Clueless

Jane Austen

 Book and film compared

 Sleeper hit with low budget

 Heckerling's debt to Austen

 Warning for teachers

 Related Links

One adaptation of Austen's Emma might not be easily recognizable at first glance, but upon viewing, it's easy to spot Austen's spirit guiding the writing in Amy Heckerling's 1995 film Clueless.

On the surface, the story of popular and rich high school student Cher Horowitz seems far from the refined world of Regency Highbury, England.  But they are actually quite similar. Cher's beautiful mother died when Cher was still a baby (during a routine liposuction).  She lives with her father and their servants in a mansion in Los Angeles.  Her father is no hypochondriac lord of the manner, though.  He's an aggressive and powerful corporate attorney.

Alicia Silverstone as Cher and as Dionne. Source: Allaboutalicia.com, http://www.allaboutalicia.com/cgi-bin/display.pl?file=cluelesspromo09.jpg

The following table shows “direct” character changes, but there are other Emma characters who seem to be hinted at in Clueless.  For example, Jane Fairfax seems to be hinted at in the character of Amber Princess Mariens, and there are hints of Mrs. Weston, or at least her marriage, in the character of Miss Geist.  Mr. Weston, then, would parallel Mr. Hall, the teacher who marries Miss Geist at the end of the film.

The story does not end in marriage for Emma and Josh, for, as Cher's overvoice narration tells us at the end, “I'm only 16 and this is California, not Kentucky!”  But they are dating and obviously in love.

Alicia Silverstone as Cher and Jeremy as Eliot in a scene parallelling Emma's painting Harriet Wilson's portrait in front of Mr. Eliot. Source: Allaboutalicia.com, http://www.allaboutalicia.com/cgi-bin/display.pl?file=clueless056.jpg

In Heckerling's version, Cher is still a busybody, meddling in her friends' affairs.  She tries very hard to matchmake, but is a poor hand at it, though she successfully matches up her odd teacher with the sweet but gawky guidance counselor.  It is their wedding that appropriately ends the film.

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The film itself was a sleeper hit.  It was filmed with the very small budget (for a movie) of $15 million, but its world wide box office was $77.3 million (WorldwideBoxoffice.com).  And in spite of the restraints of her small budget, Heckerling did wonders with the film.  The costumes and settings really help inform us the different characters.

The film may be set in a rich California neighborhood, but Heckerling maintains Austen's fine eye for detail and social criticism.  But one thing Heckerling falls prey to that Austen rarely, if ever, did is topicality.  Her screenplay is full of so many pop culture references that now, at ten years old, it can seem dated.  My own teen age ”test audience” missed a number of references as they were current when he was a little boy.  Luckily, there are a number of on-line lexicons of the movies slang.  You can find one at the Jane Austen Society of Australia pages: http://www.jasa.net.au/study/clueless.htm

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Alicia Silverstone as Cher. Source: CNN Showbiz News, http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Movies/clueless/

Heckerling has always been quite vocal about her debt to Austen.  In an interview with Amy Heckerling at the American Film Institute, she stated that the book and the film “are similar. The same exact structure. I had this character in my head, the girl, and the kind of things she was doing, saying and the journey I wanted to take her through. But I needed a strong plot and I had read Emma in college. I read it again and said, This just lays out perfectly, this is just the most perfect structure for what this girl should go through. And when I would get stuck, when I would be at story meetings and they would say: Well, this should be more this ... But it was all there in Jane Austen. It wasn't there in the studio meetings.”

A studio still cast photo of the teens in Clueless. Source: IMDB.com, http://www.imdb.com/gallery/ss/0112697/fcstil_0520.jpg

The film is full of fun one-liners, mostly given to Alicia Silverstone's character, Cher, but occasionally given to other characters as well.

And the story stays relentlessly light and upbeat.  As Heckerling said, “It's such a light movie that even if you want to say that she realizes that the world is not makeovers and materialism, how much do you want of the real life? Is she going to realize that people are being bombed in Bosnia? Is she going to worry about the ozone layer? I mean how heavy can you get without ruining the lightness of the movie? And so you want her to wake up, in a way, but you don't want it to sort of put a brick on a balloon. So I made up that arbitrary Pismo Beach disaster. We don't imply that anybody died. But they need things. So the feeling is there without the heaviness.”

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The happy couple (Silverstone and Paul Rudd) in the last scene of Clueless. Source: Allaboutalicia.com, http://www.allaboutalicia.com/cgi-bin/display.pl?file=clueless109.jpg

“Clueless Box Office.” World Wide Box Office, 18 Feb 2005, http://www.worldwideboxoffice.com/index.cgi?order=worldwide&start=1900&finish=2005&keyword=clueless&links=amazon.com&popups=yes

“Extracts from an interview with Amy Heckerling, director of Clueless at the American Film Institute, September 14, 1995,” from Jane Austen Society of Australia: Study Guide, 18 Feb 2005 http://www.jasa.net.au/study/ahinterview.htm.

Clueless and Jane Austen's Emma on the Pemberley Jane Austen pages.  

Cast list, a brief comparison between the two works, and comments by Austenphiles.  

  "Emma Becomes Clueless" by Suzanne Ferriss.

An essay by Susan Ferriss published in Jane Austen in Hollywood , ed. Linda Troost and Sayre Greenfield, The University Press of Kentucky, Kentucky, 1998. Very useful and very scholarly. 

"Amy Heckerling successfully uses many devices and techniques to transform the 18th century text Emma by Jane Austen into Clueless the contemporary flim about teenage life and pop-culture in America."   

On Courseworkinfo.com, a page for British students studying for the GCSEs.   You don't get access to the full information unless you sign up (it's a pay-for service), but this is an interesting starting place.   

 "Hartfield Moves to Beverly Hills: Emma IN - Clueless OUT" by William Philips.

Jane Austen Society of Australia: Study Guide.   This is a very helpful page, full of well-done analysis:

Janet Maslin's review of Clueless from the New York Times , July 19, 1995.  

You need to register as a NY Times user, but it's free.

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