Austen Translation: Emma & Clueless
With the release of August de Wilde’s 2020 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, I was curious to find out how many versions of this story are out there on film. I’ve not seen the BBC TV series done in 1997 starring Kate Beckinsale, nor have I seen the supposedly winsome BBC version done in 2009. There’s still another BBC version from 1972 that I’d not even heard of. But having watched the new version recently, the two film adaptations that best stand out in my mind are Amy Heckerling’s Clueless from 1995, and Miramax’s Emma from 1996.
Having re-read Austen’s still delightful, witty and psychologically astute novel for this piece, I’ve come to the conclusion that Clueless, in its own way, is a more faithful adaptation of Austen’s classic story than Miramax’s version. It’s also much more interesting for what it has to say, not just about the time of Emma’s first publishing in 1816, but about how that period is regarded from the comfort of the caffeine-fueled 90’s when the films were both released. The Miramax Emma tries to recreate that period as if the 90’s didn’t exist. Clueless uses Austen’s ideas about reticence and social custom to say something about its own time period, which makes it vastly more interesting and rewarding.
This may sound like critical solipsism, as if I meant that a film that doesn’t depict the period in which I live is inherently less interesting. But Clueless plays above and beneath the official story of Austen’s endearingly meddlesome protagonist, while Douglas McGrath’s straighter version is a pretty translation. With respect to filming books for the screen, especially prestigious and much-dissected ones like Emma, I don’t believe a straighter, more literal translation is inherently more faithful. What constitutes true fidelity to written source material is too large a rabbit hole to go down here but in short, Clueless approaches more of Austen’s playfulness, fancy, and her ear for irony. And in that, director Amy Heckerling gets at more of what Austen’s intricate and loaded social exchanges are really about than McGrath’s.
What Clueless essentially has that Emma doesn’t is a sense of giddy energy. The period furnishings in the McGrath film are relatively austere, but they have a polish and production value to them that render them relatively dull. Most of all, the movie lacks elements that would further illustrate what it is to live in this world. Private moments. Closed bits of romantic realism. A mise-en-scène that inspires any curiosity about Hartfield or the people living there. Emma is so concerned with harmony between the actors and their settings, with everything being all of a piece, that nothing is really given opportunity to stand out, and much of the wry humor of the novel is lost.
The novel is set in a time and place when social worlds were very small. Most people didn’t travel more than ten miles outside of their neighborhood their entire lives. It’s a social sphere consisting of shared dinners and picnics with neighboring families, church services, discussions of three-volume novels and very limited opportunities for diversion, save for insulated parties which enabled the turning of the rumor mill. It was a time in which reticence mattered above all else, eccentrics provided all the material for gossip and matrimony was the only thing women were made to concern themselves with.
Passions are easily stirred within such a closed world, but so too is a kind of emotional violence. If a man were to act ungallant or a woman were to betray her good manners and publicly bring disgrace on their house in the eyes of the rest of the community, it could be impossible to regain the favor of one’s peers (the original Cancel Culture). What people really want, what their hearts desire is never openly spoken of. So everything in the implicit world of hidden humanity must be suggested, inferred and telegraphed in coded signals and verbal wit. It’s a world ruled by absolute decorum.
Within this world, Emma Woodhouse is the most spritely, the most speculative, the most committed and in some ways, the most cunning. Privileged and beautiful, she’s playing the matchmaking and status game for keeps. McGrath’s Emma is in nearly every scene and we watch as she drifts from one fanciful moment in her leisurely, undemanding life to the next: First steering the uncouth Harriet Smith (Toni Collette) away from a lovestruck farmer and toward Mr. Elton (Alan Cumming), the local Reverend. Mr. Elton declares his love instead for Emma, and as Emma has her sights set on the dashing Frank Churchill (Ewan McGregor), she’ll hear no other proposal. Meanwhile, her foil is the sharp-tongued Mr. Knightley (Jeremy Northam), the only one who questions her subtle manipulation of the affections around her. He turns out to be the only man who seems to truly understand her, beating out Emma’s befuddled, detached father. It’s a measured, gradual process by which Emma’s elaborate matchmaking plans come to reveal themselves as a self-protection from honestly facing her own romantic feelings and fears.
