Clueless is a mid-'90s classic that had fans flocking to the stores for knee-highs and
mary janes.
The romantic comedy featured Alicia Silverstone as the ringleader of a quirky, girl-fronted
clique where malls are as holy as church, and catchphrases are ordinary parlance.
"Ugh, as IF!"
Nowadays, the movie stands out as a relic of the era for its clothes and slang, but
there are still plenty of things that you'll only notice about the film by watching through
a modern lens.
Here's what you might not have noticed about Clueless before.
Even though Cher might be a touch superficial,
Clueless still passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors.
That means that at least two female characters in the movie, with names, talk to each other
about something other than men.
And it happens quite a bit in the movie: Cher talks to Ms. Geist about grades and a
disaster relief effort.
Cher and Dionne talk to Tai about getting a makeover, and often talk about style and
grades with each other as well.
Then there's the scene where Cher and Tai make-up after a fight.
Considering how few movies actually meet this standard, Clueless was a bit ahead of its
time.
But there were also some aspects of the movie that are now pretty cringeworthy, too.
One of the more unpleasant things you notice
about Clueless as an adult is how much of a dirtbag Murray really is, especially to
Dionne.
"He is so possessive."
"Ugh, tell me about it."
Because of him, their relationship is unhealthy to the point of toxicity, even abuse.
He pages her all the time, obsessively worried that she's "jeeping" on him, when he's the
one who's probably unfaithful.
"Perhaps you can explain how this cheap K-Mart hair extension got into the back seat of your
car."
He also calls her "woman" repeatedly even though she hates it, and constantly tells
him to stop.
Then he full on blames her anger on her period, which is pure misogynist nonsense.
"Is it that time of the month again?" [Gasps]
Clearly he doesn't respect women, but Cher
views it a little more simply: "I think they've seen that Ike and Tina Turner
movie just too many times."
While Clueless was relatively progressive
in that there was a fully developed gay character, there are some glaring LGBT stereotypes in
the film.
For example, Miss Stoeger, the PE teacher, is portrayed as a man-hating, butch gym instructor.
"And in the grand tradition of PE teachers, Miss Stoeger seemed to be same-sex oriented."
Cher is only able to get her to change her grade up by telling her that an "evil male"
broke her heart.
Miss Stoeger responds sympathetically, calling men horrible, and saying:
"Don't feel bad, I know.
And you see, they're all like this."
Then there's the issue of Christian, one of the major characters, who's a stereotypical
gay man with his fashion sensibility, dancing skills, art literacy, and good physique.
He's even shown reading a copy of Junky by William Burroughs, a gay literary icon, in
class.
And although the movie's central cast is much more diverse than many of its contemporaries,
Clueless still struggles with social gaffes.
Consider the depiction of the "Persian Mafia," a group of Iranian boys wearing dark clothing
and sunglasses.
Cher points them out to Tai by singling out their ethnicity.
Then there's Lucy, Cher's maid.
She is not well developed as a character, and what time is spent discussing her ethnicity
only comes along as Cher mistakes her for Mexican when she's from El Salvador.
"I not a Mexican."
She doesn't get many lines, and to make matters worse, Cher considers giving her secondhand
expensive outfits as charity.
Elton constantly ignores Cher's boundaries,
literally grabbing and kissing her in the classroom not once, but twice.
Then he deliberately drops the card when they play suck and blow in an attempt to kiss her.
Later, while driving her home, he pulls over and tries to kiss her yet again.
She pushes him off a few times before he gets the memo that she wants him to stop, and eventually
has to get out of the vehicle to stop the harassment.
Making matters worse, her punishment for thwarting an assault is being robbed at gunpoint.
Another irksome element of the movie is how
frequently Cher and her friends obsess about their bodies and how much they eat.
"I feel like such a heffer.
I had two bowls of Special K, three pieces of turkey bacon, a handful of popcorn, five
peanut butter M&M's and like, three pieces of licorice."
Then she laments that her PE class is hardly "aerobically effective."
And she also obsesses about food being fat-free, and tells Dionne that if you cut your food
into smaller pieces, it will help you lose more weight.
Then she forces Tai to work out as part of her makeover, until Tai issues a mea culpa
and refuses to do anymore activity.
For extracurricular reading?
She selects the title Fit or Fat.
Finally, she says she feels "like ralphing" because she had two mocha-chinos, which is
hardly a binge worth lamenting.
Her constant obsession with food is not healthy for her body or her mind.
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