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Hollywood High:!
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Class Society and the Ideology of Conformity in High School Film!
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Sophie Jansen!
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25 June 2015!
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Supervisor: Dr. A. Tseronis!
Second reader: Dr. K. Darmoni!
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Media Studies: Film Studies (MA)!
Universiteit van Amsterdam!
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Table of Contents!
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Table of Contents!
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Introduction!
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Chapter 1: Teen Film and High School Film!
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1.1 The Rise of the Teenager!
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1.2 Early Teen Film!
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1.3 The Influence of John Hughes!
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1.4 High School Film!
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1.5 Concluding remarks!
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Chapter 2: High School Society!
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2.1 The Structure of the High School Society and the Value of Popularity!
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2.2 Means of Gaining Popularity!
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2.3 Concluding Remarks!
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Chapter 3: Language is, Like, Way Important!
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3.1 Social Distinction through Language!
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3.2 ‘As if!’: Slang and Characterisation in Clueless!
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3.3 ‘I Will Totally Shoot You in the Head:’ World-building through Language Use in
Clueless!
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3.4 ‘You can’t sit with us:’ Distinction through Language in Mean Girls!
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3.5 Concluding Remarks!
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Chapter 4: Individualism and Conformity!
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4.1 The American Culture of Individualism!
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4.2 Urban and Suburban High School Films!
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4.3 Parents and Teachers as Antagonists and Advisers !
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4.4 The Value of Education!
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4.5 Individualism or Conformity?!
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4.6 Concluding Remarks!
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Conclusion!
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Works Cited!
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Introduction!
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‘That’s what I love about these high school girls man. I get older, they stay the same age.’ Those words, uttered by Matthew McConaughey in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (1993) are as much comedic as they are true when it comes to the genre of the teen film. Ever since its emergence in the early 1950s, this genre has managed to keep teenagers entertained for many generations. It is not an aesthetically innovative genre but it is of major importance when it comes to the portrayal of adolescence in popular culture over the past six decades (Driscoll 2). Moreover, I believe that the teen film is one genre that serves as a great showcase of the ways in which Hollywood imposes its ideologies on its audience. According to Neale’s exploration of the genre in his standard work Genre and Hollywood, the defining characteristic of the teen film is that it presents a rite of passage between childhood and adulthood, in which the main character has to battle with the expectations that parents, teachers or peers have of him or her. He also claims, quoting Hay (1990) that in the way the genre deals with these processes and conflicts, dominant generic forms are inflicted or reworked (123). What Neale proves here is that the teen film is ultimately a product that is a combination of teenager’s doubts and conflicts, presented in a way that reflects a dominant Hollywood ideology. Ideology consists of, according to Pramaggiore and Wallis, the assumptions about the way the world is or should be that can be found in film, saying that there is no such thing as a neutral film (310). !
! For this thesis, I have decided to direct my focus toward a sub-genre of the teen film: the high school film. The main reason I have chosen to select this sub-genre in order to conduct my research is that it consists of a group of films which are all set in and around the same location, that of the high school, a location in which people bridge the gap between childhood and adulthood and in which Hollywood similarly bridges the gap between films intended for children and for
adults. Moreover, I believe that whereas the real life high school’s most important characteristic is that of a place in which young people are educated (amongst other things) the values of the society they live in, the high school film serves a similar educative purpose through the ideology it presents. As I will outline further in the following chapters, I believe that the high school as
represented in high school film is a micro-society, which I will henceforth call the high school society. This is a society that is separated from the world outside of it. By posing high schools as micro-societies, high school films draw a parallel between these fictional societies and our own real one. It is through the mirroring of these societies that high school film imposes its own ideology upon its viewers. By analysing the ways in which the high school society is portrayed in these films, I seek to answer the question: What is the ideology that can be drawn from the sub-genre of the high school film? !
similar rite of passage can be detected in the high school film. Therefore, on the surface, the ideology of the teen film and its sub-genre the high school film is that of self-discovery and individualism. However, I believe that the high school film actually presents an ideology of conformity and I will prove this by analysing several high school films. I have selected a body of work consisting of six high school films which I believe to be sufficient representatives of the entire sub-genre, something I will argue more elaborately in chapter one. These films are Clueless (Heckerling 1995), Election (Payne 1999), She’s All That (Iscove 1999), 10 Things I Hate About
You (Junger 1999), Whatever it Takes (Raynr 2000) and Mean Girls (Waters 2004). In the following
chapters, I will establish several characteristics of the high school film and the high school society before establishing what parts of these films to analyse in order to answer my research question. In this analysis, I will focus especially on the ways in which the competing ideologies of individualism and conformity are present in the films, thus drawing a conclusion about which ideology is most present in the sub-genre. By doing this, I will present the ways in which the sub-genre of the high school film is an educational institution which imposes on its viewers an ideology of conformity.! ! This thesis is built up of four chapters, the first of which opens with a brief history of the teen film, its origins and its characteristics. This chapter shows that the genre has had an
educational purpose ever since it originated, a purpose which can still be detected in the ideology represented in the films that are central to this thesis. Next, I will focus on the sub-genre of the high school film and come up with a list of characteristics for films belonging to this sub-genre.
Subsequently, I will present a list of these films, paired with short summaries of their plots. In the second chapter, I argue why I believe that the high school as represented in the sub-genre should be regarded as a micro-society, how this society is built up and why the high school society is an important tool in the way the high school film presents its ideology. In this chapter, I also determine the most important features of the high school society and the way it is built up. Chapter three is dedicated to the analysis of my body of work, based on the features I have established in chapter two. Lastly, chapter four focuses on the ideology of conformity that can be deduced from the high school film sub-genre and the way in which the high school being represented as a micro-society is a vital part of the way in which this conformism is imposed on the viewer. By the end of the thesis, I will answer my research question by arguing that high school films present an ideology of
conformity. !
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Chapter 1: Teen Film and High School Film!
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Until the 1940s, the notion of the teenager did not exist. Surely, there had always been people between the ages of twelve and eighteen, but it was not until this period that members of this age group were classified with the term teenager and that teenage culture came into existence
(Tropiano 20). The first section of this chapter will explain the rise of the teenager, with the second section describing the emergence of teen film that was a consequence of this rise. It will also focus on the manner in which the early teen films of the 1950s imposed an ideology of conformity on their audiences. The third section will explore another period of major importance to the teen film: the 1980s, in which the films of John Hughes were released. This section will explain the difference between the ways in which ideology is represented in early teen films and Hughes’s films. Section four will focus on high school film specifically, and contains the characteristics which I believe set high school films apart from other teen films. It also features a list of the films I have selected as the body of work that is central to this thesis. The conclusion of this first chapter is dedicated to the way in which teen films have changed over several decades but have still conveyed similar
ideologies, though be it in different ways. ! !
