As If!

Natalie Bigelow
Professor Limbrick
Ben Schultz-Figueroa
Film 20A
December 5, 2012

As If!

Despite its title, Amy Heckering's Clueless (1995) demonstrates an important consciousness of voyeurism and objectification on screen. Unlike other American teen films, Clueless appropriates and subverts Laura Mulvey's concept of the male gaze for its own purposes by placing the film's narrative in the hands of Cher, a highly self-aware teenage girl. A modern interpretation of Jane Austen's classic Emma, this film constructs the young female perspective through visual and narrated references to women as objects and men as viewers. The film expresses this voyeurism in three ways: as an inherent part of cinema viewership itself, as narrative male gaze on female characters, and as female reciprocation and manipulation of that gaze.
The most important way we're directed to the male gaze is through the film's cinematography. The camera tracks, pans and frames the female body obsessively. Multiple shots glorify the female physique: from getting dressed in the morning to receiving her weekly massage, we as viewers are shown why Cher is such an object to be desired by the males in her life. The film is far from gratuitous, but it paints Cher and friends as Barbie dolls, to be dressed, undressed and dangled in front of guys. The film as a whole is about constructing the female image: there are endless scenes showing stripping, shopping, choosing outfits, applying makeup, and various sundry stages of the grooming process. Since the film is set in Los Angeles, there are several snide references to the plastic surgery epidemic: girls all over the school sport bandages on their noses and chins from recent operations. Cher informs the audience that even her mother was a victim of cosmetic surgery, as she died during a "routine" liposuction when Cher was a child. The film's endless visual allusions to the female body force the audience to pay closer attention to the women on their screen.
Although this film is beyond clearly a "chick-flick," with female protagonists and all the accessories (makeovers, shopping, boys), it still falls into the inherently voyeuristic nature of cinema, perpetuating the issue of the male gaze even if there are few males in the film's intended audience. There are numerous, albeit relatively minor, shots that include seemingly unnecessary nudity. In the beginning of the film, Cher dresses herself for school, showing both a physical and a virtual representation of herself in underwear. About 40 minutes into the film, Cher is shown receiving a massage, shirtless, for a narratively irrelevant 9-second slow zoom out. The shot following is typical of the high school film genre – a locker room shot which includes multiple women in the background in various states of undress. They are out of focus and headless, the bodies serving as props dedicated to constructing this cinematic world of womanhood. The scene ends with another headless woman in a bra crossing the screen in front of Cher and her friends, serving as a human film transition.
The objectification of women by the camera isn't limited to these random peepshows; the female appearance is central to the film's narrative and is consistently addressed by Cher and her crew. When Ty first transfers to the school about 21 minutes in, the camera pans slowly up her baggy, earth-toned outfit as Cher and Dion discuss her as a potential project, essentially treating her like a toy for them to play with and mold to reflect male desire. The blocking in this scene is essential: Cher, Dion and her classmates are all casually leaning against the fence, hips cocked and legs open, while Ty wobbles nervously from foot to foot, waiting for their overwhelming influence.
Despite the camera's consistently male judgment, there are multiple instances where Cher (and therefore the audience) is aware of the degrading effects of the male gaze, and turns it on its head. First, Cher's internal dialogue is partially directed at the audience. She asks questions of the viewer, pausing before answering them herself. Her commentary gives us direction in viewing the film, and much of that commentary is critical of how men appraise her and her friends. Toward the beginning of the film, Cher walks in her high school courtyard as boys weave around her, staring at her, one even daring to put his arm around her. Meanwhile, she narrates: "High school boys are like dogs. You have to clean them and they're just like these nervous creatures that jump and slobber all over you." Throughout the film, Cher degrades the males around her – her stepbrother Josh is "granola breath," popular boy Elton is "a snob and a half," and the rest of the boys at school are sloppy and unworthy of her time. She calls boys out for staring and harassment, in many cases by physically fighting them off. The audience is given unadulterated access to Cher's world, and included with that is Cher's very obvious distaste for disrespectful men with their staring eyes and grabby hands. These narrative statements seem to draw more attention as a potential message than the camera's distinctly male eye.
In the film, Cher is painted as a kind of puppet master in girl world. Her main joy in life is manipulating the lives of others through matchmaking and makeovers, from her teachers to her friends. As her closest confidante, Dion, says: "It gives her a sense of control in a world full of chaos." Cher is very aware of how she looks, how her friends look, and how their appearances affect the people, especially the boys, around them. Cher herself even practices the male gaze, by evaluating herself and her friends in the context of male appreciation. Though Cher is superficially critical of how she and her friends are treated by boys, she cannot help but perform for them. She knows how to appropriate the male gaze in her favor – this is clear when she begins her campaign to seduce Christian, advising the audience that "anything you can do to draw attention to your mouth is good," and that "sometimes, you need to show a little skin." She intentionally knocks her pencil to the ground to give Christian – and the audience – a chance to stare at her bare legs, which fill the screen as the camera pans slowly up. Later, on her first date with Christian, Cher's short, tight dress and dramatic descent down the stairs gives the viewer (and the three male characters present) an unadulterated view of her "stems," a walk planned and filmed distinctly for that purpose.
The film not only uses Cher's experience to call attention to the omnipresent male gaze, it reverses it at times, especially when Cher and her friends objectify the waiter at the mall food court. As he passes by, Cher, Dion and Ty all flutter, the latter audaciously pronouncing "Ooh, baby, break me off a piece of that!" as if he were nothing but candy. Cher and Dion then proceed to debate whether he's muscular enough and therefore "doable." Here, the camera focuses solely on the girls, switching between the three as they express their preferences, implying that their opinions on muscle size and phallic shape are all-important. This is one of the more empowering shots of the film.
Finally, the film calls the audience's attention to cinema's inherent spectatorship through camera perspective. In one scene about 30 minutes into the film, Cher takes a series of pictures of her friends. The perspective shifts from Cher's first person – handheld camera movement, facing her friends as she frames them for photos – back to the third person shots of Cher holding the camera. As the main character becomes the camera operator, the audience steps into her point of view, involving us in the film more actively. This scene and Cher's narration throughout the film come close to breaking the fourth wall, reminding the audience that we are voyeurs watching every move, no better than the boys in the film who admire Cher and her friends.
The American teen film is a fairly straightforward genre – set in high school, featuring clique politics, cheerleaders, locker room scenes, parties, romances and parental drama. Clueless provides a new twist on that stereotype by exposing the extent of male harassment within the narrative, even while perpetuating the existence of the male gaze in its own shots. Though Clueless is far from an outlandish feminazi-esque outcry about objectification, it's not as superficially airheaded as it appears. Clueless allows us to step into a world few of us experience but many of us are familiar with; the life and times of a piece of eye candy. However, even that piece of eye candy has feelings and opinions that demand respect and reception, as the filmmakers so thoroughly remind us, through the carefully constructed dialogue of the character Cher. The transparency given to this "secret" cinematic world reminds the audience of their generally unconscious participation in cinema as a spectator sport.