It’s the kind of story where you could say not very much happens and yet so, so very much does happen. There are no villains in Austen’s world and what may ostensibly look like a series of mannered exchanges about who’s going to marry whom are actually loaded with intensely conflicted interior standoffs regarding individual passion and emotional untidiness threatening the strict system of social classes. The story of Emma Woodhouse in fact poses one of the most timeless subjects to be found in fiction: the struggle of the natural character of the individual against the stricture of classbound society and the status quo. Austen’s characters speak in code pertaining to these social structures, with birthright being the basis for the worthiness of the aspirations of individuals and families (Austen refers to this social importance as “consequence”).
The Emma Woodhouse of McGrath’s film is played by Gwyneth Paltrow and despite her earnest and respectful effort, she is simply too formal and too elegant in the part. Paltrow is tall and graceful, and quite adept at using her eyes to suggest Emma’s true intentions. But reading the novel again, I think she misses the sprightliness Austen’s verbiage seemed to suggest. During a highly metaphorical archery practice, her rebuttal to Mr. Knightley’s rather piggesh dismissal of Harriet’s intentions is a good example: “The most incomprehensible thing in the world to a man is a woman who rejects his offer of marriage.” Paltrow’s delivery of this line is impetuous when a playfulness may have better suited this exchange and this scene.
At this point in the novel, Emma is still deeply in denial about her unlikely feelings for Mr. Knightley. There’s a sense of giddy energy in Austen’s use of language - the way Emma spins verbal circles around the people in her web - and Paltrow’s Emma is too grown up to win us over with her scheming. She’s rather humorless, coming across not so much as challenged to one-up Mr. Knightley’s casual sexism, but to half-interestedly beat him in a debate about it. She plays the scene as if it were a more serious Battle Of The Sexes that she has to win.
What’s more, she and Northam appear to have very little chemistry. They both seem locked inside the motions of life in this world. Not even when they have to come to terms with their love for each other does one get the sense they’re going to break free and gush with the release of repressed energy. They’re stuck at the level of Hallmark figures. I’ve always thought of Austen’s heroines as capable of self-awareness, a capacity for seeing themselves as complex women at odds with the roles their conservative, patriarchal societies cast them in and that this is what enables them to see the difference between idealized, superficial goodness and actual goodness.
Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, and in their own ways, both of the Dashwood sisters in Sense and Sensibility: Austen’s writing gives intricately detailed portraits of the inner worlds of these women and how the developments of the stories take them to a vantage point outside the strict social customs and patriarchal controls that constrict their physical and emotional freedom. It’s not easy to pull off conveying this intricacy and coming into self-awareness when condensing a novel like Emma into film form (especially one overseen by Harvey Weinstein, notorious among his many other, more violent crimes for recutting films beyond recognition without the approval or knowledge of their directors). But in a story where that inner development is what drives the plot, it should have been more attentively filled in than it was here. I can’t say I fault Paltrow’s choices entirely for this lack of dimensionality. In reckoning with the tendency of major studios to see stories of gradual character development as “Nothing Is Happening,” the fault, in this case, may be entirely commercial in nature.
Besides, this insularity isn’t restricted to the reading of the main character. It extends into other areas of the production. This isn’t always a drawback. The film doesn’t linger over the usual gallery of niceties to be found in this dainty world. Elaborately decorated rooms, opulent gardens lined with topiary, lavish costumes, rich food, colorful pastries and other elements critics love to describe as “sumptuous detail” are not fussed over here and for the sake of fidelity to the source, this is as it should be.
Austen was no materialist. Her illustrations of the setting and decor her characters inhabit was purely functional and so is this adaptation of Emma. Some people of course watch films and TV programs like this mostly for the period flavor and this version includes no closeups or deep visual investigations of the places and objects the characters interact with. There are dinner gatherings, picnics, archery practices, teatimes, parties, dancing, and musical recitals but they serve the functions of the plot and are never emphasized for their simple prettiness. Never in Emma is Spectacle permitted to triumph over Event.
