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American Doll: The Movie
Nov. 24th, 2004 08:56 amI am the mother of an eight-year old and eleven-year old girl, so you know what I was doing last night. Yes. With my children, I was watching Samantha: An American Doll Holiday. For those of you who are not parents of elementary school girls, let me inform you that American Doll is a marketing juggernaut owned by Mattell, which promotes books, toys, clothes, and especially dolls and all their fabulously expensive accessories. There are, oh, six or seven dolls, scattered throughout American history in the main line (Felicity in Colonial America, Addie, daughter of slaves during Civil War, Kirsten, a Norwegian immigrant in American West, Kit, who loses her home during the Depression, etc.); each doll has several books about their history, all following a rigid formula, the same, with interchangeable titles: _________'s Surprise, ____________ Saves the Day, Changes for ____________, etc.
Fiona discovered American Girls through the books, and initially I was all for this. What a great way for her to learn about, say Colonial history, by reading a story told through the point of view of a little girl like her. And yeah, the books are thin, but it got her interested, and started her on a binge of reading other books that explore American history through fiction, which led to the (rather better) Dear America series, and other biographies and histories. We warned her that we wouldn't be buying her the doll stuff, but they have fond grandparents who are perfectly willing to do that.
After watching the movie, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about why it irritated me so. I suppose the problem was that I could see the manipulation so obviously, and the derivativeness of it. Take Sara Crewe and Mary Lennox and Anne of Green Gables and Little Orphan Annie and Jo March and, oh, maybe Heidi--you don't even have to file the serial numbers off. Throw them in a blender and serve the bland result slightly warmed over with a sprig of Christmas holly. Have Samantha discover the horrors of child labor in factories at the turn of the century! She can give a speech decrying it and feel virtuously brave and prosecuted because she didn't win the scholarship prize because she ruffled the feathers of all the rich people who came to hear the school program! She can persuade her aunt and uncle to adopt the little poor orphan girls and still get to be waited on by a maid and have the enormous Christmas tree! To really warm hearts, have the little mute girl finally speak at the end of the movie! There won't be a dry eye in the house!
Well, except mine, maybe.
And perhaps the critic at the New York Times. She saw right through it, too.
The girls get enormous pleasure out of their dolls, and they devour the books and are learning from them, too. That's fine, but I will continue to gently prod them to explore further, now that their interest in history is piqued.
Fiona discovered American Girls through the books, and initially I was all for this. What a great way for her to learn about, say Colonial history, by reading a story told through the point of view of a little girl like her. And yeah, the books are thin, but it got her interested, and started her on a binge of reading other books that explore American history through fiction, which led to the (rather better) Dear America series, and other biographies and histories. We warned her that we wouldn't be buying her the doll stuff, but they have fond grandparents who are perfectly willing to do that.
After watching the movie, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about why it irritated me so. I suppose the problem was that I could see the manipulation so obviously, and the derivativeness of it. Take Sara Crewe and Mary Lennox and Anne of Green Gables and Little Orphan Annie and Jo March and, oh, maybe Heidi--you don't even have to file the serial numbers off. Throw them in a blender and serve the bland result slightly warmed over with a sprig of Christmas holly. Have Samantha discover the horrors of child labor in factories at the turn of the century! She can give a speech decrying it and feel virtuously brave and prosecuted because she didn't win the scholarship prize because she ruffled the feathers of all the rich people who came to hear the school program! She can persuade her aunt and uncle to adopt the little poor orphan girls and still get to be waited on by a maid and have the enormous Christmas tree! To really warm hearts, have the little mute girl finally speak at the end of the movie! There won't be a dry eye in the house!
Well, except mine, maybe.
And perhaps the critic at the New York Times. She saw right through it, too.
The girls get enormous pleasure out of their dolls, and they devour the books and are learning from them, too. That's fine, but I will continue to gently prod them to explore further, now that their interest in history is piqued.