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1.1 The Rise of the Teenager!
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In his history of the Hollywood teen movie, Tropiano presents two reasons for the rise of the American teenager in the late 1940s and early 1950s (20). The first of these two reasons is a social one: During the Second World War, the structure of many American families changed. Fathers went overseas to fight, while mothers worked in factories. This break away from the traditional family pattern allowed for teenagers to develop their own world and culture: old enough to know what was going on with the war, too young to join the army or work, while their parents were suddenly too busy to interfere with their lives. This newfound independence played a major part in the development of teenage culture and once gained, it was never lost again (Tropiano 20). ! ! The second and perhaps most important reason for the rise of teenage culture was an economic one. This reason also explains why teenage culture did not disappear after the war. In the United States, the Second World War was followed by an economic boom, which caused a rise of income and an increasingly bigger middle class. Naturally, this period of economic prosperity was accompanied by a very large rise in consumer spending. This rise was not limited to adults only: teenagers also had more money to spend and a market research by Eugene Hilbert (qtd. in Tropiano 19) showed that a lot of money was to be made on the youth market, since this was a group of consumers that was very sensitive to the power of brand names. Following the discovery
This overflow of products aimed at teenagers caused American youth culture to flourish and naturally, Hollywood did not stay behind (Tropiano 19). !
! This rise of the teen film coincided with the rise of the teenager and the idea of adolescence as a critical period in between childhood and adulthood (Driscoll 12). In her critical analysis of the teen film, Driscoll recognises three other conditions that were crucial to the rise of the teen film as we know it. The first of these are the strict government-imposed systems of classification and censorship that teen films had to fit in with in order to protect their young audience from images and ideas it should not be exposed to. Secondly, there is the idea of the target audience: as presented above, the rise of teen culture was largely based on economic reasons and the same rings true for teen film. According to Driscoll, ‘teen film emerges when the film industry actively solicits a youth market through manipulations of genre’ (13). What she means by this is that the rise of the teen film was very much a top-down construction on which the moneymakers of Hollywood made sure the industry adapted to this new target audience, in order to gain as big a profit as possible. The last condition that Driscoll provides is the rise of institutions, such as high schools, in which adolescence could be managed and analysed. High school attendance
expanded greatly during the 1940s and 1950s and it is this ‘grouping together’ of teenagers in institutions like schools that gave a clearer view of this new audience and provided a grip on this generation, while the growing importance of high school also provided a new setting for teen film. ! ! What the conditions above show is that the emergence of teen film as we know it was largely influenced by outside factors, most notably rules imposed by the government and
Hollywood’s desire to make as much money as possible. Therefore, it can be said that the ideology of teen film was heavily influenced by the ideologies of these two institutions, which wanted to tell the moviegoers to be law-abiding citizens and to spend their money on Hollywood films. It is in these influences that the ideology of conformity can already be detected. !
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1.2 Early Teen Film!
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Besides explaining the conditions for the rise of the teen film, it is also important to come up with a set of characteristics that define the genre, so as not to cause confusion. Tropiano distinguishes three characteristics: Firstly, a teen film should be about teenagers and be directed at an audience of teenagers (22). Secondly, a teen film is first and foremost commercial, produced in order to make a profit (32). Thirdly, teen film is aimed at teenagers, but is made by adults who attempt to project their own values onto the young audience by means of these films (33). These
characteristics fit in with the idea of the rise of the teen film in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a genre that was based on a new age group that was coming into existence. Teen films presented a way in which Hollywood could both make a lot of money and project an ideology of conformity on the newfound audience. !
! ! The earliest teen films can be divided into three major categories, something
Tropiano and Driscoll agree on. These three categories are the juvenile delinquent movie, the teen horror movie, and the rock ’n’ roll musical, with Driscoll naming the first and third categories ‘youth as problem’ and ‘youth as party.’ These classifications underline the relationship between American youth in real life and American youth as portrayed on screen, as well as the relationship between the fictional world represented in film and the ideology it presents to its real world audience. I will now take a closer look at these three categories in order to see whether they present either different ideologies or have one ideology in common. Subsequently, I present more contemporary examples of teen films that fall into these categories, in order to see whether the ideologies represented in them are still present. !
! The first category is one that is centred around troubled youths, or juvenile delinquents, as was the more popular term in the 1950s. During this time, troubled youths were considered an enormous problem, with FBI-director J. Edgar Hoover on the front line fighting ‘the battle against juvenile violence’ (Tropiano 46). Perhaps the most well-known of these films is Rebel Without a
Cause (Ray 1955), in which James Dean portrays the leader of a group of troubled suburban
teens. The release of Blackboard Jungle (Brooks 1955), in which a teacher tries to survive at a violence-ridden high school, was met with a public outcry, with many politicians blaming the film for the increase of juvenile delinquency (Tropiano 48). These complaints were answered with the film’s opening titles, which read:!
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! We, in the United States, are fortunate to have a school system that is a tribute to our ! ! communities and to our faith in American youth. Today we are concerned with juvenile ! ! delinquency - its cause - and its effects. We are especially concerned when this ! ! ! delinquency boils over into our schools. The scenes and incidents depicted here are ! ! fictional. However, we believe that public awareness is a first step toward a remedy for any ! problem. It is in this spirit and with this faith that Blackboard Jungle is produced. (qtd. in ! ! Tropiano 52)!
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As the above quote shows, the studio went out of its way to emphasise that this film was not in any way meant to endorse juvenile uprisings: it was a warning against them. This example shows the way in which Hollywood used teen films in order to project their values on their audience, which in this case means showing it the danger of violence in the classroom and how academic
achievement can provide a break away from a life full of violence and poverty. There are many contemporary examples of the juvenile delinquent category, such as The Basketball Diaries
(Kalvert 1995), in which a boy struggles with drug addiction, Thirteen (Hardwicke 2003), in which a young girl discovers the dangerous world of sex and drugs, and Dangerous Minds (Smith 1995) in
teaching methods, much like Blackboard Jungle. The ideology presented in these films is one of conformity, of following rules and abiding by the law: they present the terrible things that can happen when teenagers behave like rebels. !
