The following appeared in the Bremerton Sun, Tuesday, August 20, 1996, page D2
heroines: movies discover the teenage girl
By Peggy Orenstein N.Y. Times News Service
No one has yet called it such, but if 1996 is to be christened anyone's, it ought surely to be named the year of the teenage girl. Consider the evidence: - Alanis Morissette packs concert venues with thousands of 13-year-olds who thrill to her hit "Ironic" the way their mothers swooned over "Love Me Do."
-"Reviving Ophelia," a therapist's account of her work with young women, is at the top of the paperback best-seller list.
-"My So-Called Life," a drama about a 15-year-old girl, plays in perpetual reruns on MTV.
-Time Magazine recently named the psychologist Carol Gilligan, who first brought girls' faltering sense of self to public attention, one of the country's most influential people.
-A slew of films are being released this summer centering on the lives of adolescent and preadolescent girls.
I'm talking about films, for children and adults alike, in which girls are in charge of their own fates, active rather than reactive; films that are about girls' relationships to one another rather than to boys, that tackle the themes of teenager life, like anger, sexuality, alienation and displacement. Before "Clueless" became such a hit last year, conventional wisdom held that female protagonists were a bad bet. While girls will unquestioningly turn out to see boys on the screen, the thinking went, boys do not identify with a female hero and refuse to watch one.
Reviewers are not immune to such assumptions. When "Harriet the Spy" was released, Peter Stack of The San Francisco Chronicle ghettoized it as "a movie for pre-teenaged girls," as if struggles to cleave to one's artistic vision, cope with betrayal and confront one's fears are, merely because a girl is involved, of less universal interest that, say, blowing up a cable car. Yet, "Harriet the Spy" was greeted in some quarters more as a political triumph than as entertainment. It _is_ thrilling to see an intrepid and fiercely committed girl on screen, heedless of fashion, scaling buildings, taking risks, even making mistakes. Her story poses fundamental coming-of-age questions: How to stay true to yourself and keep your friends. How to be honest without hurting feelings.
How to be singular but not isolated. How to find your inner voice. These are especially critical issues for girls, whose self-confidence often drops below that of boys at adolescence and never catches up. They begin to loathe their bodies, to defer to boys, to avoid expressing dissenting opinions, to fear healthy risks. Although it's about a much-younger child, the newly released "Matilda" offers up its own inspiring message, girl-style. Its heroine, a brilliant 6-year-old, is a fully realized person, not a cliche. She navigates an obstacle course of comically abusive adults by using telekinetic powers. Significantly, they are first summoned by that ultimate female taboo: anger. Matilda's welcome battle cry is "No more Miss Nice Girl!" One can only hope this catch phrase will become the "As if!" of 1996.
Eric Last, November 8th 1996