Would Buffy or Rory have existed without My So-Called Life?
HOW THE TV SERIES MY SO- CALLED LIFE USHERED IN AN ERA OF TELEVISION IN WHICH WOMEN WERE DISTINGUISHED BY THEIR LIBERTIES
High school is forever. Or, at least, this has been a working theory of mine since I left high school nearly a decade ago, and one that has been reiterated by just about every woman I know and have looked up to in my own life and on television: the Veronica Marses and Felicitys and Rory Gilmores and Joey Potters – post-1980s women defined by their independence and intellectualism.
But what all of these women share in common is their predecessor, My So- Called Life’s Angela Chase. A Crimson Glow- haired 15-year-old with enough angst and personal drama to outlast her shortlived 19 episodes in 1994, she made way for a growing history of badass female characters, giving birth to the female gaze and defining what it is to be a teenager.
Created by American screenwriter Winnie Holzman, MSCL captured the melodrama of adolescence via its star Claire Danes, who like her character, was 15 at the time of filming, and saw her own school experience mirrored in her work, with all its “rage and humour.”
For what was considered a family sitcom at the time, MSCL broke the glass ceiling of teen dramas and has been ripe for analysis of how it remains relevant – for not just women, but the average Western teenager – more than 20 years later. That’s a lot to unpack, but Soraya Roberts, a writer with an acute ’90s gaze and a sharp taste for peak pop culture, is more than up to the task with In My Humble Opinion, a pocket guide to all things MSCL.
In addition to interviewing Holzman, Roberts has collected healthy morsels of MSCL minutiae from television criticism and around the Internet, compiling not just a history of the show, but a feminist critique.
Angela is the all- encompassing narrator of MSCL; she opens each episode and emotionally travels through it before ending with a query, her voice matter- of- fact, innocent, searching. School and identity, after all, form “the ultimate battlefield,” writes Roberts. A counterpoint to the 90210 that preceded it and Gossip Girl and The O. C. that followed it, MSCL presented a more familiar version of reality, with Angela traipsing through gloomy suburbia in her overalls and Doc Martens.
Roberts labels Angela the “ideal non- ideal,” a teenager who is the best at being average. She is neither a burnout nor a wallflower, but her rites of passage ring true for just about anyone. Her catalyst is often best friend Rayanne Graff, who is very much the flip side of popularity: an outspoken, sexually active, damaged wild child, she fits right in at Angela’s side. She motivates Angela and, at times, helps her get into trouble so that she can feel “alive.”
But Rayanne is more of “a project than a person,” which ultimately becomes the friends’ undoing by the end of the first season. And what should come between them then if not a boy, the most significant catalyst in a teenage girl’s life — represented in this case by Jared Leto’s pretty Jordan Catalano. He is the antithesis of mop-topped Brian Krakow, the geeky boy- next- door who hopelessly watches and waits for Angela as she does for Jordan, making them far more similar than she cares to realize.
Roberts, keen to observe the ways in which MSCL chose to be different – to be real – analyzes the way these male characters were able to “bust” out of their archetypes. Dream boy Jordan is sensitive, while dorky Brian is reliant, strong in his beliefs and how to say what he wants. Years later his new archetype would reappear as Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Xander, Felicity’s Noah and Dawson’s Creek’s titular worry wart – a new form of masculinity, made acceptable by teen dramas.
It wouldn’t be possible if not for the female perspective, which finally offered teen dramas multifaceted and realistic characterization. “If the ’ 80s were for men, the ’ 90s were for women; this was the decade that brought us commoditized Girl Power in the form of the Spice Girls,” Roberts writes. Meaning, this is a girl’s world, these boys are seen through Angela’s crimson-coloured lens, creating an undeniable female gaze and perhaps the first of its kind on television.
The first time we see Jordan, Angela watches him lean against his locker – oh, that lean! – with his eyes shut. He is, as memes go, asking to be painted like one of Angela’s French girls. Jordan personifies trouble, simply because he is so inaccessible, so far away, their high school status a world between them.
Once they do begin to “date,” which even in the mid-’90s was difficult to define, he’s hot and cold; he makes out with her, then ignores her in front of his friends; he wants to meet her parents, then doesn’t show up; he propositions her, then says he doesn’t have “any real interest” in her. There’s one of these boys in every girl’s starter pack.
In one of her most memorable lines, Angela says, “Like with boys, how they have it so easy. How you have to pretend that you don’t notice them … noticing you.” She doesn’t know it, but Angela is observing the male gaze, and in so doing, fighting against it. She’s communicating the “invisible demographic” to her teenage girl viewership, writes Roberts, and stripping away the subtlety.
Though Roberts’ book harbours a specific focus on what it means to be a girl in the wake of My So- Called Life ( using it to demonstrate the weight of television in adolescence), In My Humble Opinion is an easy to digest, though comprehensive and immersive take on what it means to grow up. This is Roberts continuing to own the ’ 90s and reminding us that it’s OK to deify television, which, whether parents liked it or not, helped raise us and gave us a voice. It’s nostalgia at its finest, investigated by the best – a true fan.
IT’S OK TO DEIFY TELEVISION, WHICH HELPED RAISE US AND GAVE US A VOICE.