Bolin's Dead Girls Stay Dead

photo: www.Amazon.com

In middle and high school, one of my favorite shows was Pretty Little Liars. I waited for new episodes to come out, and if I was busy at 8 pm or whenever, I would record the show so that I wouldn't miss anything. The show, based off the book series of the same name, revolves around a dead girl named Alison. Her death ripples through her white, rich neighborhood, her old friends are blackmailed, and new scandals and crimes reveal themselves each day.

I loved it. And the dead girl, usually the dead white girl, is a staple in other forms of literature and entertainment, most notably the television series Twin Peaks. But the dead girl has become simply that: a symbol and not a real character or person, a way for male detectives to undergo some personal change or journey, and a symbol of purity and innocence, even when that might not be the case.

This, at least, is what Alice Bolin argues in her nonfiction piece Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession. Of course, I was drawn in by the title, and Bolin herself addresses this move and the way shes capitalizing on our weird obsession with dead girls.

She moves through shows like the aforementioned Pretty Little Liars and Twin Peaks, but she also discusses novels, witchcraft, and Joan Didion. I really enjoyed the first half of the book, where she analyzes these popular authors, artists, and their work from a more feminist lens.

But in the second half she began to lose me. She moves away from her analysis of dead girl tropes and more into the genre of personal narrative itself, including her hero Joan Didion and her own move to LA. Like the dead girls in the books and shows she analyzes, the dead girl takes the backseat to Bolin's own story.

She didn't leave me with anything relevatory, or give me wider insight into how to use her analysis to create new narratives and challenge women's roles, especially the role white women play in misogyny (which the book jacket said she would...).

I would recommend the first half of the book if you enjoy personal narrative, crime shows, and a sprinkling of feminism. But this work suffers, essentially, from the fact that Bolin is trying to do too much in one book. If she had split this into two or three, the end result would have been sharper and more cohesive.

6/10 📕