1 DE-FANGING MONSTER HIGH: MATTEL's (RE)PRESENTATION of AMERICAN GIRLHOOD in the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY by MARY ROCA a THESIS PR

Home , American Girl, Bratz, Ever After High, Fashion doll, Flavas, Monster (mixtape)

DE-FANGING MONSTER HIGH: MATTEL’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF AMERICAN GIRLHOOD IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

MARY ROCA

A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2014

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. Anastasia Ulanowicz for her exceptional guidance and mentorship, as well as Dr. Kenneth Kidd for his wonderful support and encouragement throughout this project. I would also like to thank my professors and colleagues for their contributions to my growth as a scholar. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their continued support and care.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………………………………….3

ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………………5

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION: STRANGE UN-STRANGENESS………………………………..7

2 EMBRACING AND ERASING LITERARY HERITAGE……………………………16

3 TEENAGE DREAMS………………………………………………………………….29

4 CONSUMPTION-BASED GIRLHOOD………………………………………………59

5 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………73

LIST OF REFERENCES...... ………………………………………………………………….76

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH……………………………………………………………………80

Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

DE-FANGING MONSTER HIGH: MATTEL’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF AMERICAN GIRLHOOD IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Mary Roca

December 2014

Chair: Anastasia Ulanowicz Major: English

In 2010, Mattel launched Monster High™, a mass-produced popular franchise with paranormal themes. The tween-focused brand features the teenage descendants of “famous” monsters, including Frankenstein’s Creature (Frankie Stein™), Dracula

(Draculaura™), and The Werewolf (Clawdeen Wolf™), among others. As popular mass- produced culture, Monster High both reflects and perpetuates current conceptions of

American girlhood, particularly because Mattel is one of the largest toy producers in the world. Interrogating these cultural material offers insight not only into the version of girlhood being sold, but also on how Mattel manufactures and packages that depiction.

In the first chapter, I argue that part of Monster High’s appeal is rooted in its use of familiar monsters from classic literature, mythology, and folklore, which the brand severs from their origins in order to dilute, if not remove, potentially radical associations with monstrosity. Mattel can then more easily control the values promoted by this line and minimize the risks associated with launching a new brand. Interestingly, this new brand seems to promise a new approach to depicting girlhood that emphasizes female agency, self-esteem, and coalition-building. However, as I discuss in the second

5 chapter, despite its “freaky” packaging, Monster High is remarkably similar to other mass-produced girls’ series. The narratives and characters universalize white, heteronormative experiences, while encouraging girls to remain within the nuclear family and heterosexual—albeit chaste—relationships. Monster High encourages girls to be proud of themselves, but simultaneously promotes a commodified “normal” girlhood that reflects white, upper- and middle-class, heterosexual social norms.

Chapter three focuses on how Mattel’s promotion of a consumption-based girlhood aligns not only with depictions of girlhood in girls’ series fiction, but also with the company’s development of a franchise model. Through Monster High’s wide range of productions and merchandise, Mattel works to mediate consumers’ interactions with these characters. And due to Monster High’s success, its franchise model can be reproduced with other content, like the Mattel spin-off Ever After High, which allows

Mattel to further influence ideas of girlhood.

Ultimately, my project investigates how Monster High’s characters, despite their appearances, are not really monstrous at all. Monster High has succeeded because offering monstrous characters to young girls makes it seem unique; however, the brand is actually repackaging familiar literary and cultural figures, while also patterning itself after much of the girls’ series fiction published throughout the past century. As a result, the brand does not follow through with its (admittedly implicit) promise to challenge social norms. Instead, Monster High de-radicalizes the concept of “monster” in order to be both safe for girls and for Mattel’s profit margins.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: STRANGE UN-STRANGENESS

Unfortunately for the toy company Mattel, the beginning of the twenty-first century seemed to signal the end of its dominance of the fashion doll market. After a late-1990s peak, Barbie’s sales began to drop and in 2001, she faced serious competition with the introduction of MGA Entertainment’s Bratz dolls. By the end of

2005, Barbie’s revenue, which “made up a quarter of the company’s sales,” had been

“down for more than eight successive quarters” (Oppenheimer 194). Bratz’s global sales, on the other hand, “had reached more than $2 billion,” which were “still $1 billion below Barbie, but Barbie sales were continuing their decline and stagnation”

(Oppenheimer 196). The edgier and more diverse Bratz dolls highlighted Barbie’s age, fifty as of 2009, and threatened to replace her as the reigning fashion doll.

When the American Girl line challenged Barbie’s reign, Mattel bought out the rival company rather than compete. By acquiring the Pleasant Company, the manufacturer of American Girl, in 1998, Mattel “shrewdly brought into [its] portfolio a

Barbie competitor at a time when the doll was on the decline and other revenues were sinking” (Oppenheimer 166). But Mattel took a different approach with Bratz, by suing

MGA Entertainment and attempting to recreate the Bratz’s appeal through Barbie

MyScene and Flavas lines. These doll lines were meant to offer “a trendier Barbie— more urban, more ethnic, more bling, and hotter,” but “didn’t put a dent in Bratz’s soaring sales” (Oppenheimer 196). The Flavas dolls, even more disastrously, were criticized as “[stereotyping] young African-Americans, and [making] fun of instead of complimenting the culture of hip-hop” (Oppenheimer 198). Barbie underwent other transformations at this time as well, as Mattel began developing Princess Barbie lines

“in an attempt to resuscitate what was at best a tired, at worst outdated, brand” (Orr 12).

