A Comparison of Jane Austen's Emma and Amy Heckerling’s Clueless
ane Austen’s comedy of manners novel Emma and Amy Heckerling’s ‘teenpic’Clueless, as profound and satirical reflections of Regency England and postmodern America respectively, show how the transformation process can shape and enhance textual, intertextual and contextual meaning. By adapting the genteel, idyllic country society of Highbury to the upper- fast-paced microcosm of modern Beverley Hills, insight is given into the realignment of social values and attitudes towards class, marriage and gender roles over the past two centuries. A variety of literary and visual techniques demonstrates that while some aspects of society have been changed, others have stayed the same.
An aspect of society that is transformed and reflected in both Emma and Cluelessis the rigidity of class and clique structures. Mr Elton, when aware of Emma’s plans to attach him to Harriet, expresses his incredulity through hyperbole: “I never thought of Miss Smith in the whole course of my existence…never cared if she were dead of alive…” He vehemently opposes any notion of romantic attachment to a social inferior, offering a satirical insight into the shallowness and inflexibility of Regency class doctrine. Elton conveys similar class consciousness in his rhetorical questions towards Cher: “Why Tai!? Why Tai!? Do you know who my father is?” A far shot of a blinking neon sign of a clown dwarfs Cher as she is abandoned in the carpark by Elton, symbolising society’s mockery and disapproval of her attempts to undermine a defined systems of classes and cliques. Further inflexibility in class interactions is apparent in Emma’s high modality and contemptuous tone when she claims that the “the yeomanry are precisely the order of people… with whom I feel I can have nothing to do.” However, the socially lower Tai is momentarily popularised at through her ‘near-death’ experience at the mall, shown by her central position in the camera frame when she becomes the focus of Cher’s friends and associates.
An aspect of society that is transformed and reflected in both Emma and Cluelessis the rigidity of class and clique structures. Mr Elton, when aware of Emma’s plans to attach him to Harriet, expresses his incredulity through hyperbole: “I never thought of Miss Smith in the whole course of my existence…never cared if she were dead of alive…” He vehemently opposes any notion of romantic attachment to a social inferior, offering a satirical insight into the shallowness and inflexibility of Regency class doctrine. Elton conveys similar class consciousness in his rhetorical questions towards Cher: “Why Tai!? Why Tai!? Do you know who my father is?” A far shot of a blinking neon sign of a clown dwarfs Cher as she is abandoned in the carpark by Elton, symbolising society’s mockery and disapproval of her attempts to undermine a defined systems of classes and cliques. Further inflexibility in class interactions is apparent in Emma’s high modality and contemptuous tone when she claims that the “the yeomanry are precisely the order of people… with whom I feel I can have nothing to do.” However, the socially lower Tai is momentarily popularised at through her ‘near-death’ experience at the mall, shown by her central position in the camera frame when she becomes the focus of Cher’s friends and associates.