Shallow and in Vogue

Clueless is the tale of a vapid, materialistic yet lovable fifteen year old from Beverly Hills. The fact that she cares more about ruining her Aliia dress while being mugged than the gun to her head would be grounds to throw this into the heap of other repulsive teensploitation films were we not supposed to be gawking at her valley-girl tendencies. Her vapidity is easier to laugh at than aspire to; we learn to closer align ourselves with Josh, her ex-step-brother, the smart college "mope-rock" fan who initially terrorizes Cher by making her feel guilty of her ignorance of Central American geography and general self-involvement. We sympathize not with Cher, the whining, well dressed, driver's test failure, but with Josh who suggests sterilization to Cher and her driving instructor who is unmoved by her weak attempt at justifying multiple-near accidents. In the end, Cher sheds her narcissistic tendencies for a less-self involved perspective, but not her Calvin Klein slip dress; while Cher does evolve, she stays true to herself. At one point Cher corrects Josh's smug college girlfriend about a Hamlet quote: she knows that Polonius said "to thine own self be true" because she remembers Mel Gibson.
The fact that this 1995 movie spawned an entire lucrative franchise of admiration of vacant female idiocy is admittedly extremely unfortunate*, but the fact that people have made a "career" out of being the "before Chers" is a sign more of our dim-witted culture than the vapidity of the film. But even Cher herself is from a long-gone era: Clueless was based on Jane Austen's Emma.


*Follow the above links with caution. They were meant to serve as useful glimpses of the depravity and uselessness of American contemporary culture, but now all I can think about is hyperreality and wonder why I even got up this morning.