Clueless: Representation of Teenagers Growing Up From Their Immaturity

The movie chosen for this project is the 1995 movie Clueless, written and directed by Amy Heckerling. This entire movie is based on teenagers in an upper-class neighborhood high school. This movie follows the life of Cher Horowitz and her interactions with her classmates and ex-stepbrother and father. Throughout the movie Cher is confronted with different challenges that teenagers may face as they go through the middle stage of adolescents. The movie begins laying the foundation by giving background of Cher’s life. It shows immediately that Cher has lost her mother at a young age due to a problem during liposuction. This is a very idiosyncratic event leaving her father to raise her and her ex-step brother who continues to come to the home and stay.

A scene portraying that drugs are okay to the teenagers is the scene when the principal brings the new student Tai Fraizer to meet her new class during Physical Education class. As Cher and Dionne are talking in their physical education class, they view Tai as a project since the way she dresses is considered “grunge” or unpopular, so Cher and Dionne take her into their circle. When Tai comes over to talk to Cher and Dionne, she is told that lunch will be in ten minutes, to which Tai asked if there is herbal refreshment. Cher responded, “No, but we have coke,” and Tai said, “You have coke here?” The next scene shows Tai in the lunch line next to Travis the “pothead” of the school getting her lunch and talking to him.

The scene was Tai is asking about herbal refreshments has to do with drugs. Tai is asking as if it is a normal item served on the menu. She obviously dabbles in marijuana without worry as to what it will do to her mentally or how it affects her health. She is not worried about the risk, because she is just thinking about how “good” it will make her feel. As stated by Nora, Volkow, MD, the teenager’s brain on a drug is much more excitable and reactive. She sees no moral consequence. Cher and Dionne are being naïve to what Tai is asking, and tells her about a beverage which Tai misunderstands to be a harder drug.

Again Tai is willing to take the risk without a second thought if the drug it is made available to her. When thinking about this, is it because of the school Tai previously attended that gave her this attitude towards the use of drugs and it was more acceptable to partake in the risky behavior of taking drugs.

Another scene which shows that a teenager has to deal with sexual advancements and harassment is when Cher is leaving the party with Elton. Cher tries desperately to have Tai ride home with Elton, to try and encourage a relationship between the two, but Elton insists on taking Cher home, so she gets a ride home with him. Elton was having sexual thoughts about Cher and was pushing Tai in the other car and Cher in his car, to ensure his alone time with Cher. On the ride home, Elton kept hitting on Cher, despite Cher making it clear that she does not feel the same. He pulls over to the side of the road and pushes himself onto Cher.

Cher pushes him off of her and says she was trying to set him up with Tai. He states that he is not interested in Tai by saying, “Do you know who my father is?” Elton ends up leaving Cher on the side on the road after Cher tells him to leave her alone, although she did not think he would actually leave her. As he drove off, she ended up being robbed at gunpoint and having to call her ex-stepbrother, Josh, to come to pick her up.

Looking at this scene, the idea of Elton pushing himself on Cher and then her standing up to him showed that she has strong self-esteem. Cher was not afraid about what he would say to her or how he would feel about her, and she was comfortable enough with herself and felt strong enough to fight back. It seems as though it is more often that teenagers fall into the pressures of the opposite sex’s wishes and do something they may not be ready to do or actions they are not ready to partake in. As Cher is dealing with standing up to Elton, she is also dealing with the emotional feeling of desertion. Elton leaving her on the side of the road in an area she is unfamiliar with and a dangerous area that resulted in her being robbed at gunpoint. Her risky behavior of attending a party in an unsafe neighborhood led to many emotions. By Cher calling her ex-stepbrother to her rescue, shows that she still needs someone she trusts in her inner circle.

