Analysis of Culture and Media
Queer Shapeshifting in The Last of Us Part II
The videogame The Last of Us Part II (2020) is lauded by critics and fans alike for its bold and mature narrative structure and intensely complex characters. This sequel to 2014’s The Last of Us Part I confronts players with shifting perspectives and unconventional protagonists and antagonists, including a lesbian heroine, a transgender youth, and the allegorical death of the hegemonic white male gaming protagonist by way of golf club to head of Joel, toppling and rebuilding typical boundaries of identity in gaming. Such fluid narrative and identity shifts invite interpretation through Ramzi Fawaz’s concept of “shapeshifting,” as outlined in the introduction to Queer Forms.
Fawaz describes Queer formalism as “the art of shapeshifting,” a method of representation that embraces successive transformations in form and identity. Rather than fixating on a single static image of Queerness or gender, artists offer “provisional shapes” for depicting nonconformity—picturing Queerness first one way, then another, then yet another. Shapeshifting, in Fawaz’s terms, denotes an openness to evolving identities and forms: it is “an affective openness to the measured and meaningful evolution of gender and sexual identities over time,” it describes how cultural forms reveal new dimensions when reimagined in new contexts. I will argue that The Last of Us Part II practices shapeshifting through its Queer narrative structure and character arcs. The analysis will proceed through close readings of the game alongside Fawaz’s theory, showing how shifting form and identity become a means of exploring revenge, empathy, and the heterogeneity of Queer experience.
One of the most striking ways The Last of Us Part II manifests shapeshifting is through its narrative perspective. Midway through the game, the player’s controlled character switches from Ellie, the beloved heroine, to Abby, the same antagonist who murdered Ellie’s father figure. This structural shift is jarring and deliberate: the first ten hours of revenge-murdering across post-apocalypse Seattle distract from coping with Joel’s choices and the reality of his inevitable murder stemming from said choice - it’s only when Ellie finally goes too far, destroying too much, do we get question her motivations but for just a moment as The Last of Us Part II abruptly cuts, ending Elly’s section. In effect, the story shape-shifts its form, casting the villain as a second protagonist and the protagonist as a second villain, requiring the audience to inhabit a new point of view.
Fawaz’s Queer formalism emphasizes that form is not fixed and can be reconstituted in different imaginations. The game enacts this by taking the existing narrative shape—Ellie’s revenge quest—and recasting it through Abby’s eyes. This change in form discloses new dimensions of the story. Through extended time inhabiting Abby’s perspective, it becomes evident that her pursuit of vengeance is equally earned, necessary, and futile as Ellie’s. Within Abby’s experience, Joel is the monster. The shift destabilizes the player’s moral certainty, revealing how notions of good and evil are contingent, relative, and deeply entwined (this is hugely destructive of the rigidity of the Gamer’s™ psyche).
Initially, Abby appeared to be a one-dimensional monster, but the narrative transformation reveals her as a whole person with her own history, losses, and loves. In Fawaz’s terms, the game offers a new provisional shape for understanding the cycle of violence: neither Ellie’s view nor Abby’s view alone is “essential” or absolutely true, but each is a shaped perspective that gains meaning in relation to the other.
By shapeshifting the point of view, the game invites what Fawaz calls an “affective openness” in the player. We are compelled to relinquish a singular attachment to Ellie’s narrative and to empathize with Abby’s, experiencing how context shifts transform our interpretation of events. A triple-A game had yet to take the narrative risk of dividing its story into two competing perspectives, asking players to live through both, and experience the emotional consequences of actions they once believed were justified. As the story shifts forms, so does the player’s emotional perspective.
The game refuses easy moral clarity and compels players to reexamine their loyalties as they move between perspectives. In doing so, the narrative embodies shapeshifting as an active, destabilizing process rather than a passive shift in sympathy. Embracing multiple perspective in The Last of Us Part II provides a vehicle for the Queer formalist idea that no story has a single immutable shape; instead, meaning emerges through successive re-formulations of the narrative.
Just as the game’s form shifts, so too do its characters undergo profound transformations, highlighting shapeshifting on the level of identity and ethics. Both Ellie and Abby start their journeys driven by trauma and a desire for violent retribution, but their experiences gradually reshape who they are and what they stand for. Ellie, The Last of Us Part I’s angsty teenager hoping to use her unique immunity to save humanity, is The Last of Us Part II’s post-apocalyptic commando with nothing left to save, losing pieces of her humanity with each act of brutality. Ellie tortures, kills, and sacrifices personal relationships in pursuit of revenge, and when finally in reach of what she desired, Ellie no longer recognizes herself. The person who wanted more death is gone.
She finally breaks the cycle and spares Abby’s life in a climactic moment of mercy. This choice—rejecting the very revenge she craved—signals a crucial shift in Ellie’s identity. She has shapeshifted from Abby’s brutal predator into someone capable of empathy and forgiveness enough to spare her life.
Abby’s arc mirrors and inversely complements Ellie’s. Abby begins as a hardened soldier bent on avenging her own father’s murder at the hands of Joel in the first game. She succeeds in killing Joel, but it does not end her struggle; instead, Abby’s gratification ensures more death and violence. But it also leads her to form an unexpected bond with Lev, a young outcast, and to rekindle her own compassion lost when her father was taken from her. Abby transforms from a single-minded killer into a protector. She endures her own hardships—living as a whole, self-contained person whose story is every bit as layered, thorny, and profound as Ellie’s.
Crucial to her arc, Abby risks herself to save Lev and others, acting out of care rather than hate (context: Abby is a respected soldier in WLF, a massive military society at war with the Scaraphites, a band of religious-zealous Luddites, which is where Lev comes from but is exiled). By the narrative’s conclusion, Abby, too, chooses not to perpetuate the cycle of vengeance when given the chance. In these parallel evolutions, the game portrays identity as dynamic, not static. Neither protagonist remains in the neat role of hero or villain. Instead, each shifts shape in the other’s eyes: Ellie becomes the vengeful “monster” from Abby’s perspective, while Abby becomes a sympathetic figure from Ellie’s (and the player’s) perspective.
Every form these characters take—loving daughter, ruthless killer, forgiving survivor—is context-dependent and provisional. By refusing to lock its characters into fixed moral archetypes, The Last of Us Part II’s story presents Ellie and Abby as shapeshifters narratively: women who are neither entirely righteous nor irredeemably evil, but whose identities change meaning through time and perspective. Character-driven shapeshifting deepens this game’s exploration of violence and redemption, suggesting personal transformation is possible even in a world where zombies and murderers outnumber the last of humanity. It extends a hopeful idea that identity, like narrative form, is not a prison house, but a creative process of becoming.
Looking past narrative structure and character arcs, The Last of Us Part II actively deploys shapeshifting in portraying gender and Queerness. Fawaz writes that 1970s liberationists understood Queerness “can take countless shapes” and treated the present as “a creative playground for positing, inhabiting, and setting loose feminist and Queer forms.” Similarly, this game offers a spectrum of Queer representations, rather than a single tokenized figure, thereby presenting Queerness in diverse shapes.
Ellie, the protagonist, is a lesbian navigating first love and heartbreak with her girlfriend Dina amid the apocalypse. Their relationship is tender and ordinary, given depth through playable flashbacks and quiet moments, which normalizes Queer love as simply another facet of human experience. Dina herself is bisexual and pregnant (from a prior relationship with a man), complicating the notion of family and demonstrating that identities can evolve beyond traditional labels. The inclusion of Dina’s pregnancy with Ellie as her partner challenges any rigid concept of what a family “should” look like, effectively re-forming the idea of family into a Queer shape that the game treats as valid and real.
Most strikingly, The Last of Us Part II features Lev, a 13-year-old transgender boy from a strict religious sect. Lev’s story explicitly thematizes the stakes of shapeshifting identity. Within his Seraphite community, roles are strictly imposed: Lev was born “Lily” and designated to become a child bride for an elder, a fate he could not accept. In an act of defiance and self-actualization, Lev shaves his head—an action that, in Seraphite culture, marks one as male—and is violently cast out for this transgression. He changes his shape (his outward gendered appearance) as a declaration of his true identity. For this, he is hunted and dead-named by his old clan - you experience this alongside Lev as you protect each other on the run from his old clan.
While Lev’s character fits the narrative concept and brings richness to the story, he’s also brilliant for the timing of his inclusion in a medium starved for inclusion and fraught with Gamer™ hate. Regarding Fawaz, Lev’s presence catalyzes a major narrative transformation. Through Abby’s companionship with Lev, the game sets loose a new Queer form: a trans masculine hero whose struggle for recognition and safety becomes central to the plot. Lev’s arc, while filled with suffering, carries hope and optimism as he forges a new life free from the dogma of his former group.
In Fawaz’s framework, Queer Forms thrive by proliferating new versions of gender, new bodily morphologies and the shifting potentials of these categories. The Last of Us Part II realizes this by presenting characters who break the mold of heteronormativity and gender norms. Ellie’s existence as an empowered Queer woman, Abby’s muscular body that defies feminine stereotypes, and Lev’s transition all exemplify new morphologies and expressions of identity. Notably, these characters are not depicted as anomalies nor defined solely by their labels; instead, the narrative inhabits each of their perspectives, allowing the player to understand them as multifaceted individuals.
The game thus offers multiple provisional shapes of Queerness: one moment we see a tender lesbian romance, the next a pregnant bisexual woman fighting to protect her loved ones, and the next a trans teen navigating chosen family. No single representation claims to speak for all Queer experience—echoing Fawaz’s assertion that no solitary image can “accurately capture the vastly heterogeneous experiences”(35) of Queer life, rather, by including several Queer and gender-nonconforming figures, the game displays different aspects of gender and sexual existence to the audience. This diversity of representation is a deliberate shapeshifting strategy: it prevents the fixity of a lone Queer narrative and instead celebrates variability and the coexistence of many Queer forms.
The game continually re-shapes itself—through a daring perspective flip, through the moral growth of its characters, and through the varied Queer lives it portrays—to ensure that no single shape contains its meaning. In doing so, it invites players to practice a kind of Queer formalism as they play: to remain flexible in their sympathies and open to change. This theoretical lens also highlights its contribution to Queer representation in popular media. The Last of Us Part II stands out for embracing a “spirit of flexibility or attunement to variation and change” in a medium often constrained by formula. Its Queer formalist approach suggests a new way forward for storytelling: one where form and characters remain malleable, and through their malleability, speak to the profound complexity of human experience.
References
Fawaz, Ramzi. ”Introduction,” in Queer Forms (pp.1-53). New York University Press, 2022.
Naughty Dog. The Last of Us Part I. PlayStation 3, 2013.
Naughty Dog. The Last of Us Part II. PlayStation 4, 2020.
