Chapter 2: Regina George of the 17th Century: On How the Sun King Messed Us Up and the Potentials of Counterfactual History

Imagined Alliances Between Regina George and Louis XIV 
 

In the 2004 mega-hit comedy Mean Girls, we follow Tina Fey’s dissection of the fictional Northshore High School through “the oppressive yet subtle quasi authoritarian regime” devised by head Mean Girl Regina George.24 The plot of the movie centers on Regina’s adoption of Cady Heron into her clique, the new (potentially popular) girl who moved back to the States from an unspecified country in Africa where her parents have homeschooled her. Through most of the film, we experience the world of teen gossip, cliques, relational aggressions (socio- and psychological term for mean girl behavior), and vicious power plays from Cady’s point of view, which gives us a pretty good angle on Regina.25

Portrayed as the stereotypical mean girl, Regina’s primary purpose in her teen life appears to be orchestrating the people around her to secure the continuation of her reign as queen of North Shore. Her cruel plotting is greatly supported by her two underlings (before Cady takes over), rich girl Gretchen and Karen the slut (Regina’s words), also known as “the plastics.” In all seriousness, I believe that had Regina and Louis been contemporaries, they would have been mean-girl frenemies (fake friends) or arch-enemies. There would have been no peaceful middle ground, and “frenemies” naturally refers to the way Regina made Cady her friend, Ready to throw her under the bus at any given chance, as her jealousy towards her is boiling under the surface.

As far as we can observe, both Regina and Louis were obsessed with surfaces and less with what lies below, based on our limited access to their inner emotional lives. Excess material possessions and social power seemed to be of the greatest importance, which they both attained through the sharp direction of immaterial economies of attention and semiotic warfare, where the utilization of personal image-making and the production of desire worked as primary forces. Throughout this chapter, I will unpack some of the parallels between the two, the fictions they efficiently instilled in themselves and their subjects, and their strategic deployment of the dynamics of desire within the social matrix to solidify their absolutist empires, grounded in Hegel’s master-slave dialectic.26

In Philosopher Alexandre Kojève’s “Introduction to the Reading of Hegel” (1947) he writes:

Man can appear on earth only within a herd. That is why the human reality can only be social. But for the herd to become a society, multiplicity of Desires is not sufficient by itself; in addition, the Desires of each member of the herd must be directed or potentially directed toward the Desires of the other members. If the human reality is a social reality, society is human only as a set of desires mutually desiring one another as desires.27

What Hegel’s thesis asserts according to Kojève, is the theory that human desire is driven by an internal lack, not simply focused on attaining a particular object or goal, but motivated by the desire for recognition and validation from others. For Hegel, desire develops in the context of social relations. In this context, desire becomes a complex and layered phenomenon. It is not only about pursuing individual satisfaction but also seeking recognition and approval from the people belonging to one’s “herd.” Therefore, we desire what we think others desire, as we want to be desired by them in return. Through this, desire produces itself as an endless cycle, where we constantly seek external validation to affirm our sense of self. Kojève continues this discussion into Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, arguing that the desire for recognition leads to a relationship of dominance, in which, at the beginning, both parties seek recognition from each other. However, the master is driven by a desire for absolute recognition, looking to dominate the “slave”, treating them as an object to exercise their power, while the submissive other is constantly hoping for their master’s acknowledgement. 

Hegel’s thesis provides an effective framework for comprehending and analyzing the absolutist regimes led by our protagonists. These regimes were distinct in their reliance on subtle forms of control instead of overt physical violence. Through what can be described as relational aggressive attitudes, both Louis and Regina utilized various artistic and cultural fields to manufacture symbolic markers of power, through which they established and maintained their dominant positions within the social matrix at large. Within Hegelian terminology, we could also refer to these dominant positions as the “masters” of the herds, providing Louis and Regina with numerous minions (the peasants and nobility) willing to do their dirty work as they desperately yearned for their master’s attention and recognition. Consequential to this, the desires pursued by our two leading figures assumed a universally coveted status, as they held the potential to bestow significant social recognition within their intricately constructed social realities (or what Harari might refer to as fictional realities).