The third scene for discussion would be where Cher invites Christian over to her house for dinner and a movie. In her mind, this would be the perfect opportunity her first time having sex. She greets him at the door after taking all afternoon getting ready. He walks in and smells burning cookies and comments on the smell. She immediately feels a little defeated about letting the cookies burn, but quickly lets it go. The two of them then go to watch a movie, instead of watching the movie in the living or family room on a couch; they watch it in her bedroom lying on her bed. It is not far into the movie that she states her feet are cold. She is hoping that Christian will make a move; instead, he just leans over and put a pillow over her feet. She then lies on the bed on her side in a very seductive way which causes her to fall onto the floor. Christian begins to feel uncomfortable and realizes that Cher does not know that he is gay, and Christian then gets up and leaves, which leads Cher to feel disappointed.

From this scene, there are so many emotions and developmental events taking place. First, Cher wants to take on the risky behavior of having sex for the first time. Up until she met Christian, she had sworn off not doing any of the activity until she found “the one.” Now she has decided out of the blue that it should happen to Christian would be the one since he is good looking and nice. Also, it could be that subconsciously she is feeling peer pressure to have sexual relations since all of her friends had already been involved in sexual experiences. When Christian arrives at Cher’s home, he feels comfortable and since he and Cher get along so well, he probably believes that she already knows that he is gay. So, when the events of the evening happen he feels guilty for leading her on and has to leave quickly to avoid any more awkward exchanges.

The fourth scene in this movie that deals with adolescent development would be the scene where Cher is going to take her driver’s license. Cher is so consumed about what to wear while taking the test and for other events of the day that she cannot concentrate. While taking the test, she hits a bike rider, another car, cuts off a car, forgets to signal and a few more things. The DMV instructor tells her to pull over and to get out of the car. Cher asks, “Can I start over”, and the DMV instructor told her, “No you failed”, Cher then wanted to speak to someone else of authority and he stated that he was the “Messiah of the DMV”.

Cher returned home to find Tai and Josh talking and hanging out. They were congratulating her when she told them that she failed her driving test. Cher was being depressed and went inside the house and Tai followed her so that they could burn her box of trinkets that she had collected from her crush, Elton. While Tai was trying to help Cher feel better, she told her that she liked Josh and Cher said that they probably would not mesh well. Tai was hurt and told Cher that “You’re a virgin that cannot drive.”

When examining this scene of the movie it definitely hit on the prefrontal cortex not being far from fully developed. Cher being unable to concentrate on the major event that was going on at the time, which was taking her driving test. She had gotten preoccupied and was unable to deter away from her distraction when taking the test. Then when she failed, she just could not accept the decision. She fought the outcome, fought the authority and did not accept the event; which created a conflict between her and the DMV instructor. If that does not make matter worse, then her so-called friend, Tai, bullies her with the terrible things she says and trying to hurt Cher’s self-esteem.

At the end of the movie is the scene where Cher and Josh are working together with the lawyer from Cher’s father office. Josh and Cher are nudging each other as they are working and he is teasing her lovingly as they work. The lawyer is nasty towards both of them, but mostly towards Cher. He sees Cher as a child and not as a high school student. The lawyer starts yelling at Cher for a mistake she had made, and Josh comes to her rescue. The lawyer then says to Josh he needs to rethink the “puppy love” he has towards Cher. It is then that I believe Josh and Cher do come to realize they do love each other. They sit on the steps and talk to one another; and Josh was trying to find words when he told Cher she was beautiful and popular, while Cher says she really cares for Josh more than an ex-stepbrother, which leads them to passionately kiss.

As the final scene of the movie plays, many of the concepts learned come into play. Josh being older means his prefrontal cortex is a little more developed but still growing so he is protective of Cher. Emotions are spilled out between both characters, and the ability to stand up to others and protect them is abilities that are developed in this stage. In the entire movie, there are many risky behaviors portrayed through the talk of drugs and sex. Moral values are questioned and knowing exactly who you are. Conflicts exist as the character deal with teachers and parents, and various relationships. They match up their teachers so that the teachers are not so aware of what they (the students) are doing. Cher and her father may argue but in one scene toward the end, Cher realizes in a statement he says, he loves her and really cares.