Emma Casley – Bitch Flicks

Teen Girls Coming of Age in ‘Clueless’ and ‘The Edge of Seventeen’

These two women directors, Amy Heckerling (‘Clueless’) and Kelly Fremon Craig (‘The Edge of Seventeen’), use their films to give a focused examination on the insecurity and self-doubt teen girls face. Cher and Nadine’s personal struggles, as well as their relationships with older mentors, reveal how patriarchal expectations shape their lives as they come of age.

This guest post written by Emma Casley appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

The Edge of Seventeen’s protagonist Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) says, “There are two types of people in the world: The people who naturally excel in life and the people who hope all those people die in a big explosion,” placing herself firmly in the second camp. Though Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) is the star of an entirely different film released 21 years before, there’s little doubt that Nadine would categorize the Clueless character in the first group. Despite differences in tone and the personalities of their leads, both films share a similarity in subject matter: teenage girls growing up. And both films are written and directed by women – a rarity in mainstream movies.

These two women directors, Amy Heckerling (Clueless) and Kelly Fremon Craig (The Edge of Seventeen), use their films to give a focused examination on the insecurity and self-doubt teen girls face. Cher and Nadine’s personal struggles, as well as their relationships with older mentors, reveal how patriarchal expectations shape their lives as they come of age. Though the two films both focus on a very particular demographic of white, well-off teenagers, they do point to the ways in which even these girls of relative privilege suffer under the boundaries of gender roles. The films do what they aim to do well: give depth and nuance to a demographic that is often written off as being frivolous and shallow. However there are obvious limits in what these films can portray. Though casting a critical look at male privilege, both films leave issues like racial and economic inequality untouched. The success of Heckerling and Craig’s films demonstrates the need for even more diversity of voices in film rather than being the end goal of more inclusive filmmaking.

The similarities between Clueless and The Edge of Seventeen can be most clearly seen in the parallels between their lead characters. Their actions reveal how they both struggle with the immense pressure that society places on young women. Cher sees herself as an expert and mentor for her family, fellow students, and teachers; Nadine frets over her social awkwardness and isolation. Cher spends her weekend choosing non-school books to read and workout regimens; Nadine’s nights off involve crying while throwing up into a toilet while her one friend (Haley Lu Richardson) holds her hair back. Cher uses strategically delivered flowers and chocolates to woo the object of her affection; Nadine sends a painfully awkward and explicit Facebook message to her crush about “doing it in the Petland stockroom.”

Cher might present herself as more put together through reading Fit or Fat and working out to buns of steel, but this urge to constantly “improve” herself and others demonstrates how she sees herself as something that needs to be improved upon. She complains about “feeling like such a heifer” after spending the day eating candy and snacks, and after her friend declines her suggestions for sex, she worries that she wasn’t presenting herself as attractive enough: “Did my hair get flat? Did I stumble into some bad lighting? What’s wrong with me?” While it’s a line played for laughs in the film, Cher clearly isn’t so different from Nadine as she despairs that she “feels so grotesque” and outcast from her cooler peers. They just have different ways of expressing this insecurity.

It doesn’t help that the few female role models Cher and Nadine have don’t provide much reassurance that things will get any better once they reach adulthood. Nadine’s mother (Kyra Sedgwick) seems to be constantly on the edge of breaking down – struggling between her job and taking care of her children and dealing with the emotional aftermath of her husband’s death. Cher’s mother has passed away, but her teacher Miss Geist (Twink Caplan) serves as an example of what the future might have in store for her. Similar to Nadine’s mom, Miss Geist is overworked and lonely. Though Miss Geist has a happier ending in Clueless, she still demonstrates the difficulties of living up to social expectations, even as an adult. Nadine and Cher are young women struggling with insecurity and feeling like they’re failing to perform femininity in the right way and they watch as their older female mentors struggle with the exact same performance. Nadine’s mother even tells her that she comforts herself thinking that everyone is as miserable and dead inside as she is – not exactly an “it gets better” message for the teenager.

Especially in comparison to many of the male characters in both films, the women in Clueless and Edge of Seventeen are unhappy and flawed, unable to provide support for the young female protagonists. While one reading might interpret this as plain old sexism in the writing, another way to look at it is that these films showcase the wear and tear that these women experience under a patriarchal society. While Nadine and Cher feel the pressure to twist and conform to impossible standards, their male counterparts (both teenagers and adults) are allowed to just simply be. This translates into many of the male characters being mentors or supportive figures for the female characters: Nadine has her teacher Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson); her mother has her son Darian (Blake Jenner); Cher has her father (Dan Hedaya) and Josh (Paul Rudd). Darian might express frustration with being the only “stable” one in the family, but The Edge of Seventeen never shows him struggle to live up to gendered social expectations as his mother and sister experience. Both films portray many of the male characters in a very positive way: they act as a sympathetic ear to Nadine and Cher’s problems without having much personal stake in the matter.