Queer Shapeshifting in The Last of Us Part II
The videogame The Last of Us Part II (2020) is lauded by critics and fans alike for its bold and mature narrative structure and intensely complex characters. This sequel to 2014’s The Last of Us Part I confronts players with shifting perspectives and unconventional protagonists and antagonists, including a lesbian heroine, a transgender youth, and the allegorical death of the hegemonic white male gaming protagonist by way of golf club to head of Joel, toppling and rebuilding typical boundaries of identity in gaming. Such fluid narrative and identity shifts invite interpretation through Ramzi Fawaz’s concept of “shapeshifting,” as outlined in the introduction to Queer Forms.
Fawaz describes Queer formalism as “the art of shapeshifting,” a method of representation that embraces successive transformations in form and identity. Rather than fixating on a single static image of Queerness or gender, artists offer “provisional shapes” for depicting nonconformity—picturing Queerness first one way, then another, then yet another. Shapeshifting, in Fawaz’s terms, denotes an openness to evolving identities and forms: it is “an affective openness to the measured and meaningful evolution of gender and sexual identities over time,” it describes how cultural forms reveal new dimensions when reimagined in new contexts. I will argue that The Last of Us Part II practices shapeshifting through its Queer narrative structure and character arcs. The analysis will proceed through close readings of the game alongside Fawaz’s theory, showing how shifting form and identity become a means of exploring revenge, empathy, and the heterogeneity of Queer experience.
One of the most striking ways The Last of Us Part II manifests shapeshifting is through its narrative perspective. Midway through the game, the player’s controlled character switches from Ellie, the beloved heroine, to Abby, the same antagonist who murdered Ellie’s father figure. This structural shift is jarring and deliberate: the first ten hours of revenge-murdering across post-apocalypse Seattle distract from coping with Joel’s choices and the reality of his inevitable murder stemming from said choice - it’s only when Ellie finally goes too far, destroying too much, do we get question her motivations but for just a moment as The Last of Us Part II abruptly cuts, ending Elly’s section. In effect, the story shape-shifts its form, casting the villain as a second protagonist and the protagonist as a second villain, requiring the audience to inhabit a new point of view.
Fawaz’s Queer formalism emphasizes that form is not fixed and can be reconstituted in different imaginations. The game enacts this by taking the existing narrative shape—Ellie’s revenge quest—and recasting it through Abby’s eyes. This change in form discloses new dimensions of the story. Through extended time inhabiting Abby’s perspective, it becomes evident that her pursuit of vengeance is equally earned, necessary, and futile as Ellie’s. Within Abby’s experience, Joel is the monster. The shift destabilizes the player’s moral certainty, revealing how notions of good and evil are contingent, relative, and deeply entwined (this is hugely destructive of the rigidity of the Gamer’s™ psyche).
Initially, Abby appeared to be a one-dimensional monster, but the narrative transformation reveals her as a whole person with her own history, losses, and loves. In Fawaz’s terms, the game offers a new provisional shape for understanding the cycle of violence: neither Ellie’s view nor Abby’s view alone is “essential” or absolutely true, but each is a shaped perspective that gains meaning in relation to the other.
By shapeshifting the point of view, the game invites what Fawaz calls an “affective openness” in the player. We are compelled to relinquish a singular attachment to Ellie’s narrative and to empathize with Abby’s, experiencing how context shifts transform our interpretation of events. A triple-A game had yet to take the narrative risk of dividing its story into two competing perspectives, asking players to live through both, and experience the emotional consequences of actions they once believed were justified. As the story shifts forms, so does the player’s emotional perspective.
The game refuses easy moral clarity and compels players to reexamine their loyalties as they move between perspectives. In doing so, the narrative embodies shapeshifting as an active, destabilizing process rather than a passive shift in sympathy. Embracing multiple perspective in The Last of Us Part II provides a vehicle for the Queer formalist idea that no story has a single immutable shape; instead, meaning emerges through successive re-formulations of the narrative.
Just as the game’s form shifts, so too do its characters undergo profound transformations, highlighting shapeshifting on the level of identity and ethics. Both Ellie and Abby start their journeys driven by trauma and a desire for violent retribution, but their experiences gradually reshape who they are and what they stand for. Ellie, The Last of Us Part I’s angsty teenager hoping to use her unique immunity to save humanity, is The Last of Us Part II’s post-apocalyptic commando with nothing left to save, losing pieces of her humanity with each act of brutality. Ellie tortures, kills, and sacrifices personal relationships in pursuit of revenge, and when finally in reach of what she desired, Ellie no longer recognizes herself. The person who wanted more death is gone.
She finally breaks the cycle and spares Abby’s life in a climactic moment of mercy. This choice—rejecting the very revenge she craved—signals a crucial shift in Ellie’s identity. She has shapeshifted from Abby’s brutal predator into someone capable of empathy and forgiveness enough to spare her life.
Abby’s arc mirrors and inversely complements Ellie’s. Abby begins as a hardened soldier bent on avenging her own father’s murder at the hands of Joel in the first game. She succeeds in killing Joel, but it does not end her struggle; instead, Abby’s gratification ensures more death and violence. But it also leads her to form an unexpected bond with Lev, a young outcast, and to rekindle her own compassion lost when her father was taken from her. Abby transforms from a single-minded killer into a protector. She endures her own hardships—living as a whole, self-contained person whose story is every bit as layered, thorny, and profound as Ellie’s.
Crucial to her arc, Abby risks herself to save Lev and others, acting out of care rather than hate (context: Abby is a respected soldier in WLF, a massive military society at war with the Scaraphites, a band of religious-zealous Luddites, which is where Lev comes from but is exiled). By the narrative’s conclusion, Abby, too, chooses not to perpetuate the cycle of vengeance when given the chance. In these parallel evolutions, the game portrays identity as dynamic, not static. Neither protagonist remains in the neat role of hero or villain. Instead, each shifts shape in the other’s eyes: Ellie becomes the vengeful “monster” from Abby’s perspective, while Abby becomes a sympathetic figure from Ellie’s (and the player’s) perspective.
Every form these characters take—loving daughter, ruthless killer, forgiving survivor—is context-dependent and provisional. By refusing to lock its characters into fixed moral archetypes, The Last of Us Part II’s story presents Ellie and Abby as shapeshifters narratively: women who are neither entirely righteous nor irredeemably evil, but whose identities change meaning through time and perspective. Character-driven shapeshifting deepens this game’s exploration of violence and redemption, suggesting personal transformation is possible even in a world where zombies and murderers outnumber the last of humanity. It extends a hopeful idea that identity, like narrative form, is not a prison house, but a creative process of becoming.
Looking past narrative structure and character arcs, The Last of Us Part II actively deploys shapeshifting in portraying gender and Queerness. Fawaz writes that 1970s liberationists understood Queerness “can take countless shapes” and treated the present as “a creative playground for positing, inhabiting, and setting loose feminist and Queer forms.” Similarly, this game offers a spectrum of Queer representations, rather than a single tokenized figure, thereby presenting Queerness in diverse shapes.
Ellie, the protagonist, is a lesbian navigating first love and heartbreak with her girlfriend Dina amid the apocalypse. Their relationship is tender and ordinary, given depth through playable flashbacks and quiet moments, which normalizes Queer love as simply another facet of human experience. Dina herself is bisexual and pregnant (from a prior relationship with a man), complicating the notion of family and demonstrating that identities can evolve beyond traditional labels. The inclusion of Dina’s pregnancy with Ellie as her partner challenges any rigid concept of what a family “should” look like, effectively re-forming the idea of family into a Queer shape that the game treats as valid and real.
Most strikingly, The Last of Us Part II features Lev, a 13-year-old transgender boy from a strict religious sect. Lev’s story explicitly thematizes the stakes of shapeshifting identity. Within his Seraphite community, roles are strictly imposed: Lev was born “Lily” and designated to become a child bride for an elder, a fate he could not accept. In an act of defiance and self-actualization, Lev shaves his head—an action that, in Seraphite culture, marks one as male—and is violently cast out for this transgression. He changes his shape (his outward gendered appearance) as a declaration of his true identity. For this, he is hunted and dead-named by his old clan - you experience this alongside Lev as you protect each other on the run from his old clan.
While Lev’s character fits the narrative concept and brings richness to the story, he’s also brilliant for the timing of his inclusion in a medium starved for inclusion and fraught with Gamer™ hate. Regarding Fawaz, Lev’s presence catalyzes a major narrative transformation. Through Abby’s companionship with Lev, the game sets loose a new Queer form: a trans masculine hero whose struggle for recognition and safety becomes central to the plot. Lev’s arc, while filled with suffering, carries hope and optimism as he forges a new life free from the dogma of his former group.
In Fawaz’s framework, Queer Forms thrive by proliferating new versions of gender, new bodily morphologies and the shifting potentials of these categories. The Last of Us Part II realizes this by presenting characters who break the mold of heteronormativity and gender norms. Ellie’s existence as an empowered Queer woman, Abby’s muscular body that defies feminine stereotypes, and Lev’s transition all exemplify new morphologies and expressions of identity. Notably, these characters are not depicted as anomalies nor defined solely by their labels; instead, the narrative inhabits each of their perspectives, allowing the player to understand them as multifaceted individuals.
The game thus offers multiple provisional shapes of Queerness: one moment we see a tender lesbian romance, the next a pregnant bisexual woman fighting to protect her loved ones, and the next a trans teen navigating chosen family. No single representation claims to speak for all Queer experience—echoing Fawaz’s assertion that no solitary image can “accurately capture the vastly heterogeneous experiences”(35) of Queer life, rather, by including several Queer and gender-nonconforming figures, the game displays different aspects of gender and sexual existence to the audience. This diversity of representation is a deliberate shapeshifting strategy: it prevents the fixity of a lone Queer narrative and instead celebrates variability and the coexistence of many Queer forms.
The game continually re-shapes itself—through a daring perspective flip, through the moral growth of its characters, and through the varied Queer lives it portrays—to ensure that no single shape contains its meaning. In doing so, it invites players to practice a kind of Queer formalism as they play: to remain flexible in their sympathies and open to change. This theoretical lens also highlights its contribution to Queer representation in popular media. The Last of Us Part II stands out for embracing a “spirit of flexibility or attunement to variation and change” in a medium often constrained by formula. Its Queer formalist approach suggests a new way forward for storytelling: one where form and characters remain malleable, and through their malleability, speak to the profound complexity of human experience.
References
Fawaz, Ramzi. ”Introduction,” in Queer Forms (pp.1-53). New York University Press, 2022.
Naughty Dog. The Last of Us Part I. PlayStation 3, 2013.
Naughty Dog. The Last of Us Part II. PlayStation 4, 2020.
