By: Mallory Pelton

MOVIE ANALYSIS: CLUELESS

Clueless is a 1995 comedy starring Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittney Murphy and Paul Rudd. This movie is

about coming of age and the different struggles that teenagers go through during their high school years. Cher the main character who is extremely popular and beautiful

begins to see the value in doing good deeds for other people. She gives a new girl who is unhip a total make-over. The new girl and Cher have a falling out because the new girl starts to suppress Cher’s popularity. Towards the end

of the movie everyone’s relationships are rekindled and Cher begins to find interest in her ex step brother.

INTRODUCTION TO CLUELESS

• Alicia Silverstone: plays the main character Cher, a sweet but spoiled

valley-girl who is popular, attractive, rich and clever. She believes that

she is the ‘’queen’’ of her high school

• Stacey Dash: plays Cher’s best friends Dionne. Dionne and her

boyfriend have a not so good relationship and are always fighting

• Brittney Murphy: plays the unhip unattractive new girl in school that Cher and Dionne give a make-over too. She begins to gain confidence and suppresses Cher’s popularity. Cher and her have a falling out but rekindle their relationship at the

end.

• Paul Rudd: plays Cher’s ex stepbrother. He wants to be a

lawyer and comes to visit Mel Cher’s father to learn from him. Cher and

Josh bi

CHARACTERS

Cher the main character is an attractive popular and wealthy girl who is getting ready for her 16th birthday. She lives in a mansion with her rick

father named Mel. Her mother died in a freak liposuction accident. Cher’s best friends name is Dionne who is also very attractive and

popular. Dionne dates a popular guy at school and Cher thinks their relationship is pointless. Cher’s ex step brother Josh teases her for being selfish and she constantly mocks his perfectionist personality. Josh has a secret crush on Cher throughout the film. The movie is about coming of age and the struggles that typical teenagers go through. Throughout the move Cher realizes she finds happiness in doing good deeds so she adopts

an unhip new girl named Tai. Her and Dionne give Tai a make-over and Tai starts to become popular which suppresses Cher’s popularity. Cher starts to go through struggles with her friends and when Cher finds out that Tai has a crush on her ex step brother Josh, Cher begins to realize that she has romantic feelings for him. Josh and Cher begin to pursue

each other and Tai, Dionne and Cher’s relationship are rekindled.

THE BIG PLOT

Interpersonal conflict, complaint, persuasion, verbal aggression, social support, warm feelings, authoritarian

parenting style, emotional disclosures, intercultural communication, value conflict

CONCEPTS FROM THE FILM:

This can be defined broadly as a disagreement between two interdependent people who

perceive that they have incompatible goals:

We see this take place at the beginning of the movie when Josh comes to visit and have dinner with Cher and her father. Josh is known to be a very studious college student that is studying to

be a lawyer. Josh believes that Cher is just a space cadet who gets by school by bribing her teachers. They are sitting at dinner and Cher goes, “Your such a brown noser” Josh replies, “you are such a super facial space cadet, what

makes you think you can convince your teachers to change your grades”. Cher then replies, “only

the fact that I have done it every other semester”. It is obvious that there is some

interpersonal conflict taking place here because they have two different ideas of how to get by in school . Josh believes that studying is the right

way and Cher believes that she can work her way through school by negotiations with her

teachers.

INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT

Complaint is a message telling someone that you find what is happening or has occurred unacceptable because it has violated your right or expectations.

We see the concept complaint take place when Dionne and her boyfriend come into contact with each other in front of the school outside. Dionne’s boyfriend Murray approaches her and

says, “women why don’t you be answering any of my pages”. Dionne

gets mad and expresses to Murray that she has told him time and time again

that she does not like being called women. Dionne is demonstrating a

complaint because she is expressing her expectations to Murray on the basis that she does not want to be called women

COMPLAINT

Persuasion is using verbal messages designed to influence the attitudes and behaviors of others. Persuasion occurs when someone uses words to

directly attempt to influence.

We see this take place when Cher persuades her teacher to give her a better grade. She tell her PE

teacher that some nasty boy broke her heart and how she has not been able to sleep because of it. The PE

teacher ended raising her grade because Cher persuaded her even though it was a lie Cher was still demonstrating persuasion in an effort to influence the

teacher to give her a better grade.

Cher also demonstrates persuasion when she tries to get her debate teacher Mr. Hall and her other teacher Ms. Geist to get together in order to distract them and get a better grade. During class Cher tells Mr. Hall something that Ms. Geist said about him in

order to influence Mr. Hall to like her. She says to Mr. Hall, “Ms. Geist was right about you, she said you’re the only one in this school with intelligence”. Cher

used these words as persuasion to influence Mr. Hall she then went over to Ms. Geist and used words of persuasion to influence Ms. Geist to like Mr. Hall.

Cher’s persuasion tactics resulted in Mr. Hall and Ms. Hall to date and get married.

PERSUASION

Verbal aggression is sending messages that attack another person’s self-esteem

or express personal hostility for perceived violations of rights or expectations.

Throughout this movie Cher and Josh show verbal aggression towards each other. One specific example of this is when Cher is trying to find a license

driver that she can go driving with. She approaches Josh by saying, “Hey granola

breath” this demonstrates verbal aggression because it is attacking his self-

concept of who he is as a person. Josh demonstrates verbal aggression back to Cher by saying, “what are the chances of you shutting up if I agree” it is obvious

that they have hostility towards one another and they display this by using

verbal aggression.

VERBAL AGGRESSION

Social support is the process of providing emotional, informational, and instrumental

resources to someone we perceive is in need of this aid.