! The second category is that of teen horror films, films that mix teen life with supernatural elements in which the main characters literally become monsters (Tropiano 33). Whereas the troubled youths in juvenile delinquent films start wearing leather jackets and take up smoking, the teens in these films literally become monsters, once again showing the dangers of teenage life and not following the rules (see figure 1). Examples of this category are I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (Strock 1957) and I Was aTeenage Werewolf (Fowler 1957). This category has also continued to exist with examples across the decades, such as Carrie (De Palma 1976), in which a teenage girl harms her schoolmates with her telekinetic powers, The Evil Dead (Raimi 1981), in which a group of teens comes across flesh-eating demons and The Faculty (Rodriguez 1998), in which students discover their teachers are aliens. Although the genre survives, it is interesting to note that its focus has shifted: whereas it first focused on teens themselves turned into monsters, more recent
examples such as The Evil Dead and The Faculty show ‘normal’ teenagers encountering supernatural beings. Although the message, warning teenagers of the terrible things that can happen during adolescence, is similar to that of the older teen horror films, there is also a clear difference. Whereas a film such as I Was a Teenage Werewolf show the teens themselves not following rules and becoming monsters, The Faculty sees them entering the environment of the high school where others represent the danger. The students have to fight this danger that is not inside but outside of them. In this case, it is the high school that is a dangerous place, the teenagers themselves do not represent danger. This shift shows that the representation of
teenagers has changed - they are now the heroes. However, the point of focus may have shifted, but that does not mean these films do no longer present an ideology of conformity. The teachers in
The Faculty are dangerous because they are not ‘normal,’ they do not conform to their educational
roles and it is up to the student to right this wrong and bring back balance. Thus, the ideology of conformity remains intact. !
! The third and last category, however, did not survive like the other two did. This is the category of the rock ’n’ roll musical, a sub-genre that was wildly popular in the 1950s with such films as Rock around the Clock (Sears 1956). The premise of these films was based on two pillars: they were usually centred around the music of a popular up-and-coming artist, like Bill Haley or Little Richard, and they tried to help bridge the generation gap between rock ’n’ roll-loving teenagers and their conservative parents (Tropiano 63-5). Although the genre of the musical still exists, it no longer does in the way it did in the 1950s. Across the decades, the sub-genre of the teen musical has transformed into nostalgic films set in the 1950s and 60s, such as Grease (Kleiser 1978), Cry-Baby (Waters 1990) or Hairspray (Shankman 2007). Although these films are generally tributes to the rock ’n’ roll musical, they miss one vital element of the teen film: they are !
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Figure 1: In I Was A Teenage Werewolf, a troubled teen turns into an actual monster!
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not made specifically for teenagers but for a wider audience that can gain nostalgia from these films, even if they were not alive during the time that is portrayed. An example of this is Grease, which features music by popular 1950s artists, such as Elvis Presley and Frankie Valli. A similar category that exists today is that of the dance film, such as Save the Last Dance (Carter 2001) and
Step Up (Fletcher 2006). These are films of which popular music is one of the appeals to draw the
young audience to the cinema. Although this approach is similar to that of the rock ’n’ roll musical in the 1950s, the ideologies presented in both are slightly different. The rock ’n’ roll musical is meant to bridge the gap between parents and teenagers, teaching parents that they do not need to fear the influence of rock ’n’ roll music on their children and teaching children that they can love rock ’n’ roll without having to become juvenile delinquents (Tropiano 63-5). In the contemporary dance film, music is not a means for reconnecting parents and children but for adolescents to discover themselves through dance, outside of parents, teachers and friends who are often bad influences. What this difference between the educational value of the rock ’n’ roll musical and the dance film shows is that the former genre encouraged the young viewers to stay close to parents and friends, while the latter encourages them to express themselves individually through music and dance. This is a trend that can be seen in many teen films and high school films from the past two decades and it is something I will elaborate on in chapter four. !
! What all three of the above teen film categories and their contemporary equivalents have in common is that they present their audience with a certain ideology. In other words, they try to teach the viewers something about the way they should be living and thus contain an educative element. The categories of the juvenile delinquent film and the teen horror film teach their viewers that
thus preaching an ideology of conformity. The same can be said for the rock ’n’ roll musical,
although its contemporary equivalent, the dance film, shows an increased interest in individualism. This does not mean that the ideology of conformity is slowly disappearing from the genre. As the analysis of six high school films in chapter four will show, the ideology of conformity still survives. !
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1.3 The Influence of John Hughes!
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Before moving on to the high school films that I have selected to represent the sub-genre in this thesis, I make a quick intermediate stop at the wildly successful 1980s teen films by director John Hughes. Once again with these films, I search for the ideology that can be found in them, as well as taking a look at their influence on the teen film genre. !
! After the enormously successful period of the 1950s, the second golden age of teen films occurred during the 1980s, when John Hughes directed six films that can together be seen as an exemplary body of work because of which the teen film genre would never be the same again (Kaveney 3). As Driscoll writes: ‘Hughes came to represent 1980s teen film’ (45). What Sixteen
Candles (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), Weird Science (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) and Some Kind of Wonderful (1987) all have in common is the way they
treat white middle class teens and their seemingly petty problems: Hughes’s films take teens’ problems seriously. Although I believe the ideology of conformity that is central to 1950s teen film is just as much represented in Hughes’s films, the way in which it is represented is very different. Whereas the values of conformity in 1950s teen films are expressed in a top-down manner, from parent or teacher to student, Hughes’s films are seemingly constructed from the bottom up, with the teenagers themselves discovering what they should do and who they want to be. Of course, these films are still major Hollywood productions that are built from the top down, but it is the way that the teens are centralised in them that suggests otherwise. As Tropiano writes: ‘What separates the “teen angst” films of the eighties from the teen films from all three decades that preceded them is that they don’t trivialise the issues that are important to teens’ (177). The teens in Hughes’s films have issues that are not recognised by parents or teachers, they have to solve them by
themselves. Thus, these films do not show the teens’ world from the outside, but from within: the teen characters and their lives are central, with the role of parents and teachers being far less important. This approach was very successful: with his films, Hughes activated a new period of great vogue for the teen film, which had decreased during the three previous decades (Tropiano 136).!
! In her book on teen film, the genre whose beginning she actually positions in the 1980s with Hughes’s films, Roz Kaveney writes: !
! The Hughes films (…) created or crystallised many stock expectations and character types ! that we find in the canonical work of the teen genre over the ensuing two decades. The ! ! Hughes films all take place in Illinois suburbs and thus suburbia became one of the ! ! standard expectations; they have a tendency to favour outsiders and underdogs, and so ! ! this became a standard expectation, even when it’s one that is often subverted through ! ! revisionist approaches. (3) !
