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From chemically-empowered Alex Mack
to "Sailor Moon's" intrepid heroines,
teenage girls are recharging kids TVBy JOYCE MILLMAN
Female adolescence is not for wimps. Girls can enforce conformity within the ranks through often astonishingly cruel mind games. And then there are boys to contend with. Yes, being a teenaged girl requires emotional fortitude; it's a hard and awesome passage, like childbirth, and it should be celebrated. But TV's depictions of female adolescence over the years have rarely been celebratory; mostly, they blur into a haze of tears and crushes.
In the 1950s and '60s, the daughters on shows like "Father Knows Best" and "The Donna Reed Show" were portrayed as kooky, irrational bolts of teenaged lightning captured in paternalistic bottles. Even "The Patty Duke Show," despite being the rare series headed by a teen actress, toed the line when it came to socialization -- Patty was the spirited, individualistic Id always being checked by the refined, ladylike Superego, her look-alike cousin Cathy.
But lately, a few bold shows for and about girls have begun to depict growing up as an act of might and magic, using an average girl's physical transformation into a superheroine as a metaphor for womanly power in much the same way "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie" used witchcraft. Since there's a whole new generation of girls getting hooked on nightly reruns of those old shows on cable's Nickelodeon channel, it's perhaps not coincidental that Nickelodeon should have come out with the first contemporary magic-sitcom for girls, "The Secret World of Alex Mack" (Saturdays, 8 p.m.).
The delightful "Alex Mack," which premiered in 1994, is the story of a tomboyish 13-year-old girl who, walking home from a disastrous first day at
junior high school, gets doused by an errant barrel of a super-secret substance from the local chemical plant. Soon, Alex discovers that she can telepathically move objects and people, generate electricity from her fingers and transform herself into liquid.
"Alex Mack" is funny and lyrical and free of sappiness. Kids love the goofy humor, sci-fi effects and the unpretentious Alex (played by Larisa Oleynik). But grown-ups, especially women, can appreciate it on a subtler level: Alex's "chemical transformation" makes a neat metaphor for menstruation. After the accident, Alex is literally stronger, wiser and more powerful. Her secret enhancements give her confidence in her individuality (not to mention, some pretty cool weapons against bullies, gossips and other scourges of adolescence). And for the first time, her poised, brainy older sister, to whom she confides her predicament, treats her like an equal.
Next page: "Sailor Moon" rules!