However, both films also demonstrate how a lack of awareness of societal pressures on women manifests a much less positive, and much more dangerous, way in other male characters. The Edge of Seventeen and Clueless contain very similar scenes that take place between the protagonists and a male classmate while they drive together in a car. In both cases, the girls reject the boys’ sexual advances and subsequently are stranded after leaving the car to escape the situation. In these scenes, from the boy’s perspectives, they were responding to “obvious” signs that the girls were interested in a romantic and/or sexual relationship with them. But the films suggest that actually the boys simply felt their own desires and assumed that the girls would accommodate them.

In this way, the male characters in both films, whether they are understanding mentors or aggressive sexual assaulters, are ignorant of their own power. Characters like Mr. Bruner and Cher’s father can be so “good” because they’re not dealing with the same kinds of social pressures as characters like Nadine’s mother and Miss Geist are, and can instead be pillars of stability in the main characters’ lives. But their pillar-like quality can be seen in a different way: as the men stay static, then women must constantly bend and be flexible to accommodate their positions. Cher’s father and Mr. Bruner remain ignorant to this dynamic, even when offering support to the two girls. This lack of awareness shows its darker side in the two car scenes. The two boys assume that they “know best” in these situations and expect the girls to acquiesce to their advances. Neither film gives credence to this assumption. They instead give a sympathetic view to Cher and Nadine’s hurt and betrayal, pointing the finger at the dangerous presumption of male privilege. Clueless and The Edge of Seventeen show empathy for the deeply flawed female characters and the societal oppression they face. They also demonstrate how men, as kind advisers or dangerous predators, have a tendency to assume the impartiality of their views — of course they can give good advice to their students and daughters, of course they know that when a girl gets in a car with them it’s an invitation for sex. One of the main functions of male privilege is men not even knowing that they have it.

Of course other kinds of structural oppression exist in conjunction with male privilege, and both Clueless and The Edge of Seventeen center on the lives of well-off, white, suburban girls. The two films focus on giving detailed portraits of a single character so it does make sense within the context of their stories for them both to have such a focus on a particular demographic and lifestyle. However, neither film deviates from the larger film canon’s intense fixation on the stories of the rich and the white and the otherwise privileged at the expensive of other narratives. Both directors have discussed their process in writing and directing their films; Heckerling details how she fought for Clueless to focus on the girls rather than the boys, and Craig used her own experiences with self loathing and insecurity to inform Nadine’s struggles. So while it might not have been essential that these films give nuance to female coming-of-age stories, in both cases, their role as writers and directors shaped the films into stories that echoed their own life experiences. What would other women, of different backgrounds, bring to their stories if they were given more opportunities to get behind the camera?

For both Heckerling and Craig, their efforts have translated into films that bring depth to the stories of teenage girls, but Clueless and The Edge of Seventeen shouldn’t be seen as the end goal of gender inclusivity in film direction. They represent two good examples of what can be accomplished when women directors are given more control over the stories they tell, but there are still a vast array of voices that have remained unheard.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Clueless: Way Existential

Emma Casley is a Brooklyn-based film writer. Last year she participated in the New York Film Festival’s Critics Academy. She can be found wandering the streets for good coffee and also on Twitter @EmmaLCasley.

‘Lilo & Stitch,’ ‘Moana,’ and Disney’s Representation of Indigenous Peoples

Looking at ‘Lilo & Stitch’ can provide a valuable lens in which to analyze the upcoming ‘Moana,’ as well as other mainstream films attempting to represent Indigenous cultures. … Regardless of its individual merits, ‘Lilo & Stitch’ is a moneymaking endeavor to benefit the Disney Company, which has not always had the best relationship (to say the least) with representing Indigenous cultures or respecting Indigenous peoples.

This guest post written by Emma Casley appears as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.

This November, Disney plans to release the much-anticipated Moana, advertised and hailed as the first Polynesian Disney princess. While it is the company’s first princess of Polynesian descent, it is not the first time Disney has ventured to represent Polynesian culture on-screen: the 2002 film Lilo & Stitch features sisters Lilo and Nani, who are of Indigenous Hawaiian descent as two of the central characters. Looking at Lilo & Stitch can provide a valuable lens in which to analyze the upcoming Moana, as well as other mainstream films attempting to represent Indigenous cultures.

Lilo & Stitch has been heralded as a film that avoids many of the harmful stereotypes of Polynesian culture that so many other white-produced works perpetuate. However, it is also worth considering how Lilo & Stitch as a film exists in the world, beyond the content of its storyline. As a mainstream blockbuster film made by Disney, Lilo & Stitch has an imperative to make money and to therefore appease ticket and merchandise buying audiences. Regardless of its individual merits, the film is a money-making endeavor to benefit the Disney Company, which has not always had the best relationship (to say the least) with representing Indigenous cultures or respecting Indigenous peoples.

