But what made the film Clueless so appealing to a variety of mid-western pre-teen girls in the early 2000s was the idea that Cher was the perfect West Hollywood girl. In a sense, Cher is strong. She is determined and passionate to say the least. She takes care of others and is considerate of the welfare her friends and teachers, to her own benefit in some cases. Either way, to a pre-teen girl Cher kicks high-school in the butt, she is large and in charge, but after a while, as the film unfolds, we see Cher’s perfect high-school world start to unravel.
Watching Clueless again, at the ripe age of eighteen, I am recognize Cher as the outlandish and ... well, clueless ... character that she is, all thanks to writer and director Amy Heckerling. In Mean Girls, writers Tina Fey and Rosalind Wiseman exploit all social groups and stereotypes one might assume true of a common 2004 high school. In essence, Heckerling does the same…she just did it nine years earlier.
In Clueless, Cher encompasses a wide variety of stereotypical women, combining a ‘50s housewife and ‘90s teenage girl. She is a bad driver, conscious of her figure and her fashion – as well as everyone else’s – and suggests that “whenever a boy comes over, you should always have something baking.” But we as an audience feel the exact same way as some of the characters around her; for a good portion of the film we see Cher as a ditzy, blonde, “as if” valley girl whose only direction in life is to the mall. However, what really concerned my slightly feminist mother, who was concerned about my social vulnerability as a twelve-year-old, was the fact in order to be socially successful in high school you always had to be romantically involved with a male counterpart, preferably one of your same popularity or higher. We see Cher thrust this anti-feminist value on her new founded project, Ty.
Cher also embraces the familiar sentiment that she must carry the new, hopeless, and ultimately clueless girl under her wing. This thought falls under the category of “using your popularity as a means for good.” As we saw in Mean Girls where Cady is brought up within the Plastics and in Heathers where “Heather” takes the place of the killed-off Heather Chandler despite her role as a floater. In Clueless, the newest new girl to transform herself is Ty, played by the late Brittany Murphy. Introduced as a “farm girl,” Ty’s popularity suddenly takes shape as Cher shows her the Hollywood ropes. At one point, Ty’s transformation backfires on Cher as Ty for a moment takes away all of Cher’s hard earned attention. “What was happening?” Cher says in a voice-over, “Ty being the most popular girl in school? Was this some sor tof alternate universe? Considering how clueless she was, Ty had the whole damsel in distress thing down.”
What makes this movie so emotionally appealing, to both my pre-teen and adult self, is the fact that Heckerling gives complexity to a character we might normally write off and judge as snobby and annoying. We see the struggles, humorous and heart-wrenching as they may be, unfold throughout this chapter in Cher’s life. Along with Cher and other characters such as Ty, they grow from being clueless teenagers to emotional human beings, just somewhat misunderstood by society.
Liz Rossman
Film Club