We see this occur when the new girl from California named Tai comes to school. Cher and Dionne take her in and walk her around

the school showing her all the different groups and a little bit about each of those groups explaining which ones to stay away

from and what ones are cool. They then decide that they are going to give Tai a make-

over in order to help her fit in better. They re-due her hair put on make-up and take her

shopping. These actions all demonstrate social support that Cher and Dionne were

giving to Tai in order to help her fit in better at their school. Since she was from California and was clueless on how things run and act at

her new school, Dionne and Cher’s advice offered social support to Tai.

SOCIAL SUPPORT

Warm feelings are positive feelings you have about yourself and your partner during and

immediately after an interaction. The feelings can include, happiness, excitement, yearning,

peace, gratitude, content, desire and love.

We see this occur in the movie when Dionne is driving and somehow ends up on the freeway. She has never driven on the freeway and her Murray and Cher all start screaming because they are afraid they are going to die. Murray

offers emotional support to Dionne by trying to keep her calm and tell her to keep her eyes on

the road. Once they get off of the freeway Dionne looks at Murray and it is clear to see

that she is experiencing warm feelings of content, desire and love. She realizes her love

for Murray after the event they just experienced together on the freeway. This made Dionne

realize her love for Murray and they began to kiss. This displays warm feelings because they began to express their love for each other right

after an interaction just occurred.

WARM FEELINGS

An authoritarian parenting style is when the parent demands high levels of control with low

levels of nurturing. These parents like order and tradition, demand respect and obedience, and

use punishment. They are unresponsive to their child’s negotiation efforts.

Cher’s father has a very authoritarian parenting style. It is obvious that Cher knows his

expectations and his afraid to not meet them. She demonstrates this by going to extreme

efforts in order to get her grades up. Another example in the film is when Cher is at a party

and her father calls her in an angered tone asking where she is. He states that he wants her home in 20 minutes and Cher argues saying that is impossible. He yells over the phone that every

place in LA takes twenty minutes to get home and then hangs up the phone. He displays an

authoritarian parenting style because he leaves no room for negotiation to take place. He never shows any sign of nurturing just strict demands that need to be met otherwise Cher would be in

trouble.

AUTHORITARIAN PARENTING STYLE

Emotional disclosures occur when one person reveals sensitive, private, and/or personally risky

information signaling to our partners that we trust them.

We see emotional disclosures take place in the film when Cher, Dionne and Tai are out to lunch

and somehow the topic gets brought up about the levels of intimacy each person has been gone through. Cher reveals that she is a virgin and

explains why she is virgin. She states that she is even picky about her shoes so when it comes to men she is very picky as well. She then reveals Dionne’s personal information about her sex life as well. Dionne then jumps in and explains how she is a techniquely a virgin but goes into detail about her and murray’s relationship and what they have done. When Cher and Dionne reveal

this personal information they are demonstrating emotional disclosures because it is not a topic

that you would bring up with anyone. By revealing this information they are

demonstrating the levels of intimacy that their specific friend group shares.

EMOTIONAL DISCLOSURES

Intercultural communication is a form of communication that aims to share information

across different cultures and social groups. It is used to describe the wide range of communication

processes and problems that naturally appear within an organization or social context made up of

individuals from different religious, social, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.

In this film the maid Lucy and Cher come from two different cultural back rounds. Cher walks up to Lucy in a panic asking her where one of her specific shirt is and Lucy explains that it was in the dry cleaner. Lucy

then asks Cher if she had talked to Jose about trimming the bushes out front and Cher replies, “Lucy you don’t I don’t speak Mexican” this upsets Lucy as

she forcefully claims, “I am not a Mexican”!. Josh then goes on to explain the Cher where Lucy is from

and why that would be offensive to her. This demonstrates the barriers that intercultural

communication can sometimes face. This demonstrates the problems that can occur through intercultural communication, Cher automatically

assumed that where Lucy was from but to Lucy her culture is very different than Mexican culture and took

offense that Cher just assumed.

INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Value conflict is a disagreement caused by differences in partners deep-seated moral beliefs.

This occurs in the movie when Cher has a crush on this boy named Christian. Cher thinks that

they are going on a date and wants him to make a move on her. They are laying in the bed and

Cher is confused why he isn’t making a move so she decided to make the move and puts her feet on him. Christian freaks out and she explains

that her feet are cold so he puts a pillow on top of them instead of using that as an excuse to

cuddle her like Cher intended to happen. After a couple more attempts he jumps up and leaves later to find out that he is gay. This is a value conflict because Cher thought that his beliefs

were the same as her. She was under the impression that he was into her and that they

were going to end up dating. It turned out that they actually had two different beliefs not that Cher is necessarily against gay people but that

she interpreted his beliefs to be the same as hers.

VALUE CONFLICT

This film demonstrated all different kinds of intimate relationships. Cher and her father demonstrated a family relationships, Tai, Dionne and Cher represented an intimate friendship and Dionne and Murray represented a

long term relationship. It is obvious that each of these relationships differ in many ways. This movie helped me realize the different stages that each of these relationships go through. The friendship between Tai, Dionne and

Cher really opened up my understanding of how and when initiation takes place. I think I can relate to the friendship piece of this movie because when I first moved to Maine I did not know a single soul. One of my best friends now took me in and now I am friends with all of her friends as well. This

movie reminded me of the different initiation processes that occur when we first meet other people. Another part of this film that was relatable was the

authoritarian parent style that Mel, Cher’s father has. This was relatable because my fathers parenting style is very similar to this. He is very direct

and lays out his expectations. He also does not leave any room for negotiation. Overall this movie is perfect example of interpersonal

communication and all of the positive and negatives that go into it.

EVALUATIONS

Google images. Googleimages.com

Verderber, K.S., & Verderber, R.F. (2013). Inter-Act: Interpersonal communication. (13th ed., v-500). New York,

New York: Oxford University Press

REFERENCES