Angela McRobbie

Plenty of food for thought here, and quite a few indications for further reading. I picked it up originally because it was the only older academic book I'd seen that was likely to have looked at girls comics even a little bit - there has been more work in this area recently, but for one thing I was hoping that this would have been written closer to the time that girls comics actually existed as a reality rather than just a memory. (For another, I still haven't come across any of the other work in person either - it's not like my local library stocks any of it.)


Some of it was a bit harder going than others (laden with sociology jargon) and it could definitely have done with a better go at proofreading and correction, to the extent that some parts were a bit distracting. Overall, though, it was definitely worth reading right through as I did.

I'm not quite sure what to make of her analysis of Jackie as a text that strongly imposes the cultural hegemony of romantic individualism on the girl reader - it's certainly a very depressing interpretation, that this seemingly-light magazine is really only and always about telling girls that they must have a boyfriend, that other girls are dangerous boy-stealers and not to be trusted, that the world of work is not for them. Unlike one of the other reviewers of this book, I'm not denying it, mind! I haven't read enough Jackie to get a sense of whether McRobbie is overlooking certain kinds of story or certain motivations that the readers of the time might have had in reading it.

There's an interesting chapter about dance in fiction and film, as giving girls a focus that is not allowed for in "romantic individualism" - a passion that is not relationship-focused, that can plausibly lead to a career and a living, and that is portrayed as validated by the powers that be. She analyses Ballet Shoes, Fame (the film), and Flashdance; in this, she references Valerie Walkerdine's investigation into comics for younger girls (Bunty, Judy) and their cult of powerlessness, in comparison with the power that the protagonists of these three stories end up with (with some external support). I'd really like to read the Walkerdine in more detail now, though I suspect I'd find plenty to quibble with.

Finally, it ends with a pretty heart-wrenching chapter about teen motherhood in the depths of the Thatcher era and the entrenchment of female poverty in the light of general joblessness. Far from being the demonised 'out to get what they can from the state' stereotypes of the press of the time (and indeed now), McRobbie shows how the young mothers are not doing anything vastly different from what they did in more favourable economic circumstances; but the results are considerably more bleak.… (més)