Becoming the Sun King

“Why are you so obsessed with me?”28 Apollo did not say to Louis but easily could have, as a fair description of his fascination with the God of light would be an obsession. In 1653, at the age of 15, the young king appeared for the first time in one of his ballets wearing a breastplate embellished with the symbol of Apollo, bringing back memories from elementary school, when pre-teen girls, unhappy with their not yet fully grown chests, stuffed their bras with toilet paper.29

The link between Regina and Louis initially occurred while I re-watched the dance scene from the high school talent show in Mean Girls. In the scene, the plastics perform in knee-high leather boots and latex miniskirts, clearly being an essential annual moment for Regina and her nobles (Gretchen, Karen, and Cady) to perform their superior positions by catching the attention of their yearning high school “peasants.”30 In the scene, Regina demonstrates a profound comprehension of the sociability of desire by skillfully orchestrating and capitalizing on this performative moment. As a calculated maneuver, effectively reinforcing her fashionable popularity while nourishing the aspirations of her subordinates, providing them with an image to desire and strive for. Louis understood this very same logic of power within the realm of dance and performance. In one of his seminal performances, the semiotic gangbang of Ballet de la Nuit, the king staged a 12-hour court spectacle to represent the battle between darkness and light. Darkness, representing everything evil and light, everything good. According to Kirsten Dickhaut the performance consisted of a five-act structure, whereas most took place in the metaphorical space of darkness.31 The dark acts were designed to represent the fights between the monarchy and the rebel nobles during the civil wars of the Fronde.32 After their attempt at subverting the royal absolutist system, the Fronde had only recently been defeated, leading to polarized tensions in France at the time.

Connecting the Fronde to the evil of the night was, in that respect, an efficient propagandistic move for Louis’ young reign, as he, in opposition, was represented as the light bringing new and positive beginnings to France. The 12-hour spectacle was summed up with the sun’s arrival, embodied by the king himself. This arrival was an allegory for his rise to power, defeating the evil Fronde and shining a new light on his country. Dickhaut points out that, with the allegory of the Sun King, he not only embodied a somewhat divine celestial body, “he also represents the idea that the entire world is rotating around France — thus, a robust claim to global power is implied.”33 Additionally, Dickhaut states that the image of the sun painted an ethically solid picture of the king since the sun is fair and brings equal light to everyone.34

Within a Hegelian framework of analysis, one can argue that Louis’ utilization of dance and performance as a semiotic instrument elucidates his own inherent quest for recognition, encompassing not only his personal ambitions but through the lens of the Ballet de la Nuit, effectively communicates precisely how he wants to be recognized and validated; as an ethical, divine king, devoted to the betterment of France. Additionally, one could say that he exploited Hegel’s sociability of desire (in alignment with Regina’s performative exploitation by subtly prescribing his subject’s “own” desires and indirectly guiding their aspirations toward a collective, nationalistic vision. Thereby successfully harnessing performance as a transformative force and turning it into what Haraway might describe as a “power field,” weaponized to strengthen the monarch’s standing as the embodiment of his herd’s collective aspirations.35

What, at this point, is likely clear is that arrogance and megalomania were unfortunate and well-documented qualities of Louis’ personality. To understand his arrogance and mania for control, Philip Mansel suggests that we look back at the humiliations he experienced during the Fronde, where he and his mom, Anne of Austria, powerlessly had to flee Paris and the noble rebel armies for several years.36 Another possible explanation, or maybe a mix of the two, could be the intensely religious Anne’s focus on grooming him from early childhood to believe in himself as a divine figure, instituting a god complex that would only intensify during his reign.37 This confidence and his success in manifesting the public image of himself as being sent directly from God to govern formed a clear path to his absolutist rule, constituted when his chief minister of state, Cardinal Mazarin, died in 1661. After Mazarin’s death, Louis’ twisted logic told him that it would be appropriate not to hire a new minister but instead take complete control of the state himself. I would speculate that the decision not to hire a new chief minister might not have been a total shocker, as Louis, approximately five years prior in 1655, made his cocky announcement, “l’Etat, c’est moi!”38 

