An Analysis of the Film Clueless
Amy Heckerling’s movie Clueless focuses on an upper middle class 16-year-old girl, Cher, who lives in a nice neighborhood with her father and stepbrother, Josh. Cher and her friend, Dionne, take in a new girl, Tai, to help her fit into their high school. All of the major characters in the movie are in adolescence, which ranges from 10-19 years of age. In adolescence, teenagers undergo cognitive and emotional development. According to Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory, adolescents are in formal operational period from 11-20 years of age. During this period, adolescents develop abstract thinking and rational decision making. They experience two aspects of adolescent egocentrism, imaginary audience
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Cultural differences include when Cher mentions coke with her lunch and Tai thought she meant the drug coke, also known as cocaine, instead of the beverage coke. Because Cher comes from an upper middle class background, her upbringing, culture and language are different. Tai, on the other hand, comes from a middle class background and coke, short for cocaine, is a common street word. Therefore, the different backgrounds and upbringings cause word confusion between the girls. There is social class difference among the group members present in the film. In the beginning of the film, Tai shows interest in Travis, a skateboarder, but Cher directs Tai’s interest toward the rich, popular boy in school, Elton. Cher is trying to mold Tai into someone who she thinks is acceptable and she believes that her end-results are too good for a mere skateboarder. Cher looks down on the other group because of their lack of money and their different interests. Social class is determined by “educational attainment, income level and occupation status” (Peterson, 2010). Out of these three major components of social class, income level plays a major role in the high school social hierarchy. Elton is supposedly a better match for Tai just because his family is …show more content…
When Tai falls down the stairs, she feels embarrassed and self-conscious. She feels like the imaginary audience is judging her. The imaginary audience is an aspect of egocentrism where one feels like everyone is watching him/her and listening to his/her conversation. This is common in adolescence because when the teenager starts developing their own identity, they tend to focus a lot on themselves and become somewhat self-centered. Adolescence is also the time when emotions run wild. Emotions are affected by hormones such as “estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone that are produced by the gonads” (Kulkarni, 2015). In the film, when Cher mislabels the August files with September files she becomes embarrassed and starts crying for damaging her father’s case. Her emotions are running freely in this scene because the hormonal changes cause the situation to affect her
Throughout Baby’s life she has experienced many cases where she has lost her innocence. Baby is young enough to bring her dolls around in a vinyl suitcase, yet old enough to experience more than she should about the world’s hardships. Baby and Jules had a lot of misfortunes in their life, and Baby’s vulnerability contributes to her misfortune, in being unable to differentiate between right and wrong, due to her desire to be loved; which Jules always failed to show her. There are many reasons why young adults feel the need to grow up fast in the adulthood world but in the end it’s not worth it. The childhood stage is overlooked and that’s the most important stage of life that young adults should cherish, because you only live through it once.
The movie, The Outsiders, starts with the Curtis parents on their weekly, Saturday evening drive to the baking store to buy some ingredients for their boys’ favorite Sunday morning, breakfast treat: chocolate cake. The Curtis boys love their chocolate cake for Sunday breakfast not only because they love it, but also because they appreciate how hard their parents have to work to save the monies necessary for the morsels that put smiles on their faces!
Can you recall the very last night that you spent with your high school buddies before packing your bags and leaving for college? The films American Graffiti and Dazed and Confused bring you back to that through the recreation of those great experiences. American Graffiti is based on a closely-knit group of teenagers who will all be leaving each other the next day for new adventures. This gang of teenagers, despite their differences, all goes out together and share their last memorable evening. Throughout the night, friendships are strengthened, conflicting struggles arise, and romances are created and disrupted. Dazed and Confused dealt about life during wartime – the wartime of high school, where the faculty is irrational, the parents are
Incohesive, long, and dialogue-heavy, Inherent Vice has all the potential to flounder. Yet under the steady (or rather, wild) hands of director Paul Thomas Anderson, the film becomes a psychedelic, incredibly enjoyable ride brimming with wit and melancholy. The film follows Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello (played in routinely magnificent fashion by the now ever-reliable Joaquin Phoenix), and his exploits to help his ex-girlfriend, Shasta Fey (Katherine Waterston, also exquisite) investigate a kidnapping of notorious real-estate billionaire Mickey Wolfmann. From there, the plot descends (or ascends, depending on your perspective of the film) into sumptuous lunacy; a mystery involving the coveted and secretive
This film contains some classic examples of the kinds of real life issues adolescents deal with. Issues such as popularity, peer relationships, family/sibling relationships, sex, and struggles with identity are all addressed in this ninety-minute film.
Every single person on earth has gone through the stage of middle childhood in their lives; it is inevitable. This stage is an important time in an individual’s life as it provides them the opportunity to experience new challenges and to make new friends and relationships. Middle childhood is a time of slow yet steady growth of a person in the aspects of physical, mental, and emotional development. In the movie The Sandlot, the young boys show visible signs of school-age development which include the concept of self-esteem, showing interests in the opposite sex, and overcoming challenges. While there are many other things that imply development in school-age children, these three topics are the most prominent in the film.
