Nancy Drew The Movie:
Not-So-American Teen
By: Makna Sinatria
INTRODUCTION
Drama movies have been the most influential image making in American culture, especially on making the image of the Americans. More and more drama movies take the everyday lives as its main theme. By doing this, the media—especially the drama movies—are trying to portray the Americans—male or female—on the point of view which they like. But I seriously think that the producers of the drama movies make the movie as what they thought to be most ideal to portray Americans, thus make it as if the identity of Americans. Although media portrayal of both genders changes time over time, but somehow it maintains the stereotyped representation of what “women or men” should be (Luke, 1996).
Drama movies nowadays revolves around teen movies. Teen movies are movies about American teens (especially girls) on their high school life. How they managed their love life, school life, everything that mainly concern about our daily high school life, with yeah some problems which will be like the climax of the movie. Most teen drama movies are the portrayal of the American teenagers—or who they want to be like—and this has been the major formula or theme on many teen drama movies in America. Well this pattern does not only in teen drama movies, in some TV series too, like Gossip Girls or Beverly Hills, 90210.
On movies and TV series, the media (the producer) is actually trying to make some kind of mindset in our mind, with their portrayal how the American teenagers should be, we as the audiences are influenced by this a lot. This may only exist in movie, but I believe that some girls want to have life like the characters in the movies and TV series have, beautiful, sexy body, happy life with a lot of money, shopping everyday, partying all night, no parents restriction, and above all, the freedom.
The representation of female characters in the media would be expected to play a role in viewers’ perceptions regarding gender identity, which may ultimately influence attitudes and beliefs about appropriate gender roles (Behm-Morawitz and Mastro, 2008, p. 132).
A lot of movies and TV series focus on the American girls’ life, and created more stereotypes on girls, that girls are into shopping, fashion, beautiful, sexy body, flawless skin, stupid, only aim at the popularity. Somehow, the media nowadays are making the negative image of American girls. They have the thought that although American girls are beautiful, rich, they didn’t focus on how smart the American girls are. Moreover, the media are trying to say that it’s common idea that blonde girl with blue eyes will be stupid, like in Legally Blonde, she only uses her beautiful look to seduce the men, well, she appears to be smart in the end of the movie anyway.
I wanted to take Nancy Drew the Movie for this movie analysis as one example that stereotypes are on going on the film industry. The portrayal of Nancy Drew as the not-so-American-teens will be different from the American teenagers on her age, and somehow the stereotypes are different. The reason why I choose the title will be explained furthermore on the discussion part.
DISCUSSION
Just like what most people know—or not—Nancy Drew is a famous book series about a girl detective in the era of 1930s written by many ghost writers in the past but rewritten by Carolyn Keene for easy reading for young/adult books. Many researchers said that Nancy Drew is a figure of a feminist; she is independent, free, and able to do anything (Still, 2009). Nancy Drew is a positive role model for women, as she is a heroine with the ability and freedom as man, but she is feminine. Unlike the common idea that girl who plays detective will be masculine, tomboy and strong, Nancy Drew is a feminine girl with skirts and long blond hair.
Basically Nancy Drew is the depiction of the American girl at that time, American girl in 1930s with different culture to girls on the 20th or 21st century. But many people said that Nancy Drew series are timeless. The character itself, Nancy Drew is (I’m not going to say she is genderless, because she is a girl) timeless too. She will be okay to be put in many years, whether it is in 1930s or in the 21st century.
This timeless character is proven by the making of Nancy Drew the Movie on 2007. The movie is different with the book, not different in term of the sleuthing part because female sleuthing is practically the main personality of Nancy Drew, but how the movie is pact in such a way that inside the detective story, there is the school life of Nancy. In the book it’s rarely described because all the cases happen on the summer break when Nancy was on vacation.
The genre of the movie itself is family, mystery, comedy, and criminal. But in my opinion we can add the drama genre on this movie, as we can see there are some scenes on her school life, love life, and Nancy’s life with her new friends in Los Angeles. The school life scenes add some seasoning to the movie—not in the book because I think it will be too much romance rather than mystery. And I will analyze this drama part of Nancy Drew the Movie, and the image of Nancy Drew as American teenage girl.
The reason why I choose the title of “Nancy Drew: not-so-American Teens” is that in the movie, the setting is not in the 1930s, but in the 21st century. This is the big difference from the movie and the book. It will be good to analyze on how the image of Nancy Drew as a female detective is depicted compared to the typical American teenage girls on the same movie and in comparison into some other American teenage girls movies.
As this movie is novel adaption, I can see that the producer is trying his best to keep the image of Nancy Drew as being an innocent girl from a small town. Moreover, the setting of Nancy Drew’s case on the film is not on her small town River Heights, but Los Angeles. On the movie, Nancy Drew has to be able to adapt with the new environment of the big metropolitan city. She has to blend with the new school life, where people wore fashionable style, it’s not that Nancy Drew is unfashionable.
On the movie, Nancy Drew is different with other girls on her school. The typical American girls depicted in teen movies are fashionable with beautiful clothes and make ups, tall, slender, expose their skin too much (see picture).
This picture is a movie caps from Mean Girls. This movie has same setting with Nancy Drew, in the high school and the girls are 16-17 years old teenage girl. As we can see from the picture, the girls wore pink clothes to show their youth and femininity, short skirts, high heels, and they expose their skin too much for the public consumption. Even only for a glance we can guess these girls hang out in nightclub and mall. Shopping is their life, typical American teenage girls on most of all teen movies, the typical girls who uphold their popularity as the most important thing and set aside their achievement on study.
Let’s compare them with the image of Nancy Drew in the movie.
