Dr Mel Gibson's "Remembered Reading": book abt girls comics

[comixminx]

There were lots in the past to be sure - I'm just wondering if they would all be frowned upon in today's climate. Only a few days ago I heard a woman say how much she detested the 'moral' of Hans Anderson's 'Little Mermaid'. (I was always a sucker for that sort of thing, whether it was aimed at girls or boys)

I think whether little girls like self-sacrificing stories is still an open question though I would expect most women and older girls to have hopefully been encouraged away from that... not that you can be sure of course! Disney films are of course massively popular and they do still have the self-sacrificing storyline, pretty much. Less so the more recent ones such as Brave and Tangled though, there is a move away I know.

[Phoenix]

Unlike, say, Bunty's Sister of the Bride, where a girl keeps sabotaging her sister's career because she thinks marriage is what will make sis truly happy. It was probably acceptable for its time in 1967, but try running that serial today! And if that serial ended with sis all too happy to give up her career to get married and our protagonist all believing she had done the right thing, I am going to be ... not amused.

There is no need for you to get out your paper hankies, Tammyfan. Shona Kelly and John Ross get married, and 14-year-old Jane thinks that perhaps all her worrying and planning have been worth while. After John's toast that praises the person who helped to make this a happy day for Shona and me, she feels that she is the happiest person at the wedding, except her sister and John, of course. I didn't find the serial particularly inspiring, or the artwork for that matter. Still, you can rest easy now as there is no evidence either way of what Jane's future plans are.

[Tammyfan]

Unlike, say, Bunty's Sister of the Bride, where a girl keeps sabotaging her sister's career because she thinks marriage is what will make sis truly happy. It was probably acceptable for its time in 1967, but try running that serial today! And if that serial ended with sis all too happy to give up her career to get married and our protagonist all believing she had done the right thing, I am going to be ... not amused.

There is no need for you to get out your paper hankies, Tammyfan. Shona Kelly and John Ross get married, and 14-year-old Jane thinks that perhaps all her worrying and planning have been worth while. After John's toast that praises the person who helped to make this a happy day for Shona and me, she feels that she is the happiest person at the wedding, except her sister and John, of course. I didn't find the serial particularly inspiring, or the artwork for that matter. Still, you can rest easy now as there is no evidence either way of what Jane's future plans are.

Thank you, Phoenix. At least there is not too much of a need for me to throw the issue at the wall if I had it. But it sounds very distasteful of Bunty, having the girl being unknowingly toasted for bringing the couple together, when she did it by secretly sabotaging her sister's career. Girls who play tricks like that should either repent or get their comeuppance in girls' comics.

[philcom55]

I think stories like that worked best when the main character learned an important lesson at the end - realising that she had acted wrongly, albeit for the best of reasons. The Happy Days was always very good at that sort of neat morality tale.

Of course there were times when the editors and writers themselves genuinely believed that 'a woman's place is in the home', in which case the 'lesson' that was learned might well result in a modern reader using her wall for target practice!

[Tammyfan]

I think stories like that worked best when the main character learned an important lesson at the end - realising that she had acted wrongly, albeit for the best of reasons. The Happy Days was always very good at that sort of neat morality tale.

Of course there were times when the editors and writers themselves genuinely believed that 'a woman's place is in the home', in which case the 'lesson' that was learned might well result in a modern reader using her wall for target practice!

Yes, even allowing for the fact that Sister of the Bride came out in the 1960s, when things must have been less feminist, you have to wonder what the hell Bunty was thinking with this one. If Jane had acted as a matchmaker to get her sister married rather than sabotaging her career, it would have been ok. Stories in that vein lasted in DCT well into the '80s.

[philcom55]

Maybe it reflects the prevailing view of Fleet Street during the 1960s that Jenny Butterworth wrote a Happy Days storyline where Mrs. Day was inspired by a high-flying schoolfriend to go out to work herself - only to find the family was hopelessly unsettled as a result and she'd been much happier as a stay-at-home mum. What's more, it was then learned that her friend also hated her seemingly successful career since it had left her solitary and unfulfilled.

