Jane Austen Society of Australia: Study Guide

'Hartfield Moves to Beverly Hills'
Emma IN - Clueless OUT

Williams Phillips

Professor William Phillips is Foreign Professor in the Department of British/American studies at Aichi Prefectural University, at Nagakute-cho (Nagoya), Japan. His interest is increasingly in the study of film and theatre.

Judging solely by the dates when they appeared, 1815 and 1995 respectively, we wouldn't ordinarily think that two works separated by 180 years were likely to have much in common. They both involve writing in the English language, but even there the differences are enormous – but maybe not! Even though the name of Jane Austen does not appear anywhere in the credits for the 1995 film Clueless, from writer/director Amy Heckerling, it soon became widely accepted that Clueless was an adaptation of Austen's 1815 novel Emma. Within weeks of the release and considerable box office success of Clueless, Heckerling was publicly discussing the fact and acknowledging the link between the movie and Austen.

At this point, I would like to put forward four topic areas for your consideration of the film Clueless in relation to its source in the writing of Jane Austen. Obviously the place for you to begin is by reading Emma and watching Clueless. I suggest that order, but it's up to you. If you haven't done either thing before this time, you may want to look through these materials first, to help give you a point of view for your reading and viewing. In either case, if you get really involved, you'll want to keep the book, the video, a notebook, a highlighter and a pen or pencil close at hand.

Setting and Development of Characters
Mysteries
Slang (Language)
Transformations of Men

Setting and Development of Characters

Setting

At first glance Highbury, Surrey in 1814 and Beverly Hills, California in 1995 might not seem to have much in common, but I wonder. Let's explore the transformation of the former into the latter.

A lot of Jane Austen's letters have been preserved. One written to her niece, Anna Austen, gives advice about a novel the younger Austen is writing and indirectly comments on her own choice of the setting of Emma. '…3 or 4 families in a country village should be just the thing to work on.' She continues later in the letter to say. 'You are now coming to the heart and beauty of your book; until the heroine grows up, the fun must be imperfect -- .' This letter dated 9 Sept, 1814 was written just as the finishing touches were being put on Emma.

Extracts from an interview with Amy Heckerling, director of Clueless

Fortunately we also have access to extracts from an interview in which Amy Heckerling discusses the making of Clueless with students at the American Film Institute. This might be a good time to read the interview.

How did Amy Heckerling get the idea to transform Emma into Clueless?
What are the ways in which the society of Amy Heckerling's Bronson Alcott High School is like Austen's large village 'almost amounting to a town' called Highbury?

Let me get you started thinking about that question with this observation. For all their gentility, the society of Highbury is parochial and extremely self-satisfied. I use the word parochial in the contemporary social sense rather than the original religious sense although in Highbury that sense also applies. I would say that the high school society that Heckerling portrays is just the same.

What other qualities do Highbury and Beverly Hills have in common?
Can you locate some of the same features in contemporary Australian society?
The creators of both novel and movie turn a profoundly ironic gaze at the societies they portray. What examples from each can you find of this intensely ironic treatment?
Having located these examples, are they similar in tone and spirit (i.e. comparing Austen and Heckerling)

Characters

The direct parallels between characters in Clueless and Emma are pretty easy to ferret out. You can find discussions of these in several of the sources given in the Resources section.

Emma obviously becomes Cher; Mr. Knightley becomes Josh; Harriet Smith becomes Tai Fraser; and Robert Martin becomes Travis Berkenstock. From there it becomes a little less obvious, and that may be a source of discussion for you. Frank Churchill clearly becomes Christian, but that may not be the whole story. There are some comments and questions which I have chosen to put under the heading of 'Mysteries.'

Here are some questions related to 'characters' like the ones you might want to ask.

How is Miss Geist like Miss Taylor/Mrs. Weston?
How is Miss Geist different?
The Geist/Hall wedding at the end of Clueless is parallel to the Taylor/Weston wedding at the beginning of Emma. This stands Austen's novel on end chronologically. Is that OK?
Is Heckerling's story still 'true' or 'faithful' to Austen in important ways? Discuss your ideas.

Mysteries

Most literary historians recognize Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) as the first great writer of mystery, suspense and crime novels. His novel Basil (1852) established his credentials in that area. With The Moonstone (1868) he is given credit for having created the 'detective' novel.

Much earlier in the 19th century, Emma was one of the first novels to incorporate a number of mysteries. There is no real crime, but it is in its own way, quite suspenseful. Austen, like the writers of all good mysteries, gives clues to the solution of the mysteries. Let me get you started looking for clues and mysteries in Emma and Clueless with partial information.

One of the biggest mysteries in Emma is the really big secret that Frank Churchill has.

What is Frank's secret?
At the ball his father and Mrs Weston host at The Crown, Frank gives the reader a deliciously ambiguous clue to his secret.
Can you find that clue?
The ball is described in Emma, Vol. II, Ch. iii. If we do not know the secret already, I think there is about a 99.9% chance that we will fail to realize, on first reading, that Frank is not telling his listeners the absolute truth.

The parallel in Clueless is Christian's big secret - though this is perhaps obvious to everyone but Cher.

