I love reviewing books for Biff Bam Pop!, but especially a book about this Granny’s favourite female empowering teen film, Clueless.
Ugh! As If! Clueless
You might find it strange to learn that this seventy-eight-year-old great granny is a huge fan of Clueless. In fact, I bet you would be surprised to learn that I watch Clueless whenever I find it streaming on one of the many cable stations in my home. I know why I love the film, which I will explain at the conclusion of this review, but it was refreshing to read Veronica Litt’s reason for her respect for the film.
Clueless (for those of you who have never seen the film) was and still is a brilliant look at teen life, femininity and expectations of the late 1990s. The film, written and directed by Amy Heckerling and starring Alicia Silverstone, Paul Rudd, Brittany Murphy, Dan Hedaya, and Stacey Dash, takes place in Beverly Hills and is a loose adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel, Emma.
Veronica Litt delves into her take on what Clueless represented when it first premiered, and what it continues to represent today. At first glance, the film and its main character, Cher (Alicia Silverstone), appear to be a teen fluff film. Still, to the discerning eye, Clueless is a masterpiece that explores friendship and personal growth. Cher is learning about her own feminine power as she also maneuvers through the social aspects and responsibilities of the 1990s obsession with power and wealth. Veronica Litt offers delightful behind-the-scenes info and her observations on why the film wasn’t taken seriously by the media. Was it because it was seen as a movie only for women and girls?
Interview with Veronica Litt
Gilbert: Hi, Veronica. I absolutely loved the book, and I am a Great-Granny who will watch Clueless whenever it’s on Netflix. What is your favourite part of the film?
Veronica Litt: Thank you so much! I’m so glad that you enjoyed the book. It’s hard to narrow down one single part of the movie because the dialogue is consistently stellar. Amy Heckerling’s use of language is so brilliant and unexpected. If I had to choose just one standout scene, I have to go with Tai Frasier’s iconic line “You’re a virgin who can’t drive.” Frankly, Cher deserves the reality check after the way she treated Tai, plus there’s a charming behind-the-scenes angle too. Apparently, when Brittany Murphy filmed the scene, she was herself a virgin who could not drive. Bless.
Gilbert: How has this film changed your outlook on life in general?
Veronica Litt: Ultimately, I see Clueless as a movie that insists on our capacity for goodness and change, symbolized through Cher’s arc. Cher starts the film as a sweet but oblivious girl whose focus is solely on herself and her social standing (she’s popular and beautiful, and she’d like to stay that way). She ends the film with a new, necessary focus on her community; think of how she chairs a relief fund for victims of a natural disaster, how she treats her friends and family with renewed tenderness and attention. This is a hopeful and open-hearted idea—that unlikely people can change and contribute to their worlds. I treasure that message because I (personally) need to be reminded that my life can contribute, in some small way, to the bigger work of cultivating goodness and justice. I often feel overwhelmed by current events and I appreciate the reminder that giving into despondence and cynicism will do no good. We have to believe a better world is possible and try to make it so.
Gilbert: As a teenager who graduated high school in 1964, I saw many similarities in Clueless that tied in with my own awareness of what was happening in my world at the time of my teen years: women’s liberation, Civil rights, and eventually protesting the Vietnam War. Do you feel that Clueless could be used as a mirror to what could have been as to what is happening in our country right now?
Veronica Litt: I’m going to answer your question in a bit of a meandering way, so here we go. During Trump’s 2017 “Muslim Ban,” a particular protest sign went viral. It featured a quote from Clueless where Cher, discussing a refugee crisis, insists that America must be hospitable: in her words, “It does not say RSVP on the Declaration of Independence.”
In the film, this is one of Heckerling’s signature satiric barbs. On the one hand, Cher seems so naive. She’s talking about geopolitics through an extended comparison to her dad’s 50th birthday party. How could her speech make sense? Like, what is this girl talking about? But at the same time, Cher is clearly in the right. Her childish innocence lets her cut through political PR speak; she insists on a more essential moral truth: that when people need aid, the right thing to do is help them.
I see this scene as modelling how to grapple with systemic injustice. Zoom out from the 24-hour news cycle and frequently indecipherable speeches by politicians, and ask, is this right or is this wrong? So often, politicians pay hollow lip service to ongoing crises (“thoughts and prayers”) while contributing to the exact same crises (the Canadian government’s avowed commitment to Truth and Reconciliation standing side by side with the country’s failure to provide something so basic as clean drinking water to multiple Indigenous communities, Canada’s loopholes for exporting arms to Israel amid the destruction of Gaza, I could go on).
So, for me, I find this little scene to be surprisingly powerful. In it, Cher takes a massive global issue and clarifies its moral stakes. I think that is something that still resonates with viewers, especially when political discourse can be so fraught and incomprehensible. That desire for moral clarity is still relevant, as seen in the protest sign that began this answer.
Gilbert: What are you working on now?
Veronica Litt: It’s a 180-degree turn for sure. I’ve gone from this optimistic project to a project that grapples with evil. I’m working on a piece of cultural criticism on villains in literature and popular culture. I want to understand how books and media reflect and shape social taboos. I’m sketching out villain archetypes like the sympathetic villain (Killmonger from Black Panther), incomprehensible evil (Michael Myers from the Halloween franchise), and the sexually attractive villain (Joe Goldberg from You) and investigating how they shape readers’ and viewers’ own ideas of morality.
You can order ‘Ugh! As If! Clueless’ from our friends and ECW Press here.