According to Paul Fox, the concepts of absolutism and kingly divinity were not ideas developed by Louis himself but had already been established centuries before. An argument backed up by Arthur Hocart asserting king worship to be one of the oldest known religions.39 One could, therefore, say that a king’s “natural” position had always been at the center of the social matrix. However, what differentiated Louis’ way of exercising this position through an absolutist ideology, as opposed to his predecessors, was the extremity of it. To the point of his reign verging on despotism, eradicating any political challenge or opposition. Primarily achieved through methods grounded in mean girling the people around him, such as bullying,gossiping, staging himself as a superior figure, social surveillance, and exclusion from the “herd.” When examining Louis’s governmental style today, it is thus not farfetched to describe him as an out-of-control, wealthy, and megalomanic teenager. Although he did have close confidants such as his minister of state, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to whom he trusted with certain responsibilities. There is no doubt that he considered himself a rightful sovereign head of the state, seen through the (among other things) merging of the sun with his persona as this could also translate to the one that gives life, as the Earth would naturally be uninhabitable for humans without the energy it exudes. A notion of sovereignty that parallels Achille Mbembe’s definition, as he defines it as the one who has the capacity to govern life and thereby the power to decide who must live and who must die.40

Versailles as High School

Up until Louis officially inherited the throne, Versailles was used as a relatively humble hunting lodge by his deceased father, Louis XIII. But as a prude young king, he found Paris dirty and full of sin and decided he was fonder of the countryside. Having, at this point in 1661, already let his vanity loose and eager to further display his sovereign capacities, he decided to burn off huge amounts of tax money to turn Versailles into MTV Cribs wet dream.41 The excessively bedazzled palace that we know today decorated as a seventeenth century version of Regina’s baroque-inspired pink bedroom. To flash his new mansion and further manifest himself as the nexus of France, he forced most of his court to permanently reside within the palace, as Versailles was to be seen as a direct materialization of his political and imperial ambitions.42 To describe Versailles as Louis’ high school, which he never left and simultaneously attended, taught, and governed, could, for that reason, be appropriate. 

It is said that between 3000 and 10000, courtiers lived within the palace walls, many without much choice, as they were forced through either social obligation to the king or simply had to earn a living.43 Everyone living within this high school prison-like structure was under strict subjugation and had to follow authoritarian etiquettes instated by Louis. These etiquettes would constitute the pettiest things, such as who could approach whom and who could sit down in which chairs and at what tables.44 I guess I am stating the obvious when saying that these petty social codifications, parallel moments from Mean Girls such as the lunch table divisions to classify social groups in Northshore, or when Gretchen frenetically screams to Regina, “you can’t sit with us,”45 because she is wearing sweatpants for the second time in a week. Or, when Karen enthusiastically enlightens Cady, “on Wednesdays, we wear pink.”46

Louis and his court rarely left Versailles, as he preferred staying within the confines of his golden walls and gardens of hyper-designed nature, and although it might seem like the king mostly thought about himself, he was indeed very interested in his subjects, nobles, and peasants alike. Not because he necessarily cared about their well being but because he loved to keep them under strict supervision and punish them for their sins.47 Louis was, in fact, fanatic about virtues within his kingdom. According to Philip Riley, the move to Versailles, therefore, offered an ideal setting to scrutinize his court to a degree that would have never been possible in an urban setting like Paris, full of temptations, discreet corners in serpentine streets, and private hotels; basically, an unregulated seductive playground where to perfor sin of various kinds.48

To keep track of poor peasantry sin within the lower hierarchies of Paris’ population was relatively straightforward. Louis would have his police commissaires from Chatelet patrol the streets around the clock, who would send countless reports to the king, which in turn, often received the reply: “The king wishes to know more.”49 It was within the courts that Louis had to be sneaky to access the secrets of his nobles. He would apply strategies such as reading their mail, eavesdropping, and sending his palace guards around to snoop in people’s rooms. However, the most effective strategy, and in alignment with Regina’s tracking of high school rumors and secrets in her burn book, was, of course, the culture for gossip.50 Louis loved any hot new gossip, and as Riley notes, Versailles offered very little serious activity to keep him and his courtiers busy. So, with a desire to please the king and in turn (hopefully) receive a desired attention and recognition, most secrets would eventually find their way to Louis’ listening ear. Versailles, in that matter, proved efficient for Louis’ project in establishing a toxic economy of attention by enabling the literal trapping of his subordinates inside the confines of his own home. This trapping allowed him to codify every single aspect of his courtier’s lives while surveilling their desires (and squash any deviance), which in turn made them fight even harder for his attention and recognition through measures such as throwing each other under the bus (telling on each other), as we see several examples of in Mean Girls as well, like the scene where Regina goes rogue and publishes her burn book while blaming Cady for its diabolical content.51

