"Mean Girls" movie reference in essay

Hanna
Mon, 08 Oct 2012 18:31:41 +0000

“I don’t see a point in referring to a movie as if everyone’s seen it.”

Some movie references are so big that you don’t really need to have seen the movie. I really did work on an outstanding essay with a Darth Vader reference. I can’t believe there’s anyone employed in an undergraduate admissions office who doesn’t know who Darth Vader is, and the reference added a lot of humor and color to the piece. It would have ruined the rhythm of the essay to take a sentence to explain that Darth Vader is a helmeted movie villain from the “Star Wars” series. (It would have treated the reader like an idiot, too, IMHO). I think it would also have been fine to refer to Jaws, Scarlett O’Hara, Godzilla stomping on Tokyo, “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore,” etc. Those are a matter of cultural literacy.

My Darth Vader kid got into Stanford, Princeton, Duke, Swarthmore, etc., so it turned out well. But much as I love Tina Fey, “Mean Girls” ain’t “Star Wars.”