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The following section features a list of characteristics that I believe high school films show and this list is heavily influenced by the characteristics of Hughes’ films that Kaveney mentions. As can be seen below, all films that I have selected are set in a suburban environment and are concerned with outsiders mixing with popular students. Something else that I believe is vital to the high school film and is very present in Hughes’s films is the existence of several cliques within high school. This is something that is most evident in The Breakfast Club, in which five students from different cliques are forced to spend a day in detention together and discover that they are not so very different after all. And thus, much of the groundwork for my own understanding of the high school film was laid down by Hughes. The characteristics of high school film that I list below, as well as my selection of high school films to represent the sub-genre and the ideology represented in them are heavily influenced by Hughes. Teen films had been taking place at high school long before
Hughes’s films were released, but it is their seemingly bottom-up construction, their large interest in the teens’ worlds and problems and their suburban setting and focus on clique division because of which I believe the sub-genre of the high-school film is really rooted in Hughes’s films.!
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1.4 High School Film!
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Now that I have presented the genre of the teen film, I will turn towards the sub-genre that is central to this thesis: the high school film. In order to establish the borders of this genre, it is
important to make clear what characteristics make the high school film its own sub-genre within the teen film genre, since I have found that a high school setting alone is not enough of a criterion. ! ! The first of these characteristics is that a high school film does not only show students’ lives, but also leaves room for teachers and supporting school staff, such as sports coaches, school nurses and janitors. These need not be main characters but they do need to be real characters, not extras: they should have names, speak lines and be part of the narrative. They should not just exist in the background without ever interacting with the main characters. As chapter two will show, I aim to approach the high school as a society and I believe that in the depiction of this society, all layers of its population should be represented. The teachers and supporting school staff are just as much part of the structure of the high school society as the
! Secondly, there is the issue of locations. Naturally, not all high school films take place at just the school: there are also such locations as the protagonists’ houses or the mall. In order to establish whether the high school is indeed a central location, I have chosen not to come up with a percentage of the film’s running time that should take place at the school and measure this with a chess clock, but instead I have come up with a number of key locations within the high school that should be seen in the film. These locations are: classroom, hallway, cafeteria, locker room and sports facility. I have chosen these particular locations because they are locations in which the difference between the several cliques that exist within the high school (see section 2.1) becomes clear.!
! Thirdly, the population of the school as represented in the high school film should consist of several cliques. I have come up with a number of cliques that should be present in the high school film, based on Bulman’s listing of common teen film characters. These are: the popular boys and/or jocks, the beautiful popular girls, the unpopular nerds and the misunderstood rebels. Besides these cliques, of course there is also the main character, who shifts between cliques, and the main character’s best friend, who is usually but not necessarily an unpopular nerd (Bulman 17). As chapter two will show, it is this clique structure which forms the basis of the micro-society that high school is in this sub-genre.!
! Fourthly, some sort of after school activity, such as sports or art, should be present in the film. This characteristic is necessary in order to establish that the school seen in the film is indeed a micro-society. This society does not end when the bell rings at three in the afternoon nor does its border lie at the school gate; it functions around the clock, and extends beyond the school’s
terrains. This characteristic also encompasses parties that are generally thrown at least once in high school films: although these parties are held at different locations, attendants are generally all students from the same high school and the existing clique structure that the high school society encompasses remains intact, also outside of school.! !
! Lastly, all films I will be discussing hereafter are American. I have made this decision for several reasons. Firstly, America is where teen culture first blossomed and American teen films can thus be regarded as the original teen films. In analysing these films, I will be taking into account that they are part of a long tradition of American teen film that started in the 1950s (Tropiano 19). Naturally, I am well aware that many films about teenagers and their schools were made in other countries, the coming-of-age dramas of the French Nouvelle Vague for example, but I believe these had no influence on the teen films that I will be discussing and analysing here, and therefore I will not take them into consideration. It is also because of this long tradition of American teen films that I believe one common ideology represented in high school films can be detected. As a result of this approach, I plan to connect the ideology I find in these high school films with American culture.!
! With the above characteristics in mind, these are the films I have selected to represent the sub-genre of the high school film in this thesis. Included here are short descriptions of the films’ plots, which can be used as points of reference during the analyses in the following chapters. !
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Clueless!
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Based loosely on the classic novel Emma by Jane Austen, Clueless introduces its viewers to the world of Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone). Cher is a superficial Beverly Hills teen who is obsessed with clothes, playing matchmaker between her teachers and teaching her ‘clueless’ friend Tai (Brittany Murphy) to be more like her. As the film progresses, Cher realises that she might actually be the one who is clueless, while also falling in love with her older stepbrother Josh (Paul Rudd).!
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Election!
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The life of idealistic teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) is turned around when ambitious student Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) runs unopposed in the election for student body council president. Jim resents Tracy for conducting an affair with one of his former colleagues and decides to manipulate popular jock Paul (Chris Klein) to also run. What follows is an election which will ruin Jim’s career as a teacher.!
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She’s All That!
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She’s All That is a loose adaptation of G.B. Shaw’s play Pygmalion, in which a professor bets he
can turn a poor flower girl into a proper lady. In this film, it is popular jock Zack (Freddie Prinze Jr.) who bets his friends he can turn nerdy Laney (Rachael Leigh Cook) into prom queen. As Laney’s transformation progresses, Zack realises he might actually have feelings for her.!
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10 Things I Hate About You!
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A modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, 10 Things I Hate About You is the story of teenage girls Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) and Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles), who live with their overbearing father (Larry Miller). Popular Bianca is not allowed to date unless unpopular and alternative Kat does too, and thus Bianca’s suitor Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) comes up with the plan of paying bad boy Patrick (Heath Ledger) to take Kat out. All characters are occupied with rumours and prejudices, but eventually the relationships between both Kat and Patrick and Bianca
Whatever It Takes !
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In this modern take on Cyrano de Bergerac, two high school boys, one nerd and one popular jock, help each other out with their social skills, since they are both pursuing girls from each other’s clique. Chris (James Franco) is attracted to slightly nerdy Maggie (Marla Sokoloff). He asks her best friend since childhood Ryan (Shane West) to help him win her over and in turn promises to help Ryan connect with Ashley (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe), the most popular girl in school. As both become associated with popular cliques, the friendship between Maggie and Ryan becomes endangered, before they realise who they truly are and that they are really attracted to each other.!
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Mean Girls!
