The work of Amy Heckerling is synonymous with a postmodern, allusive, anti-hierarchical and, above all, boundary-blurring aesthetic. The generic allegiances of her films thus throw up problems of categorization. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) and Clueless (1995) are widely recognized as having been influential in shaping the post-1980s cycle of the cinematic teenpic, while the television show, video game, and book series spin-offs to which the latter has given rise stretch generic parameters in sometimes unexpected directions. 1 In between these two films, Heckerling had considerable success with family-oriented comedies like National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985), Look Who's Talking, and Look Who's Talking Too (1989 and 1990). However, Heckerling's later films I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007) and Vamps (2012) prove harder to classify in generic terms despite drawing explicitly on the director's teen narratives.

My interest here is specifically in the feminist potentials of Heckerling's uses of intertextual references and pastiche in Clueless, I Could Never Be Your Woman, and Vamps. I argue that these films create an effect comparable to that referred to by Roberta Garrett in a different context as “metagenericity,” or the “playful, self-reflexive mixing of well-known cinematic formulas.” That is, they frequently reference previous texts, with varying degrees of selfconsciousness, and they do so in such a promiscuous way that the viewer's engagement in this domain is likely to come not just from spotting specific references but also, in large measure, from appreciating a generalized sense of familiarity linked to “well-known cinematic [or more broadly textual] formulas.” As genre is “a functional interface between the cinematic institution, audiences, and the wider realm of culture,” discussions of genre are always also discussions of spectatorial address. This essay seeks to examine more fully the gendered implications of the mode of address such generic referentiality implies, including the question of how Heckerling's narratives may make us feel—an issue central to yet often sidelined in analyses of genre storytelling. In other words, the analysis accords priority not just to form but specifically to the interrelation of style, tone, and affect in mainstream narrative cinema, in a manner that, as we shall see, is ideologically loaded in the context of female authorship.