With the popularity of this movie, and 'Cruel Intentions'. I know that Josh is supposed to be her "ex-step-brother", but I still was a little disturbed by it. I wouldn't be interested in the child of my parent's spouse..that's just a little too weird.
shareEh, a step up from the 80's Luke+Leia haha.
In Clueless they probably never even felt like brother and sister since they probably didn't even meet until they were relatively old. I forget the details.
Step siblings aren't related. I don't see anything wrong with it. Particularly as in both Cruel Intentions and Clueless, it's made clear that the siblings didn't grow up together.
shareWhat's interesting is that both of those films were classic literature adapted as modern teen stories. I think that is a factor. I believe both of the original stories had the characters have some sort of relation that wasn't blood (I think Emma's love interest was her brother in law) so they had to adapt that for the new movies. Stepsiblings was the closest they could get.
shareTo go aling with curemad_jelly_tot's statement of how they didn't grow up together, not only did they not grow up together as step-siblings, it seemed to me that the time they spent as step-siblings was relatively short, like maybe a year at most.
Once upon a time there was a magical place where it never rained. The end.
In the original Liaisons Dangereuses, I think the main characters are adults who are married to other people. When translating this to teenagers in Cruel Intentions, I think step-siblings made sense in that it was as taboo as adultery was in 1780, but not as taboo as incest, so it gave it kind of a similar vibe without veering into being too disgusting.
Similarly, in Emma, Emma and Mr. Knightley grew up together (with him being older). I think in a movie, it would be too obvious that they'd get together if he were the best friend growing up. Pretty much every movie does that except like Pretty in Pink. Step-siblings is too close of a relationship (and in Emma, there's no taboo or weirdness with Emma and Mr. Knightley being together), so they went with ex-step. It comes as kind of a surprise that they end up together, as you're thinking she'll get with the Christian character for quite some time. I think the surprise translates well. Besides, it fits in with the 90s California thing, people being married multiple times.
That's my analysis, lol. I don't think it had anything to do with the culture of the 90s or anything like that.