Marching Forth: On Book Reviews, Friendship, and “Beverly Hills, 90210”
Guest Post
Vallie Lynn Watson, the UNCW professor whose class I had the honor of speaking to last November, wrote the below essay as a guest post for TeenDramaWhore. Watson is a longtime teen drama fan and even appeared as an extra on “One Tree Hill.” Watson is also a longtime TDW reader, even though we only personally connected last year. She shared with me an email from 2010 in which she and a friend discussed an interview from the original TeenDramaWhore. I’m always humbled and flattered when I learn someone is familiar with my older work. Now I’m proud to also call Lynn a friend.
Marching Forth: On Book Reviews, Friendship, and “Beverly Hills, 90210”
By Vallie Lynn Watson
One night late last spring, I was frantically grading papers at 2 a.m. and queued up the most recent “Beverly Hills 90210 Show” podcast to keep me company. Grades for the semester were due at 8 a.m., and so I was preoccupied and only half-listening when I heard “Beverly Hills, 90210” executive producer Larry Mollin ask their podcast guest, whose name I’d missed, how everything was going in Wilmington.
Wilmington?! My Wilmington?
Surely not. Figuring they meant Wilmington, Delaware, I turned back to paper grading. Then, Larry Mollin asked, “Have you eaten at Jesters lately?”
Jesters?! My Jesters?
I restarted the podcast, noted the guest’s name, and searched Facebook for Shari Weiss, creator and writer of TeenDramaWhore, who, lo and behold, lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, as I do. I had known of TDW for well over a decade, and was overwhelmed with curiosity, but grades were due in just a few hours. I wanted to make my point quickly and convince this queen of teen dramas of my excitement, so I did a little name-dropping.
“My dogs’ names are McKay and Raven,” I wrote to Shari in a Facebook message, “if that gives any indication of my love of the teen drama genre.”
I told Shari that I had to turn the podcast off, or else I would fall into a deep dive and wouldn’t get grades in on time, but that I looked forward to learning more.
When we finally got to chat a bit, I mentioned that I’d just ordered some summer reading: The Construction of Masculinities and Femininities in Beverly Hills, 90210, Justin Charlebois’ 2012 examination of “delegitimized but also legitimized forms of masculinity and femininity” in said show. Shari kindly asked if I might like to review the book for TDW. Of course I would!
I dove in eagerly, but soon had to acknowledge two prohibitive problems: 1) Because the language and ideas we apply to gender identity are always necessarily evolving, Construction had became dated in the decade since its publication, and 2) I am not in any way qualified to speak on these changes — gender studies is not my academic field, and I have too much respect for the importance of its treatment to offer any sort of update. A glance back through a longtime bookshelf staple, E. Graham McKinley’s Beverly Hills, 90210: Television, Gender, and Identity, published in 1997, confirmed the ever-changing nature of such a complicated subject.
RELATED — Cliffnotes: Beverly Hills, 90210: Television, Gender, and Identity
While gender studies isn’t my field, I do consider the teen dramas my unofficial field of study — though I’m no Shari Weiss! — and I have seen my favorite shows bumble their treatment of gender and sexual identity, a sentiment retrospectively acknowledged by many of their showrunners. I have seen my shows do a whole lot of things right, too. As writers and storytellers, we all yearn to represent the human connection with a relatable honesty, and in that realm, “Beverly Hills, 90210” and its successors will always be successes. It is that earnestness that makes these shows sustainable and precious, despite their flaws.
We continue to love teen dramas because everything is heightened as a teenager, especially connections — friendships, romantic relationships, family — and we are reminded of the importance of these attachments. Granted, most of us don’t watch our father get “blown up … by a bomb … in a car” or watch a heart, waiting to be transplanted into our estranged father, instead get eaten by a dog. But where I think us teen drama lovers may have an advantage over the negators of the world is with the empathy we’ve developed from this heightened storytelling and the appreciation of human connection.
The evening of the crushing day that Luke Perry died, I came across a meme that read, “March 4th — the only day that is also an instruction,” and I think about that phrase all the time now. It’s important to march forth. That’s what storytellers must do when approaching complicated issues like gender and sexual identification — move onward and upward and hope for better and better representation with each new story. I know each “Beverly Hills, 90210” reboot (fingers eternally crossed) will improve upon the last, as will all teen dramas. What they’ve already got right are the relationships.
“Beverly Hills, 90210” is truly the gift that keeps on giving. I met one of my very best friends on a “Beverly Hills, 90210” discussion board way back in 1999, when we, and the internet, were still young. Twenty-three years later, thanks to the show, now I’ve met another new friend. I hope, 23 years from now, I will have amassed even more teen drama friends. We will march forth toward crone-dom together while rejoicing in old stories. Thank you, “Beverly Hills, 90210.”
Vallie Lynn Watson’s first novel, A River So Long, was published by Luminus Books in 2012, and her Pushcart-nominated short stories appear in magazines such as PANK, Gargoyle, and decomP. She earned her doctorate from the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers in 2009. Watson teaches writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and wanders the local beaches, collecting sea glass.