I recently spent an afternoon with my teenaged sister watching a number of movies and tv episodes focusing on teens with teen girls as main characters. Two of these films in particular dealt with how the teen girl protagonists responded to bullying by other girls in terms of their childhood upbringing and, arguably, abuse. First we watched Carrie (2013) followed by Kick-Ass (2010) and then Kick-Ass 2 (2013). Carrie is a remake (Carrie 1976) of an adaptation of a 1974 novel of the same name by Stephen King. The film tells the story of a young girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) raised by her extremely religious mother who views Carrie as an abomination, possibly even the devil’s spawn. As such, Carrie is regularly punished by being locked in a closet to pray, most notably in the film when she experiences her first period. Being completely unprepared for this physical rite of passage when she experiences it in the school locker room showers, Carrie is terrified at the sight of her own blood while the other girls taunt her and throw feminine hygiene products at her. Consequently, one of the other girls (Sue Snell played by Gabriella Wild), feels guilty about her part in the bullying of Carrie so she convinces her boyfriend Tommy (Ansel Elgort) to take Carrie to the senior prom. At the same time, Carrie discovers that she has some powers of telekinesis and begins to develop them against her mother’s wishes. Finally, when Tommy and Carrie are named Prom King and Queen the worst bully (Chris played by Portia Doubleday), who has since been ostracized by the other girls and expelled as well as refused entrance to the prom, and her boyfriend (Alex Russell) dump a bucket of pig’s blood on Carrie while a video of her harrowing experience in the girls’ shower plays for all to see on screen beside her.

Carrie’s response to this situation is violent. She has learned to harness her powers and now she brings them to bear on the whole school. Carrie kills or injures almost every person in the school gym, saving only the gym teacher (Judy Greer) who showed her compassion and gave her hope. Not only does she wreak vengeance on the students in the gym, but she also pursues Chris and her boyfriend, ultimately killing them both and incinerating them in a ball of fire. Upon returning home in an attempt to find solace and comfort from her mother, Carrie breaks down for a moment and realizes the horror of the acts she has perpetrated. She also finally allows herself a moment to feel the sorrow and pain of the loss of a normal life. This is the ultimate loss in this film, the ability to fit in with her peers after a brief glimpse of how wonderful normalcy could be.

In Kick-Ass 2 we again see Chloë Grace Moretz as a teenage girl facing an inability to fit in with the normal world of society. Her character, Hit Girl/Mindy Macready, also has special powers of a sort in her super hero training and knowledge. In this film however, Hit Girl doesn’t want to fit in, at least not at first. She is quite happy to continue her deceased father’s mandate to protect the city from evil. Unfortunately, she makes a promise to her guardian Marcus (Morris Chestnut) to give up the dangerous and illegal life of a vigilante super hero. As such, Hit Girl must become Mindy full time. The film actually does a pretty good, if exaggerated, job of portraying Mindy’s and Dave’s (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) teenaged journeys to understandings of their own senses of being throughout the film.

Mindy’s first steps into a normal non-super society of teen girls is represented by a moment at her first sleepover during which she views a music video by a boy band and feels the first stirrings of romantic desire (again sex-related activities indicate normalcy). This moment allows Mindy to recognize the similarities she shares with other teenage girls. The recognition combined with her promise to Marcus pushes Mindy to continue finding her place in this world of normalcy. Unlike Carrie, Mindy is able to use her powers to help her fit in – she impresses all of those around her during the dance team audition by pretending she is battling four attackers. This dance audition however, represents Mindy’s downfall. The popularity and accolades she gains are enough to make her let her guard down and begin to enjoy this new world of teenaged normalcy. Unfortunately, the popularity Mindy gains inspires Brooke (Claudia Lee), previously Mindy’s “sponsor” into the world of popularity, to plot her downfall. Mindy has finally decided to turn her back on Hit Girl and the life of a super hero by rejecting Dave and refusing to help him and choosing instead to go on a date like a “normal” teenage girl. At this moment however, Mindy faces her moment of embarrassment and taunting. Unlike the violence of Carrie’s blood bath, Mindy’s moment is a fairly mild, but still public, “date ditch.” Mindy’s date drives her out to the middle of the woods while professing his interest in her, but when they get out of the vehicle Mindy is presented to a group of laughing teens led by Brooke who all confirm Mindy’s earlier fears that she will never fit in with normal life. Broken emotionally and unsure of her direction, Mindy visits Dave and asks for his advice. Dave reminds Mindy that she is better than the other girls and tells her that she has to be true to herself – Hit Girl – not the mask she wears at school.

 This pep talk spurs Mindy to take Dave’s words literally; she dresses up like the other girls and puts on a mask of make-up to fit in with others. Unlike the other girls though, Mindy uses a “weapon” from her super hero arsenal to publicly invoke violent bouts of vomiting and diarrhea in the girls who shamed her and tossed her out of their world. This violent, yet non-violent action represents Mindy’s reaffirmation of her (super hero) self, Hit Girl.

Interestingly, both Carrie and Mindy face a crisis of identity; both have some level of powers unavailable to others; and both decide their futures after enduring bullying. At the same time, the two girls take completely different paths. Carrie is excited about but still very secretive of her powers of telekinesis and this excitement is partially tied to the excitement of being brought in to the fold of normalcy and womanhood. We see Carrie growing as a person by making decisions for herself, asserting those decisions even in the face of the punishment of her mother, and learning to use her abilities. Similarly, Mindy is also breaking from the desires of her father by making a contradictory promise to her guardian. This moment represents her personal growth and the beginnings of her journey of discovery of self. Ultimately, these girls make very different life choices – Carrie chooses death after the torment of embarrassment and the recognition that she killed her own mother while Mindy chooses a life a Hit Girl even if it means she must leave Dave and Marcus – but the important thing is that they have made those choices for themselves.

While both films highlight the extreme level of bullying teenage girls perpetrate on each other, they also show the strength that can come from understanding the hierarchy and recognizing one’s own abilities. I think Kick-Ass 2 does a better job of showing this as Mindy, being a self-actualized young woman before being broken (and then rebuilt) by the popular girls at school and having a friendship to fall back on, is better able to see what is happening from the outside. During her retaliatory strike on Brooke and her friends, Mindy also provides another girl with that knowledge by informing her that all it takes to look like the popular girls is money for clothes and make-up, not subjection to their wishes. This recognition is something that Carrie was denied.

From this afternoon viewing I could suggest that movies aimed at teens featuring teen girls are attempting to show their viewers that bullying can be overcome through self-actualization but I fear that this is too optimistic a view. First of all, two films, does not a genre make. Secondly, that conclusion is only one of many and is actually quite problematic. For one thing, Carrie is not rewarded for her understanding of self – Sue is, to a certain extent as Carrie saves her and allows her to keep her child – Carrie is actually destroyed by her sudden understanding of self. It is possible to suggest that she is only punished because she uses such extreme violence in response to the bullying she endures, but she is punished throughout this movie for every indication that she is becoming a woman of her own. Mindy is not punished and is actually rewarded with freedom and her first kiss at the end of the movie but that doesn’t change the fact that she is not the featured character of this film or its previous installment. While we can argue that a large part of the story is taken up by Mindy’s story, she is not the title character and the story is ultimately about Dave’s realization that every man, no matter his powers or lack thereof, can be a hero to someone just by working with others to make the world a better place. Regardless these objections, I will still see these films as rays of hope in a group of teen movies that continue to portray young girls negatively.