The New Sincerity

I fully recognize that you are not Nancy Drew people. I imagine that not many of you went to see the new Nancy Drew movie, nor have seen the old ones. Under duress some of you might confess to having read some of the horribly written books as a child. Maybe one or two of you are actually teen detectives. Who am I to judge?

But I must confess: While I am not necessarily a Nancy Drew fan per se, I am secret addict of teen girl movies. I can’t quite say why. Perhaps it is the dramatic and triumphant stories of awkward girls. Perhaps it is the overzealous and obligatory makeover scenes. Perhaps it is the adorably chaste romances between generally unsuitable teens who will likely break up a week after the story ends. Or perhaps I just have an unhealthy addiction.

Needless to say, when I saw that the new Nancy Drew movie was coming out, I responded much in the same way as when the Princess Diaries movie came out, whispering to myself, “My inner twelve-year-old needs to see this movie.” And so, last weekend, I indulged my inner twelve-year-old.

And my response to the movie gets a bit muddled at this point, because while the twelve-year-old in my brain wants to report that the film was delightful, my grownup and significantly more cynical academic inner voice is somewhat troubled. (Thankfully, these two voices have learned to ignore each other over the years or else I might actually have an aneurysm.)

Here’s the thing. Teen movies make for an excellent barometer of cultural trends, of the movement of younger generations, their anxieties, and their desires. Movies (teen or otherwise) don’t come out of thin air. They always come out of something bigger and often something scarier. Regardless of whether audiences want to admit it, movies and television function like the subconscious of a society, symbolically telling us what we really think and feel about the world around us.

Not that you care but here’s the plot: small-town Nancy must temporarily travel with her father to Los Angles for a new job. While on one hand, Nancy’s provincial style cannot possibly fit in with the trendier and PoMo stylings of her new high school peers (we are even gifted with the obligatory high school cafeteria rejection scene), she manages to fit in by finding a mystery wherever she goes. By selecting a house where a rising actress mysteriously died twenty years earlier, Nancy Drew is able to distract herself from her social failings by sleuthing out what has happened to the fallen film star. Mystery and hilarity ensue.

So while my inner twelve-year-old was delighted by the 50s stylized “new” Nancy (perkily played by Julia Robert’s niece, Emma Roberts), my inner academic voice began to slowly rumble. As the pristine Nancy walked around in knee socks, plaid skirts, and penny loafers, bribing officials and criminals with baked goods and singing the praises of all that is “old fashioned” I began to get uncomfortable. And by the end of the movie, when the far less chaste and more “fashionable” teen girls who made a point of humiliating Nancy at the beginning of the film decide to emulate the new Drew’s style and labeled it “The New Sincerity” I grew concerned.

Per Nancy Drew etiquette The New Sincerity, it would seem, involves more than just sleuthing behind a parent’s back. It is unquestionably reminiscent of what Betty Friedan labeled “The Feminine Mystique.” By the standard of The New Sincerity girls should be good, they should be chaste, they should be nurturing, they should show proper etiquette, are neat in a sort of OCD way, should dress both femininely and sensibly, and should partake in traditional values. While none of these things are exactly bad, they are romanticizing a time, a place, and a style where women and femininity were trivialized and patronized.

Furthermore, how am I supposed to buy into a New Sincerity from a film with a dozen or more product placements?

Via an anonymous tip, I was told that the phrase “The New Sincerity” is actually one with growing cultural significance which exceeds the boundaries of teen flicks. So on a hunch, I did a bit of sleuthing of my own, attempting to figure out what exactly this self-important and seemingly meaningless label means. It would appear that it is something about the death of irony (if irony is dead then I am not leaving the goddamn wake!), though I honestly can’t tell if the discussions on the death of irony are meant to be ironic. It appears to be a post-9-11 movement towards will-full naivety. There also seem to be some academic links to the term, many of them referencing my often-hero Judith Butler and (from what I can tell) misreading her notions of performativity. (Which, in fairness, it’s hard not to misread Butler. I do it all the time.)

Alas my sleuthing did not get me much farther in my search to understand The New Sincerity. But let’s be honest. I ain’t no Nancy Drew.

So while my inner twelve-year-old is currently pouting in the corner and muttering that my inner academic has to go and ruin all of the good movies, the new Nancy Drew movie makes me wonder about the future of young American girls. Is this film indicative of a trend of a “New Femininity” more than a “New Sincerity” (or, perhaps, a rehashing of an old femininity and sincerity)? I’m not sure that we could say that Nancy Drew in this iteration is an anti-feminist figure (she’s certainly better than the sexist and racist Nancy Drew films from the 1930s), but I’m not sure if she is a good role model for young girls, either. Certainly the now canceled television show Veronica Mars was a far better (and more realistic role model) for potential teen girl detectives.

And so I am divided. While my inner twelve-year-old is currently modeling 50s New Sincerity clothing in an imaginary mirror and primly brushing her hair, my inner academic is a bit annoyed. She worries too much, my inner academic, but she is still concerned that young girls might take the wrong things from the new Nancy Drew. Which totally might be true. But in the end that doesn’t really stop my inner twelve-year old from wondering if Amanda Bynes or the Olson twins have any new movies coming out this summer.

Shira Chess is a PhD student in Communication and Rhetoric at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and her home page online is shiraland.com.

Nancy Drew via Alterati.net