An Analysis of Representation in Media - Advertisement
Representation is the name of the effect given to the use of images and languages that are designed to create meaning and purpose. Maria Sturken and Lisa Cartwright detail this in a chapter from their book “Practices in Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture,” where they delineate an overview of how visual images are used by cultures to help us express ourselves, communicate, and learn from each other. They posit that, like the English language, representation systems like painting, photography, film, and television all have rules and regulations that express and interpret meaning. Images from these systems are used to make meanings or represent different attitudes and beliefs about society or culture, and even abstract concepts like emotions or political ideologies. The two claim that representation isn’t so much a direct reflection of a reality that exists; instead, it is a way for us to organize, construct, and mediate our understanding of reality, emotion, and imagination. All this is to say that the world is not actually reflected back at us through systems of representation, but we actually construct the meaning of the material world through these different systems.
Images have two effective meanings when viewed: the connotative and the denotative. The denotative meaning is understanding imagery at its most basic level, i.e., what it is literally depicting via its imagery. The connotative level is more complex and requires an understanding of context and meaning, relying on the viewer's history and learned cultural experiences in society or even personal experience. French literary theorist Roland Barthes famously used a pasta ad as an example to delineate the two meanings and provide evidence for their existence. The pasta ad was created by French designers and literally depicted several store-bought items that are known for their Italian origins. The advertisement not only lets you know what types of things you can buy to make a pasta dish, the denotative meaning, but it is also implanting and taking advantage within the viewer a preconceived notion of Italian culture and family-made dinners, the connotative meaning. By taking advantage of understanding these two abstract concepts, advertisers create an image designed to make you want to buy their stuff.
Since the creation of using images to advertise a product, millions of different ad plans have been enacted, failed, been successful, or were so prone to controversy and advocated poor practices that they have been totally illegalized. One of the more infamous advertisements for that latter category has been the cigarette advertisements that ran from the late eighteenth century all the way to 1971, the year of the last cigarette commercial. These advertisements often depicted people smoking a particular type of cigarette, acting a particular type of way. Cigarette companies were a dime a dozen, and their products were all essentially the same exact thing. To alleviate the market's oversaturation, these companies would try to attach a specific lifestyle or identity to their brand. They’d do this by having their most likely male subject be happy, contemptuous, or maybe hard-working. They planned to get people to think that by smoking their specific cigarette, they could achieve the life and identity of the people in their favorite cigarette advertisements. By adhering to a brand, the smoker would inherit that brand’s qualities of sophistication and grandeur.
Though cigarettes primarily targeted men initially, the early twentieth century included advertisements that included women. These advertisements directly related smoking to different contemporary social customs, including shorter and more revealing dresses, freely dating, and even dancing. These images worked in conjunction with the smoking ads directed at men that attempted to trick them into thinking smoking would make them more manly. The women in ads were always very attractive and young, highly sexualized and feminine, maintaining expected societal gender roles.
In an advertisement from Pall Mall, a man is depicted smoking a cigarette between two conventionally attractive women in a small boat. He sits back smiling, dressed in suave lounge suit-wear as the women happily paddle the little craft for him. The top of the image reads,
“You make out better at both ends”
The two ends are the women in the boat, as well as the specific cigarette advertised. The cigarette and the pack it came from make up the image's lower half, along with a graph showing the specialness of the cigarette's two sides; the extended filter and the more-than-average amount of tobacco within the roll. The most substantial amount of text is offered to the left of the pack, reading, “ Pall Mall gives you more tobacco for more flavor. A longer filter for a milder taste. You make out better at both ends – better than with any other cigarette.” For a viewer who enjoys mild or “tasteful” cigarettes, the brief description is undoubtedly more attractive than what is offered by harsher cigarettes like Marlboro Reds.
The self-complimenting lines of the advertisement are sure to be seen in any typical and contemporary advert you might see today, but what you won’t get as much anymore is the outdated display of gender roles and performance shown in the picture. These cigarette ads serve as mirrors into a time when sexism and the patriarchy (still very prominent in society but less obvious) were more brazen in their presence and attempted to mold society to their will. This advertisement is doing that by allowing the man to sit leisurely while two subservient women paddle him around. It plays on the idea that women exist to serve men and includes the male fantasy of being serviced by two women, not exclusively in a sexual setting, while also being a joke on the double-sidedness of the cigarette shown. By creating this image of the powerful male, advertisers design and play with a preexisting construct that manipulates their predominantly male customers into associating themselves or their masculine behaviors with this particular brand of cigarettes. “By smoking the Pall Malls, I’ll be just like that guy in the boat.” - Bill Smoker, probably.
Advertisements like this were not exclusive to the cigarette industry but were undoubtedly a stapled quality of most ads. These don’t exist anymore. In fact, cigarette companies are only really allowed to advertise their products on signs and posters located inside buildings that distribute cigarettes and cigarette products. This is due to acts like the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act which heavily regulates the distribution and advertisement of cigarettes, making targeted advertisements like Pall Malls a relic of the past.
Though these images of the social hierarchy are supremely negative and inherently bad, they serve as a representation study source. You can very clearly see how Pall Mall used the denotative imagery of a man in charge of two women helping him while he is dressed luxuriously to sell the connotative image of the male fantasy and therefore selling cigarettes to men who want to be seen the same way they see that man in the boat. It’s so blatant that it seems childish and nonserious, but this type of advertisement genuinely harmed society by upholding these gender stereotypes while also selling incredibly unhealthy and addictive products.
Works Cited
Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. Oxford University Press, 2018.
Barthes, Roland. Rhetoric of the Image. 1977.
https://onlineexhibits.library.yale.edu/s/sellingsmoke/page/gender
https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/rules-regulations-and-guidance/family-smoking-prevention-and-tobacco-control-act-overview
Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. Oxford University Press, 2018.
Barthes, Roland. Rhetoric of the Image. 1977.
https://onlineexhibits.library.yale.edu/s/sellingsmoke/page/gender
https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/rules-regulations-and-guidance/family-smoking-prevention-and-tobacco-control-act-overview
A Character Analysis - Film
Wishful Thinking in Dusty Boots
Josh Brolin depicts masculinity and the dangers thereof in the most frustrating and realistic ways. Though it's charming at times, Brolin’s Moss ultimately pays the price for his greed and overconfidence in No Country for Old Men.
If he is in a room, that room is his. The cocky stomp and determined gaze with calculated movements absorb any sense of ownership about the space, leaving everyone else wondering what they should be doing for him and how they can assist. Josh Brolin’s Vietnam-veteran cowpoke Llewelyn Moss is a man’s man in the most self-gratifying of ways. Being from the Ozarks of Southern Missouri, my father or any of my 10-something uncles would undoubtedly imagine they see themselves in Brolin, and perhaps I’m also supposed to. There certainly is something charming about a rugged hero in boots and a cowboy hat, but how well do those fantastical qualities of masculine heroism match up against a much more real villain? Brolin drips with stubborn confidence and misplaced pride in his fantasy of being the hero that will win this story, all for it to be wiped away when his chivalrous nature leads him to self-destruction in No Country for Old Men.
Regarding the weaknesses of masculinity or manliness and the traits thereof, I like to think I’m a bit of an authority on the subject. Perhaps that is one example of such weakness, presuming I know enough about it to announce my ability to explain it. Growing up as a guy in a hyper-conservative rural Missouri town, you are taught how to behave as a man. Behaviors and traits like independence, courage, strength, and stoicism are expected and were certainly expected of me by my veteran father. Those expectations were expanded upon during my time in the Navy, where everyone seemed to be in a pissing contest to see who could be the most macho. Experiences like these shaped how I perceive masculinity and helped me understand its faults.
When Brolin is introduced in No Country for Old Men, he’s holding his hunting rifle the same way I was taught when I was 12, and he picks up his spent brass like any other conscious hunter. It is so easy to imagine him as just another guy at the shooting range trying to sight his scope, and the disdain on his face when he merely wounds his prey has been worn by so many before. Genuinely, it feels like we are spying on a man attempting to bring home this month’s venison. As a blue-collar worker living in a trailer with his wife in the Texas desert, that deer is vital to his livelihood, making his next choice slightly uncharacteristic. Moss doesn’t decide to track his bleeding prey and instead follows a nearby wounded dog’s backtracks to find a drug deal gone awry. Brolin slowly and methodically maneuvers through the scene, clearing the area and taking complete ownership of the impromptu graveyard, only stopping to question the last survivor.
Moss is unblinking as he scans the bloodied corpses and instead gains a look of hunger when he discovers the drugs. He concludes there must be a ‘last man standing’ and leaves to use his hunting skills to find a man, juxtaposing his earlier tracking of the deer. A chilling apathy blankets Brolin’s face when a dying survivor asks him for water. Throughout most of the film, that unblinking apathy stays on Brolin’s face. Sometimes it reassures you that he knows what he is doing and everything will be okay. But other times, it frustrates you beyond measure when you see how oblivious he is to the danger following him. Brolin’s Moss lives in a world that has led him to believe that he knows all and is willing to risk his and his wife's lives in a desperate game of cat and mouse to get away with the 2 million dollars he found.
When Moss finds the money, he mutters a “yeah..” to himself. This little bit was improvised by Brolin, who was scripted to remain silent upon seeing the money. He knew he was looking for a large amount of drug money, but this phrase conveys the gravity of the discovery and shows us just how sure Moss is in his predictions. Something that only serves to get him into trouble throughout the story. Brolin clearly understands his character and asks himself how he would react if he were this unlucky hunter. These quiet mutterings of talking to himself are in several scenes, usually moments of dramatic realization.
After watching how he operates in this environment and absorbing his general demeanor, you can predict almost exactly how he speaks to his wife when we see him arrive home. He swings the door open and deflects Carla Jean’s questions, accusing her of hollering at him when she simply asks where he found a gun. This a valid question to ask your romantic partner, and maybe cause for concern when they tell you to ignore it. Yet whatever it is about Brolin’s cowboy swagger that binds Carla to Moss somehow outweighs the question of the procural of a flashy nickel-plated pistol, something that would be of zero use to a hunter. Brolin has the aggressive playfulness of a southern dad in on the joke; even when there is no joke to be made, this is quite a severe predicament he has unwittingly started. He expects his wife to be quiet and watch the TV with him; the casualness Brolin emits makes you wonder how often this sort of thing happens. Moss’ alone time is his time, and time with his wife is also his.
The main antagonist of the movie and the one chasing after Moss is Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem, who gives a chilling performance as the sociopathic assassin. There aren’t any traditional protagonists + antagonist showdowns in the movie, only a brief chase scene in which most of it takes place with the two being quite far from one another. The two characters only interact with each other by shooting blindly at one other in a populated community. Here Moss’ propensity for violence is shown in the ugliest of ways.
The pseudo-showdown starts with Chigurh chasing Moss out of the hotel he’s been hiding in. After a shootout and several car crashes, it ends with Moss being the better shot and severely wounding Chigurh, causing him to retreat into an alley. Brolin is imbued with a powerful physicality as his body language regresses to that of a hunter. With a gun in each hand, he follows the trail of Chigurh’s wound and discovers him in an alley, helpless and dying. Moss’s heroic self-view with high moral standards won’t allow him to kill Chigurh if he’s no longer an immediate threat, something he will regret.