Although “Princess Barbies sold better than their sexier sisters” (Orr 23), Mattel still struggled to interest the consumers who were enraptured with the Bratz doll line.

The ongoing lawsuits damaged MGA Entertainment’s meteoric rise, but the edgier doll lines Mattel developed to compete with Bratz did little to improve Barbie’s flagging sales. Mattel still could not maintain girls’ interest in doll play past a certain age.

While Barbie “is targeted to girls ages three to seven” (“Mattel History” 7), Mattel wanted a product line that would not only challenge Bratz dolls, but also could expand its consumer base into the tween and teen markets. Thus, in 2010, Mattel launched

Monster High™, a mass-produced popular franchise with paranormal themes. The tween-focused brand features “the hip teenage descendants of the world’s most famous monsters” (“Mattel Unveils”), including Frankenstein’s Creature (Frankie Stein™),

Dracula (Draculaura™), and The Werewolf (Clawdeen Wolf™), among others. Based on the dolls’ aesthetics, with slim bodies, large heads, and exaggerated features,

Monster High seems to have developed from the recent popularity of paranormal adolescent cultural materials, Bratz’s success with edgier and more diverse dolls, and

Mattel’s continued investment in retaining consumers as they grow too old for Barbie.

Monster High marks Mattel’s first intellectual property released across “a number of diverse consumer products categories simultaneously” (“Mattel Unveils”), demonstrating not only Mattel’s investment in this brand but also the company’s foray into multi-platform storytelling and promotion. The cute, teenage versions of traditional monsters are embodied by dolls, but can also be found in two book series, online webisodes, television specials, video games, and a variety of branded merchandise.

When Mattel introduced the Monster High brand, the company already had partnerships in place with Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Universal Pictures, Justice®, and

Party City to offer “rich content and relatable storytelling via publishing, web, animation and live-action theatrical entertainment” (“Mattel Unveils”). The live-action entertainment—originally a theatrical musical through Universal Pictures—has yet to develop, but Monster High has achieved international success with its dolls, books, webisodes, and other products. Retailers, according to Target spokeswoman Erin

Madsen, were “‘really excited about Monster High because it showcases the current trend in vampires/monsters…and has the great fashion aesthetics required in the fashion doll category’” (Hyland 56). While Barbie’s sales went down by 6% in 2013,

“[w]orldwide gross sales for Other Girls Brands were up 25% for the year, primarily driven by Monster High®” (“Mattel Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2013”). In just under four years, the “perfectly imperfect” world of Monster High became a trend-setting sensation, spawning similar lines in competing doll brands, like MGA Entertainment’s

Bratzillaz in 2012, and inspiring a Mattel spin-off, Ever After High, launched in 2013.

When Mattel first announced Monster High, some industry insiders dismissed these strange dolls. The monster chic aesthetic did not, for some, seem to fit in the fashion doll market. Toy analyst Gerrick Johnson “‘didn’t think it [Monster High] would work,’” in part because he assumed the dolls would not have the same appeal as

Barbie, who “‘works because she’s aspirational. Girls want to be like Barbie’” (Ulaby).

However, judging by the brand’s success, Monster High resonates with consumers, if not necessarily the older girls that the company originally targeted. As of 2013, Monster

High dolls “are designed for girls ages 6 to 12” (Ulaby), but in Mattel’s 2010 press

9 release, the franchise “target[ed] tween and teen girls” (“Mattel Unveils”). The shift implies that teenagers are no longer included in the targeted audience, but that does not mean the brand has been unsuccessful. In fact, Monster High’s immense popularity surprised not only the skeptics, but also the individuals involved in production. Although

Tim Kilpin, General Manager of Mattel Brands, explained in a press release that

“through the development of relatable characters and clever storytelling, this property will resonate with girls of all ages” (“Mattel Unveils”), the company did not expect it would “become a billion dollar brand” so quickly (Ulaby). Since its launch, the Monster

High brand has produced forty-seven dolls series released in “waves” (totaling approximately two hundred individual dolls), twenty-six playsets, nine books, a graphic novel, 144 webisodes, seven television specials, three full-length movies released straight to DVD, and three video games, as well as costumes, clothing lines, and other merchandise1.

