanna
Tue, 09 Oct 2012 18:34:58 +0000

I have sometimes OK’d pop culture references that not everyone would get, as long as they were explicit and thus easy to look up. Suppose I have a kid who’s a guitarist, and he wants to talk about how he was inspired the first time he heard Stevie Ray Vaughan. I don’t think he needs to give any background on Stevie Ray Vaughan because it’s clear from context that he’s a guitarist, and that’s really all you need to know to understand the essay. An officer who wants to know more about the student’s musical taste can always Google him.

These references have always been musical or literary rather than film, but I could see it working if a kid were really into film and wanted to rave about “Les 400 Coups” or whatever.