Maybe the possibility of murdering an innocent bystander is justified because he was attacked first. But by attacking or running from Chigurh, Moss unconsciously decides that the money he finds is more important than the lives of those around him. That same decision will be seen later when Chigurh gives Moss a deal; the money or his wife’s life. Despite knowing he is no match for such a determined killer, Moss can’t help himself and decides not to take the deal, instead promising to kill Chigurh. A decision like that shows us that Moss honestly believes himself to be some sort of fantastical hero in this ‘neo-western gone wrong’ and that everything will be dandy as he and Clara ride off into the sunset with a big bag full of cartel heroin money.
Not only is No Country for Old Men lacking the traditional showdown scene, but it also doesn’t end its protagonist’s story in a typical manner. We get a brief moment of Brolin showing off his macho country swagger at a hotel where he chooses to meet his wife, except this scene doesn’t involve Clara Jean. He flirts with a guest by the pool for a time, and we get a small reminder of Brolin’s charm before he’s invited back into her room, ending the scene. In what is regarded as a notoriously unceremonious film death, Moss is then killed off-screen by unknown assassins, grounding Brolin’s fantasy-like cowboy antics both literally and figuratively.
There is a not-so-missed nostalgia in the wonderfully dumb idea that if you’re determined enough or think you’re smooth enough, you’ll get whatever you want exactly how you want it. Whoever Brolin’s Moss reminds you of from your life, they’ve probably subscribed to such ideas and see no errors in such a belief. I certainly have before, and I’m sure I will again. Men like Moss genuinely believe they deserve whatever they want and are willing to risk it just to get it. That cake you blindly shoved away all sense and reasoning and fought tooth and nail for? Well, you can have it. You can eat it too. Can’t you? Probably not.
A Research Paper on Factory Farms and Their Detriments to Society
Factory Farming (CAFOs)
How do we get our meat, and who decides how that meat is sourced? In a world with a constantly growing population, a population that mostly eats meat but does not actively participate in the killing and butchering of animals, privately owned farms simply cannot keep up with the demand. To fix this inadequate meat supply, farming is industrialized with mass farming factories that provide meat products effectively and efficiently. This industrialization is a very cheap fix for the meat industry that allows for the creation of immense amounts of meat for consumers but at the cost of the animal’s welfare and comfort. Factory farming is not a problem that only affects animals subjugated to the harmful practices of factory farming; it also negatively affects the environment and the human population. Factory farming is not a sustainable practice and must be abolished.
Due to the general population's lack of assistance in the accrual of animals and their meats, we have created a huge reliance on these farms and factories. It is a problematic reliance that has no definitive formulation (Rittel 1972, 393), creating a wicked problem. Factory farming does serve the legitimate purpose of providing cheap food all over the world. It is so ingrained in our society that it seems like there is no other option, and if you don’t know much about factory farming, you wouldn’t even consider why another option should exist. The short-term problems of factory farming consist mainly of animal welfare and land accrual by corporations, problems that, unfortunately, most of the world doesn’t see and therefore doesn’t care about. The long-term effects of factory farming are mostly ecologically damaging and pertain to the environment as a whole, another thing that many people do not understand or care for.
In the Humane League website’s page titled, “Factory Farming: What it is and Why its a Problem,” factory farming is described more officially as a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) and are “modern industrial methods of raising farmed animals, who are collectively known in industry parlance as livestock.” These farms are huge agricultural operations capable of raising and harvesting large quantities of animals with minimum resources, confining the animals to small spaces in horrible conditions. CAFOs supply 98% of the U.S.’s meat products. The United States Department of Agriculture’s technical requirements for the CAFO label is AFOs (animal feeding operations) with more than 1,000 animal units (e.g., 700 dairy cows, 2,500 swine, or 125,000 broiler chickens) or AFOs of any size that discharge manure or wastewater into a ditch, stream, or waterway.
The Humane League’s page explains the specific problems with the industry, such as the genetic manipulation of chickens and cows that leaves them debilitated, the painful debeaking of chickens that leave them disfigured, and the long-term effects that these immense operations have on the environment. Effects include deforestation for factory expansion and animal feed crops, heavy usage of fossil fuels for climate control within the facilities, and animal waste that isn’t disposed of properly, leading to surface and groundwater contamination.
The wickedness of this situation is revealed in the question of what if the meat corporations suddenly decided they care about the environment and animals and cease all factory operations. Animals are safe, and the environment will heal, sure. But what about the people who rely heavily on easily accessing meat that is so vital to the diets of most humans? What is the other option for purchasing meat products that don’t rely on small farms in rural areas? The answer would most likely lead us back to the revitalization of factory farming to fill the needs of consumers.
Government regulations on CAFOs' treatment of animals and environmental pollution could help the problem, but doing so would heavily subtract from the expected food availability in stores. Asking people to become vegetarians would not help much, either. The lack of business for the meat industry would put the almost 1,000,000 employees in the beef industry alone in danger. The point is that no matter what move you make to try and fix the problem, there is another negative result to take its place and muddies the image of the actual problem, confusing which issue to tackle. “Nothing really bounds the problem-solving process – it is experienced as ambiguous, fluid, complex, political, and frustrating as hell” (Roberts 2000, 2).
How did America and the Earth as a whole get so reliant on factory farms when they are damaging to so many? At the beginning of the 1900s, over half of Americans were private farmers or lived in rural areas that patronized those farmers. Despite this, agriculture's industrialization exploded over the 20th century, undergoing greater changes than it had since agriculture was created over 13,000 years ago. The invention of synthetic pesticides, fertilizers, and antibiotics improved farm animal life and allowed them to be kept alive in smaller spaces much easier, further aiding industrialization. This advancement significantly improved the amount of livestock able to be harvested and would go on to make factory farming the way America provides 99% of its meat products.
With global meat consumption increasing steadily, especially in lower and middle-income countries, the demand for cheap meat and manufacturing costs will continue to rise too. These parallel demands create a self-reproducing situation and give no real end in sight. With America’s staunch position in capitalism, the ability to take advantage of low-income laborers is too compelling for such a powerful industry to ignore. Just six companies control two-thirds of all meat production in the US: Tyson, JBS, Smithfield, Cargill, National Beef, and Hormel. This monopolization of agriculture drives out the small farms, competitors, and small-time businesses, effectively losing America 88% of local dairy farms over the past 50 years. This creates a system of indentured servants comprised of farmers forced out of business who now have to become part of the big meat corporations. These laborers are typically underpaid, not compensated properly for their land and services, and face severe financial insecurity.
With all of the other farmers being too poor and indebted to America’s banking system, CAFOs hoard all sales, and Americans can only really rely on CAFO farms to provide meat, severely damaging local farm sustainability owners. The monopolization this creates allows factory farms to control the meat market completely and gain total freedom of business operations. Freedoms like a general disregard for employee treatment cause serious injuries in factory farms. They only serve to take advantage of the laborers who are not getting anywhere near appropriate payment for the amount of work expected of them. A poorer population is forced to pay for the cheaper, mass-produced product, adding to the cycle of demand for factory farming.
Another negative result of their monopolization and freedom of operations is the environmental effect CAFOs will invariably cause. CAFO runners will spend a lot of money to further improve the technologies that assist them in producing their massive quantities of animal products. However, they do not make an effort to invest in facilities that would allow them to properly handle the waste that animal treating produces. CAFO waste is primarily urine, feces, carcasses, and 168 hazardous gases that livestock and their waste create. Many farmers insist that the waste is recycled and used as fertilizers for their feed crops, but the colossal amount of waste produced is simply too much to use for such purposes. This waste does damage to the surrounding areas' groundwater, surface water, soil, and air in the form of polluting pathogens, hazardous chemicals, animal pharmaceuticals, and heavy metals. According to the EPA, statistics show these excrements polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and groundwater in 17 states.
Chemicals found in the treatment of livestock are antibiotics used to keep them alive in such terrible conditions before getting slaughtered for the food-making process. The antibiotics that keep them alive longer in tighter quarters also make the animals bigger, requiring more antibiotics to maintain livestock health. Chickens are made larger with antibiotics to ensure they don’t die from being too big. This is an unsustainable cycle of medical manipulation that ensures the meat we eat is pumped full of antibiotics.
Pro-CAFO arguments are typically points of food price, availability, and employment. They ask where we would find our meats, where the people who work in these industries go, and how much meat would cost if we were to abolish the factory farming method of meat processing. In Angela Davis’ Are Prisons Obsolete?, she gives a nuanced thought process in a similar question regarding what we would do without the prison system. She asks why it must be that we should rely on this one system that is so heavily flawed and why can’t we fathom a different form of system that only benefits everyone involved. In terms of mass factory farming in America, many people don’t care about its issues. Sure, they understand that it has cons, but they act as if the other options don’t exist.
People who understand the seriousness of the issues stemming from factory farming make conscious choices like buying their meat from local farmers or simply not buying meat and practicing vegetarianism and veganism as a form of protest or moral belief. Others might try to lobby for more government regulation to hinder the poor choices that CAFOs make or protest to attempt to change the mind of other meat consumers. Many companies have created plant-based meat alternatives to attempt to replace meat as an option for those conscious consumers who do not want to participate in giving business to CAFOs. Huge modern advances in bioengineering have created a method of growing meat in a lab without actually slaughtering any animals. By taking living cells from farm animals, engineers can grow the cells in a controlled laboratory environment that produces a near-identical product that greatly resembles meat. The FDA has been approving the selling of genetically modified products and expects grocery stores to soon provide “lab meats” in grocery stores. Lab-grown meat creation is presumed to be more efficient and environmentally friendly than factory farms.
One hundred sixty-five million animals are killed yearly in America’s factory farms. There are, fortunately, many options that are steps to ensure a future in which this does not happen. Many grassroots organizations are formed to stop CAFOs from moving into local areas. The Animal Welfare Institute provides a step-by-step plan for organizing an anti-CAFO group for communities expecting a factory farm to crop up in their local areas. Making efforts to defeat the American stigma of “tree-huggers” would be essential to making this form of protest more widespread. Still, rural America has taken more effective notice of the harms of CAFOs, making them more willing to organize against these farms. The notice of CAFO harms has made it to many younger, progressive politicians, spurring a movement of conceptual regulations and laws that are the most significant opportunities to abolish factory farming in America effectively.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) is one of those politicians who wishes to end factory farms, and his conceptual bill would be a huge step toward this. His Farm System Reform Act would halt the construction of new CAFOs immediately. It would use a $100 million fund to buy out existing CAFOs and repurpose them to better support agriculture activities such as raising pasture-based livestock, growing specialty crops, or organic commodity production. Politicians like Booker becoming more popular in America is evidence of a changing opinion on meat or plant-based diets and the food industry as a whole. Proposed legislation like this would take years to end the operations of America’s CAFOs, but it would undoubtedly be an excellent start to the finish of the industry.
