Beverly Hills, 90210: Television, Gender, and Identity

Chapter 1. The Enthusiastic Voices

Chapter 1 The Enthusiastic Voices Across the United States for most of the 1990s, millions of girls and young women gave special importance to Wednesday evening, when Beverly Hills, 90210 aired. This prime-time soap opera chronicled the lives of a group of upscale students who attended two fictitious schools in glamorous southern California: posh West Beverly Hills High School (the numbers in the title refer to its envied ZIP code), then enticing California University. Dedicated viewers arranged their weekly scheduleshomework , shower time, night classes, work schedules-to free themselves to watch 90210 and its spin-off in the following time-slot, Melrose Place. Whether they watched alone in their bedrooms or with boisterous friends in crowded dormitory lounges, their devotion bordered on the religious. Almost from the time the Fox network program debuted in the fall of 1990 (on Thursday nights the first season), to well beyond the spring of 1994, when the interviews for this study were conducted, the show commanded the airwaves for American girls and young women. At this writing, during the summer of 1996, it still draws a hefty following. Experience of 90210 transcended the hour from 8 to 9 p.m., spilling into a world of orchestrated fandom and promoted merchandisemagazines , books, bubble gum cards, T-shirts, and cosmetics. The controversial central character, Brenda the "bitch," became the focus of a national "I Hate Brenda" fan club. A World Wide Web site offered extended analyses and running commentary on the latest episodes. The show became part of the lives of millions of young viewers-perhaps most importantly in their conversations about it. It was these enthusiastic discussions that first attracted my attention. In the fall of 1992, I heard intense conferences, even arguments, about 90210 among a number ofjunior-high-school girls with whom I worked. I learned that they often videotaped and rewatched episodes, read about the performers, purchased promotional materials-and exhaustively discussed the show with friends. In some cases, they said, they even dreamed about the characters. To me-an infrequent television 2 Chapter 1 watcher-the show seemed a largely empty portrayal of an ensemble of wealthy, unsupervised young characters with improbable cheekbones. Though its dramas highlighted salient social issues, to my eye it represented a typical Hollywood effort: superficially liberal in its treatment of individual rights, but ultimately perpetuating conservative values. However , the charisma of the cast, allurement of the settings and fast pace of the plots were captivating, and it was obvious that the show resonated with teenage girls and young women. My observation of their excited conversations led me to believe that talking about the show was an important part of their viewing experience , and I wanted to explore that intuition. Obviously, talk about television shows is a ubiquitous phenomenon in our culture, and numerous other researchers have explored various ramifications of this behavior. In no way do I mean to suggest that there was anything particularly unique in the talk about 90210. Indeed, it is my hope that readers will use my ideas as suggestive for analyzing talk about other shows, even other media experiences. Here, I simply want to make the point that, in this study, I confined myself to talk about 90210, and I cannot make claims about talk about other shows. I wondered what this talk accomplished. As the girls' choir and drama director, I had discussed with them their goals and aspirations. They talked about their thoughts, fears, and hopes with considerable intensity and, it seemed to me, some vulnerability. I suspected that the similarly intense discussion of Beverly Hills, 90210 might be playing a role in their thinking about their own lives and world. As they talked about the show, they seemed to be wrestling with important issues concerning their own identities. This study is the outgrowth of my desire to understand whether and how such talk accomplished identity work. The voices you will hear in the succeeding pages belong to 36 girls and young women, ranging from sixth grade (age 11) through college age (22). As I drew on various personal and professional connections to find fans who would agree to be interviewed, I looked for people who described themselves as fans of Beverly Hills, 90210 and who had watched the show for at least a year, preferably since the first season. In some cases I knew the viewers fairly well; in others we were strangers. I mustered representatives from a range of socioeconomic classes, though racially my panel was...