Comparison Of Emma In The Movie Clueless

Texts and their appropriations are related to particular historical periods, and the diverse perspectives they offer are significant to understanding the ways of thinking and the values held during that period. Discuss with close reference to Jane Austen's Emma and Amy Heckerling's Clueless.

The film Clueless, written and directed by Amy Heckerling, is an adaptation of Jane Austen's novel. The producers deliberately set out to make new trends for teenagers, even releasing a Clueless-inspired line of Barbie dolls, and these efforts were wildly successfully. The main character, Cher is 15 going on 16 years old. She is a spoiled, socially successful, high-class snob who, after undergoing a crisis brought on by their own pride and repression of their feelings, are transformed from callowness to mental and emotional maturity. Clueless is an interesting social experiment.

Jane Austen's novel "Emma" published in 1815 and the film adaptation "Clueless" written and directed by Amy Heckerling in 1995 both share a similar interest in maintaining a high social status. Emma Woodhouse of the novel "Emma" and Cher Horowitz from the film "Clueless" are both spoiled young lady living in a high-class society. Emma Woodhouse is part of the rich, upscale society in a large and populous village in the nineteenth century England, while Cher Horowitz lives in a rich, upscale Beverly Hills, California USA. Both of the main characters, Emma and Cher shows arrogance and lack of acceptance to other social class due to their use of power and wealth, which they are unaware of it themselves. Emma and Cher's immaturity has resulted

Throughout history, notions of beauty have been integral to social life and culture, and are often reflected in period texts. An example of this is Jane Austen’s Regency era novel Emma (1815), and its 1995 film appropriation Clueless, written and directed by Amy Heckerling. These texts use the beauty ideals of their respective periods to showcase the negative effects of superficiality and the importance of ‘inner’ beauty. This becomes evident through exploration of the beauty ideals of both eras and how representations of these ideals have been appropriated from Emma to Clueless through characterisation.

Author and journalist, Italo Calvino once stated that, “a classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say”, the perennial feature of a classic novel is able to provide a sense of relatability to the modern reader regardless of societal contexts. The significance of reinterpretation of classical texts lays in its disclosure of the modifications in society; the transformation of attitudes and values is juxtaposed in various milieus making it applicable to a vast audience. The novel "Emma" by Jane Austen scrutinizes the numerous complications of dating, ranging from social hierarchy, family and friendship to love and matrimony. The loosely based adaptation "Clueless" utilizes Jane Austen's ability to decipher human emotion and refashioning it to a much more appealing and marketable American High School setting.

Of course it does. Propriety is valued in the Regency period, where it is gained through tension between others, allowing one to self actualize. We are able to see Emma’s lack of propriety, as well as maturity through her dialogue to Miss Bates, “”…but there may be a difficulty…you will be limited as to number – only three at once””. She is unable to sympathize with Miss Bates, reinforcing on her immaturity and lack of character. Due to the tension between Mr Knightley, Emma reflects through the third-person omniscient narrator of “How she have been so brutal, so cruel to Miss Bates!”. Now she understands that she should respect and be more mature to others. On the other hand, appearance and popularity are much more valued in the consumer-driven society in Clueless. In the numerous dolly shots we see Cher and Dionne wear expensive clothes strutting down the footpath in the school, centre screen and thus, the centre of attention. Irony is created with the voice-over of “but seriously I have a way normal life for a teenage girl”, which contradicts the panning shot of Cher picking her clothes from a computer. Hence, highlighting the significance of appearance and thus suggest how our society is

to. So it defines one's rank to be at one of these social functions as

A Comparison of Emma by Jane Austen and Movie Clueless The film Clueless, written and directed by Amy Heckerling, is an adaptation of Jane Austen's novel Emma and closely parallels the story in terms of character development and action. Although Emma was written in 1816 and developed ideas and issues of that period in time, 180 years on we can still recognize and identify with the exact same issues. This just proves that despite all the radical social changes that have taken place since Jane Austen's time, people and life haven't really changed all that much. The general life issues of money, love, friendship, class and finding ones place in the world are raised in both texts.

The person I feel most sympathy towards in the production is Emma I feel sympathy for her through technical use of dialog. A part of dialog that arises in regards to Emma happens when jerry and Robert are having a conversation and Robert brings up the fact that he has beaten Emma before this takes place in scene Two. “It’s true I’ve hit Emma once or twice. But that wasn’t to defend a principle...I just felt like giving her a good bashing.” Through this scene my sympathy for Emma Is at its peak as I am very against abusive relationships and don't believe a man ever has an excuse to beat his wife and I am especially effected by the way he brushes off the fact he has done such a horrible act with how his reasoning for the despicable incident was

balanced each other, and their love and devotion to one another helped them conquer challenging times (Black, p. #).

The universality of themes pervading both Emma and Clueless in correlation with the humanistic, obviously flawed protagonists in both texts, captivates and immerses responders. This engagement leads to an involvement and enjoyment in the composer’s craft, which enables the responders’ to obtain sophisticated insight into the text’s concerns on both subjective and objective levels. Critiques agree that the transformation enables an audience to “enjoy cultural capital and aesthetic knowledge” while retaining a “connection to the past through classic text and cutting edge post modernism.”

Jane Austen’s novel 'Emma' and Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, as significant and satirical reflections of Regency England and postmodern America respectively, indicate how the transformation process can shape and improve literacy, intertextual and logical importance. The transformation is evident in the compositions Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’ and Amy Heckerling’s ‘Clueless’ enabling us to investigate the assortment of logical subjects. Regarding ‘Emma’ the perspective throughout the Regency time frame examines the strict values of love and marriage inside the inflexible social hierarchy. Austen’s advances the significance of etiquette throughout the text. Austen reveals a neo-women’s activist perspective, shown in the female protagonist revealing the female protagonists’ scholarly capacity and social equity in an otherwise patriarchal society. However, the close resemblance of the story; ‘Clueless’, Heckerling composition conveys entirely transformed values, reflected through the actions of the current upper-working class of contemporary Los Angeles. The critical analysis of commercialism in the informal social class system of modern America reiterating social expectations of gender and social characterisation within the microcosm of the typical American educational system. The transformation in attitudes of Austen, reveals an exhaustive utilisation of setting, a close examination of dialect and various artistic procedure.

I just wanted to add some information from the film.  Symptoms of clinical depression where mentioned by Dr. Mryna Weissman which includes: feeling of sadness, guiltiness, hopeless, helplessness, not worthy of living, problem eating and sleeping.

Emma Woodhouse, who begins the novel "handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition" (Austen 1), suffers from a dangerous propensity to play matchmaker, diving into other’s lives, for what she believes is their own good. Despite this, she is a sympathetic character. Her matchmaking leads only to near-disasters and her expressions of remorse following these mistakes are sincere and resolute. Jane Austen's Emma concerns the social milieu of a sympathetic, but flawed young woman whose self-delusion regarding her flaws is gradually erased through a series of comic and ironic events.

Emma Bovary allows herself to be destroyed by the people she encounters and her obsession with falling in love. Emma is not happy with herself and her relationship so she looks for other people to fill the void. Emma never really realizes that she is the root of all of the troubles in her life. If she were more in touch with reality, she would realize that she needs to work on herself before blaming her love interests for not being like the men that she has read about in the past. Emma has a very unrealistic perception of love. Emma is unable to fall in love with anyone because she will always be dissatisfied. She destroyed her own marriage before it even started because of her preconceived idea of love. Charles is absolutely in love with Emma and would do anything for her but she does not feel the same way about him due to her fairytale idea of love. It seems as if she is not capable of separating her real life romances from the romance novels that she read when during her time at the convent.