Groups like PETA have used shocking imagery and tactics in their protests that have been considered as doing more harm than good, laying on their beliefs too hard for the average meat-eating Americans to want to switch sides. However, many animal-welfare groups have utilized donated money and political leverage to benefit farm animals and harm the meat industry. Since we are a capitalist society, money is, more often than not, the best way to get things done around here. Other than that, documentaries and photos taken in factory farm environments successfully represent these atrocities to the public. The use of visual aids has significantly been influential in getting consumers to question the ethics and morals of the factory farming industry and changing the mind of many of them. Journalists and exposers getting into these facilities and taking images of the animals in these conditions is the best representation to show how wrong these environments are.
Factory farming has created a dynamic between people and animals that did not exist all that long ago. Livestock animals such as cows, pigs, and chickens were always used to provide food for their owners, but we did not see them as the products we do now. Today, many people would be disgusted when they walk through some unseen corporation’s rows of hundreds of squealing, wounded pigs that have lived their whole lives without even being able to turn around. Whereas a hundred or so years ago, these farms would be family-owned by farmers you were probably friends with and knew treated their animals with dignity before eventually slaughtering them humanely. With the abolishment of factory farming, consumers could rest easy knowing the food they ate was not from a tortured animal that a laborer had to kill by using an air gun to blow a hole through its skull, then using a vacuum to suck out its brains. We could live in a world where farm animals are not mass-bred and unwillingly contributing to environmental damage in almost every way possible.
WORKS CITED
Rittel, Horst W. J.. “On the Planning Crisis: Systems Analysis of the 'First and Second Generations '.” (2006).
Roberts, Nancy C.. “Wicked Problems and Network Approaches to Resolution.” International Public Management Review 1 (2000): 1-19.
Davis, Angela. Are Prisons Obsolete? Seven Stories Press, 2003.
Literature Research and Analysis of Jane Austen’s Work
Austen’s Best and Sturdiest Man
Jane Austen’s Emma (1815) includes one Mr. George Knightley, a quiet yet revolutionary figure: a gentleman whose masculinity is defined not by domination or bravado, but by emotional intelligence, moral guidance, and a respectful egalitarian attitude toward the novel’s heroine, Emma Woodhouse. Two centuries later, Amy Heckerling’s film Clueless (1995) transposes Emma’s story to a Beverly Hills high school and, in the process, reimagines Knightley’s counterpart, Josh, as a modern model of progressive masculinity. This paper argues that Knightly represents a foundational model, “New Man,” an alternative to the hegemonic masculinity of his era, and that Clueless updates and clarifies this model for a 1990s audience through Josh’s character. Using R. W. Connell’s theory of masculinities (2005) as a framework, particularly her concept of hegemonic masculinity and the coexistence of multiple masculinities, this analysis shows how Knightley and Josh challenge traditional masculine roles through mentorship, emotional restraint, and moral consistency.
The adaptation highlights these traits by minimizing the age and power imbalances and placing the romantic relationship in a more elitist social framework. In doing so, Clueless addresses feminist critiques of Emma (such as those by Susan Fraiman and Claudia Johnson) that complicate viewing Knightley as an uncomplicatedly progressive figure. The result is a comparative study of two characters, across time and media, who exemplify masculinity as a positive, guiding force rather than an oppressive one. The analysis unfolds in several parts: first, a theoretical overview of hegemonics masculinity and the “New Man”; second, a close reading of Knightley’s role in Emma as an alternative masculine ideal, including critiques of its limits; third, an examination of how Clueless adapts and transforms Knightley into Josh to suit a modern egalitarian ideal; and finally, a conclusion that reflects on the stakes of this comparison for our understanding of masculinity in Austen and contemporary culture.
R.W. Connell’s theory of gender provides a crucial understanding of the concept of hegemonic masculinity to describe the culturally exalted form of manhood that sustains male dominance in a given society. Hegemonic masculinity is “defined as a practice that legitimizes men’s dominant position in society and justifies the subordination” of women as well as of men who embody alternative masculinities (Connell) In other words, at any given time and place, there is a normative ideal of “real manhood” that is tied to authority, competitiveness, and often the suppression of emotions or traits coded as “feminine.”
Crucially, Connell emphasizes that there is no single way to be a man: multiple masculinities coexist, arranged in relations of hierarchy and marginalization. While a hegemonic masculinity (in Regency England, perhaps the patraicarchal gentleman; in modern America, the assertive corporate breadwinner) holds cultural power, there are also complicit masculinities men who benefit from patriarchy without overt domination), subordinate masculinities (e.g. those associated with femininity or homosexuality, disempowered by the hegemonic norm), and alternative models that resist the dominant mold.
Within this theoretical framework, Knightley and Josh can be seen as exemplars of a masculinity that challenges the hegemonic ideal of their respective contexts. They embody what late 20th-century discourse has termed the “New Man.” The New Man ideal, which gained prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, describes a form of masculinity aligned with feminist values: emotionally open, empathetic, non-aggressive, and supportive of women as equals. In opposition to the traditional strong-silent male archetype, the New Man is “linked to the ability to navigate between emotions, to communicate and be self-reflective” (J. Olsson and J. Lauri, p. 244).
In popular media of the 1990s, the New Man was often portrayed as sensitive and nurturing (what one sociologist described as the “eruption of the popular image of the ‘new man’ in the 1980s as a man who is sensitive and nurturing” (Shelley, p. 13). While Austen obviously did not use a new man, Mr. Knightley’s characterization anticipates many of these qualities. He differs markedly from the overtly patriarchal or cynical male figures elsewhere in literature of the period. Likewise, Josh in Clueless is explicitly contrasted with more boorish or superficial male characters, aligning instead with a gentler, morally grounded masculinity that feels strikingly “modern.”
It is important to note that portraying such an alternative masculinity is a subtly subversive act in Austen’s context. As Claudia Johnson observes in her influential study Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel, Austen’s works often undermine “fixed or… commonly shared notions of masculinity” of her time. Instead of glorifying domineering men, Austen frequently valorizes men of principle and humility. Mr. Knightley, we shall see, is a prime example of this tendency. However, the progressive potential of such a character can be complicated by the social realities of Austen’s era: Knightley is still an older, weathered man who holds significant power over Emma. Feminist critcs like Susan Fraiman have therefore read Emma as a narrative in which a young woman’s independent spirit is disciplined and reshaped under the influence of an older male mentor (analogous to a “taming of the shrew” plot (Dasari)). These tensions raise the question: how far can Knightley’s brand of masculinity be considered egalitarian or “new” in a world structured by rigid gender and class hierarchies?
Amy Heckerling’s film directly engages this question through the adaptive process. Adaptation, as Linda Hutcheon theorizes, is not just a passive copy of a story into a new setting, but “a creative and an interpretive act of appropriation” (What is Adaptation?) - a transposition of a work into another context that inevitably carries out a change in perspective. Heckerling’s film takes the core dynamics of Emma and asks how they might play out in late-20th-century Los Angeles, a setting with very different norms around gender and relationships. As Marc DiPaolo argues, the result is one of the most overtly feminist Austen adaptations: Clueless “comes closest of all to bringing a feminist reading of the novel to the screen”(Lang, Introduction to DiPaolo’s book). By alternating key aspects of the Knightley-Emma relationship (especially age and authority differences), Clueless salvages the progressive essences of Knightley’s character and makes it legible and palatable to a modern audience. Before turning to Josh, we must examine how Knightley functions in Emma, both as an embodiment of an alternative masculinity and as a figure limited by his context.
From his first appearance in Emma, Mr. Knightley distinguishes himself from the other men of Highbury and Donwell by his conduct and values. Knghtley is the principal landowner in the district and of higher social rank than the Woodhouse family, yet he eschews arrogance or aloofness. Austen pointedly notes his “real liberality of mind”, and we see this liberality in action throughout the novel. He is attentive to those less fortunate: for instance, he makes a daily habit of visiting Emma’s invalid father and showing kindness to the garrulous Miss Bates, and he pointedly asks Harriet Smith to dance when Mr. Elton’s rudeness leaves her humiliated and without a partner (Emsley). Such behaviors reveal Knightley’s egalitarian impulse in a rigidly stratified society. Rather than reinforcing class distinctions, he gently subverts them, modeling a gentlemanliness based on empathy and fairness rather than pride. Emma herself praises his “benevolence” and notes that “you might not see one in a hundred with a gentleman so plainly written as in Mr. Knightley”. Knightley’s respect for people of lower status (orphans, governesses, farmers) marks him as quietly exceptional in a community that largely subscribes to conventional hierarchies.
Knightley’s role in the novel is frequently that of moral guide or mentor, but importantly, he exercises this role with emotional intelligence and restraint. He is nearly the only character willing to tell the self-satisfied Emma when she is wrong, yet he does so out of genuine concern for her moral development, not out of a desire to dominate. In the famous Box Hill scene, after Emma thoughtlessly ridicules Miss Bates, Knightley reproaches her with unmistakable anger and disappointment (Larrow). This scolding has often been cited as evidence of Knightley’s patriarchal authority - here is the older man educating the younger woman, administering “disciplinary correctives” to her behavior. Indeed, early feminist readings of Emma sometimes characterized this plot arc as Emma being cut down to size by male authority, her youthful independence chastened. Fraiman, for example, views the traditional female Bildungsroman (including Emma) as a process by which the heroine’s willfulness is undone; Emma must un-become the autonomous “masculine” woman she initially is in order to fit into the role of a proper wife (hend fraiman’s phrase Unbecoming Women for the the broader pattern). From that angle, Knightley can look like the agent of Emma’s ideological domestication, the firm hand of patriarchy guiding the wayward girl back to social propriety.
However, Austen’s text and numerous scholars (including Johnson) invite a more nuanced interpretation of Knightley’s mentorship. Knightley’s rebuke at Box Hill, while stern, is not meant to annihilate Emma’s spirit but to awaken her empathy and self-awareness. Knightley himself reflects on the limits of his right to criticize. He prefaces his lecture by acknowledging his longstanding privilege in speaking frankly to her: “Emma, I must once more speak to you as I have been used to do: a privilege rather endured than allowed, perhaps, but I must still use it” (Larrow) This line - “a privilege rather endured than allowed”- shows Knightley’s acute awareness that Emma tolerates his counsel; she is not obliged to accept it.
Knightley does not claim an inherent authority over her, but appeals to their friendship and his duty as a concerned friend. In fact, by the novel’s end, Knightley explicitly disavows the idea that he has been Emma’s teacher. When he proposes, he tells her that if he had loved her less, he “might be able to talk about it more,” famously indicating how love, not domination, motivates all his past interventions. He even confesses that any benefit his advice gave Emma was “all to myself,” suggesting that his corrections were as much an expression of caring (and even jealousy) as they were lessons for her. He adds that with Emma’s good sense and principles, she “must have done well” in life even without his interference. Such humility and self-questioning on Knightley’s part contrast sharply with the hegemonic masculine stance that assumes entitlement and infallibility.
