Ozker, Asli Bringing the Mall

¶ … Ozker, Asli

Bringing the Mall Home

Final Paper _ First Draft

Ozker, Asli

The Same Girl, Only a Bit Wiser?

"…it's basically a John Hughes teen movie ten years on. The basic elements are the same -- a feisty heroine who falls for the wrong guy, a class clown, a sympathetic teacher or two, copping off (or not) with the school dreamboat at some awful party, and one or two pointed lessons at life."

These are the lines the film critic Jonathan Romney uses in describing the timelessness of Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 1995) in its similarities with coming-of- age films. On the other hand, Thomas Doherthy simply categorized the genre of Gidget (Paul Wendkos, 1959) as an invisible girl trying to get noticed upfront while being faced with the complications of being in an in-between age and a virgin coming from a warm family who is, in the end penetrated with sense and sensibility.

At a first glance, one could have difficulty identifying grand similarities between Gidget and Clueless as besides both being about virgin girls on a journey from childhood to adulthood, the latter is a coming of age film undergone the transformation of contemporary culture.

Comparing the wholesomeness, contemporary cultures and the effects of these cultures on the coming of age genre, the former is the ancestor of the latter. As Doherthy clearly stated, both films belonging to the coming of age genre have adolescents in the film that "come from well-to-do families and their major problems concern whether they will pass their high school exams and who their dates will be for Saturday night."

Both Gidget and Clueless share the same frame in having the confused girl who is trying to find her true self, the advisor, the worried yet caring family and the dream guy depicted in the conventional sunny Los Angeles setting. However, the new and exciting emerging attributes of the Post-Classical Period's (1946-1962) studio system is obvious in Gidget's plot and narrative structure with its risque scenes and modernization efforts. The nostalgic backlash to earlier times are aesthetics of the Postmodern Period (1977-present) that together with the blending of the old and new create a contemporary criticism towards the senseless victimization of young kids and with Clueless, it takes us on a journey back to simpler times.