School's Out Forever!
This week I'm celebrating the end of my PhD with a back-to-school special on Clueless!
It’s been a while since I last wrote anything for AutCasts because life, or rather my PhD, got the better of me. I thought I could do it all, but it turns out that my brain had little space for anything other than my thesis over the last two months. A big part of understanding my neurodivergence, has been to respect my physical and mental limits in a way I was rarely prepared to do before, so I abandoned AutCasts without so much as a TTFA!
Welcome to AutCasts, a free bi-weeekly newsletter by writer, Aisling Walsh, exploring neurodivergence through cinema’s oddballs, misfits & rebels!
The good news is that I submitted my thesis last Thursday and (after a few days of feeling zombified) my creative juices started flowing again. Thank you to regular readers for staying with me through the hiatus and a big welcome to new readers who joined along the way! To mark the end of school forever for me, I thought I’d celebrate with a look back at one of my favourite high-school comedies and a teen-movie classic: Clueless!
Clueless is a 1995 teen comedy retelling of the Jane Austen novel Emma, written and directed by Amy Heckerling. Cher (Alicia Silverstone) is a 15 year old from Beverly Hills, with a ‘way normal life’ who spends her time driving around and shopping with her best-friend Dionne (Stacey Dash). When she is awarded ‘C’ (for inconceivable) by her debate teacher (Wallace Shawn) she decides to set him up with another teacher Ms. Geist (Twink Caplan) to improve his moods and her grades. Spurred on by her success at playing cupid, Cher becomes determined to continue doing good deeds. She and Dionne adopt new student Tai (Brittany Murphy), give her the ultimate make-over and try to set her up with school heart-throb Elton (Jeremy Sisto). A reluctant Tai is pulled along by Cher’s meddling but, things begin to go array when Eliot turns out to be a total douchebag and sexual harasser and Cher and Tai fall out over their mutual affection for Josh (Paul Rudd).
I was eleven when Clueless premiered and though I have no recollection of it I must have seen it in the cinema. Either way, as soon as it came out on VHS it became a regular feature at sleepovers with my primary, then secondary school, friends. As I mentioned in a previous post, Clueless and Mean Girls bookend my secondary school experience. Clueless came out the year before I started and set unreasonably high expectations for friendship, dating and fashion. Mean Girls came out the year after I finished and served as catharsis for six years of accumulated high school trauma.
Shit, you guys!
I barely remember anything from my first day of secondary school except the moment I found myself standing alone at break. I knew no one and was afraid too afraid of social rejection to approach any of the clusters of my peers laughing and chatting together with ease. I clutched my books to my chest and the dread of six more years of social ignominy swept over me. Then, just like Cher and Dionne, two girls, who had apparently spotted the distress signals I had been trying so hard to hide, approached me smiling and said they were in my class. I chatted with Ruth and Amy for the rest of the break. They soon became two of my closest friends, our friendships lasting for the duration of our time in secondary school and beyond.
Our group of nerds grew to six over the course of the next couple of years. We sat together in class, spent every weekend together and most of our summer holidays together. The A-Team, as we were called behind our backs, was my saving grace throughout secondary school. Without them I doubt I would have survived. They insulated my from the worst of the barely concealed disdain and potential for bullying I could sense from my other classmates whenever I strayed beyond their protective bubble.
Clueless was on regular rotation during our, sometimes weekly, sleepovers and it continues to remind me how teenage friendships can be a source of real joy and sisterhood, whatever happens once you leave school.
It gives her a sense of control in a world full of chaos…
Though Cher is the star of the show, my teenage identity fell somewhere between Tai and Josh. As a teen, I was a shy, chubby little red-head who preferred baggy pants and t-shirts to skirts and heels. I was totally clueless about fashion, socially awkward and incredibly clumsy. I can’t count the times I tripped over myself or slipped a flight of stairs in public.
I was also a confirmed nerd who wore overly-earnest Amnesty International t-shirts, to reflect my overly earnest politics. I listened to complaint rock (Radiohead) and read “serious books” far beyond my age range (though not Nietzsche - that was my girlfriend).
Under Cher and Dionne’s guidance, Tai learns to dress and act like the popular girls, but never quite gets it. And, like fish-out-of-water Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) in Mean Girls, as soon as she gets a little too comfortable with her new-found popularity she takes it too far. Tai falls out with Cher over a boy, delivering one of the greatest line reads in cinema history:
This time, I makeover my soul!
Cher realises that Tai has become bitchier than the bitches and worries that, in moulding Tai to her image, she has created a monster! Tai’s ascendancy to popularity and confrontation with Cher reminded me of all those times I felt like I had cracked the rules of girl-world and achieved acceptance. As soon as I got comfortable, however, the mask would slip and I would say something or do something to merit social expulsion.
Cher and Dionne’s world is nowhere near as cutthroat as the Plastics’ dictatorship in Mean Girls. After a tearful apology Cher and Tai make up. Tai returns to her chill, grungey style and rekindles her crush for recovering stoner, Travis (Breckin Meyer).
As teen movies go, Clueless set the mould (make-overs, cliques, low-stakes teen love) as well as the bar to be reached in terms of comedy and intelligence. It continues to be one of my top comfort movies and was the first thing I watched on finishing my PhD last week. For a movie that’s nearly 30 years old it stands up quite well in the feminist stakes (aside from a few slut shaming/body shaming gaffs). It addresses issue of consent and harassment, centres female friendships which do not depend on male attention and celebrates authenticity over popularity.
Rollin' with the homies…
Before I go let’s have a shout out for two of my favourite character actors to make appearances throughout Clueless: Wallace Shawn as debate teacher Mr. Hall and Dan Hedaya as Cher’s terrifying litigator father. Also let’s take a moment to remember the incredibly talented Britney Murphy who left us long before her time.
If you are thirsty for more Clueless content, I highly recommend the documentary Beyond Clueless, which explores the teen movie genre and the tropes that Clueless gave birth to, streaming on Mubi.
You can also check out the Clueless episodes from some of my favourite movie podcasts: You Are Good, The Bechdel Cast and This Ends at Prom.
If you liked what you read, please consider subscribing (for free) or sharing this essay. As an independent writer it’s the best way to support my work!
Congratulations on your PhD! A big accomplishment. We must be around the same age, as my memories of Clueless are very similar. There are only a few movies that I ever knew most of the lines to, and that was one of them! My sister and I would watch it repeatedly.