Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 20, 1993 TAG: 9309240351
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: HENRY SHEEHAN ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Its central character is a girl, not a boy.
The lack of girl-oriented material isn't just a problem in films. When my wife and I first started looking for stories to read to our 8-year-old daughter, we discovered how difficult it was to find one in which girls played anything but the most passive roles, aside from housekeeping. But if you search hard enough for girls' stories in books, you'll find them. With movies, you're stuck with whatever the studios release.
``Rookie of the Year'' uses a girl to mark its young protagonist's dawning sexuality and provide the reason he suffers a crucial broken arm. After she fulfills that function, she's brushed off stage.
``Free Willy'' just ignores their existence altogether.
And ``Dennis the Menace,'' in the person of Dennis' neighbor Martha, offers what is the most misogynistic and ugly portrait of a female of any description in years.
Oddly, in this age of feminist consciousness, things used to be better.
During the late '30s, there were plenty of boy stars out there making films - Freddie Bartholomew, Jackie Cooper - but the reigning box office champ was Shirley Temple, whose films regularly outpolled those of Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, James Cagney or anyone else you'd care to mention.
She wasn't the only girl star of her time, either; Jane Withers, for one, who would famously end up playing Josephine the Plumber in commercials during the '60s, had a successful run in a series of her own vehicles.
When movies featured a boy star, they didn't try to expunge the very existence of women. Mickey Rooney's Andy Hardy didn't just fall in love, he had to contend with girls all the time, beginning with his sister.
Children also were integrated into features not specifically aimed at other kids. Young Margaret O'Brien, the great child star of the '40s, had one of the key roles in the classic 1944 musical ``Meet Me In St. Louis,'' in which she co-starred with Judy Garland, another former child star, female division.
Elizabeth Taylor (``National Velvet'') and Natalie Wood (``Miracle on 34th Street'') began their careers as successful child stars.
So what happened? Probably the '50s, in which children's fare in general was shifted to television. As that decade wore on, children's films, because of rarity, became more of an event, and the old marketing saw that girls would see a film about boys, but boys wouldn't watch a movie about girls, took strong hold. You'd have an occasional ``Old Yeller,'' about a boy and his dog, but no more, for example, girl-and-her-horse yarns.
``Secret Garden'' isn't exactly breaking this ban. This summer, there was ``Life With Mikey,'' which was kind of a ``Last Action Hero'' of kids' movies, a story with two child stars about being a child star. However, the film's real focus wasn't the Puerto Rican girl making it as a commercial star but grown-up Michael J. Fox.
More to the point was ``Beauty and the Beast.'' After the anti-feminism of ``The Little Mermaid'' - about a girl who gives up everything important in life to get hitched to some dumb yokel she goes gaga over at first sight - Disney's ``Beauty'' offered an active young woman with an almost startingly well-developed inner life.
And it's that psychological aspect that reminds us how valuable girls' films are, above and beyond the satisfaction they give to girls in the audience.
Boys' films are usually about an adventure, whether it's floating down the Mississippi with Huck or playing for the Cubs. But girls' films tend to depend on strong psychological themes. Often it's no more than coming to terms with father figures - or bringing father figures to heel, which was the plot of 90 percent of Temple's films. But it can involve a great deal more, too.
``The Secret Garden'' preaches that it's possible to use your inner resources to create happiness in what looks like a desperately unhappy situation. Although its characters make almost magical leaps in personality, the story has an essential knowingness about human nature.
That's not just something for girls to watch; that's something for us all.
by CNB