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Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) experiences her first day of school at the age of sixteen. Up until this moment she has been raised in Africa by her zoologist parents. When entering a world full of cliques, bullies and nerds, she discovers that the difference between life at high school and African wildlife might not be so big after all. When the opportunity presents itself, her friends Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and Damian (Daniel Franzese) encourage her to infiltrate in The Plastics, a group of the most popular and meanest girls in school. During her time with The Plastics and especially their leader Regina George (Rachel McAdams), Cady becomes entangled in their world and grows into being the meanest girl of them all, before realising the mistake she made by betraying her true friends Janis and Damian. !
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! Although all of these six films tell fairly similar stories of the power of popularity within the high school society, the respective ways in which they do this are very different. Clueless is largely a parody of teen world, 10 Things I Hate About You presents a world in which teenagers seem more grown up than their parents or teachers, Mean Girls is a comedy based on a guidance book for concerned parents, Election is a mix of comedy and drama by acclaimed director Alexander Payne, She’s All That is mainly focused on bodily transformation and Whatever it Takes warns teenagers for the dangers of betraying true friends. It is this mix of similarities and differences, combined with the fact that all encompass the characteristics I have laid out above, that I think makes this body of films a good representation of the entire high school film sub-genre.!
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1.5 Concluding remarks!
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From their rise in the late 1940s to the present day, teen films have always contained an element of education. The earliest teen films very clearly watched their young audience to conform to the rules of society, warning them of the dangers of deviating. Later teen films have been telling teenagers that they have to really become their own individual selves in order to be truly happy.
Although it seems as though these are two very different ideologies, the following chapters will show that they actually are not. By investigating the way in which high school films present high schools as micro-societies and what they are trying to teach their audience, I will subsequently prove that modern high school films present an ideology of conformity, just as their predecessors did. !
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Chapter 2: High School Society!
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As mentioned above, my approach towards the high school as represented in high school film is that of the high school as a society. Naturally, actual high schools are very much part of American society, having to conform to government-posed rules. Still, I would like to argue that cinema’s representation of high school is that of a separate society with its own laws and power structures. When reading this chapter, it is important to keep in mind that by ‘separate,’ I do not mean that the high school society as presented in high school film is disconnected from the real world. On the contrary: the main goal of this thesis is to prove that the ideology represented in high school film is very much connected to real-life American society. However, what I do mean to emphasise here is that within the high school film diegesis, there is little attention for the world existing outside of the high school; in all of the films I have selected, the film is concerned with the workings of the high school society itself, hardly any room is left for influences from the outside. I believe that this separation is a major way in which the ideology of conformity is conveyed in high school films. By not letting the films take part in the real world but in a separate and independent society, the world represented in the high school film becomes a micro-version of real-life society, thus providing the viewer with a cinematic mirror.!
! In order to paint a clear picture of the high school society and explain what ideology it presents to the outside world, I consider various key aspects of it, thus hoping to provide ample argumentation for the cinematic high school as an independent society. Central to these aspects is the idea that the high school society relies on a structure built up from several cliques, besides the official structure of principal, teachers, supporting school staff and students. I argue that popularity is the factor that distinguishes cliques from one another, while also distinguishing the ranking of individual members within cliques. Subsequently, I look at the means by which popularity can be gained, such as good looks, possession of expensive items and expression of sexuality. The following chapter explores the role that language plays in the high school society and in chapter four I will put the discoveries I have made to use and connect the structure of the high school society to the ideology presented in high school films. !
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2.1 The Structure of the High School Society and the Value of Popularity
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The high school society is one that is built up from and reliant upon a large structure of various cliques. The introduction of these cliques at the beginning of the movie often happens through something that Roz Kaveney calls the anthropology shot: ‘Such shots establish a number of social groups among high school students and pan between them to demonstrate social divisions’ (56). This type of shot can be found in many high school films, including Clueless, 10 Things I Hate
Figure 2: The rastafari clique of Clueless, as shown in the film’s anthropology shot!
Figure 3: The jocks of Mean Girls, as shown in the film’s anthropology shot!
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student arriving at school and receiving a tour of its locations and groups (see figures 2 and 3). This can be clearly seen in Mean Girls, in which Cady is not only given a tour around the school and its cliques but is also presented with a map on which all cliques and their usual tables in the cafeteria are drawn (see figure 4). The second function of the anthropology shot is to make sure the viewer does not forget about the class structure of the high school society that is so central to the film: it is thanks to this shot that in later scenes involving lots of students together, the viewer
Figure 4: Cady’s Map to North Shore High School!
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! As the anthropology shot shows, the structure between cliques is central to the way the high school society is presented, which begs the question: who is in charge here? On the surface, the answer to this question may seem a very simple one: officially, the principal is in charge, followed by the teachers and supporting school staff and at the bottom we find the students, who need to abide by the rules set upon them in order to graduate. It is this graduation that will
eventually allow the students to leave high school society and enter the real world. However, this is a construction that seems to matter very little in high school film. It exists and we see superiors carry out rules over students, but this is never central to the storyline. In fact, whenever characters are punished or graduate, this is more connected to the workings of cliques and to their personal development as characters than it is to the influence of the actual rules of high school. For
example: in 10 Things I Hate About You, Patrick is sent to detention. Kat comes into the detention classroom in order to distract the teacher and liberate Patrick, which is of major importance in the defining of their relationship. Thus, the official school rule is only a means of supporting a major plot line, that of a relationship between students. A similar thing can be seen in Whatever It Takes, in which a group of students becomes obsessed with pulling a large practical joke at their
graduation ceremony. They are apparently not at all concerned with grades or their actual diploma, they want to do something that will impress the members of the high school society, regardless of how to make an impression when it comes to the actual rules. !
! As the examples above show, the official school rules are certainly in power, but when it comes to the films’ narrative, the class structure of the high school society and the rules that come with it are of much bigger importance. There is a law among students that has everything to do
with the class society that the high school society is. It is a law which determines that whoever possesses popularity within the high school society holds the most power. As the anthropology shot shows from the very beginning: the class structure of the high school society is central to its workings. The importance of cliques and the popularity which divides students into them is central to most high school film narratives, which often deal with students trying to become more popular and thus become part of a clique that holds more power. There are several reasons for characters trying do this. Sometimes the cause is love: In 10 Things I Hate About You, Cameron tries to become more popular in order to be closer to Bianca, as does Ryan in Whatever it Takes, when he’s trying to woo Ashley. Other times, students attempt to reach the higher classes of the high school society because somebody else makes them do it: Lacey does not want to switch cliques in
She’s All That but is convinced by Zack, Paul does not want to run for election in Election but mr.
McAllister forces him and in Clueless, Tai is involuntarily pulled into Cher’s clique. In Mean Girls, Cady makes her way up the high school society food chain out of resentment for the popular Regina and her clique, The Plastics. Whatever their reasons are, all students trying to become part of higher cliques have to gain popularity in order to do so. The next sections will analyse several ways in which characters gain the popularity they need in order to become members of high-ranking cliques.!