Moreover, the outcomes of Emma and Knightley’s relationship are strikingly egalitarian for its time. Emma does learn humility and greater kindness - she develops, but she is not crushed. She keeps her promise that “if she were to marry, it would be only for love” and on her own terms. Notably, Emma’s marriage to Knightley does not entail her surrendering her domestic domain or freedom. On the contrary, Knightley is the one who literally moves house to accommodate Emma’s circumstances. As the narrative highlights, “few men” of Knightley’s position would have renounced their own home for Hartfield as he does.
Knightley chooses to live with Emma in her father’s house so that Emma can continue to care for her anxious, elderly father, Mr. Woodhouse. In doing so, he “relinquish[es] the seat of his own power to reinforce hers,” as put by. Johnson emphasizes the symbolic importance of this decision: “In placing himself within her domain, Knightley essentially gives his blessing to her rule.” Rather than the heroine being subsumed into the hero’s life (the standard patriarchal marriage plot where the woman enters the man’s household and authority), Emma ends with the hero literally subordinating his autonomy to hers. If any character is “dethroned” at the end of Emma, it is arguably Mr. Knightley, who gives up a portion of his independence and social privilege for the sake of an equal partnership. This highly unusual arrangement for a Regency marriage suggests that Austen’s own subtle critique of gender norms; as Johnson notes, Emma makes “no sacrifice of authority” in marrying Knightley. Love in this novel is not about a dominant man conquering a woman, but about two strong-willed individuals finding equilibrium.
It is also crucial to recognize that Knightley himself is not a static pillar of perfection; he, too, grows and adapts, which humanizes him and undercuts a simplistic teacher-pupil dichotomy. Austen gives Knightley moments of emotional vulnerability and fallibility—traits not typically granted to the archetypal patriarch. He is secretly jealous of Frank Churchill’s flirtation with Emma and must confront that jealousy when it’s revealed that Frank was never truly a rival. In a moment of candor, Knightley admits he was unfairly dismissive of Harriet Smith’s worth, paralleling Emma’s own snobbish dismissal of Robert Martin; “I am changed also,” he tells Emma, acknowledging that he had things to learn about his own prejudices.
Johnson underscores Knightley’s “dynamic character,” describing that he is “far from embodying fixed… notions of masculinity [for the time]”. He is neither the chivalric alpha male nor a flawless moral tutor on a pedestal. Instead, Knightley is portrayed as a man who can admit error and experience uncertainty - note how nervous and tongue-tied he comes when he finally declares his love to Emma - and ultimately change his stance when confronted with new truths. The self-awareness and capacity for change align him neatly with the ideals of the New Man - He demonstrates strength, certainly—“energy, vigor, and decision,” to use Johnson’s words - but these qualities are directed toward ethical action and caring (protecting Jane Fairfax from gossip, aiding his tenants and neighbors, etc.), not toward exerting dominance for its own sake.
Despite these progressive qualities, one cannot dismiss the feminist critiques of Knightley’s position in Emma. The fact remains that the narrative perspective and Emma’s own esteem cast Knightley as the ultimate authority on right and wrong in the novel. As Fraiman and other scholars have pointed out, Emma can be read as endorsing Knightley’s worldview as the correct one, with Emma’s maturation measured by how fully she comes to recognize Knightley’s correctness. In this light, the power dynamic is till asymmectifcal: Emma’s happy ending comes only after she confesses that “I have been a fool” in her judgments and that Knightley has been right all along Critic Suzanne Ferriss encapsulates this concern in her analytic of Clueless, noting that “in the film as in the novel, love arises out of the female character’s recognition that she is wrong and he is right.” (Bagno-Simon) From this perspective, the romance narrative reinforces a traditional pattern:” the ideal man is one who guides a misguided woman onto the proper path, and her reward (and his) is romantic union once she learns her lesson.
Ferriss goes so far as to argue that Clueless, by retaining this pattern, suggest “contemprary women are no more independent or empowered than women of the early nineteenth century” In other words, if the price of love is that a modern Cher (Emma’s counterpart) must likewise admit her cluelessness and how to the widsom of a man, how progressive can we really call this model? Such critiques prevent us from painting Knightley as a straightforward feminist hero. Instead, they alert us to the nuanced interplay between character (who, in isolation, might seem enlightened) and narrative structure (which can and does still privilege male authority).
This is where the adaptive choices in Clueless become crucial. Heckerling’s film, consciously or not, takes on exactly this issue: how to preserve Knightley’s goodness and guidance, while neutralizing the elements that made his relationship with Emma one of unequals. By examining Josh in Clueless, we can see how the film industry of the 1990s, steeped in conversations about gender equality, reframed the Knightley archetype, amplifying its progressive aspects and attenuating its more troublesome implications. Clueless, as Linda Hutcheon would remind us, is not merely Austen in a different costume; it is Austen filtered through modern sensibilities and a different medium, an “extended intertextual engagement” that can comment on the source even as it entertains. In bringing Knightley “up to date,” the film effectively translates Austen’s vision of a morally exemplary masculinity into a clearer, improved vision of the New Man for a late-20th-century audience.
Clueless famously transforms the genteel world of Emma into the neon, mall-centered teenage milieu of mid-90s Beverly Hills. Surprisingly, this change of scene works brilliantly to highlight the universality of Austen’s social satire and character dynamics. As Melissa Mazmanian observes, both Emma and Clueless “reconstruct specific social environments and address an audience of that similar environment,” inviting comparisons between the micro-societies of Highbury and Bronson Alcott High School. Within this updated setting, the character of Josh (played by Paul Rudd) serves as the film’s answer to Mr. Knightley. He is Cher Horowitz’s quasi-older brother figure (the college-aged son of Cher’s father’s ex-wife), who hangs around the house as an amiable presence and, eventually, Cher’s love interest.
From a structural standpoint, Josh occupies the same position as Knightley: he is older, wiser, and often bemusedly observing the antics of the heroine and her friends. Many of the potentially problematic elements of Knightley and Emma’s dynamic are removed or revamped in Cher and Josh’s relationship, making the latter feel far more egalitarian and explicitly “progressive.” In effect, Clueless clarifies Knightley’s New Man qualities by placing them in a context where their intent can shine without the baggage of Regency customs.
One key modification is the reduction of the age and power gap. In Emma, Mr. Knightley is 37 to Emma’s 21, a difference of sixteen years; he has known her since she was an infant, practically watching her grow up. This feeds into a mild paternalistic tone in their interactions and understandably raises modern eyebrows. Clueless updates this by making Josh only a few years older than Cher. He is a college freshman (around 18 or 19) to her 15 (almost 16) - still an age gap, but one that in the 1990s ten culture context is not scandalous (indeed, Cher quips, “I’m not even technically related to Josh,” to alleviate any social squeamishness about the romance). More importantly, Josh has no real guardianship role in Cher’s life; he’s not a family authority or even a stepbrother in any legal sense (his connection is via an ex-stepfather who remains paternal). He is essentially a family friend who hangs out. Thus, from the start, the film positions Josh and Cher as near-peers. He is older and can drive and vote, but he has no formal power over - he’s not her teacher, not her boss. This removes the Victorian notion of a gentlemanly mentor instructing a protege and replaces it with a more relaxed dynamic of two young people exchanging worldviews.
The social gap between the modern retelling’s couple is also narrowed: while Cher is a wealthy teenager with a high school queen bee status and Josh is a budding intellectual, they share socioeconomic comfort and familiarity. In Austen’s novel, Knightely’s superior status is constantly emphasized (he owns Donwell Abbey; Emma is “first in consequence” only within little Highbury; ultimately, as one critic noted, “much in Emma hinges on Mr. Knightely’s being Emma’s equal in class, but her superior in status”(Delaney). In Clueless, by contrast, Cher is actually in the position of privilege (her father is a high-powered lawyer, while Josh drives a clunky car and is figuring out his path). The movie gently satirizes Josh’s somewhat pretentious college-boy earnestness - he read Friedrich Nietzsche and environmental law textbooks by the pool - suggesting in some ways that Cher has the upper hand (at least in worldly comfort and social savvy) even as Josh has more intellectual maturity. The more level playing field means that when conflicts or critiques arise between them, it doesn’t read as a powerful elder reprimanding a child, but rather as two equals clashing and learning from each other.
Despite the differences, Josh clearly retains Knightley’s core attributes of emotional intelligence and moral integrity. Heckerling meticuliously crafts situations that parallel Knightley’s role as Cher’s moral compass, but in a youthful, humorous register that suits the tone of the film. For instance, when Cher (like Emma) undertakes a misguided “project” to improve someone of lower social standing - Tai, the new girl (the Harriet Smith figure) - Josh is the one who voices concern. He teases Cher about her “project’ and questions whether her matchmaking and makeover efforts are truly for Tai’s benefit or just Cher’s vanity. In one scene, Josh pointedly observes Cher coaching Tai and remarks that Cher’s Meddling might be doing more harm than good, much as Knightly warns Emma that she is “making [Harriet] too tall” (filling her head with unrealistic aspirations (Jeffers)).
According to Marc DiPaolo’s analysis, Josh “expresses his objections to Cher finding a more clueless girl to use as her project” in a way that echoes Knightley’s gentle criticism of Emma’s mentorship of Harriet (Erdal). The parallel is clear: Josh, like Knightley, sees the humanity of the person Cher is manipulating (Tai/Harriet) and calls Cher out on it. But unlike Knightley’s rather severe lecture in the novel, Josh’s approach is wrapped in playful banter and brotherly sarcasm, calibrated for a teen comedy. He is never angry with Cher the way Knightley could be with Emma; the film’s tone doesn’t permit a stern patriarchal dressing-down. Instead, Josh’s influence comes through as a persistent common-sense reminder and a kind of moral mirror to Cher. After one of Cher’s schemes blows up (the attempted match between Tai and Elton), Josh is supportive but uses the opportunity to prompt Cher’s self-reflection. This dynamic fulfills the same narrative purpose as Knightley’s guidance but avoids overtly authoritative vibes.
Furthermore, Josh’s emotional support for Cher is depicted in a manner that emphasizes companionship and empathy. When Cher faces personal setbacks or feelings she doesn’t understand, Josh is quietly there for her. A poignant example is the aftermath of Cher’s failure on her driving test—a comedic low point that spirals into Cher’s realization of her own flaws. Cher is humiliated and emotionally vulnerable (an echo of Emma’s mortification after Box Hill). At this moment, Josh doesn’t scold or say, “I told you so.” Instead, he offers comfort and helps her regroup. He even interrupts his college date to drive Cher home when she gets stranded and robbed one night, in a modern act of chivalry that mirrors Knightley’s vigilant care for Emma’s well-being (for instance, Knightley ensuring her safety in the episode of the dangerous carriage ride with Harriet in the novel, or metaphorically, his role in “rescuing” Harriet from social embarrassment at the ball).