The adolescence is proposing questions of self-identity and trying to understand more of self during these years. Mean Girls emphasizes these self-identifications by capturing different cliques and group of people that the high schoolers associate and label themselves as. For instance in the film, Cady is being accepted by Janis and Damian, but they want Cady to engage in a risky behavior by associating herself as “The Plastics.” This plan started out with the intention of trying to find out more high school secrets and to humiliate “The Plastics,” but Cady turned more like them as she received more acceptance by them. Mean Girls demonstrates not only the sense of self emerging during the adolescent age, but the struggles of all it takes to find a sense of self-identity. Cady eventually put her relationship with Janis and Damian, parents, and acquaintances of school on the line by trying to maintain her “Plastic”
Recently, there is a spike of historical films being released lately. One of the films is an Academy Award nominee for “Best Picture,” Selma. The film, Selma, is based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches. The film shows the struggles of the black community face with the blockage of their voting rights and the racial inequality during the civil rights movement. Selma is about civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. heading to the rural Alabama City, Selma, to secure the voting rights for the African American community by having a march to Montgomery. It shows the struggles from what the African American community had to endured during the 1960s. Selma shows a social significance to today’s current events, specifically
Before the civil rights movement could begin, a few courageous individuals had to guide the way. Dr. Vernon Johns was one of those individuals. Dr. Vernon Johns was a pastor and civil rights activist in the 1920s. Johns became the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama in the late 1940s. During his time as a pastor, Johns preached many sermons on how African American people were being treated not only in the community but in society. Johns on multiple occasions upset his community through his ideas on social change. Through a sociologist perspective, many sociological concepts were displayed in The Vernon Johns Story. Some of those concepts included: ascribed status, conflict theory, deviant behavior, alienation, and
The film Jack and Jill primary ideas throughout the film evolves around the conflicts and differences between both siblings. The conflict between siblings was the primary reason why I did not find this film funny or saw any humor to it. Firstly, the film’s cheap humor is portrayed through Jill where the standards of a female persona were lowered. This is evident as Jill is often needy, helpless, likes to be the center of attention, and has no filter in which she speaks her mind out. I did not agree to this, as this is not an ideal or pleasant image to give to a woman. In addition, she shows her neediness and helplessness as she longs spending sometime with her twin brother; however, she over exaggerates things and wants to do things with her brother that they use to do when they were kids. I personally think that it is ok to hug your siblings and show them some affection however; Jill takes this affection to another level and wants to cuddle in bed with her twin brother like old times. Cuddling while being adults in their forty’s is just a creepy imagine to see and not funny at all. Moreover, Jill has no filter when she talks
Adolescent egocentrism can occur when teenagers think they have an imaginary audience or think people are more concerned with their appearance and behavior than they really are. In the movie Mean Girls, Regina George, Gretchen Wieners, Cady Herron, and Karen Smith are referred to as the "plastics" by their fellow classmates because of their self-absorbed personalities and glamorous looks. They have a book titled "The Burn Book" in which they talk about everyone in the school in a very nasty way. They believe that these people are concerned with how they look and act at all times. Gretchen Wieners said, "I'm sorry that people are so jealous of me...but I can't help it that I'm so popular." In the beginning of the film, Cady has a very humble personality in which her true friends admire. However, as the movie progresses Cady begins to think that everything she does is important to all of he...
Adolescence is the stage in life when you are no longer a child, but not yet an adult. There are many things that still need to be explored, learned and conquered. In the film Thirteen, the main character, Tracy Freeland, is just entering adolescence. While trying to conquer Erikson’s theory of Identity vs. Role confusion, Tracy is affected by many influences, including family and friends that hinder her development. Many concepts from what we have learned in class can be applied to this character from identity development, to depression, to adolescent sexuality and more. In this film Tracy is a prime example of an adolescent and much of what I have learned this year can be applied to her character.
Keating, D. (1990): Adolescent thinking, in: S.S. Feldman and G.R. Elliott (eds.) At the threshold: The developing adolescent , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 54-–89.
As college professors, do you ever consider exploring the world? Christopher McCandless once stated, “The core of man's spirit comes from new experiences.” This quote resonates throughout the movie adaptation, Into the Wild. Based on a true story in the 1990’s, the film explores a man’s existence and the meaning of life. Although released in 2007, I discovered the movie three years ago through the internet. Instantly, it became my favorite movie. Into the Wild describes an eye-opening adventure, an influential message, and a story that I, and possibly others, can relate to.
This movie starts off as Jordan Belfort, the main character in the movie, losing his job as a stockbroker in Wall Street. After losing his job, he goes and gets a job in a Long Island brokerage room. In the brokerage room, he sells penny stocks. Thanks to him being aggressive in his selling skills, he was able to make a profit. With the new income, he gives his wife a bracelet and she asked him why doesn’t he go after the people that can afford to lose money, not the middle-class people or lower income people. That is when he gets the idea to get a lot of young people and train them to become the best stock brokers.