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2.2 Means of Gaining Popularity!
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When speaking of gaining popularity, it is important to notice that popularity is not something that can be counted. It is a relative subject. In order to still approach a measurement of it, I will now look at some features which popularity is closely connected to. !
! The first of these features is money. In the high school society, all students seem to be equal. All have the same opportunities, their tuition is paid for and they eat the same lunches. Yet, when looking at the films that form my body of work, it is obvious that the most popular students in the high school society are always ones who have rich parents. Popularity is inextricably linked with capitalist values which are represented with such things as expensive clothing or cars. In 10
Things I Hate About You, for example, Bianca tells her friend: ‘You don’t have a Prada backpack.’
By saying this, she makes it clear that it is this expensive possession which puts her above her friend within their own clique. A similar thing can be seen with the possession of cars: the most popular person in the group is generally the one who owns the most expensive car. This can be seen in She’s All That, for example, in which the popular group makes fun of Laney because she drives a very old pick-up truck.!
! Another means by which popularity can be gained is through sexuality, which means that one should be sexually active, have an attractive body and show that body off. This counts for both
they have to adapt to this norm and thus show off their sexuality. In films, this transformation can very clearly be seen in the clothing that characters wear, with popular people wearing tight clothes that show off their bodies and unpopular people wearing baggy clothes which conceal their bodies, signalling that they are not sexually active. For example in Mean Girls, when it comes to Cady’s transformation from unpopular new girl to part of The Plastics, the most popular clique of girls at school, her clothes change gradually as she becomes more and more associated with them. For The Plastics, clothes are an essential part of who they are and the way they judge others. They even have rules regarding their own clothing, one of which is: ‘On Wednesdays we wear pink.’ In order to fit in with the group while infiltrating, Cady has to follow this rule. On the first Wednesday she is ‘allowed’ to eat lunch with The Plastics, she thus wears a gigantic pink polo shirt that was clearly found in her parents’ closet and shows nothing of her body. As the film progresses and Cady is clearly no longer an infiltrator but has really become one of The Plastics, she appears in a number of increasingly tight and short pink outfits (see figure 5). Becoming part of the popular group requires her to show off her sexuality. Therefore, it seems all the more fitting that once Cady realises the whole division into cliques is bad for the high school and its inhabitants, she goes back into wearing jeans and a boys’ jacket. Once she has realised she does not have to be part of the popular group to be happy, she no longer feels the need to dress so sexily.!
! With the boys too, the difference between popular and unpopular cliques can be detected through sexuality, which can be recognised by looking at costumes. The popular boys are
generally jocks who are dressed in sportswear for the most part of the films. These are clothes which accentuate their bodily features. They can also be seen playing sports quite often, they are often half naked in their locker rooms and they very frequently take their shirts off. Showing off physical features is inherent to the popular group they are members of. This is very different for the more nerdy boys. Contrary to the jocks, their way of dressing consists of mainly wide baggy
trousers and shirts that are buttoned up as highly as possible (see figure 6). This way of dressing is in no way meant to show off their bodies, thus signalling that these unpopular boys do not have active sex lives. !
! One thing that can often be seen in teen and high school films and can be linked to an increase of popularity is the makeover (Wilkinson 2). According to Wilkinson’s publication on the subject, the makeover is an instrument of performativity: a means by which a girl can take her fate into her own hands by transforming herself and creating her own femininity (5). As Wilkinson says: ‘[The makeover] highlights the privilege of choice, of possibility, yet emphasises the burden of! choosing and performing ‘correctly’ as well’ (6). This can be linked to the clique structure of the high school society: performativity means that anyone can reach a higher clique as long as they can obtain the necessary popularity, which is often linked with a physical transformation. This is also connected with performing ‘correctly’: in order to fit in with a certain clique, students have to abide by its rules. If they don’t, they can be cast out, an example of which can be seen in the !
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Figure 5: Increasingly sexy outfits in Mean Girls!
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Figure 6: Clique differences made clear through costuming in 10 Things I Hate About You!
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following paragraph. One film that Wilkinson bases her claims on is The Breakfast Club, in which ‘basket case’ Allison (Ally Sheedy) lets ‘princess’ Claire (Molly Ringwald) give her a makeover. With this new look, Allison has found an appropriate way to express her femininity which allows her to date jock Andy (Emilio Estevez) (Wilkinson 3). A similar makeover occurs in She’s All That.
Following Laney’s transformation, Zack and Laney have realised they actually like each other and moreover, they have both decided that they will attend art school after graduation. Thus, Laney’s
boyfriend discover that he may not actually be a jock after all, even though that is the clique with which his popularity is connected. !
! This transformation from ugly duckling to beautiful swan can also be turned around: when someone is no longer sexy, they will lower in rank, which shows the ruthlessness of the high school society. For example: in Mean Girls when Regina gains a lot of weight she no longer fits in her sexy clothes and is forced to wear jogging pants. Because of this she is not following the clothing rules of her clique anymore and she is no longer allowed to sit with them. Thus, the loss of her sexy body causes Regina to be ejected from the most popular group and forces her to descend from her high rank in the clique system.!
! Besides costuming and the importance of bodily features, the importance of sexuality as a marker of popularity and a defining factor in the ranking of cliques can also be found in dialogue and on-screen action. The next chapter will focus wholly on the importance of language for high school society, but I would already like to quickly touch upon it here, with regards to sexuality being a marker of popularity. Conversations between popular guys or girls feature a lot of sexual
language, making sex one of their major topics of conversation. In his study of 90s Hollywood high school movies, Wood argues that sexual development is of major importance, calling it a
‘structuring presence.’ He divides this presence into two concepts that are often connected: ‘falling in love’ and ‘getting laid’ (5). According to Wood, ‘falling in love’ is generally connected to the girls whereas it is the boys who want to ‘get laid’ (5). However, I believe that this distinction is based more heavily on the class differences of the high school society. When a popular person is
attracted to someone, this is made clear through sexual words and acts. For instance, in 10 Things
I Hate About You, popular Joey and nerdy Cameron both pursue the beautiful Bianca. Joey tries to
do this by touching her even when she does not want to be touched and not hesitating to describe her in sexual terms, just as he does with her unpopular sister Kat. Later in the film, it is revealed that Joey and Kat had sex two years earlier, which was an unpleasant experience for her. She told him she didn’t want to have sex anymore, as a result of which he broke up with her. After that incident, Joey remained sexually active and popular, whereas sexually inactive Kat was henceforth unpopular. Cameron’s approach towards Bianca is not sexual at all. He describes his love for her with the Shakespeare quote: ‘I burn, I pine, I perish’ and he always calls Bianca ‘beautiful,’ never sexy. Through the difference in the ways they speak and dress, the difference in sexual expression between Cameron and Joey can be seen, and thus their different positions in the clique system can be explained. !
