How to Be a Real Girl: Authenticity and Mediated Girlhood in "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too"

Regueira Martín, Andrea Sofía (Universidad de Zaragoza)

Resumen: Rachel (Angourie Rice) and her sister Jack (Madison Davenport) embody two versions of girlhood that can be mapped onto a series of binaries: cheerfulness and broodiness, conformity and rebellion, optimism and cynicism, light and darkness, mainstream and underground. While the former, in this case Rachel, is celebrated as "optimistic, self-inventing, and success-oriented." the latter, in this case Jack, is the object of moral concern due to her "juvenile delinquency, nihilism and antisocial attitudes" (24). In all these ways, this paper explores how the Black Mirror episode "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too" interrogates the often-blurry line that divides the real from the manufactured, specifically through the ways whereby it unsettles the borders between the celebrity image and one's authentic self, between the human and the non-human, and between pop music and alternative rock. Nowadays, Disney's so-called "tween machine" (Borstin and Wheat) spreads beyond television and into multiple forms of media and merchandise, and it possesses star-making power, as is demonstrated by some of the big names in acting and music that got their start as tween Disney stars, like Hilary Duff, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato and, more recently, Zendaya. 2 As Blue explains in Girlhood on Disney Channel, through its promotion of girl performers, Disney Channel continues to portray and shape an idealized version of girlhood that corresponds to Harris's can-do girls, who are "identifiable by their commitment to exceptional careers and career planning, their belief in their capacity to invent themselves and succeed, and their display of a consumer lifestyle" (13).

Idioma: Inglés

Año: 2023

Publicado en: Femspec (Cleveland, Ohio) 23, 1 (2023), 106-148
ISSN: 1523-4002

Originalmente disponible en: Texto completo de la revista

Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MICINN/PID2021-123836NB-I00

Tipo y forma: Artículo (Versión definitiva)

Área (Departamento): Área Filología Inglesa (Dpto. Filolog.Inglesa y Alema.)