Still, one doesn’t expect a lot of panache in this type of film stylewise. Emma is tastefully and classically framed, lit, shot, colored, scored, blocked and edited to the point of tedium (the throbbing anachronisms to be found in Marie Antoinette, Moulin Rouge and Titus were still some years away). Characters are framed standing in neat rows and facing the camera as they take turns speaking. It looks pretty enough and it’s never offensive to the senses. But the techniques are so very much by the book (so to speak), the movie never really engages us. It’s understandable for a filmmaker showcasing material with this kind of literary prestige (and not to mention, many obsessed fans who delight in trying to unscramble Austen’s psychological puzzles) to want to get out of the way and put the spotlight on the writing and the actors. It’s an honorable and unpretentious instinct.
But what the film gains in narrative and stylistic economy, it loses in suggestive possibility about the material and its implications. One of the great joys of reading Austen in addition to her witty prose, is in her observations and speculations about people in the rhythms of ordinary daily activity. What ties people to social customs, and what motivates them to risk the punishment for violating them. A bit more curiosity and ambiguity on the part of McGrath and Miramax would have transmitted the excitement of Austen at this pastime instead of deadening it.
Instead, there’s very little room for ambiguity, which big studios see as Kryptonite. Ambiguity doesn’t focus test well. Major studios swear religiously by focus testing their releases and the risk of confusing even a single audience member with too much material that isn’t literal to the point of obviousness is considered a major financial risk. And sadly, navigating these risks are how major studios assess the task of making movies.
Not that Clueless is in any way an independent film, but the smart and gifted Amy Heckerling seems to have had more wiggle room to explore her characters and their environment, to the point of riffing on the source material. Cher (Alicia Silverstone) and her friend, Dionne (Stacy Dash), talk and behave in the manner of spoiled Beverly Hills teenagers - the high society Regency figures of their particular era and homeland. But their dialogue is articulate in a brainy-dopey sort of way, as if they were kidding themselves. The era of the Valley Girl was a decade ago and these kinds of characters, though still privileged and self-absorbed, are more culturally savvy in the 90’s. It’s as if they’re only acting the part of spoiled ditzes for fun. They’re playing at these roles the same way Heckerling is playing at updating the story of Emma Woodbridge.
She omits many of the book's major characters and events, instead selecting certain elements and taking them in different directions. In the McGrath’s adaptation, Harriet Smith is the protege of inferior pedigree whom Emma takes upon herself to prep for courtship by Mr. Elston. She’s presented to Emma’s social circle and becomes both a loyal friend and an ear to bend for Emma’s gossip and cupid-y plotting. In Clueless, the Harriet figure is a new student from New York named Tai (the late Brittany Murphy) whom Cher grooms to be her disciple/doppelganger. A makeover, a new wardrobe and a series of lessons about the social cliques at their school soon prep Tai for her own social dalliances with the male student body. But then Tai betrays Cher, leaving her behind for a new group. Cher looks at the monster it seems she’s created and the irony is that she’s too naive to realize that the progeny created in her image is a reflection of her own vacuousness. When she eventually does realize this, it’s like she’s finally seeing herself from the outside, self-absorption and all.
Austen’s protagonist set about bringing together all the potential suitors in her social circle as she saw their compatibility. Clueless’s heroine starts off trying to nudge two of the teachers who are giving her poor grades towards each other, believing that their newfound romantic happiness will get them to have mercy on her. In other words, it’s a good deed that also serves her immediate interest and this is the first of many commentaries on the differences between Regency England and 90’s Beverly Hills. Despite what may seem like a connection in the psychotic amount of privilege afforded to both sets of characters, the interests of the privileged inhabitants of Beverly Hills in Clueless are heavily informed by late 20th century impulses like narcissism, “looksism” and materialism - the unsavory values of MTV (and later, Reality Shows).
It’s not that these values were absent in the world of Jane Austen’s literary heroines. They just didn’t have this kind of prominence. A whole set of social codes developed which had the effect of hiding the prejudice, vulgarity and decadence that make them possible. They weren’t as easily excused if they were even known and spoken of at all, which means they couldn’t have been embraced and cherished the way Heckerling’s characters embrace and cherish them. Would Paltow as Austen’s period Emma have picked out her wardrobe with a computer program if it had been available?
