The Curious Case of Clueless

GayAsXmas (whose handle always makes me smile) thinks it was a mistake that I didn't peg the beginning of the contemporary canon to Clueless. He and I discussed this in comments, but I wanted to pull it up because it was something I thought about a great deal in writing the piece. He argues:

Clueless was one of the first to bring a sense of absurdity to the idea of High School Cliques (remember Cher and Dionne bringing Tai around the school and showing her the different groups) and to give a sense that they were permeable. Both Cher and Tai move amongst the various cliques during the course of the movie and eventually find a greater sense of happiness and community in comingling them all.

I think this is sort of true, but not entirely. Clueless, unlike 10 Things I Hate About You, hews very closely to the plot lines of its source material, which means that ultimately the former has to rely on a fairly rigid understanding of social class. Cher and Dionne's tour of the high school ultimately isn't about deconstructing cliques; it's about reaffirming their own place in the social hierarchy, something neither of them ever relinquishes, even as Cher becomes friends with a somewhat broader group of people. Like Emma, she remains firm in her sense of her own status, if not her behavior. And like Emma, the movie's happy conclusion comes when Cher acknowledges that Tai belongs with a guy she initially dismissed as beneath her new friend--in other words, when she acknowledges that she can put new clothes on Tai and give her some exciting-sounding experiences, but that she's never really going to be anything but the girl who draws Marvin the Martian and crushes on a skateboarder.

Which is, you know, fine. There's a lot to be said for people being themselves and being happy, particularly if said people are teenagers. But it's not an argument about the malleability and artificiality of cliques. And while the movie has Cher do some volunteering, the characters don't really have after school activities.

I think Clueless is a masterpiece, I really do. But I also think it's a transitional movie. You can't have 10 Things I Hate About You or Mean Girls without Clueless. Those movie advanced and updated the vision of high school that Clueless helped bring out of the 1980's. So bless Amy Heckerling for her role in ushering in a new and great dynasty of teen movies. I fear the kids growing up with High School Musical have no such patron saint. I guess these are dark days.