Transformation - Jane Austen Emma to Clueless

The transformation process redefines a story to make it accessible to the culture and values of a contemporary context. The manipulation of medium, genre, setting, characters and plot enables the transformed text to be understood and connect with a new audience. Amy Heckerling’s post-modern film transformation Clueless (1995) is derived from Jane Austen’s classic novel Emma (1816) with both texts comparable as they use satire to address similar values. The shift in context enables the texts to reinforce the values of Regency England or 1990s Beverly Hills. Heckerling subverts and appropriates the original text to a cinematic context, through this she can comment on American society thus invoking new meaning to the ideas in Emma. Both composers approach the place of the social hierarchy, placing weight on class, marriage and charity. Furthermore, through examination of the transformation process it is evident that human concerns remain intact with values conditional on the world of the text.

Emma presents her audience with the ills of a socially stratified society and its repressive constraints manifested through her characters. The conservative social structure of Regency England is established through a clearly defined social organisation which is responsible for determining class by a families inherited wealth and lineage. The eponymous character is presented as the regency stereotype of the upper-class elitist, with the preliminary stages of the novel reflecting the context through the establishment of Emma’s social superiorty. “Emma Woodhouse, clever, handsome, and rich with a comfortable lifestyle and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings in existence.” The opening sentence uses a trochaic rhythm to reveal the heroines place in the higher echelons of Highbury society. Emma’s moral development and her “disposition to think a little to well of herself” as stated by the omniscient narrator amplifies Emma’s vanity gently satirising the