The cast of Beverly Hills Teens (Jett is the one with the blonde palm tree and guitar, Switchboard is behind her in the jacuzzi wearing sunglasses and a pink bow); image courtesy of wikimedia.org
The other night at a mutual friend’s party, Alex of Pink Army played me a portion of an episode of the animated children’s program Beverly Hills Teens. It aired on syndication and was brought to American kids by DiC, who anticipated the allure of rich teens romping through Beverly Hills before Aaron Spelling by a few years. Apparently it only had one season in the can (1987-1988) but the 65 episodes were re-ran for some time. Five of these episodes are available in full to curious or nostalgic types on YouTube. Other friends at the party remembered it as well, serving as either a lead-in to Jem or following Duck Tales in the after-school line-up. Somehow it was not on my radar. Maybe it was because I was watching Out of This World instead.
Make no mistake: this show is really dumb. Hokey writing, predictable storylines, broadly-written stock characters, and so forth. Basically, each episode focuses on teen queens Larke Tanner and Bianca Dupree. Anyone who’s watched Gossip Girl or read an Archie comic can guess how any plot goes down. Snobby blue-blood brunette Dupree covets something of golden girl Tanner’s (her popularity, modeling career, or boyfriend Troy) and doesn’t get it.
Like Betty and Veronica and Larke and Bianca, Blair and Serena are blonde vs. brunette frenemies
The considerable supporting cast also brings to mind the Archie universe or the coterie of folks inhabiting the CW’s version of the UES. All-American Troy is Archie Andrews or Nate Archibald. Preppy Pierce Thorndyke III (love that name) is Reggie Mantle III or Chuck Bass. Token African American character Shanelle Spencer suggests a shallow notion of inclusiveness in the same way that Chuck Clayton, Nancy Woods, or Blair’s attendants of color do. Rocker Gig and surfer Radley provide some slacker cool in the wake of Jughead Jones’s insouciance that predates the hipster appeal of Dan Humphrey. You get it.
Gossip Girl: what happens when Archie Andrews meets Aaron Spelling, Stephanie Savage, and Josh Schwartz; image courtesy of feministe.us
However, I don’t want to write off this formulaic children’s cartoon without mentioning two characters that are completely in line with my research: rock chick Jett and nerdy informant Switchboard. Valley girl Jett may be Gig’s girlfriend, but they also play guitars in an outfit together. In fact, Jett sings the theme song. I suppose she could be somewhere between Jenny Humphrey and Josie McCoy, a satellite in the Archie universe.
Rachel Leigh Cook in the middle as the live-action version of Josie McCoy, flanked by drummer Melody Valentine (Tara Reid) and bassist Valerie Brown (Rosario Dawson); image courtesy of premiere.com
The character I relate to is Switchboard, a friend of Jett’s. The name’s great, for a start. And while she’s cast as a geek (glasses on!), her idiosyncratic, period-indicative fashion sense would be prescient for how hipster girls dress now. As a journalist who always has the scoop on everything that’s going on in this stratified world, it only lends to her credibility. And while she’s got a strange obsession with the boring popular girls, something tells me that she’d later channel that energy into something more subversive once she went to RISD or Mills College. Basically, I think this girl later goes on to launch Artforum‘s Web site. There’s no clear precursor to her in the Archie universe, but I think she may very well be Gossip Girl, if it isn’t Chuck.
It’s now clear that geeks have a tremendous amount of cultural sway, as books like Benjamin Nugent’s American Nerd: The Story of My People and the rise of Tina Fey suggest. I’d argue there’s a whole lot of whiteness going on with this construction of geek, as the characterization of classed whiteness offered by Stuff White People Like and the fascination with blipsters may also evince. That said, as a white girl geek, I’m still interested in cataloging those moment when nerdy girls and women exist in media culture, no matter how small or problematic. In honor of friend and fellow geek Catherine, who came to feminism through riot grrrl as a teenage outcast and gave me Nugent’s book for my 25th birthday, I’ll leave you with Lisa Loeb’s “Stay.” Catherine texted me yesterday that she was watching this video and discovered that Ms. Loeb (an Ivy League-educated Texan) designed her own eyewear collection. Naturally.
