Emma/Clueless

EMMA & CLUELESS

Both Emma in Jane Austen's Emma and Cher in Amy Heckerling's Clueless portray symbolical manifestations and representational products of their social environment. Each of their social contexts are established by the composers' distinctions and parallels of values, ethics, settings and mediums used.

In observing Jane Austen's Emma and Amy Heckerling's Clueless one if forced to observe the paralleled values in both texts. These values assist in confirming the social, historical and cultural contexts within both texts.

A prominent binary in establishing disparate contexts within Emma and Clueless is that of ‘propriety' against ‘equality and expression'. Propriety is a principle issue within Jane Austen's social context of Emma, the correctness and admiration towards ‘wealth' in 1816 is very much observed. This propriety is sustained by the somewhat hierarchal features that the town of Highbury possesses. "The Woodhouses held a high place" within the 19th century social context, superior to that of Ms. Bates, Harriet and Mrs Weston, all of whom possessed a lower fortune. Mr Knightley's perception of Mrs. Weston "She knows nothing herself, and looks upon Emma as knowing everything" testifies the inferior's admiration and regard towards the wealthy and fortunate.

Although the popular, respected character Cher enables the 1995 film to exhibit some aspects of social propriety there are scenes introduced by the composer to swiftly disregard this concept. In Emma the prospect of Harriet displaying disrespect

towards the protagonist would have contravened Austen's social context, whereas Tai's ability to verbalise irreverence towards Cher shows a change in social acceptability, thus social context. Heckerling's introduction of Cher being held at gunpoint, and robbed and Cher being hectored by her father's employee brings Cher to a parity in her social context, more so than Emma.

There is a close affiliation between Jane Austen's concept of propriety and Amy Heckerling's inclusion of popularity, within Cher's school environment. There are some effectively compositoned ( mis-en-scene)shots that communicate to the responders that Cher is respected and admired by her peers. For example, Cher is the vector of the shot when Dyonne, Cher and Tai walk through the school grounds. This makes Cher centred within an entire school shot making her visually the primary focus of the school, thus the most popular. Respect for Cher is also displayed following her debate on the comparison of ‘refugees to her father's party guests'. The fact that her peers applaud and praise such a politically incorrect argument with such high regard emphasises her popularity, verging on propriety.