The situation is a double-edged sword: mainstream films have the potential to challenge stereotypes and showcase Indigenous peoples’ voices on a large scale; but at the same time such widespread distribution and visibility almost always requires the heft of a multi-billion dollar company behind it — one which may or may not have the same interests in adhering to treating Indigenous peoples with respect. I’m not interested in looking at Lilo & Stitch and simply adding up the racist vs. un-racist points it scores to see which label holds up. Rather, I think that the film provides a helpful example of the complicated cultural space a film can occupy. Lilo & Stitch has racist elements; it also has moments where it challenges racial stereotypes in powerful ways for a broad audience to see. One fact does not negate the other, they coexist within the same text.

Many films set in Hawai’i do so from a colonialist white perspective, which Joy T. Taylor calls the “tourist gaze.” In these stories, Hawai’i is shown from an outsider’s perspective: often the islands are used to represent some kind of beautiful, lush, post-racial utopia that white people can visit and enjoy with no harmful repercussions — completely forgetting the Islands’ painful colonial history. The post-racial fantasy of Hawai’i can be seen in instances like the now infamous whitewashing casting of Emma Stone to play the role of half-Asian Hawaiian character of Allison Ng in Aloha. Under the “tourist gaze,” Hawai’i becomes a melting pot of different peoples in a way that explicitly favors white culture. Rather than addressing the ways in which white culture was very much forced upon Indigenous Hawaiians, films like Aloha center white actors with mainstream (read: white) sensibilities who then wear a couple of leis and hula skirts to showcase some vague form of “cultural mixing,” while still assuming whiteness as the dominant and default perspective.

On the other hand, Lilo & Stitch primarily adopts the point of view of the young, native Hawaiian Lilo, rather than the outside white visitors who come to the islands. Lilo’s hobby of taking pictures of the tourists she meets can be read as an inversion of the “tourist gaze.” Instead of Lilo becoming the subject of scrutiny and outside observation, she literally turns the camera onto the people doing the observing. Rather than being a side character in a white person’s journey, Lilo has the agency to not only be the protagonist of her story, but to turn the tables on the typical white narrative of Hawai’i by taking pictures of the white tourists that surround her: they’re the ones out of place on her island, they’re the ones that should be gawked at.

Nani similarly bucks stereotypes of Indigenous women on-screen, though in a different way. A related facet of the “tourist gaze” is the Dusky Maiden trope: where Indigenous women are cast as exotic, sexually available objects for the (generally) white male characters to consume, just another aspect of the beautiful Hawaiian scenery at their disposal. A clip from the 1962 film Mutiny on the Bounty (which the uploader has charmingly captioned as the “hottest scene in the history of cinema”) provides a pretty clear example of this trope in action:

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDpD2757jrc”]

In the video, Tahitian women perform for the white sailors, and the film cuts between their dancing and Marlon Brando watching them. It is a spectacle of Tahitian culture and bodies designed to entertain and appease white observers, both within the context of the story as well as the film itself. It’s just as much about the audience being able to watch these women performing and smiling and implying sexual availability as it is about the characters watching the same thing. Indigenous women are there to be looked at, not just by anyone, but by outsiders, by white men.

Unlike Mutiny on the Bounty, Lilo & Stitch adopts a very different gaze towards its female characters. Nani has a small romantic subplot, but it is not a crucial aspect of her character. The film frequently shows Nani in action and with agency. Her primary role in Lilo & Stitch is as the older sister and guardian of Lilo, rather than as a sexual object of desire. She turns down co-worker David’s romantic advances in favor of spending more time caring for her sister. Though the circumstances of Nani’s legal guardianship of Lilo were outside of her control, the film still lets Nani have agency to prioritize what matters most to her — the preservation and happiness of her family — over her dating life, thus giving a substantial alternative to the Dusky Maiden trope so prevalent in other films featuring Indigenous women.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking challenge to colonialist sensibilities in Lilo & Stitch is the scene where Nani must tell Lilo she is going to be taken away by Child Protective Services. Nani takes Lilo onto the hammock and signs her “Aloha ‘Oe” as a way of explaining what is about to happen to their family.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WraKfeFtOPs”]

“Aloha ‘Oe,” in addition to being one of the most iconic Indigenous Hawaiian songs, also has ties to the U.S.’ illegal annexation of Hawai’i and the fall of the Hawaiian kingdom. It was written by Queen Liliuokalani, the last ruler of Hawai’i, and has come to symbolize the loss of the Kingdom to Western rule. Using this particular song ties the experiences of Lilo and Nani to the history of the Hawaiian people. Much like Queen Liliuokalani lost her kingdom to a specter of Western civilization (the U.S. government), Nani faces losing her family to another Western force: Child Protective Services.

