Clueless
Alarming trends in films come and go with different levels of furore but one that tickled my childhood so much so that I wrote an
essay about it in GCSE English was the adaptation of Shakespeare and his writing kin into teen film spectacles. 10 Things I Hate About You was based on The Taming of the Shrew, She’s The Man was a kicking adaptation of The Twelfth Night, Get Over It featured A Midsummer’s Night Dream and Romeo + Juliet was, well, Romeo and Juliet but with modernized text because Baz Lurhmann is totes so cool. What worked about it was the ability to bring classical tragedy and comedy and adapt it to modern kids so they the original text could appeal to hormones and spots.
Taking notes, cliff-notes if you will, is the 1995 Amy Hackering adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma - Clueless. By the way, that makes the film itself twenty years old and the text exactly 200 years old. How old do you feel now?
Clueless is actually an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. Cher is your typical Valley girl, living in the rich estates of LA and generally enjoying life alongside her father and stepbrother. However, when she sees her grades, as well as the rest of her classes, failing she comes up with a scheme to bring her teachers together who become so armoured everyone sees the benefits. Inspired by this, Cher finds herself becoming a matchmaker for other people in an attempt to bring harmony for her school, especially with new kid Tai Fraser.This would all work swimmingly if her attempts at her own romance would work out. Can Cher find love?
Remarkably, the film works and a lot of that is centred on Alicia Silverstone’s character Cher. The writing and elements of our seemingly “blonde bimbo” stereotype smash any cliché that nineties movies try to perforate. Played bubbly and full of career, while Cher does have idiotism and isn’t afraid to weild it, she also has plenty of heart that she carefully gifts to the people around her. While some of her reasons were based on vanity, they eventually grow into passion and love. Cher is a character that, stripped back, just wants to help people find their way. On another point, she also isn’t completely foolish. In fact, as vapid as she seems, she is intelligent enough to help her lawyer father win cases whilst similarly implementing her fashion life into her classwork. For example, have you actually listened to her debate on immigration at the start of the film? It makes wicked amounts of sense but is dismissed because of her twang and her seemingly vapid comparisons. She’s a bright kid who can manoeuvre other people’s emotions for the better.
As for comedy, humour and look against debilitating time, even decades past the nineties the extremely alarming nineties fashion hasn’t faded the vibrancy and colour of it all. Instead, it works best as a tableau of teenage life during that era. Comparatively to films by John Hughes, Clueless knows where to implement soft comedy against the crazy tongue in cheek self-awareness. Hilarious, with this glorious vein of sentimentality that blooms into brilliance towards the finale (and helped along by the sarcastic Paul Rudd all baby-faced and charming), you cannot help but fall desperately in love with this nineties classic and let it warm your cockles.
A lot of people dismiss the film and will continue to do so by this reversal of prejudice against blonde haired popularity and its ilk. Similarly, announcing that the film is somewhat genius when tackling pubescent hormonal kids and stereotypes could be met with a loud raucous eye roll. But Clueless is a mindful film that plays with classic text and adapts it so seemingly it’s impossible not to get lost. With an excellent class of actors including the late Brittany Murphy, Stacey Dash, and Scrubs’ Donald Faison, Clueless ironically has a brain, heart and definitely a clue….
Think I’m going to stop going on about this film?
“Erm, As if?”