Blog #4 : Clueless

Going into the screening of "Clueless", it was helpful to know that this film was in an adaptation of "Emma". It was my first time seeing both of two films and I think that benefited me so I didn't have any previous screenings of the films. With that said I can say that I enjoyed watching the film "Clueless" a lot more than "Emma". As one of the screening questions states, "Younger film reviews are sometimes ready to court favor by expressing a hip impatience.." which I think I can agree with. Personally I liked the adaptation style of "Clueless" more than the "Emma" because of the 'hip impatience'. I can't really say that I enjoyed the reading nor the screening of "Emma" just because I simply didn't have the patience for it's style. Watching "Clueless" even made the story of "Emma" stand out more to me just because I could relate to more. For example, Michael Hattaway observes that "Clueless" shows us a world where 'all styles are equal' which is exactly right. I could relate to the 90s styles in this film just because that norm still implies in today's youth. In "Clueless" we see many different styles of fashion, people, and attitudes that took place in 90s. We are exposed to the rich kids, skaters, lawyers, masculinity, and the "helpless" as Cher would put it. All of these groups were different but still tended to mingle throughout the film expressing that all styles are equal in the long run.

We could tell that this film's setting took place in Los Angeles not only did they say they were located in California, but due to the houses, clothes, people, and lifestyle. This can compare to the town of Highbury in "Emma" because we instantly can assume that settings are taken place in a popular city by the characters, wardrobe, and props used throughout different settings. Also when analyzing Lesley Stern's claim in our discussion questions, I think she is implying that throughout the different references and allusions that go in everyday life, they can be easily ruled out by any trend that is made. In the film we see that Cher and Dionne are the trend setters and even change people using their social status. For example when Tai is introduced in the film, Cher and Dionne immediately have the intention to befriend her and change her to their liking.

Here we get a good imagery of how Tai started off being very different by not fitting in style wise. Personally towards the end of the film, I forgot that Tai started off looking this way which really surprises me how they made her character change so much.

Overall I can agree that "Clueless" is more faithful to the the novel "Emma" than the film "Emma" all due to the character of Cher. Throughout both films, Cher/Emma play almost the same role as the high social class who deals with typical drama all by trying too hard to be a match maker for other people. As the film comes to an end we can kind of predict the relationship status of Cher and Josh even though we were never sure since it was there all along. But even though "Clueless" is an adaptation of "Emma", I think that a lot of chick flick films are like this as well. Since it was my first time watching this film, I felt like I was watching any typical romantic comedy, but thought it was like "Emma" only because we were on the topic of adaptations. 

Despite them being "opposites" we could easily tell towards the end of the film that Josh and Cher were going to end up together since they just naturally had an attraction towards each other. Also their relationship is a good example of how real relationships are usually the ones that are right in front of your face without even noticing it.