The girl detective gets a CW reboot, but is she more than endlessly recyclable intellectual property?
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(Why are girls at school mean to me?
Why do I bleed from the crotch every month?)
If you are a woman who has aged out of that demo, she is nostalgia.
If you are in sales at Penguin Random House, she is a cash cow.
(The original Nancy Drew books still sell more than 350,000 copies a year.
If you are a web connection executive, she is marketable intellectual property.
If you are a male, she is wait, who?
The Nancy Drew Mystery Stories were designed for bulk acquisition.
Lined up on a shelf, the yellow spines formed a banana slug of escape opportunities.
I would describe them less as novels than as fodder.
The conventions of the series were stable.
Stratemeyer ran a syndicate that originated nearly 1,400 books, including the Bobbsey Twins and the Hardy Boys.
By the late 1930s, the series was so popular that it had been translated into Braille.
By 1969, more than 30 million copies had been sold.
IM JUST SAYING THAT NOBODY HAS EVER SEEN ME AND NANCY DREW IN THE SAME ROOM.
In a 1970s TV adaptation, Nancy wore slinky halter tops and had feathered hair.
Scott Speedman played Nancys boyfriend in the 1995 version.
A company called HeR Interactive spun out a bunch of Nancy Drew computer games starting in the late 90s.
Nancy reappeared in 2002 on TV, then in a 2007 movie with Emma Roberts.
A Nancy Drew movie released earlier this year replaced Nancys car with a skateboard.
(She wore a helmet.)
A likable dork, but still.
If the show werent tethered to its IP, George would be the obvious starring character.
Like Old Nancy, New Nancy is a human glass of whole milk: nutritious, passe, white.
(Somehow she has sex fully clothed.)
Isnt she exactly the sort of mannered do-gooder who repulses any human in the prepubertal range?
The opposing throw in of character is the adult-in-a-kids-body both an aspirational and a fantastical model of being.
My explanation for this is that Nancy is an incredibly boring character.
Its not an original observation.
Nancy is not different, a quality as highly prized as leprosy when youre young, Ruskin wrote.
There is no magic to her, no eccentricity, no humor.
Instead of freelancing for her dad, shed establish a detective start-up of her own.
She would build a personal brand.
She would start, for Gods sake, accepting money for her work.
Instead, Nancy has leaned so far out shes practically prone on the floor.
But it was never Nancys personality that shone; it was her skills.
She is polite and well groomed.
Her hunches are infallible.
Her glamour isnt to be found in her adjectives tactful, cordial, serious but in her verbs.
At the initial age of Drew consumption, my definition of freedom was pretty elementary.
This is what all kids would do starting at age 7 if they didnt have parents to stop them.
Bursts of elective chaos with a cozy ending are what the Nancy Drew books deliver.
A shot of endangerment with a chaser of domesticity.
The plots might be spooky, but they are never creepy.
Readers in the 1950s would have experienced her usefulness and abilities as subversive.
After all, she was twice as accomplished as her male counterparts.
(There weretwoHardy Boys!)
She had money, family, friends, adventure, a fulfilling career, and a slim figure.
Rereading Nancy Drew is, Im sorry to say it, an unflattering experience.
Nancy Drew, unlike Eloise or Pippi Longstocking, has proved to be a one-way street.
Rereading Carolyn Keene when youve tasted Agatha Christie is like eating diet ice cream after years of Haagen-Dazs.
Its like reverting to the Counting Crows after youve locked into Van Morrison.
Or snuggling up to some R.L.
Stine when youve sipped on the sweet nectar of Stephen King.
Maybe Nancy Drew is unrevivable.
Maybe rebooting Nancy Drew is like … rebooting a training bra.