Sue Parrill has noted that both the novel and film use physical metaphors of control to illustrate the power dynamic: for example, an archery contest in one adaptation of Emma visually shows Knightley’s superior aim compared to Emma’s errant shots., just as Clueless humorously uses Cher’s hapless driving on the freeway to signify her loss of control and need for guidance. In Clueless, however, these metaphors always resolve with mutual laughter or affection rather than humiliation. Dionne’s freeway driving panic (with Murray, her boyfriend, effectively taking the wheel) ends in comedic relief; Cher’s test failure leads to a consoling tête-à-tête with Josh that brings them closer. The film, as Jane Mills observes, is very much a transformation of Emma, not just a retelling. It translates the moral structure of Austen’s story into the teen-romance genre, which demands a softer touch and more overt affirmation of the heroine.
By the film’s climax, Cher herself becomes actively aware of her own shortcomings and decides to better herself, not just to impress Josh, but because she wants to be a good person. Josh catalyzes this, but Cher’s growth feels self-propelled. This is a departure from Austen, where Knightley’s approval is explicitly the moral lodestar. In Clueless, Cher’s revelation “I was totally clueless!” is played as an internal epiphany (albeit influenced by Josh’s earlier comments). As a result, when Josh and Cher finally confess their feelings for each other, it comes across as a union of equals who have each learned from the other, rather than a reward conferred on a corrected heroine by a righteous hero.
The egalitarian nature of Josh and Cher’s romance is further reinforced by the film’s social context and how it frames their partnership. Melissa Mazmanian points out that Clueless presents Cher and Josh as “the ideal match reflected against other not-so-perfect attachments” around them (Mazmanian) The film populates the world with several caricatures of flawed masculinity: Elton (analogous to Mr. Elton) is shallow and status-obsessed; Murray (analogous to a combination of Frank Churchill’s charm and some comic flaws) is brash and comically misogynistic at times (using slang like “woman, lend me five dollars” to his girlfriend Dionne); Christian (the Frank Churchill figure) is stylish and attractive but (in a twist) revealed to be gay, making him an affectionate friend but not a heterosexual romantic partner for Cher. In contrast to these, Josh stands out as the genuinely caring, steady guy. He’s not flashy or suave—Cher initially jokes about his grungy fashion and earnestness—but the film steadily builds our appreciation for Josh’s qualities. By the end, it is obvious to everyone (Cher’s father, her friends, and the audience) that Cher and Josh complement each other. When they come together, Cher’s voice-over claims she got “together with my step-brother” in a tongue-in-cheek manner, fully aware of the unconventional setup, and the film pointedly depicts them bickering over legal debate points even as they kiss—suggesting their relationship is founded on friendship and intellectual give-and-take as much as physical attraction or social convenience.
In essence, Clueless neutralizes the potentially patriarchal dynamic of the original by making the romantic resolution a meeting of minds and hearts on level ground. Claudia Johnson’s insight about Knightley “placing himself within [Emma’s] domain” to bless “her rule” is almost literalized in Clueless: Josh enters Cher’s life and home and ends up choosing to be part of her world (the frivolous, fashion-driven world he initially mocked) because he values her. Meanwhile, Cher expands her own world to include concern for causes Josh cares about (she stops glossing over the news and starts organizing disaster relief donations, inspired by conversations with Josh). Each moves toward the other’s position, balancing out. The film thus makes the partnership aspect that was more implicit in Austen explicit. As one commentator of the novel noted, after deciding to live at Hartfield, Emma thinks of Knightley now as a true “companion” and “partner” (Kohn)- terms that denote equality. Clueless achieves this feeling with even greater clarity by aligning the two characters’ arcs.
It should also be noted that by scrubbing away the formalities of Austen’s setting, Clueless allows Josh to display affection and respect toward Cher without any gendered power play. He teases her for being superficial, yes, but he also delights in her wit and unique perspective. The film’s satirical humor often lets Josh be the gentle straight-man to Cher’s malapropisms (her famous debate speech on Haitian refugees, for example, which Lynch notes is not given due credit by Cher’s teacher. Deidre Lynch, in discussing Clueless, observes continuities between Austen’s and Heckerling’s works in how they handle social commentary (Galperin). One continuity is the treatment of the heroine’s “blind spots” with a mix of satire and sympathy. In Clueless, Josh sometimes laughs at Cher’s cluelessness, but he never scorns her; his attentiveness during her moments of embarrassment or growth signals that he values her agency.
When Cher takes the initiative to captain the school’s Pismo Beach disaster relief effort (a modern analogue to Emma’s project of guiding Harriet, but now redirected toward genuine charity), Josh is visibly impressed and supportive. He isn’t guiding her every move; he watches her find her own better self. This subtly different dynamic addresses the Ferriss-style critique head-on: Cher’s ultimate improvement is not only because “he was right,” but because she discovers what is right, and he is right there with her. In effect, Clueless reframes the story so that Cher’s climactic realization is less about Josh’s superior judgment and more about her own maturity, with Josh serving as a catalyst and ally. The romantic coupling, then, celebrates not a submission to male authority but a convergence of values.
Finally, it’s worth considering how Clueless amplifies the comic aspect of the Knightley-Emma dynamic to make it more palatable to modern audiences. Austen’s Knightley has a dry wit, and he and Emma share teasing banter on occasion, but Clueless turns a lot of Josh-and-Cher interactions into playful sparring that underscores mutual affection. Their early dialogues are full of quips (Cher calling Josh “Kato” as a jibe at his college activist leanings, Josh gently ridiculing Cher’s Valley-girl jargon) that create a sense of camaraderie. This steady current of humor means that when Josh eventually does deliver a critique (like telling Cher that her misguided need to “make-over” people might stem from her own issues), it lands without malice. The audience sees it as friendly ribbing with a point, rather than a moral lecture. Linda Hutcheon’s theory would suggest that part of why Clueless succeeds as an adaptation is its self-awareness and tone management: it keeps the “spirit” of Austen (the irony, the social satire, the fundamentally kind heart) while altering the “letter” (the Regency manners, the narrative voice) to fit a late-20th-century teen comedy ethos.
The result of the antics is that Josh’s New Man qualities—his emotional availability, respect, and ethical steadfastness—come off as cool and desirable, rather than anachronistic or sanctimonious. In the 1990s, the figure of the sensitive, understanding young man was increasingly valorized in media (a notable example being TV’s My So-Called Life with the character of Brian, or various John Hughes film heroes of the late 80s/early 90s). Josh fits this trend perfectly. As DiPaolo and others have argued, Clueless can be seen as a feminist interpretation of Emma precisely because it gives us a romantic male lead who is nurturing and egalitarian without losing his attractiveness or humor. He is, effectively, Knightley if Knightley were stripped of any 19th-century patriarchal strictures—a Knightley allowed to just be a good guy.
Mr. Knightley and Josh might hail from worlds as far apart as rural Highbury and urban Los Angeles, yet through Jane Austen’s pen and Amy Heckerling’s lens, they emerge as kindred spirits—a testament to the enduring appeal of a certain kind of masculinity. This is a masculinity defined not by “domination of women and a hierarchy of intermale dominance”(as hegemonic masculinity would dictate), but by the strength to be gentle, the confidence to be ethical, and the wisdom to partner with women rather than patronize them. In their respective stories, Knightley and Josh stand as alternatives to the more toxic or trivial men around them. They are not seducers, tyrants, fools, or absentees; they are steady presences who mentor and care. Crucially, both narratives show these men rewarded with the love of a heroine because of, not in spite of, their respect for the heroine’s autonomy and intellect. Knightley falls in love with the strong-willed Emma as she is (telling her “perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another” in so many words), and Josh equally appreciates Cher’s unique combination of compassion and frivolity. The heroines, in turn, come to value the heroes’ guidance without feeling oppressed by it, especially in Clueless, where Cher explicitly asserts herself even as she takes Josh’s lessons to heart.
By using R. W. Connell’s concept of multiple masculinities as a guide, we can see that Knightley and Josh represent what might be termed a counter-hegemonic masculinity. In Austen’s time, the culturally exalted male might have been the overtly powerful patriarch (the “master” of Pemberley or Mansfield Park type), yet Austen crafted Knightley as a different ideal: a man who uses his power benevolently and even cedes power to the woman he loves. Clueless then translates this ideal into the vernacular of the 1990s, a period that had its own version of hegemonic masculinity (the aggressive, money-driven alpha male of Wall Street or the indifferent “new lad” of 90s pop culture) and its counter-image, the New Man. By minimizing the age gap and power imbalance, Clueless makes the romantic relationship more visibly equal. Josh and Cher succeed as a couple because they communicate openly and learn from each other, fulfilling Connell’s vision that masculinities can adapt and change in relation to femininity rather than always dominating it.
Moreover, this comparative study highlights how adaptation can serve as a form of feminist critique. Fraiman and Johnson debated whether Emma’s narrative enshrines or subverts patriarchal authority. Clueless enters that debate not with theory but with praxis: it “writes back” to Austen by tweaking character relationships. If Knightley could be viewed as a benevolent patriarch who ultimately still presides over Emma’s moral growth, Josh is reconceived as a partner who grows alongside Cher. The film’s tongue-in-cheek tone (as seen in its very title) is self-aware about the source material’s ironies, and as Deidre Lynch suggests, Clueless engages with Emma’s themes and historical context by both continuity and contrast. The adaptation preserves the spirit of Austen’s commentary on youthful folly and mature love, yet it also resolves some of Austen’s ambiguities in favor of a clearer statement on gender parity. In doing so, Clueless perhaps sacrifices a bit of the novel’s complexity—one could argue, as some have, that Cher is more clueless than Emma ever was, making her transformation a touch more straightforward (Master). But what it gains is a relationship dynamic that modern audiences can wholeheartedly cheer for: we aren’t left wondering if Cher “settled” or lost some of her freedom by pairing with Josh. Instead, we feel that both characters have been enriched and empowered by their union.
In the end, examining Knightley and Josh side by side enriches our understanding of how ideals of masculinity can be persistent and flexible at once. The core qualities Austen valorized in a man—honesty, empathy, integrity, and mutual respect—are timeless enough that a Hollywood teen comedy could latch onto them and find they still resonate. Yet the changes made by Clueless also remind us that social progress is real: what needed to be implicit or subtle in 1815 (Austen could not have Emma openly preach feminist equality, but she could have Knightley quietly yield to Emma’s comfort) could be made delightfully explicit in 1995. Josh openly enjoys that Cher is a “total Betty” (beautiful and socially adept) and also values her goodness; Cher freely tells Josh that he’s dope (awesome) and a “snob and a half” and that she admires his idealism. Their final scene, with debate and flirtation intertwined, would have been unthinkable in Emma’s genteel courtship framework, but it achieves the same end: a portrait of heterosexual romance premised on balance and reciprocity.