Despite Lilo & Stitch’s relative willingness to engage with colonialist issues faced by Indigenous Hawaiians, at least as compared to other Hollywood films, the animated feature does shy away from a more direct confrontation of modern day Indigenous issues. One such example of this hesitation comes from a deleted scene that more explicitly points criticism at the behavior of modern white tourists in Hawai’i.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taPoeIQaOiQ

The deleted scene shows Lilo having to answer frequent questions by tourists butchering the Hawaiian language, as well as someone exclaiming, “Oh look a real native!” as she passes by. Unlike the “Aloha ‘Oe” scene, and Lilo’s hobby of taking pictures of tourists, this scene offers a more direct commentary on the lasting effects of colonialism and the media’s use of the “tourist gaze” when depicting Hawai’i. I am not discrediting the power of the two examples which remain in the final cut of the film, but it is worth noting that there were moments such as these that never made it on-screen.

And here lies the central tension in the production of Lilo & Stitch: even as a relatively low budget Disney film, ($80 million), it’s still a film being produced by a major studio for a mainstream audience with an imperative to make money. Anything that might threaten its profitability, such as direct critiques of modern white tourists in Hawai’i, often gets thrown out for being too big of a risk for financial success. On the other hand, the global reach of Disney films also provides a very large platform for issues of racism and colonialism faced by Native Hawaiians to be seen by millions of people.

A very similar tension can already be traced out in the upcoming Moana: a film that has been praised for its use of Polynesian voice actors but has also been criticized in its depiction of demigod Maui and its merchandise and marketing — in particular, the release of a racist Halloween costume of the Moana character Maui featuring brown skin and tribal tattoos, an example of brownface and cultural appropriation. A tweet by @LivingOffTheGrid perfectly encapsulates the conflicted emotions associated with the situation. Along with many others, this Twitter user expresses the simultaneous desire to support Indigenous voices on a large scale, while also frustration at the fiscal endeavors of the corporation which funds these films; endeavors which more often than not do not take into consideration the voices or concerns of Indigenous peoples. With the advent of cheaper filmmaking and distribution technologies, it is technically possible for smaller companies to provide a large platform for typically underrepresented voices, but it is undoubtedly harder and much rarer for such films to gain the amount of widespread attention Disney blockbusters get on a daily basis. Though for what it’s worth, Disney did pull the costumes after the large amounts of criticism it garnered through social media and other means — a conversation largely lead by Polynesian people, so there is undoubtedly always room for shifts, however small, in this dynamic.

Moana has also faced criticisms from Indigenous Hawaiians for white people telling the stories of Indigenous peoples. While Taika Waititi wrote the film’s initial draft, the credited directors and writers are all white people. As Tina Ngata writes at Civil Beat, Disney is participating in “colonial subversion of storytelling as a statement of diversity”:

“While they are celebrated for presenting a protagonist who will ‘not put up with mansplaining,’ Disney is patently ignoring the fact that this entire film is an act of whitesplaining.”

Anne Keala Kelly at Indian Country Today Media Network also criticizes Disney and Moana for “mining” Indigenous Hawaiian culture for profit:

“Most Indigenous peoples under U.S. control, certainly Hawaiians, have yet to carve out a meaningful space to represent ourselves, what we value, and our reality in mass media and film largely because America’s master narrative relies on our subjugation. […] The cultural imperialism of Disney mirrors the military imperialism of the United States and the other industries it uses to erase our Indigenous belonging…”

The controversies Moana has faced, even before the film has even been released for wide audiences, demonstrates how Lilo & Stitch is by no means an anomaly in terms of its complex relationship with race and representing Indigenous peoples. There are moments where Lilo & Stitch offers a profound counterpoint to mainstream narratives about Hawai’i and Indigenous Hawaiian people. There are also ways in which the desire to make money keeps the film away from making more direct or explicit statements about these issues. While it’s imperative to critique racist, colonialist, and white supremacist narratives, tropes, and representations, simply trying to look at Lilo & Stitch (or any film), and trying to determine if it’s good or bad in terms of its representations of race and Indigenous peoples overlooks the complicated cultural space these films occupy.

Unilaterally praising a film like Lilo & Stitch as being a pinnacle of “good” Indigenous representation ignores its significant flaws, and the flaws of the Disney company as a whole; just as completely dismissing the film overlooks the ways in which it can be used as a vehicle for positive change. As with most films, Lilo & Stitch occupies a more tenuous middle ground — a space of conflict and tension that must be acknowledged and explored, not overlooked in favor of either/or categorizations. Upcoming films like Moana deserve similar treatment.

Emma Casley is a Brooklyn-based film writer. She recently participated in the New York Film Festival’s Critics Academy and currently interns at the Metrograph. She can be found wandering the streets for good coffee and also on Twitter @EmmaLCasley.