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2.3 Concluding Remarks!
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! As the examples above show, the high school society is made up of a combination of two kinds of power structures: the first of these is the official one between principal, teachers and
students, the second one is the power structure that exists among students. Although both exist simultaneously, and both can be detected easily in the high school film, the second power structure is of major importance to the way the high school society is presented and it is within this power structure that the larger part of the narrative takes place. This is a power structure in which popularity is of major importance and the two main ways of gaining this popularity are through the possession of expensive goods and expressing one’s sexuality. !
! As the films I have selected show, high school films are set within the borders of this
society. Differences between cliques and students who try to make their way up towards the higher cliques, or any other kind of disruption of the clique system, are central to the narrative. By putting the emphasis of the sub-genre on the workings of the high school society, filmmakers present high school as a world that is not bothered by the real world outside of it. In real life, this is of course not the case. This distinction between high school in real life and the cinematic high school society provides the audience with a mirror: the high school is a society just like the one the audience lives in and the lessons that the students in these film learn should influence the way the viewers live their lives in the real world. I will elaborate on this in chapter four. !
! However, one very important means by which the high school society is built up and characterisation occurs and that I have hardly touched upon yet is language. As the following chapter will show, language is perhaps the most important factor by which the high school society is established and its inhabitants are characterised.!
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Chapter 3: Language is, Like, Way Important!
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‘Nice pile of bricks’ is the way one of the characters in Clueless compliments a beautiful house. This example of slang as used by a teenager highlights the way a house is built from the bottom up and how it is essentially a large amount of bricks that holds it all together. Although a house might be a pile of bricks, this does not make it a home: a home is made by the family that lives inside the house and the interpersonal connections between members of that family. A similar thing can be said for the high school: the building of a high school is essentially just another pile of bricks, but it is the students, teachers and other school staff as well as the interpersonal connections between them, combined with the rules that count within its confines, that make up the high school society.! ! Just as a school or a house is much more than just a pile of bricks, a film is not just a collection of frames. It is a form of art that consists of many details in which meaning can be discovered. Meaning can be found in many aspects of film, such as camera angles, mise-en-scène, and editing, to name but a few. I could have selected any element of film to analyse the body of work that I have selected, and I have decided to focus on dialogue, which is an important way of gaining insight into characters’ lives, emotions and motivations, as well as illustrating their conflicts with other characters (Pramaggiore and Wallis 239). I believe that the interpersonal connections between characters are the building blocks of the high school society and that the language they use is a very important marker of characterisation and character development. By analysing the dialogue in high school films, I will illustrate further the importance of the high school as a society, before analysing high school film’s underlying ideology in chapter four. !
! In order to illustrate the importance and power of language within the high school society, the section below will firstly explain the ways in which language can be used as a means of distinguishing between groups before moving on to two case studies. The first of these will look at the way Clueless uses slang firstly as a means of characterisation and secondly as a way of showing the positions of its characters within the high school society. The second case study will take a closer look at the ways language is used to differentiate between the different cliques in
Mean Girls. Besides being a means of characterisation and distinction, language is also a main
feature of the high school society because of its arbitrariness. As this chapter will show, language is one of the most important building blocks of the high school society. However, the characters’ specific language use has no power outside the high school society (see section 3.3) and it shows that this society’s rules are only verbally executed and can thus be considered completely arbitrary (see section 3.4). In the last section of this chapter, I will connect this arbitrariness to the competing ideologies of individualism and conformity. !
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3.1 Social Distinction through Language!
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In his book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Bourdieu described cultural distinction: the way in which those who determine what good taste is are in possession of what he calls cultural capital and how this difference in taste is of major importance in the division between social classes (12). According to Bourdieu, there is such a thing as a ‘cultural nobility’ (2) that functions as leader in an ‘economy of cultural goods’ (1). McEnery, professor of English and Language at Lancaster University, makes use of Bourdieu’s theory of distinction when explaining the way that language can distinguish several groups within a society. Bourdieu’s theory is mainly connected to such things as art and manners but can also easily be applied to language use, which is equally as important (or perhaps even more so) to the construction of a culture in society (McEnery 9). !
! McEnery interprets Bourdieu’s theory of distinction as follows:!
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! [F]eatures of culture are used to discriminate between groups in society, establishing a ! ! social hierarchy based on a series of social shibboleths. The consequences of the ! ! establishment of such a hierarchy are both to allow members of groups to be readily ! ! identified and to impose the hierarchy itself. (9)!
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McEnery also explains that this use of language to distinguish one group from another is not a casual occurrence but an extensive process. He claims that through this process, different groups are characterised by their language use and that the language of the dominant group subsequently becomes the linguistic norm. What this process leads to is that those who speak the language that form this linguistic norm, can exercise power over those who do not (McEnery 9-10). As the case studies below illustrate, both characteristics that McEnery attributes to language use in a society can be observed in Clueless and Mean Girls, thus showing that language is an important building block of the high school society. As I described in chapter two, popularity is the factor by which the several cliques are ranked and this popularity is largely depended on the possession of expensive items and being sexually active. However, this difference cannot just be seen in possessions and expressions of sexuality, but it is also illustrated with language use. This can be compared with Bourdieu’s ‘economy of cultural goods’ making popularity the main feature which distinguishes between cliques, making ‘the cultural nobility’ those who are the most popular. !
! In the two case studies below, it can be seen that language is a very important way of expressing this difference between cliques. What this importance of language use shows is that popularity can’t be bought, not even within the high school society. Popularity is not only contained and exercised through expensive possessions and expressing sexuality, but is also strongly
large part of the high school society’s cultural capital, and those who speak the dominant language form the dominant group, and are thus the most popular. !
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3.2
‘As if!’: Slang and Characterisation in Clueless!
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‘We’ve got to work on your accent and vocabulary’ tells Cher Horowitz to new student Tai as she’s being initiated into Cher’s clique of popular girls. In Cher’s world, she and her friends use so many words and expressions of their own that watching Clueless can initially feel like entering another country where an unfamiliar language is spoken. The film’s characters have their completely own way of speaking with words often connected to popular culture: an attractive male is a ‘Baldwin,’ ‘ralphing’ means vomiting, to ‘surf the crimson wave’ is the term by which they indicate they are menstruating (O’Meara 142) and the catchphrase ‘As if!’ means as much as ‘don’t even think about it.’!