Another significant venture of Louis’ to display his opulence and superiority was fashion which also experienced a revolution during his time, making him one of the most influential figures in shaping the fashion world as we know it today. We can even call Louis the original Anna Wintour as he, together with Colbert, instituted the first ever known fashion magazine called “The Mercure Galant,” in which Louis and Colbert, through drawings of garments and short texts, would tell readers detailed descriptions of what to wear and how to wear it.52 Mercure Galant would also lead Colbert to the cynical but genius (from a capitalist perspective) innovation of seasonal fashion. Namely, the division between winter and summer collections to increase sales, which likely laid the foundation for what we today recognize as the world-destroying, necrotic production model of “fast fashion,” as other European countries quickly noticed Louis and Colbert’s rapid development of the industry and decided to copy their innovations.53 Strict fashion etiquettes for Lous’ courtiers (as their bodies were of course living representations of the King’s power) within the Versailles high school were therefore no exception, much like Regina’s strict fashion etiquettes for the plastics, such as demanding pink attires on Wednesdays and sweatpants no more than once a week.

Although Louis’ haute couture was supposedly extremely painful for the wearer, due to the mere weight of the garments, with steel wires poking into the skin and asphyxiating corsets. Louis surely did not accept having unfashionable people around him, fashionably bringing us back to Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, as everyone would abide by the king’s desires without question (at least openly) to the point of even his police commissaires wearing stylish, but heavy and unpractical uniforms. In addition to instating the newest fashion codes through his magazine, Mercure Galant, Louis would utilize his court parties and court ballets as a form of catwalk to flash the newest trends. The court ballets were a perfect selling point, as specific fashions would be connected to sophisticated and civilized activities such as classical dance and music, fostering the new idea, for that period, of selling fashion as an identity rather than as mere practicality. Louis has even been accused of forcing his nobles to spend all their money on luxury garments. But, according to Kimberly Chrisman Campbell, he (at least) often contributed with subsidies to cover their expenses, as he considered haute couture not only necessary to the economy and health of the country but as a way of displaying prestige and superiority to the people outside of his court, nationally and internationally.54 Louis, in fact, once famously said that “fashion is the mirror of history” following it up with “It reflects social, economic, and political change rather than mere whimsy,” which could be interpreted as a way of saying that his fashions should reflect the rapid progression of France towards becoming a hyper- civilized nation i.e., a superior nation.55

Some of the dark sides of Louis’ fashion fairytale, according to Jutta Wimmler in her book “The Sun King’s Atlantic” (2017), was that while France turned into a cultural hub and a financial superpower within dance, fashion, cuisine, science, and fine arts. The peasantry of France experienced severe financial stagnation, poverty, and overall gross social inequalities, getting no share whatsoever in the financial explosion of the country.56 Even darker, as Wimmler describes, was that this financial and cultural explosion of the country, was only made possible through the French colonies in the Caribbean Islands, with an aggressive increase of slave trade, as well as intensified processes of extracting raw materials such as dyestuffs and sugar.

The Feminized Mean Girl

While studying these aspects of Louis’ reign, using Regina George as a comparative character, a misguiding manipulation of history slowly appear to emerge. In 2003, a year prior to the initial release of the movie Mean Girls, magazine editor Tori DeAngelis, under an article titled “Girls use a different kind of weapon,” referred to psychologist Nicki Crick’s study on relational aggressions (which, as I have asserted earlier, is the socio- and psychological terminology for mean-girling).57 Concluding that while boys tend to apply overt physical violence to gain power, girls tend to apply more subtle, relational aggressive means such as gossiping, withdrawing affection, playing people out against each other, fashion, and social exclusion, but is this in fact true? It does indeed appear as if science and mainstream cultural mediums want to convince us that mean girl behavior belongs to the nature of a female social domain, as this is only one out of countless articles, as well as the movie Mean Girls being only one out of countless movies I have encountered, manifesting the mean girl as a natural quality to female relationality. These findings find resonance in anthropologist Alex Pavlotski’s article “Boys are ‘Mean Girls’ Too: The Sexism of Relational Aggression.”58 His research locates that, while the majority of scientific articles and mainstream media want to tell us that mean girl behavior is reserved for girls and women, other scientific findings, such as a major meta-analysis from 2008, show that relational aggressions, to similar extends, are applied in social relationships by boys and men (notice that 2008 was before the notion of non-binarism hit mainstream discourse).59 