Both Emma and Clueless ultimately suggest that the best marriages (or relationships) are those between two people who improve each other, where the man doesn’t have to diminish the woman to feel strong, nor the woman lose her voice to be loved. In Knightley and in Josh, we see the outline of a New Man who is, in Connell’s terms, “not the cultural expression of the patriarchal dividend” but rather a harbinger of change within the gender order. That a Regency gentleman and a 90s college boy can share that mantle speaks to Austen’s forward-thinking characterization and to the adaptive genius of Clueless, which makes Jane Austen’s quietly radical hero accessible to new generations. Knightley and Josh, each in their own way, give “their blessing” to a world where women and men relate as friends and equals, and that is why their stories, though told in different centuries, continue to charm and persuade us today.
Annotated Bibliography
Connell, R. W. Masculinities. Polity, 2022.
Connell’s foundational text introduces and elaborates the concept of hegemonic masculinity, discussing how multiple masculinities coexist in cultural hierarchies. This source provides theoretical grounding for analyzing progressive and hegemonic masculinities in Emma and Clueless.
Olsson, Josefin, and Johanna Lauri. “The Fantasy of the New Man: Norm-Critique, Vulnerability and Victimhood.” NORMA, vol. 17, no. 4, 2022, pp. 236–51, doi:10.1080/18902138.2022.2075666.
Olsson and Lauri critically assess contemporary portrayals of vulnerable, emotionally expressive masculinities, highlighting the sociocultural implications of such representations. This article aids in contextualizing Josh's character within broader cultural perceptions of masculinity.
“No Teacher but Herself: Education, Feminism, and Romance in Emma.” Jane Austen Society of North America, jasna.org, accessed 9 May 2025.
This analysis explores feminist interpretations of Emma’s narrative structure and Knightley’s mentorship, emphasizing educational dynamics. It contributes to understanding feminist critiques of Knightley’s guidance.
“Adaptation Page.” Universitat de València, www.uv.es, accessed 9 May 2025.
This resource defines and examines adaptation theory, highlighting the transformative nature of adaptations. It supports the argument regarding Clueless as a culturally significant reinterpretation of Emma.
Di Paolo, Marc. Emma Adapted: Jane Austen’s Heroine from Book to Film. Peter Lang, 2007.
Di Paolo analyzes film adaptations of Emma, with a significant focus on Clueless, emphasizing feminist interpretations and modern portrayals of gender roles. This text strengthens the comparative analysis between Knightley and Josh.
Emsley, Sarah. “My Heart Belongs to Mr. Knightley.” Sarah Emsley, 9 Mar. 2016, sarahemsley.com.
Emsley’s article explores the nuances of Knightley’s character, emphasizing his moral integrity and progressive masculinity. This source highlights Knightley’s virtues in Austen’s novel.
Larrow, Michele. “Mr. Knightley’s Harshness at Box Hill.” JASNA E. Washington and N. Idaho Region, 7 Sept. 2020, jasnaewanid.org.
Larrow critically assesses Knightley’s behavior at Box Hill, contextualizing his moral reprimand within Austen’s broader social commentary. It adds complexity to interpretations of Knightley’s progressive masculinity.
Delany, Paul. “‘A Sort of Notch in the Donwell Estate’: Intersections of Status and Class in Emma.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 12, no. 4, July 2000, pp. 533–48, doi:10.1353/ecf.2000.0024.
Delany examines class dynamics and their intersection with gender in Emma, particularly focusing on Knightley’s social position. This provides essential background for discussions about Knightley’s status relative to Emma.
“Genderlessness in Jane Austen’s ‘Emma,’ a Guest Post from Lelia Eye.” Every Woman Dreams…, 8 Apr. 2021, reginajeffers. blog.
This article explores how Austen subverts traditional gender roles in Emma, particularly highlighting Knightley’s non-traditional masculine traits. It enriches the analysis of Knightley as a progressive figure.
Erdal, Guro. “Clueless about Class: A Study of How Four Film Adaptations of Jane Austen’s Emma Adapt the Theme of Class.” University of Bergen, 2022.
Erdal studies adaptations of Emma with a focus on how class themes are modernized, specifically analyzing Clueless. This thesis aids in examining the thematic continuity between Emma and Clueless.
Mazmanian, Melissa. “Reviving Emma in a Clueless World: The Current Attraction to a Classic Structure.” Persuasions On-Line, 1999, jasna.org.
Mazmanian explores the cultural appeal of Clueless as an adaptation of Emma, emphasizing the modernization of narrative structures and gender roles. It helps frame Josh’s modern reinterpretation of Knightley.
Kohn, Denise. “Reading ‘Emma’ as a Lesson on ‘Ladyhood’: A Study in the Domestic ‘Bildungsroman.’” Essays in Literature, vol. 22, no. 1, spring 1995, Gale Literature Resource Center.
Kohn examines Emma through the lens of the Bildungsroman, focusing on domestic education and gender roles. This article contextualizes the feminist analysis of Knightley’s mentorship.
Galperin, William. “Adapting Jane Austen: The Surprising Fidelity of ‘Clueless.’”
The Wordsworth Circle, vol. 42, no. 3, June 2011, pp. 187–93, doi:10.1086/twc24043146. Galperin discusses how Clueless retains thematic fidelity to Emma despite its modern setting, offering insights into adaptation fidelity. This supports arguments about Clueless' effectiveness in modernizing Austen’s messages.
Master, Station. “Why Clueless Is Clueless about Jane Austen’s Emma.”
The Adaptation Station, 2022, theadaptationstation.com. This critique argues Clueless misinterprets core elements of Austen’s novel, offering a counterpoint that enriches the paper's analytical depth regarding the successes and limitations of adaptation.
Connell, R. W. Masculinities. Polity, 2022.
Connell’s foundational text introduces and elaborates the concept of hegemonic masculinity, discussing how multiple masculinities coexist in cultural hierarchies. This source provides theoretical grounding for analyzing progressive and hegemonic masculinities in Emma and Clueless.
Olsson, Josefin, and Johanna Lauri. “The Fantasy of the New Man: Norm-Critique, Vulnerability and Victimhood.” NORMA, vol. 17, no. 4, 2022, pp. 236–51, doi:10.1080/18902138.2022.2075666.
Olsson and Lauri critically assess contemporary portrayals of vulnerable, emotionally expressive masculinities, highlighting the sociocultural implications of such representations. This article aids in contextualizing Josh's character within broader cultural perceptions of masculinity.
“No Teacher but Herself: Education, Feminism, and Romance in Emma.” Jane Austen Society of North America, jasna.org, accessed 9 May 2025.
This analysis explores feminist interpretations of Emma’s narrative structure and Knightley’s mentorship, emphasizing educational dynamics. It contributes to understanding feminist critiques of Knightley’s guidance.
“Adaptation Page.” Universitat de València, www.uv.es, accessed 9 May 2025.
This resource defines and examines adaptation theory, highlighting the transformative nature of adaptations. It supports the argument regarding Clueless as a culturally significant reinterpretation of Emma.
Di Paolo, Marc. Emma Adapted: Jane Austen’s Heroine from Book to Film. Peter Lang, 2007.
Di Paolo analyzes film adaptations of Emma, with a significant focus on Clueless, emphasizing feminist interpretations and modern portrayals of gender roles. This text strengthens the comparative analysis between Knightley and Josh.
Emsley, Sarah. “My Heart Belongs to Mr. Knightley.” Sarah Emsley, 9 Mar. 2016, sarahemsley.com.
Emsley’s article explores the nuances of Knightley’s character, emphasizing his moral integrity and progressive masculinity. This source highlights Knightley’s virtues in Austen’s novel.
Larrow, Michele. “Mr. Knightley’s Harshness at Box Hill.” JASNA E. Washington and N. Idaho Region, 7 Sept. 2020, jasnaewanid.org.
Larrow critically assesses Knightley’s behavior at Box Hill, contextualizing his moral reprimand within Austen’s broader social commentary. It adds complexity to interpretations of Knightley’s progressive masculinity.
Delany, Paul. “‘A Sort of Notch in the Donwell Estate’: Intersections of Status and Class in Emma.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 12, no. 4, July 2000, pp. 533–48, doi:10.1353/ecf.2000.0024.
Delany examines class dynamics and their intersection with gender in Emma, particularly focusing on Knightley’s social position. This provides essential background for discussions about Knightley’s status relative to Emma.
“Genderlessness in Jane Austen’s ‘Emma,’ a Guest Post from Lelia Eye.” Every Woman Dreams…, 8 Apr. 2021, reginajeffers. blog.
This article explores how Austen subverts traditional gender roles in Emma, particularly highlighting Knightley’s non-traditional masculine traits. It enriches the analysis of Knightley as a progressive figure.
Erdal, Guro. “Clueless about Class: A Study of How Four Film Adaptations of Jane Austen’s Emma Adapt the Theme of Class.” University of Bergen, 2022.
Erdal studies adaptations of Emma with a focus on how class themes are modernized, specifically analyzing Clueless. This thesis aids in examining the thematic continuity between Emma and Clueless.
Mazmanian, Melissa. “Reviving Emma in a Clueless World: The Current Attraction to a Classic Structure.” Persuasions On-Line, 1999, jasna.org.
Mazmanian explores the cultural appeal of Clueless as an adaptation of Emma, emphasizing the modernization of narrative structures and gender roles. It helps frame Josh’s modern reinterpretation of Knightley.
Kohn, Denise. “Reading ‘Emma’ as a Lesson on ‘Ladyhood’: A Study in the Domestic ‘Bildungsroman.’” Essays in Literature, vol. 22, no. 1, spring 1995, Gale Literature Resource Center.
Kohn examines Emma through the lens of the Bildungsroman, focusing on domestic education and gender roles. This article contextualizes the feminist analysis of Knightley’s mentorship.
Galperin, William. “Adapting Jane Austen: The Surprising Fidelity of ‘Clueless.’”
The Wordsworth Circle, vol. 42, no. 3, June 2011, pp. 187–93, doi:10.1086/twc24043146. Galperin discusses how Clueless retains thematic fidelity to Emma despite its modern setting, offering insights into adaptation fidelity. This supports arguments about Clueless' effectiveness in modernizing Austen’s messages.
Master, Station. “Why Clueless Is Clueless about Jane Austen’s Emma.”
The Adaptation Station, 2022, theadaptationstation.com. This critique argues Clueless misinterprets core elements of Austen’s novel, offering a counterpoint that enriches the paper's analytical depth regarding the successes and limitations of adaptation.