ABSTRACT

From an overview of how Amy Heckerling's film has been received as an adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma, this chapter explores the Clueless franchise and the film's acquisition of a cult following. Many adaptation scholars argued that the film's setting of Los Angeles retained the novel's theme of a parochial setting. Equally, Clueless offers a distinctive interpretation of the part of the novel in which Emma creates a portrait of Harriet and gives it to Mr Elton in an attempt to match the two, which fails when he attempts instead to court Emma. The impact of Clueless resonates in its emergence as a cult film and a focus of revivalism, outliving the proliferation of Austen adaptations in the 1990s. Clueless and the ensuing cycle of adaptations brought increased critical respect to the teen genre, which seemed at least temporarily to transcend its historical origins in the 'controversial content, bottom-line bookkeeping, and demographic targeting' of exploitation film.