What is Christian's 'secret'?
At the dance party where Christian has taken Cher on their first evening together, there are both verbal and visual clues to Christian's secret.
What are the clues?
Hint, the verbal clue is given by Cher not by Christian. Christian gives us the visual clues.
Have you noticed that Christian's name is a kind of tribute to Jane Austen? In Emma, Frank's name is a kind of pun. Christian's name is a kind of obvious pun as well.
What is the pun? Explain it. Have you noticed that jokes are never very neat once you've explained them?

There are other mysteries in Emma. I think some of them are solved for us while others are not.

Does Heckerling develop her own mysteries? I obviously think so.
Do Heckerling's mysteries pay tribute to Austen? Or...
Do Heckerling's mysteries violate the spirit of Austen?

In order to encourage you to think about it, I'm going to ask a question about one of my favourite mysteries in Clueless.

What has happened to Jane Fairfax in the movie?

All the essays I've seen on the topic say that Jane Fairfax has been eliminated as a character. Don't you believe it! My colleague Louise Heal and I think we have found her in a lot of places in Clueless, and we keep discovering more as time goes by. Like several other characters in Emma, Jane Fairfax may not appear as a primary, separate character, but that doesn't mean she can't be accounted for. Louise and I did a piece for JASNA's Persuasions, which discusses our initial discoveries about Jane.

Can you find others?
Do you think Louise and I are correct or totally wrong? Develop your argument for your opinion.

I think it is not only Jane Fairfax who is taken apart and sprinkled around several places in the story of Clueless. Some of the other main characters in Emma make appearances outside their 'usual' parallels.

Once again, am I right or wrong?
What is your evidence for your opinion?

Let me give you an example. Most commentary says that Murray and Dionne (or at least Murray) are added to the story. However, I think they serve here and there as several of the characters in Emma. Here's just one of my ideas. I think I've found a place in Clueless where Murray represents John Knightley, the husband of Emma's sister Isabella. (Hint: Think of Christmas Eve at the Westons.)

Can you find the place?

Slang (Language)

A list of slang and expressions from Clueless

Every time I watch Clueless, I am struck by the way in which the 'slang' used by the characters seems in most cases to be right up to date (for California, 1995). Yet, I am also struck by the durability of some of the expressions, recalling that they had currency 40-50 years ago when I was in my teen age years.

It is characteristic of most slang that it is very 'period' specific. Slang comes and goes in any language – usually driven by the more youthful members of a 'speech community.' Let me give you an example from Japanese slang of just over a decade ago. This bit of slang came from a visit to Japan by the first Bush who was President of the U.S. (in office from 1989 to 1993). In a dreadfully embarrassing moment, President Bush became quite ill at a state dinner and threw up onto the lap of the distinguished Japanese gentleman seated next to him. For six months after that, young Japanese speakers were using 'bushu-suru' (literally 'do a Bush') to mean 'vomit in public'. It disappeared just as quickly as that President Bush did. My guess is that if 'bushu-suru' re-entered Japanese slang today, it would mean something very different.

No doubt all this slang tells us something about the society in which Clueless is set (high school society in Beverly Hills in the mid-1990s).

Here are some questions that you might be interested in considering.

What does it tell us about Amy Heckerling (and her associates)?
What, if anything at all, does it have to say about Jane Austen?
What questions might it prompt us to ask about Austen's work?
Does Austen use any language comparable to slang?

I'll suggest some lines of thinking related to a couple of these questions. With regard to the first question, I was interested in the use of some much more durable expressions, or at least ones which had origins considerably in the past. I wondered if these were really used by teenagers in 1995 or possibly reflected Heckerling's own background in the New York Boroughs of Bronx and Queens and at the arts high school she attended in Manhattan when she was a teenager herself.

Three usages popped out at me from the screen:

Dionne says that she's 'kvelling.'
Christian makes a request to Cher, 'Cadge me a fin, I'll pay you back.'
Cher says that she might 'ralph'.

Are any of these terms among expressions you use? Maybe the third, eh?
Let's look at them one by one.

The first is a Yiddish word. Under the influence of a large Jewish population, many of whom have Yiddish speaking ancestors who immigrated from eastern Europe, American English has been enriched by a great many Yiddish words or particularly American variations on Yiddish words.

'Kvelling' means to be kind of excited or wound up by something. It's use would seem to me to be much more likely coming from Heckerling, herself, given her background, than from the character Dionne. However, it has been argued that Cher is Jewish - Dionne may have picked up the expression from her. What do you think?
'Cadge me a fin.' Cadge is a word that has been around in most dialects of English for a long time. It's meaning along with the following promise may represent a comment on the character of Christian. 'Fin,' as you could guess from the 'I'll pay you back,' and Cher's action, has something to do with money. It is an expression going back at least 60 or 70 years meaning an American $5 bill. Here again, it is most likely from Yiddish. The Yiddish word for 'five' transliterates as 'finef.'
'Ralph' meaning to vomit had currency in the speech of my peers going back at least to the time I was about 10 or 12. The onomotopoetic quality makes me think it probably goes back a very long way.

These three expressions from Clueless make me think of these additional questions related to questions 1-4 at the beginning of this section.