! This use of language is what sets the main characters apart from others and it is an essential part of their popularity. Cher calls those who do not live their lives the way she does ‘clueless,’ while remaining friendly. She is superficial but she is not a bully like the popular girls in
Mean Girls are. The importance of language use within the film becomes clear when Cher and her
best friend Dionne (Stacey Dash) decide to help clueless Tai and make her a part of their group. Of course this induction is paired with the obligatory makeover (see section 2.2) but it is the change in the way Tai speaks which ultimately shows her transformation. It becomes clear that this
transformation has gone a little too well for Cher’s taste when Tai gradually becomes more popular than her mentor. Their alignment is first signalled when Tai uses the expression ‘I’m
Audi!’ (meaning that she’s leaving), a term coined by Cher in the first ten minutes of the film. When Cher is trying to say something but her classmates tell her to be quiet so they can hear Tai talk about an incident at the mall, it is evident that Tai has officially taken Cher’s place. By not allowing her to speak, Cher’s classmates are making it impossible for her to express herself verbally. Thus she is robbed of her greatest power within the high school society: her speech. She is popular because of being rich and sexy, but the way she speaks is her most important way of showing her identity, in which her popularity can be recognised. When her classmates do not let her express herself through speech, it represents a loss of popularity. As the film progresses, Cher gradually learns that she herself might actually be the one who is clueless and that she needs to find a better grip on reality (or rather the high school film version of reality).!
! Before taking a closer look at the film’s narrative and the way its characters evolve, I will first take a look at the way in which the character of Cher is portrayed through her language use. It is through her language that we come to know Cher as a girl who is very superficial but also intelligent in her own way. She knows exactly how to put language to good use in order to get what
she wants. An example of her cunning can be seen when she has to make an argument on America’s immigration policy in debate class:!
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! So like, right now for example, the Haitians need to come to America. But some people are ! all, ‘What about the strain on our resources?’ Well it’s like when I had this garden party for ! my father’s birthday right? I put R.S.V.P. ‘cause it was a sit-down dinner. But some people ! came that like did not R.S.V.P. I was like totally buggin’. I had to haul ass to the kitchen, ! ! redistribute the food, and squish in extra place settings. But by the end of the day it was, ! ! like, the more the merrier. And so if the government could just get to the kitchen, rearrange ! some things, we could certainly party with the Haitians. And in conclusion may I please ! ! remind you that it does not say R.S.V.P. on the Statue of Liberty. Thank you very much.!
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The above example shows the way in which Cher’s superficiality is combined with her intelligence through language: she compares a serious immigration issue to a garden party and uses a lot of empty words such a ‘like,’ yet the speech is a huge success with the class: it receives a big
applause, which shows that she has given the people exactly what they want, without having done an effort to formulate her argument properly. She just knows her audience and its expectations very well. Although her classmates love it, the speech is not well-received by her teacher who gives her a C. Cher, however, goes on to prove her intelligence by negotiating a higher grade, having learned from her lawyer father to ‘never accept the first offer’ and viewing grades as ‘a jumping off point for negotiations’ (O’Meara 140). !
! A second manner in which this combination of superficiality and intelligence is presented is with Cher’s use of empty words, such as the many instances of ‘like’ in the example above. These are words that do not technically have any meaning: if one were to remove them, nothing about the content of the argument would change. A similar thing occurs when Cher is trying to convince her stepbrother Josh to take her out for a drive. The phrase by which she convinces him is ‘since you’re not doing anything and all.’ Without the addition of the last two words ‘and all,’ the argument ‘you’re not doing anything so you might as well entertain me’ does not change. However, this is the element that does the actual convincing: ‘and all’ is not in any way used to emphasise Josh’s free time, like ‘at all’ would. It is just a meaningless phrase but it is in these little empty words that Cher’s personality shines through (O’Meara 139). Josh, who is actually smitten with Cher, is convinced by these empty words because they showcase her personality, of which her inventive language use in order to get her way is such a vital part. As the examples above show, Cher’s sentences would lose their rhetorical effect without these empty words, because it is through words like these that Cher’s personality and popularity emerge.!
3.3 ‘I Will Totally Shoot You in the Head:’ World-building through Language Use in
Clueless!
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Besides its convincing effect, Cher’s idiomatic language use has another function: the building and strengthening of relationships within her own world. According to Fought, professor of linguistics at Pitzer College in Claremont, California: ‘Young women take linguistic features and use them as power tools for building relationships’ (qtd. in Quenqua D1). Even though Fought’s statement is based on actual society and not high school society as represented in film, it still applies to
Clueless. It might even be said that it counts more strongly for the high school society, the structure
of which is defined by popularity and interpersonal relationships. Whereas the following section shows that in Mean Girls, language is used as a means of separating people, this section shows how Clueless presents language as a way of bringing them closer together, thus strengthening the relationships which form the building blocks of the high school society. !
! One relationship in the film that is strengthened by the use of language is that between Cher and her father. Even though this is a relationship which exists outside of the high school society, it is still connected with it. Cher makes use of many legal terms that her father has taught her in school situations. She is able to chat herself out of detention for being late by using the sentence: ‘I object! Do you recall the dates of these alleged tardies?’ and tells a teacher she is ‘brutally rebuffed’ by the low grade he has given her, thus being able to negotiate a higher grade. Cher and her father connecting through language use also occurs the other way around: Cher’s father makes use of her slang to form a connection with his daughter, naming her ability to negotiate her way to higher grades ‘fabulous’ (O’Meara 140). By using a word like this, he tries to be a part of his daughter’s world by showing that he is interested in her life and is familiar with the particular way in which she speaks. Language use is also a way for other characters to connect: college student Josh befriends Cher’s school friend Murray by using one of his favourite slang terms: ‘buggin’ (which means to go crazy). !
! As these examples show, the spreading of language from one character to another can signal a strengthening in their relationship (O’Meara 144). Of course, the two examples above are occurrences of language extending beyond the high school society and yet they are connected with it. As I have explained above, Cher’s way of speaking is a large part of the reason she is popular. Thus, her speech and her popularity are intricately connected, which can be seen when she loses some of her popularity and starts speaking a lot more ‘normally’ and using less empty words. The popularity that is achieved within the high school society and the language use connected with it are so connected with who Cher is, that others who are not part of the high school society will adapt to her way of speaking in order to become closer to her. This is a way of speaking which originated within the high school society. This connection through language