I will not argue that Louis XIV singlehandedly invented the social codifications of mean-girling. However, after unpacking some of his less flattering qualities throughout this chapter, I will identify him as one of the most influential individuals in the development of early modern Europe while embodying mean girl traits in their purest form. When conflating the mainstream cultural agenda of feminizing the mean girl, Meta’s counter-analysis, and the government and personality of Louis XIV, it, therefore, seems compelling to speculate that the attributes of a mean girl proper have been severely misgendered throughout history, as Meta’s analysis and Louis ’reign could, to certain extends, indicate that these attributes likely originate from a masculinist, patriarchal position—reminding me, once again, of Haraway’s “situated knowledges” and her claim of history as a story told by a male-dominated field of patriarchal historians. Thus, when trying to recover the conception of the mean girl as that of yet another patriarchal invention, it piques my interest to situate Regina within this patriarchal matrix to comprehend her strivings for a potentially better life in a male-dominated world.

In her analysis of Leni Riefenstahl’s career in “The Feminazi Mystique,” Bell Hooks examines how Riefenstahl, a German filmmaker and producer of Nazi propaganda, strategically navigated strict societal constraints placed on women during her time. Hooks contends that Riefenstahl capitalized on perceptions of what she describes as “the myth of feminine innocence” to gain a seat at the table and ascend in a male-dominated field. By conforming to stereotypical femininity and seducing her way to the top, Riefenstahl ascended the social ladder, enabling her to exert a kind of backhanded power within the patriarchal order while evading scrutiny for actions that would have been deemed unacceptable for men. In this sense, she performed a form of cynical feminism, wherein she achieved a social status above that of other women but remained subordinate to male authority, as her performance of femininity flattered the male ego and never actually challenged the patriarchal order. By eluding being perceived as a threat to men, Riefenstahl gained access to a position of influence within a male world; however, her status as a female delimited her from ever attaining the authority of a man. 

Similarly, the hyper-feminized character of Regina in “Mean Girls” employs tactics reminiscent of Riefenstahl’s to seek dominance within her social sphere. Through relational aggression and manipulation, Regina asserts herself as the “queen bee” among her female peers while flattering and seducing her male peers, ultimately permitting her to exert power within and gain the protection of the patriarchal order without challenging the patriarchy itself. To further maintain her mean girl empire, she performs a feminine innocence, observed in several scenes by cryingly playing the victim, such as when she delivers her self-authored burn book to the high school principal, claiming to be bullied by it. The implication of this is that the power Regina aspires towards is essentially limited, as her female status prevents her from ever gaining the status of a sovereign patriarch, given that her tactics are dependent on the patriarchy itself. This stands in contrast to the power sought by Louis, which is the power of ultimate dominance and sovereignty. My point here is neither to vilify further nor victimize Regina but rather to underscore the complexities of how mean girl power dynamics play out from different gendered positions and nuance the variations in mean girl motivations. This equips us to understand that the desires and ambitions of a mean girl are not simply universal but rather diverse and indeed exist within a hierarchical order in which the sovereign male patriarch still occupies the top, as illustrated by figures such as Louis XIV.

Again, I would need more information on the centuries before the seventeenth century to confidently claim Louis as our original mean girl. However, re-situating him as the potential progenitor of the modern mean girl does not seem improbable. Regardless, it is vital throughout the following chapters to remember that my references to mean girl behavior refer to a conceivably recovered patriarchal position. A position I will explore how potentially manifested itself in one of its ultimate forms through Louis ’desire to construct racialized divisions within his design of a new European dance culture.