As they say, 'the past is another country' - and while I'm wholly in favour of the gains women have made there's still a part of me that misses that vanished world where I used to come home from school every afternoon to find my mum waiting for me in the kitchen with a big smile!

[Tammyfan]

Maybe it reflects the prevailing view of Fleet Street during the 1960s that Jenny Butterworth wrote a Happy Days storyline where Mrs. Day was inspired by a high-flying schoolfriend to go out to work herself - only to find the family was hopelessly unsettled as a result and she'd been much happier as a stay-at-home mum. What's more, it was then learned that her friend also hated her seemingly successful career since it had left her solitary and unfulfilled.

As they say, 'the past is another country' - and while I'm wholly in favour of the gains women have made there's still a part of me that misses that vanished world where I used to come home from school every afternoon to find my mum waiting for me in the kitchen with a big smile!

Maybe, but the protagonist trying to get her sister married by playing dirty tricks to sabotage her career???

[philcom55]

...Of course you'd never get anybody sabotaging his brother's career!

[Phoenix]

If Jane had acted as a matchmaker to get her sister married rather than sabotaging her career, it would have been ok.

Jane is certainly manipulative, but there is a singlemindedness of purpose about everything she does, which is to make sure that Shona and John have a great wedding. Her main problem is her disfunctional family. Her mother's obsession with yoga allows meals cooking on the stove to be burnt, her artist father's ability to allow new ideas for paintings to distract him from commissioned work that pays the family's bills, John and Shona are often bickering, her four-year-old twin siblings are naughty, and even the dog can be relied on to scoff some of the ingredients for a family meal if they are left within reach. Jane has to take over all the meal preparation, and other jobs such bathing the twins. There is no reference to her going to school unless there is one in the only instalment that I don't have (514). We are told that John has an office job and Shona has one in a shop. Then one evening she comes home from work with the exciting news that she is going to be a model for famous photographer Julian Street, and resigns from her shop job. It is only at this point that Jane actively tries to sabotage her sister's job, first by going to see Mr Street to ask him to stop using Shona as a model, then, after his refusal, spoiling Shona's hairstyle, and finally cooking fattening meals for her after she fails to persuade him, which she doesn't eat, preferring salads. In the event Shona gives it up due to having to get up really early too often for photoshoots, so Jane gets her wish anyway. It also suits John who on one occasion tells Shona that she will be giving up work after they are married!! Sister Of The Bride ran in Bunty 513 (Nov. 11 1967) - 525 (Feb. 3 1968). No instalment in issue 523.

[philcom55]

As a matter of interest does Dr Gibson make any attempt to assess the literary and artistic merits of the comics she discusses? I have a similar book called 'Magazines Teenagers Read' by Connie Alderson which was published in 1968, and while it includes some fascinating information about the comics enjoyed by a test group of schoolchildren during that period I couldn't help feeling that the author had never come across comics herself when she was growing up - and that apart from their sociological significance she took it for granted that the content was entirely worthless: a kind of cheap opiate produced by cynical publishers which served only to distract working-class girls from genuinely worthwhile art and literature, thereby shaping them for a future of low expectations in which marriage would be the only alternative to menial work as a shop-worker or secretary.

[comixminx]

As a matter of interest does Dr Gibson make any attempt to assess the literary and artistic merits of the comics she discusses? I have a similar book called 'Magazines Teenagers Read' by Connie Alderson which was published in 1968, and while it includes some fascinating information about the comics enjoyed by a test group of schoolchildren during that period I couldn't help feeling that the author had never come across comics herself when she was growing up - and that apart from their sociological significance she took it for granted that the content was entirely worthless: a kind of cheap opiate produced by cynical publishers which served only to distract working-class girls from genuinely worthwhile art and literature, thereby shaping them for a future of low expectations in which marriage would be the only alternative to menial work as a shop-worker or secretary.

Dr Mel certainly did read comics herself as a kid an as an adult; at the beginning of the book she analyses a couple of specific strips in some detail to show how they work, in a very respectful and interested way. She is very far from having the snooty sort of impression of comics that you mention. That's part of what I like about her work! Having said that, her book is not primarily a literary analysis, it's pretty much a sociological investigation, so the literary aspects of the comics are not her main focus.