2. Clueless is a 1995 comedy starring Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittney
Murphy and Paul Rudd. This movie is about coming of age and the different
struggles that teenagers go through during their high school years. Cher the
main character who is extremely popular and beautiful begins to see the value
in doing good deeds for other people. She gives a new girl who is unhip a total
make-over. The new girl and Cher have a falling out because the new girl
starts to suppress Cher’s popularity. Towards the end of the movie everyone’s
relationships are rekindled and Cher begins to find interest in her ex step
brother.
INTRODUCTION TO CLUELESS
3. • Alicia Silverstone: plays the main character
Cher, a sweet but spoiled valley-girl who is
popular, attractive, rich and clever. She believes
that she is the ‘’queen’’ of her high school
• Stacey Dash: plays Cher’s best friends Dionne.
Dionne and her boyfriend have a not so good
relationship and are always fighting
• Brittney Murphy: plays the unhip unattractive
new girl in school that Cher and Dionne give a
make-over too. She begins to gain confidence
and suppresses Cher’s popularity. Cher and her
have a falling out but rekindle their relationship
at the end.
• Paul Rudd: plays Cher’s ex stepbrother. He
wants to be a lawyer and comes to visit Mel
Cher’s father to learn from him. Cher and Josh
bi
CHARACTERS
4. Cher the main character is an attractive popular and wealthy girl who is getting
ready for her 16th birthday. She lives in a mansion with her rick father named Mel.
Her mother died in a freak liposuction accident. Cher’s best friends name is
Dionne who is also very attractive and popular. Dionne dates a popular guy at
school and Cher thinks their relationship is pointless. Cher’s ex step brother Josh
teases her for being selfish and she constantly mocks his perfectionist personality.
Josh has a secret crush on Cher throughout the film. The movie is about coming
of age and the struggles that typical teenagers go through. Throughout the move
Cher realizes she finds happiness in doing good deeds so she adopts an unhip new
girl named Tai. Her and Dionne give Tai a make-over and Tai starts to become
popular which suppresses Cher’s popularity. Cher starts to go through struggles
with her friends and when Cher finds out that Tai has a crush on her ex step
brother Josh, Cher begins to realize that she has romantic feelings for him. Josh
and Cher begin to pursue each other and Tai, Dionne and Cher’s relationship are
rekindled.
THE BIG PLOT
5. Interpersonal conflict, complaint, persuasion, verbal aggression, social
support, warm feelings, authoritarian parenting style, emotional disclosures,
intercultural communication, value conflict
CONCEPTS FROM THE FILM:
6. This can be defined broadly as a disagreement
between two interdependent people who perceive
that they have incompatible goals:
We see this take place at the beginning of the movie
when Josh comes to visit and have dinner with Cher
and her father. Josh is known to be a very studious
college student that is studying to be a lawyer. Josh
believes that Cher is just a space cadet who gets by
school by bribing her teachers. They are sitting at
dinner and Cher goes, “Your such a brown noser”
Josh replies, “you are such a super facial space cadet,
what makes you think you can convince your
teachers to change your grades”. Cher then replies,
“only the fact that I have done it every other
semester”. It is obvious that there is some
interpersonal conflict taking place here because they
have two different ideas of how to get by in school .
Josh believes that studying is the right way and Cher
believes that she can work her way through school
by negotiations with her teachers.
INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT
7. Complaint is a message telling someone
that you find what is happening or has
occurred unacceptable because it has
violated your right or expectations.
We see the concept complaint take place
when Dionne and her boyfriend come into
contact with each other in front of the
school outside. Dionne’s boyfriend Murray
approaches her and says, “women why
don’t you be answering any of my pages”.
Dionne gets mad and expresses to Murray
that she has told him time and time again
that she does not like being called women.
Dionne is demonstrating a complaint
because she is expressing her expectations
to Murray on the basis that she does not
want to be called women
COMPLAINT
8. Persuasion is using verbal messages designed to influence the
attitudes and behaviors of others. Persuasion occurs when
someone uses words to directly attempt to influence.