Another interesting divergence can be found in the scene depicting Emma’s insult to the doddering, mousy Mrs. Bates. In the novel and the McGrath film, it’s the breaking point after which Emma is finally confronted by Mr. Knightley for her pretensions about the lower classes and her condescension to Mrs. Bates at the picnic. The nearest scene I can think of to that in Clueless is the only scene in the movie that actually harshly judges its heroine’s ignorance. Cher whiningly chastises Lucy, the family’s Spanish-speaking maid, for taking an article of clothing she wanted to wear during her drivers test to the cleaners. She’s asked calmly by Lucy why she didn’t mention it to one of the other servants. “I don’t speak Mexican!” Cher exclaims. “I’m not a Mexican!” Lucy yells back, storming off. The whole thing was witnessed by Cher’s college intellectual step brother, Josh (a debuting Paul Rudd), who would be the Mr. Knightley figure in this movie. “Lucy’s from El Salvador,” he tells her. “What’s the difference?” she asks.
This scene suggests a darker side to the ignorance and privilege of this world. The incredible aloofness of people like this can be enjoyed as comedy up to a point. But judging by the current discourse about economic and social class, many ultra-wealthy households in America actually do contain people with this level of ignorance about people who aren’t exactly like they are, which is just about everyone. And this being the 90’s, there is now Political Correctness to contend with as well. This would be the first mass social engine for pushing people towards self-policing their speech choices under some threat of social ostracization seen since the Regency period and don’t think for a second that consideration has eluded Heckerling’s script either.
Alicia Silverstone's performance tells me she’s on the same page as Heckerling and so is the rest of the cast. There’s a lot of winking to the camera in the way her dialogue is conveyed. As Cher, she uses big, impressive words in very long, articulate sentences to ultimately say very vain and dumb things, her lips protruding and twitching in a way that’s slightly reminiscent of Drew Barrymore. Heckerling adds a welcome narration (that gets easily distracted by high end clothing and candy bars) from her Emma figure and this too seems more in line with Austen’s deeply considered approach to daily life. She’s a schemer, but a naive one, and never outwardly malicious.
I want to despise Cher and her friends for their sense of entitlement, their spoiled and overindulged existences, which seem less cute and amusing in 2022, when the gulf between people like Cher’s family and myself is so much wider. I rooted for Wallace Shawn as the stern debate teacher who’s simply not fooled by her act, until he proves to be totally undone by the vagaries of love as a result of Cher’s own matchmaking. I rooted for Rudd’s Josh to stand in the way of this brat getting everything she wants with his constant reminders of her vanity and obstinacy, right up until the moment when he falls for and lands his high school-aged step sister in a creepy denouement that has unsettling implications of its own. I want to react the way I imagine today’s younger audiences would react if Clueless had been released today. But I can’t bring myself to do that. The script is too funny and smart to be put in the “Hasn’t Aged Well” pile. Heckerling makes her movie and her heroine endearing.
This is probably because Cher is not a victim. She’s quite crafty and resilient, with a likely future in being underestimated to the detriment of her detractors, like Reese Witherspoon’s compulsive blond overachiever in Election. Cher is undoubtedly cut from the same cloth as her tough lawyer father (a scarily Nixonian Dan Hedaya), who’s less clueless himself than Austen’s Mr. Woodhouse about what his daughter is up to. He sees everything going on in the house and when he learns that she negotiated her debate grade from a C to an A, he’s delighted: “I couldn’t be happier than if they were based on real grades!” The humbling of this Emma character, in her acceptance of her own heart’s desire, her own discovery of true goodness over false notions of it, and the excitement of that discovery is what Clueless gets right about Austen’s world.
Above all, it’s this energy - the thrill of gossip, romantic misunderstandings, the possibilities of new love and the feeling of being young and unaccountable - that Heckerling gets about this project that the Weinsteins missed. They deliver what they think a costume drama should feel like. A Disney princess outing that hits all the right buttons, palatable and inoffensive, made to sell to its target audience. Clueless appropriates that material to comment on the present, while keeping its original flavor of wit and irony. In asking whether a story like Emma can still be possible in a less formal but more materialistic and morally slippery age, Heckerling transforms the material in unexpected ways. Meanwhile, Emma’s lessons about the era of its making can only be studied from outside the film, as an example of studio plate-spinning that is like so last season.
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