Don't fuck with that guy, he cheats on tests dude.

Well I could not find the reading assigned for this weekend, the Meat is Murder piece, so all I have to go on for my comments are the movie and my own experiences. All the characters in the movie were first and foremost kids that live int he suburbs. The asian characters represent a common asian american identity construction of the suburbs, which is ultra academic, competitive, and ambitious. The main characters were all kids that "played the game," even though they played it the hardest, so their entire identities were based on following rules. There transgressions were all within the framework of suburban teenagers...they couldn't obtain their badassness and pull of their scams without the being in school, having the favor of the authorities, and being the most capable, multi tasking, ambitious students possible. Cheat sheets, scamming computer hardware from office depot, even selling drugs are all activities for these characters that depended on pre-set institutions and codes of behavior that they and everyone else have to at least pretend to follow. The characters could transgress as much as they liked, as long as they didnt get found out by their parents, the teachers, or the cops. I suppose what I am saying is that all suburban bad-boyness is carried on in a sort of double life-sort of way, where a person's main concern is to maintain their external normative image. For if a character were to go too crazy, they would be kicked out of school, sent to boarding scool, or else juvie. The asian american bad-ass subarbanite is an interesting archetype because it contains two extremes - the super complaint conformist and the super transgressive crime kingpin.
I knew a group of kid in high school who made fake-IDs. Others stole shit from target and returned it, things like x-boxes and computers. These are all the type of activities that a suburban bad-boy would do. In short, there is NO OR MINIMAL INTERACTION WITH OTHER CLASSES, namely lower classes. All the suburban crime is done within the bubble, helping to maintian the borders as much as possible. Otherwise it is done by an outsider, a vagrant most likely, and outsiders are usually succesfully kept out. This makes the job of the cops and authorities a lot easier.
As far as the girls of the suburbs go...well in this movie they were still pretty maintained within current gender norms. Stephanie was sheltered from the illegal going ons of the men her life because she is too fragile and innocent to be exposed to things like those. She turned out to not actually be in the porno. She was an emotional character whom the male characters felt first and foremost needed protection. I would have liked to see her as a bad-girl, norm breaking character as well, it would have made for a more interesting character. Wouldn't it be cool if the boys discovered she was actually a bigger azn suburban kingpin than they were?
I view the most common transgression bad-boy/girl method in the suburbs is drug use...it fits perfectly into "maintaining a good front" thing i talked about earlier. I think a good identity construction to talk about for contemporary (kind of) suburbs, one that is closely tied to the asian suburbanite, is the raver. Drugs, remote locations, all night parties, promiscuity, high tech fun -- then going to class the next day. These raver kids used to be in my math class in HS, and would tell the craziest stories.