02.19.07
Clueless in the neo-colonial world order
In her essay, “Clueless in the Neo-Colonial World Order,” Gayle Wald argues that Amy Heckerling’s 1995 film analyzes how national citizenship is defined in relation to third and first worlds. Wald writes that Clueless “situates the subjectivity of its protagonist at the intersection of competing narratives of gender itself; for while it represents Cher as a ‘First World’ girl who deploys her cluelessness in order to ‘innocently’ access power, it also suggests that such cluelessness stands in the way of her ‘successful’ gendering according to the demands of the marriage plot” (Wald 219). Furthermore, Wald argues that Cher’s gender identity is based on consumership, a First World characteristic which uses the poverty of the Third World as its other. Thus, Cher’s character is based on a neo-colonial world order which justifies consumership–while simultaneously shunning it–as something intrinsic to the female gender and American identity.
Wald writes that Clueless explores “the role of cinematic representation in the construction of national and cultural citizenship, as well as…the gender, race and class dimensions of the national narratives produced by a contemporary Hollywood film…addressed to an audience of adolescent and pre-adolescent US girls” (Wald 218). To support her claims, Wald analyzes Cher’s ‘Haiti’ speech, which takes place early in the film, as an example of how Cher is constructed as an All-American First World girl through hospitality and consumership. Cher’s speech is juxtaposed with the American national anthem in background which marks her character as a good, innocent All-American girl. Wald argues that this makes Cher appealing to both adolescent girls and their parents; Cher is a devoted, obedient teenager who is both stylish and attractive to the opposite sex. Wald writes that “the speech not only serves to establish how gender is produced in and through ideologies of nationhood and national identity, but how narratives of national identity may be framed within the context of (or even serve as the rationale for) ideologies of domestic female virtue” (222).
While Cher is presented as a model daughter in her Haiti speech, she is also established as clueless. Thus, Heckerling imbues Emma Woodhouse’s loveable characteristics into
Cher. While audiences of teenagers, parents and critics alike love Cher, they are wary of her denseness, but view it as a slight character flaw rather than immoral. Additionally, Heckerling constructs Cher’s identity by using third world citizens, such as Haitians and the maid, Lucy, as an other. Indeed, Wald writes that “her’s performance of domestic virtue is inextricable from her role as a consumer of domestic labour, and from her obliviousness to the discrepancy between her parable and the problems that Haitians and Haitian immigrants actually face. As viewers might be led to surmise…the only way that ‘real’ immigrants attended her father’s fiftieth birthday party were as labourers in the kitchen” (223).
Audiences believe that because Cher is so innocent and All-American, she would include anyone if she only realized that her behaviors were exclusive. Wald writes thatCher’s speech works to
“ingratiate Cher to the viewing audience, pairing her cluelessness about US-Haitian relations with the audience’s affection for her as a liberal advocate of the sort of democratic values associated with national symbols such as the Statue of Liberty; it legitimates gendered domestic virtue as both a principle of international diplomacy and the means by which she can win the approval of her father and then later Josh; and it establishes altruism (gift-giving) and communitarianism as the logical paradigms of First World-Third World relations, and by analogy of the gendered relations with the ‘domestic’ (that is, the national/public and home/private) spheres” (223).
Heckerling appropriates Emma’s good-natured cluelessness to the social systems around her and fits them into a commentary on American social systems, both inside and outside the
First World. By fitting Cher’s feminine gendering into a romantic plot, Heckerling comments on the demands of First World femininity; however, Heckerling simultaneously asserts that consumership for the sake of the Third World, or the other, is good by using Josh as a reward for a clued-in
Cher.
Wald also briefly discusses Cher’s Jewishness in relation to the All-American (WASP) girl and the All-American self-made man. Wald writes that “Heckerling’s translation of Emma into a Jewish-American ‘princess’ complements the film’s re-visioning of national identity in terms of specifically ‘American’ narratives of the upward economic mobility of immigrants” (226). While
Cher’s gender and national identity is constructed in the relation to the Third World, her character is still historically apart of a minority, which makes an even more explicit All-American statement.
I really liked this article for Wald’s comments on All-Americanism and identity construction; I would definitely use it for my paper. However, I think that it was a little confusing in certain areas. Wald writes a couple pages on how she will set up her argument, and what her essay will cover, and then spends a couple pages actually supporting her ideas. This was both redundant and confusing. Also, I think a basic definition of neo-colonial at the start of the essay would have helped instead of paragraphs devoted to how both critics and teenage girls loved Clueless.
by: Leah