Somehow I ended up watching 1995's Clueless last night. I don't think I'd seen it all the way through since it came out though I must have seen bits and pieces whenever my sister watched it. It's certainly a relic of a bygone era, isn't it? Could you make a movie about a dumb rich blonde girl to-day? I mean, one who's supposed to be sympathetic? Maybe there are examples among movies and TV series I haven't seen.
I find myself watching it through two lenses--a nostalgic lens, for '90s America and my youth, and an English teacher in Japan lens. Japanese teachers have asked me more than once, "What's school like in the US?" Usually I recommend The Breakfast Club or Pretty in Pink. I suppose Clueless and Mean Girls should be on the list, too. Clueless might be perfect to show kids in Japan because Cher (Alicia Silverstone) is so positive, and positivity is a message that's vigorously pressed on students.
Wikipedia quotes writer/director Amy Heckerling as saying,
"The most successful character in anything I'd ever done was Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times. People think that's because he was stoned and a surfer. But that's not it. It's because he's positive. So I thought, 'I'm going to write a character who's positive and happy.' And that was Cher."
Plus, Cher's a virgin, which is valued much more highly in Japan than in the US. Cher and her friends are all wealthy but no-one in the movie mentions it, there are no class issues present, which would also make it ideal. Two of the American movies that have clearly gone through committees to be officially endorsed at schools I've worked at, Wonder and Back to the Future, both show characters living comfortably and economic disparity is never mentioned (so maybe I shouldn't be recommending Pretty In Pink). The only real problem with Clueless is that it features two characters who smoke pot. Drugs are talked about casually and sometimes approvingly in the movie. Oh, well.
Anyway. I enjoyed Clueless. The moment at the climax when Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd are staring at each other is so sweet and really made me want to watch more romantic films. Why do those two work? All of the moments meant to prove that Cher isn't so dumb are very circumstantial and ultimately meaningless, like when she knows the Hamlet quote better than the supposedly smart girl. There's no real indication that Cher is as interested as Josh is in exploring concepts. She just likes being nice. She can be manipulative but only to please her father and her friends. The fact that her manipulations are transparent and sometimes clumsy adds to her charm. She and Josh adore each other, each kind of pities the other, which would be a red flag if Josh bothered consulting Nietzsche on the subject.
If you zoom in on that book, you can see the name "Friedrich Nietzsche" is taped onto the back. Heckerling really wanted you to know who Josh was reading. Nietzsche considered pity a demeaning and ultimately harmful thing, for both the one who pities and the one who is pitied.
Josh pities Cher because she's dumb and Cher pities Josh because he's unfashionable. Is that good enough? I can't help thinking about . . .
You see that? You can't kill Woody Allen, he's in our heads forever . . .
Clueless is available on Paramount.
Twitter Sonnet #1680
With icing lost behind the crash we ate.
With frozen food we made a home at large.
And wandered out across the tundra late.
We saw the gathered flakes of blizzard charge.
Confusion clouds the rink before the freeze.
Above the falling skate a beauty cries.
A frosted glass contains a thousand seas.
Preserved in glacier ice, her lonesome sighs.
Combining cherry red with fuchsia wins.
But phantom dates revolve the living room.
To make the grade, she seeks the aid of sins.
Effective colours break the party tomb.
Mistakes allowed the lace to top dessert.
And now the tea and coffee might invert.
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