Introduction:
Migration from novel to Film: Clueless as a Discourse on Emma
By Vicki Unsworth
The eighteenth century
work of Jane Austen has remained
an important contribution to English romance literature. Her six
published novels, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice,
Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and
Persuasion continue to be studied in high schools and lecture
halls around the world. Within the last two decades, both British
film studios and Hollywood have formulated their own narratives
of her work onto the movie screen, with famous actors playing
the characters many readers have grown to know and love.
Jane Austen's fourth novel,
Emma, incorporated the wit
and charm famous of her novels. What distinguished Emma from the
rest was an element of humor brought through by Emma Woodhouse,
a main character so unique that Jane Austen was once quoted as
saying "no one but myself will much like" (Lodge:1968:131).
Most recently, Amy Heckerling wrote and directed the film Clueless as a modernized version of the Jane Austen classic. Heckerling incorporated her own narrative analysis of the novel and while using the same story of Emma, created a discourse with a 1990's twist. Clueless introduced a unique vocabulary to its audiences, with such phrases as "as if" and "whatever" becoming a cultural phenomenon. Along with character transformations, the story incorporated similar issues found in Emma - gender, class and sexuality, but with a modern day, cultural makeover.
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