As we can see in here, Nancy Drew exposed her image as innocent girl with her pastel choice clothes, knee sock, flat shoes, and she really dresses tidily. She never wears jeans like the other kids do. She does wear trousers, but the old style ones. From a glance, she definitely looks different (see pictures).
The picture of the two girls are Nancy’s friends on her new school, well practically they are not her friends because they despise Nancy’s dress and behaviors. As we can see from the pictures, Nancy character in here seems to be trapped in a different flow of times. Everybody are wearing T-shirts, jeans, hat, sunglasses, and always holding gadgets (except on class, of course). Nancy doesn’t have cell phone to be noted in here. Nancy prefer something feminine for her dress, in the movie she exclaims to modify some of her mother’s old clothes, the answer why her dresses are so out-of-date with pastel color like in the past. This is one of the producer’s ways to maintain the originality of Nancy Drew’s style from the book. Obviously, she is a different type of American teenage girls, not into popularity and the outlook, although she seems to keep her feminine side.
Nancy Drew is described as female heroine too. But she is not described as some strong girl with muscles and masculine image. She is a very feminine girl, symbolized by her feminine look with blond hair and blue eyes—previously seen as the symbol of weak American girl. She has her own way to get away from troubles, she uses her girl’s way—not in the from of seductive method. This signify that although she is a heroine and capable to do many thing. Nancy Drew is still a girl. It is the producer and also the script writer and the author’s main idea of creating new type of American teenage heroine as a detective.
Aside from the way she dressed differently with other girls, Nancy Drew sure is someone different from other girls. She knows a lot of things which can be regarded as unusual for girl at her age. She is more capable of doing thing compared to her friends, male or female. She is smarter than her friends on the classroom and she has more talent on craftsmanship compared to her male friends too. In the movie she knew how to do CPR, how to do the first aid on choking victim and allergic victim. She even did some little operation to her friends. It’s unusual for a high school girl to perform these actions.
On an interview, Emma Roberts who played as Nancy Drew even exclaimed that Nancy Drew is the stereotype of good girl. She is genuine, loyal, independent, and kind. Nancy Drew is not the typical American teenage girl on 21st century—or at least like media are trying to tell us what ‘American teenagers’ should be.
Being like Nancy, the book or the movie version, is a matter of getting out in the world, looking around you, seeing, thinking about what you see and acting upon it. It’s a matter of using your brain, not your credit card (Mannion, 2008).
In this statement we can see a little satire being exposed on the movie that being a teenage girl shouldn’t be someone as your friends want you to be. You just need to be yourself, like Nancy Drew. She feels like she is an alien on her new world, from her different dress to her tendency to sleuth than to hang out with her friends. She is not like a normal girl, this is emphasized more on how her father—Carson Drew—found her daughter make a mess up birthday party, but he didn’t scold her, he hugged her instead for being normal.
The most important thing in here, Nancy Drew as depicted in the movie is free from the stereotypes of American teenage girl who only cares for the popularity and money. She creates some different stereotype of American teenage girl who is smart and tends to be different, not in the negative way. Nancy Drew is free, in many things. She is free from fashion pressure. She is free from peer pressure. She is free from dependence on her father. And she is free from sexual pressure too. Her relationship with Ned wasn’t really being exposed in here, but it sure look like Nancy doesn’t really think of her love life. As she seems to let it flow.
Nancy Drew is an independent girl, in the movie it can be clearly seen from how she drove her own car, meet some important people regarding to her cases, go to anywhere she likes, sleuthing in secret tunnels, and investigating things. She does this alone, but she doesn’t reject help.
CONCLUSION
In the movie or in the book, Nancy Drew is a good example of good girl stereotype and role model for American teenage girl. As she has better thing to think of rather than thinking on how she should have desiring body like other teenagers want to have. Nancy Drew might not be a good example of typical American teenage girl as depicted in many teen movies and TV series.
She is different with these typical girls, and she obviously does not meet up all the stereotypes of American teenage girls which have spread as the formula of making teen movies. These teen movies mainly focus on the “queen bees”, school life, shopping, partying, hanging out, and these stereotypes has stick to all American teenage girls image. Even some producers have made these as the American dreams.
Nancy Drew is depicted too as a heroine, but without muscular body and tomboyish. She is a very feminine girl who wore clothes with pastel colors which shows femininity, has a long blond hair—which mostly correspond a weak American girl, and her behavior is very girly. She doesn’t show strength and powerful over the male villain, but she sure knows another way on solving problems and getting out of troubles without muscle power.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mannion, Lance. 2008. Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Ambivalent Movie Adaption. Retrieved on December 10, 2010 from http://lancemannion.typepad.com/lance_mannion/2008/03/nancy-drew-and.html
Luke, Carmen, “Reading Gender and Culture in Media Discourses and Texts” (1996). The Literary Lexicon.
Still, Katie, “The Mystery of the Body: Embodiment in the Nancy Drew Mystery Series” (2009). Women’s Studies Theses. Paper 16. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/wsi_theses/16
1 komentar:
Reading your analysis, I have some things to say. Firstly, Nancy Drew is not the embodiment of the new stereotypes. In my opinion, she has not reached the level of creating the new stereotype. Instead, it is better to say that Nancy Drew provides an alternative image of American good teenage girl. Secondly, by using the term, an alternative image of American good teenage girl, you will then be able to distinct it to the prevailing stereotypes of American good teenage girl i.e. nerdy, old-fashioned and shy although this kind of girls is rarely found in reality. This movie, though I never watch it, is also about self-empowerment to combat the stereotypes of the "queen bee".
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