We see this take place when Cher persuades her
teacher to give her a better grade. She tell her PE teacher that
some nasty boy broke her heart and how she has not been able to
sleep because of it. The PE teacher ended raising her grade
because Cher persuaded her even though it was a lie Cher was still
demonstrating persuasion in an effort to influence the teacher to
give her a better grade.
Cher also demonstrates persuasion when she tries
to get her debate teacher Mr. Hall and her other teacher Ms. Geist
to get together in order to distract them and get a better grade.
During class Cher tells Mr. Hall something that Ms. Geist said
about him in order to influence Mr. Hall to like her. She says to
Mr. Hall, “Ms. Geist was right about you, she said you’re the only
one in this school with intelligence”. Cher used these words as
persuasion to influence Mr. Hall she then went over to Ms. Geist
and used words of persuasion to influence Ms. Geist to like Mr.
Hall. Cher’s persuasion tactics resulted in Mr. Hall and Ms. Hall
to date and get married.
PERSUASION
9. Verbal aggression is sending messages that
attack another person’s self-esteem or
express personal hostility for perceived
violations of rights or expectations.
Throughout this movie Cher and Josh show
verbal aggression towards each other. One
specific example of this is when Cher is
trying to find a license driver that she can
go driving with. She approaches Josh by
saying, “Hey granola breath” this
demonstrates verbal aggression because it
is attacking his self-concept of who he is as
a person. Josh demonstrates verbal
aggression back to Cher by saying, “what
are the chances of you shutting up if I
agree” it is obvious that they have hostility
towards one another and they display this
by using verbal aggression.
VERBAL AGGRESSION
10. Social support is the process of providing
emotional, informational, and instrumental
resources to someone we perceive is in need of this
aid.
We see this occur when the new girl from California
named Tai comes to school. Cher and Dionne take
her in and walk her around the school showing her
all the different groups and a little bit about each of
those groups explaining which ones to stay away
from and what ones are cool. They then decide that
they are going to give Tai a make-over in order to
help her fit in better. They re-due her hair put on
make-up and take her shopping. These actions all
demonstrate social support that Cher and Dionne
were giving to Tai in order to help her fit in better at
their school. Since she was from California and was
clueless on how things run and act at her new
school, Dionne and Cher’s advice offered social
support to Tai.
SOCIAL SUPPORT
11. Warm feelings are positive feelings you have about
yourself and your partner during and immediately
after an interaction. The feelings can include,
happiness, excitement, yearning, peace, gratitude,
content, desire and love.
We see this occur in the movie when Dionne is
driving and somehow ends up on the freeway. She
has never driven on the freeway and her Murray and
Cher all start screaming because they are afraid they
are going to die. Murray offers emotional support
to Dionne by trying to keep her calm and tell her to
keep her eyes on the road. Once they get off of the
freeway Dionne looks at Murray and it is clear to see
that she is experiencing warm feelings of content,
desire and love. She realizes her love for Murray
after the event they just experienced together on the
freeway. This made Dionne realize her love for
Murray and they began to kiss. This displays warm
feelings because they began to express their love for
each other right after an interaction just occurred.
WARM FEELINGS
12. An authoritarian parenting style is when the parent
demands high levels of control with low levels of
nurturing. These parents like order and tradition,
demand respect and obedience, and use punishment.
They are unresponsive to their child’s negotiation
efforts.
Cher’s father has a very authoritarian parenting style.
It is obvious that Cher knows his expectations and
his afraid to not meet them. She demonstrates this
by going to extreme efforts in order to get her
grades up. Another example in the film is when
Cher is at a party and her father calls her in an
angered tone asking where she is. He states that he
wants her home in 20 minutes and Cher argues
saying that is impossible. He yells over the phone
that every place in LA takes twenty minutes to get
home and then hangs up the phone. He displays an
authoritarian parenting style because he leaves no
room for negotiation to take place. He never shows
any sign of nurturing just strict demands that need
to be met otherwise Cher would be in trouble.
