Clueless

Starring Alicia Silverstone , Paul Rudd, Birttany Murphy, and Stacey Dash, Clueless is a 2005 movie written and directed by Amy Heckerling. It’s a coming of age romantic comedy that feature mainly around the kids that go to Bronson Alcott high school. Grossing  $56.1 million in the box office, this critically acclaimed movie went on to develop a cult following and is still as popular as ever. This movie is a great feminist film as it portrays women as people with supreme independence.

Feminism’s origin can be traced back to the  1920s and it looked at women subjectivity through their own expression. Feminism basically can be boiled down to the analyses of the social or historical position of women.  Throughout history, women were often subordinates, subjugated, oppressed by the dominant patriarchy. This movements aims to dismantle this regime.   Feminist film theory grew in prominence in 1960s due to a more radical and upfront feminist movement that focused on sexual liberation female representation. Some themes that are explored is stereotyping,  objectification, oppression, and patriarchy. The Gaze is a concept introduced by Laura Mulvey which basically says that, film regards the female character as an exhibitionist that people would want to look at. They are a symbol of eroticism and visual pleasure. The Gaze originates from viewers particularly male who wish relate with the on screen male actor and his interaction with the female. Mulvey claims that cinema is a form of voyeurism  and that there are 3 ways of looking at things Male character looking at the female character in the film, audience in cinema looking at the female character in the film, and audience in cinema looking through the eyes of the male character who is looking at the female

character. There are several ways we can look at feminism in film, first we can assume predetermined roles and identities set for women by the patriarchy and see how the film challenges those. Then we can look at the various female characters represented in the films  and finally select a preferred representation. Lastly, look at the female representation from a female perspective.

Clueless entails the story of the Cher Horowitz and her best friend Dionne Davenport as they navigate high school as the super popular and highly fashionable students. To see herself pass her classes Cher sets up her 2 teachers to fall in love and likes the thought of helping people and begins to take freshman Tai Fraser under her wing. Mocked by her ex step brother, Josh for her selfishness and fake altruism  Cher eventually falls for him and decides to do some real good by running a donation drive for a disaster relief.  They eventually confess their feelings for each other and kiss.

The approach we are using to analyse this movie is approach 2 which is discussing the individual female characters present in this film. Let’s first start with Cher Horowitz, who is pretty and popular. She loves shopping and is extremely fashionable. She is super confident and uses here words to get her way. She argues her way out of tricky situations and uses it to get whatever she wants for example, her grades. She’s also a blonde and blondes are stereotypically portrayed as dumb. However, Cher is shown to be extremely intelligent in her own way although she initially is shown to be kind of an airhead. Cher is also shown to be altruistic as she wants to help the people around her. Cher also chooses to change her life around from caring only when it benefits her, to caring unconditionally. This is important as Cher’s character breaks many stereotypes and the element of choice is very clear and is left up to her. Choice is a very important aspect of feminism. Next up is Dionne Davenport who like Cher, is very pretty, confident, and popular. She’s very adventurous in fashion and doesn’t care what anyone thinks. She’s is also very bossy with her boyfriend and often wants him to listen to her. This is stark contrast to what the patriarchy normally expects of women. Besides that, she also control the sex life of the couple, only having done lighter stuff and then moving on to full blown sex only when she wants. This element of choice is very important for Dionne and the movie in regards to feminism. 

 The next character we are going to dissect is Tai Fraser who is brunette. Brunettes are usually portrayed as the brains of the movie however Tai is very dumb and clueless. She was very timid in nature until Cher built her confidence. She got so confident to a point she chose to isolate Cher and then chooses to get back with her. She chose what she wanted to do with her relationships. Lastly on the list is Amber who is kind of Cher’s rival per se. She’s a redhead who is also very pretty. She’s is also very confident and always challenges Cher when ever she doesn’t agree with her although the rest of the class doesn’t. she also chooses to wear whatever she wants even though she is constantly chastised for it by Cher. The movie successfully quashes certain stereotypes about women and reinforces the concept of choice and shows that women can do whatever they put their minds to.

Feminism is a very important movement that has shaped our present world the way it is today. It has shaped things from government legislations to film which are a reflection of society. Feminism in film is what all the women centric roles we see in Hollywood today. Although many strides have been made, however we still have a long way to before we have proper representation in film but I believe we are on the right track.