When Heckerling has Christian say 'Cadge me a fin, I'll pay you back,' I think this is a comment on his character. I think it has direct parallels in Austen's development of the character of Frank Churchill. Can you find comparable things in Emma? Other places in Clueless? Discuss your findings.

The following questions are pretty tough. I'm not sure how I would go about trying to discuss them. But here they are anyway.

Is the use of these expressions by Heckerling just an imposition of her linguistic history on the story she has written?

or
Are there places in Emma where Austen has characters say things that are more like Austen would say, that that particular character might say, or are used for Austen's particular purposes? If you can write an interesting analysis of this question, you can probably get it published and 'ace out' your university professors.

A number of expressions used by Cher in Clueless, suggest a rather high level of cultural sophistication. Here are a couple of examples.

At the college dance,

(Tai spots Elton dancing with Amber.) Oh, my God, Cher, look. He’s going with Amber?!

CHER                    No, he’s probably just dancing with her.

TAI                         Do you think she’s pretty?

CHER                    No, she’s a full on Monet.

TAI                        What’s a Monet?

CHER                    It’s like a painting, see? From far away, it’s OK, but up close, it’s a big old mess. Let’s ask a guy. Christian, what do you think of Amber?

CHRISTIAN          Hagsville.

Cher has seemingly invented an expression whose meaning depends on an understanding of the art of French Impressionist painter Claude Monet (1840-1926).
In the same vein, she has already praised Tai's beauty to Elton by saying that Tai is like 'a Botticelli chick' a reference to Florentine painter Sandro Boticelli (1445-1510).

(Elton approaches.) .

ELTON            Cool picture.

CHER            Doesn’t she look classic?

ELTON            Yeah, this is beautiful.
CHER     She looks like one of those Botticelli chicks.

However, this is the same young woman who later shows Christian around her father's pool side art collection. When Christian recognizes a piece as being by 20th century Swedish-American sculptor, Claes Oldenburg, Cher bats her eyes and says 'he's way famous!'

What does this say about Cher's personality?
Is there an accurate parallel here with the way Austen draws the personality of Emma? Draw on evidence from the movie and the novel to argue for an opinion about this.

I'd like to bring up two more expressions from Clueless that intrigue me. A great looking guy is called a 'Baldwin' while a great looking woman is called a 'Betty.' The former obviously comes from the popular, handsome acting brothers of the mid-90s with the surname Baldwin. This usage is obviously time-bound. Already, only seven years after the making of the film, the Baldwins, while still popular actors, are a bit 'long in the tooth' still to be used in that way.

By contrast, the term 'Betty' probably comes from Betty Grable, a movie sex symbol of the 1930s and 40s. (See 'Slang and Expressions from Clueless')

What does this 50-60 year difference in the source of the expressions indicate, if anything?
Are there differences in the way the looks of men and women are discussed in Emma?
What are the differences in the importance of good looks, grooming and fashion in Emma and Clueless? Are they really different, or quite similar? Hints: (1) Compare Emma's reaction to the fashion sense of Mrs. Elton with comments Cher makes about Amber here and there in the film. (2) Find places where Frank - Christian buys something in leather.
Can you find words in Emma that are used in a sense that seems to be different from the way we use them today in ordinary speech?
Can you locate parallel expressions in the language of Clueless?

Transformations of Men ~
Jane Austen, Amy Heckerling and Men.

We don't need to spend a lot of time on this topic, but I think the question of the portrayal of men by Jane Austen is interesting. There is a kind of a belief floating around that like 'not eating quiche,' REAL MEN don't read Jane Austen. I think that is 'errant nonsense' (to borrow a phrase which Austen gives to Mr. Knightley in Emma).

Did Jane Austen create 'real men'? She certainly created men that women in the late 20th and early 21st centuries find interesting.
Do her men have any relevance for contemporary men?
How could an unmarried, genteel 18th/19th century lady like Jane Austen know anything about men anyway?
How does Heckerling transform the Austen men into the Clueless men?
Are there qualities in the men in Clueless that combine characteristics of the men in Emma?

Try Your Hand

Here is a suggestion for a bit of creative transformation on your own part. Pick a favourite scene from Emma. You should try to make it one which can stand on its own as an independent story. Then try writing your own story or script in which you transform it into a contemporary Australian setting.

Here are a couple of things that I thought might work - or be fun to try.

(1) The source is the Weston's Christmas Eve gathering and the subsequent 'proposal-rejection' scene between Emma and Mr. Elton. Set that story in the context of a contemporary office Christmas party in a large Australian city. Given December in Australia, you might have fun changing the context from a snowy winter evening to a sweltering summer night.

(2) Another segment from Emma could the outing to Box Hill. My first idea was to set that story as a day trip to the Blue Mountains by a Sydney motorcycle club. There are bound to be comparable characters (Emma, Frank, Miss Bates, Mr. Knightley, the Eltons) in almost any group.

I'll wager that you can come up with something delightful of your own. Have fun finding a scene and transforming it.

Prof. William Phillips

'Hartfield Moves to Beverly Hills' Emma IN - Clueless OUT