AUTHORITARIAN PARENTING
STYLE
13. Emotional disclosures occur when one person
reveals sensitive, private, and/or personally risky
information signaling to our partners that we trust
them.
We see emotional disclosures take place in the film
when Cher, Dionne and Tai are out to lunch and
somehow the topic gets brought up about the levels
of intimacy each person has been gone through.
Cher reveals that she is a virgin and explains why
she is virgin. She states that she is even picky about
her shoes so when it comes to men she is very picky
as well. She then reveals Dionne’s personal
information about her sex life as well. Dionne then
jumps in and explains how she is a techniquely a
virgin but goes into detail about her and murray’s
relationship and what they have done. When Cher
and Dionne reveal this personal information they
are demonstrating emotional disclosures because it
is not a topic that you would bring up with anyone.
By revealing this information they are demonstrating
the levels of intimacy that their specific friend
group shares.
EMOTIONAL DISCLOSURES
14. Intercultural communication is a form of
communication that aims to share information across
different cultures and social groups. It is used to
describe the wide range of communication processes
and problems that naturally appear within an
organization or social context made up of individuals
from different religious, social, ethnic, and educational
backgrounds.
In this film the maid Lucy and Cher come from two
different cultural back rounds. Cher walks up to Lucy in
a panic asking her where one of her specific shirt is and
Lucy explains that it was in the dry cleaner. Lucy then
asks Cher if she had talked to Jose about trimming the
bushes out front and Cher replies, “Lucy you don’t I
don’t speak Mexican” this upsets Lucy as she forcefully
claims, “I am not a Mexican”!. Josh then goes on to
explain the Cher where Lucy is from and why that would
be offensive to her. This demonstrates the barriers that
intercultural communication can sometimes face. This
demonstrates the problems that can occur through
intercultural communication, Cher automatically
assumed that where Lucy was from but to Lucy her
culture is very different than Mexican culture and took
offense that Cher just assumed.
INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNICATION
15. Value conflict is a disagreement caused by
differences in partners deep-seated moral beliefs.
This occurs in the movie when Cher has a crush on
this boy named Christian. Cher thinks that they are
going on a date and wants him to make a move on
her. They are laying in the bed and Cher is confused
why he isn’t making a move so she decided to make
the move and puts her feet on him. Christian freaks
out and she explains that her feet are cold so he puts
a pillow on top of them instead of using that as an
excuse to cuddle her like Cher intended to happen.
After a couple more attempts he jumps up and
leaves later to find out that he is gay. This is a value
conflict because Cher thought that his beliefs were
the same as her. She was under the impression that
he was into her and that they were going to end up
dating. It turned out that they actually had two
different beliefs not that Cher is necessarily against
gay people but that she interpreted his beliefs to be
the same as hers.
VALUE CONFLICT
16. This film demonstrated all different kinds of intimate relationships. Cher and her
father demonstrated a family relationships, Tai, Dionne and Cher represented an
intimate friendship and Dionne and Murray represented a long term relationship.
It is obvious that each of these relationships differ in many ways. This movie
helped me realize the different stages that each of these relationships go through.
The friendship between Tai, Dionne and Cher really opened up my understanding
of how and when initiation takes place. I think I can relate to the friendship piece
of this movie because when I first moved to Maine I did not know a single soul.
One of my best friends now took me in and now I am friends with all of her
friends as well. This movie reminded me of the different initiation processes that
occur when we first meet other people. Another part of this film that was
relatable was the authoritarian parent style that Mel, Cher’s father has. This was
relatable because my fathers parenting style is very similar to this. He is very
direct and lays out his expectations. He also does not leave any room for
negotiation. Overall this movie is perfect example of interpersonal
communication and all of the positive and negatives that go into it.
EVALUATIONS
17. Google images. Googleimages.com
Verderber, K.S., & Verderber, R.F. (2013). Inter-Act: Interpersonal
communication. (13th ed., v-500). New York, New York: Oxford University
Press
REFERENCES