Monster High has succeeded because offering monstrous characters to young girls makes it seem unique; however, the brand is actually repackaging familiar literary and cultural figures, while also patterning itself after much of the girls’ series fiction published throughout the past century. Developed in 2007 and launched in 2010,

Monster High’s transformation of primarily male monsters into predominately female teenagers actually follows publishing trends of recent girls’ series books. According to

Carolyn Carpan, the late 1990s saw a wave of successful “[s]eries about girls with unusual powers,” followed by popular “series about spoiled rich teens” like “Gossip Girl,

The A-List, Private, and The Clique” in the early twenty-first century (xv). Monster High

1 As of July 2014

10 combines these two trends by featuring almost exclusively upper- and middle-class characters with a variety of paranormal traits arising from their monstrous heritages.

The brand seems to set itself apart from the spoiled teens of other popular series by presenting characters with green skin, fur, and fangs who embrace their “freaky” selves while encouraging young girls to do the same. However, Monster High really aims to train girls, the primary audience, to become socially acceptable women by reinforcing stereotypical definitions of femininity—heavily reliant on appearance—and, more importantly to Mattel, promoting consumption.

According to Lori Pantel, the Vice President overseeing marketing for Mattel’s

Girls Brands, Monster High is “based on the universal truth that everyone has times when they feel like a monster.” Through this brand, Mattel hopes to “bring girls an empowering message of self-awareness and self-acceptance” by “[t]elling engaging stories with relatable characters—all of whom are dealing with learning to accept their own ‘freaky flaws’” and “partnering with talented girl-created non-profits” (Pantel). In her article “Believing in Girls is Good Business,” Pantel specifically mentions the documentary and education movement The Kind Campaign, which is dedicated to

“[raising] discussion amongst girls in schools about the girl on girl ‘crimes’ committed everyday such as bullying, backstabbing, gossip and rumors.” Partnering with anti- bullying non-profits distances Mattel’s monster-themed brand from cultural conceptions of a “monster” as a frightening figure. The word “monster” calls to mind a range of negative figures—the violent brute, the malformed creature, the giant beast, for example—that are not reflected in Monster High’s depictions. Instead, Mattel is invested

11 in promoting feeling “like a monster” as a universal experience, which seems to be at odds with broader cultural conceptions.

To pursue this discrepancy further, I turn to the Oxford English Dictionary, which offers a number of definitions for “monster,” including, originally, “a mythical creature which is part animal and part human, or combines elements of two or more animal forms” and “later, more generally: any imaginary creature that is large, ugly, and frightening.” While the characters of Monster High are often identified with mythical and imaginary creatures, ranging from sirens to vampires to cyborgs, none of them are particularly large, ugly, or frightening. Most of the other definitions do not quite fit either:

“a malformed animal or plant,” “a creature of huge size,” “an ugly or deformed person, animal, or thing” (“Monster”). Monster High seems to purposely work against presenting a “monster” as a “person of repulsively unnatural character, or exhibiting such extreme cruelty or wickedness as to appear inhuman” (“Monster”), as the brand promotes, ostensibly, self-esteem and acceptance of others. The definitions of “monstrous” seem to offer more relevant clues to Monster High’s depiction of feeling “like a monster.” The

O.E.D. defines “monstrous” as “deviating from the natural or conventional order; unnatural, extraordinary” (“Monstrous”). However, “monstrous” is also defined as

“strange or unnatural in conduct or disposition,” “abnormally large,” and “having the appearance or nature of a monster, esp. in being hideous or frightening” (“Monstrous”).

Admittedly, Mattel is under no obligation to fulfill all expectations excited by the term

“monster,” but after choosing the title ‘Monster High,’ the company must address at least some of these definitions. Even though Monster High appears to embrace the deviations from “conventional order” implied by monstrosity, the brand’s insistence on

12 universality challenges the status of “monster” as other. If everyone feels “like a monster,” then no one actually is a monster. This project investigates how Monster

High’s characters, despite their appearances, are not really monstrous at all.

The first part of this paper argues that part of Monster High’s appeal is rooted in its use of familiar monsters from classic literature, mythology, and folklore, which the brand severs from their origins in order to dilute, if not remove, potentially radical associations with monstrosity. Drawing on these traditional monster figures, Monster

High selectively extracts details from literary histories, while largely ignoring the broader context in order to best serve its own needs. Mattel can then more easily control the values promoted by this line and minimize the risks associated with launching a new brand. Interestingly, this new brand seems to promise a new approach to depicting girlhood that emphasizes female agency, self-esteem, and coalition-building. However, as I discuss in the second chapter, despite its “freaky” packaging, Monster High is remarkably similar to other mass-produced girls’ series. The narratives and characters universalize white, heteronormative experiences, while encouraging girls to remain within the nuclear family and heterosexual—albeit chaste—relationships. Monster High encourages girls to be proud of themselves, but simultaneously promotes a commodified “normal” girlhood that reflects white, upper- and middle-class, heterosexual social norms. Should girls not fulfill this model, the brand’s narratives helpfully suggests ways to comply, often through the further consumption of beauty products, expensive clothing, and, of course, other Monster High cultural materials.

Chapter three focuses on how Mattel’s promotion of a consumption-based girlhood aligns not only with depictions of girlhood in girls’ series fiction, but also with the

13 company’s development of a franchise model. Monster High’s wide fan base engages with the products in expected ways, such as doll play, but users also produce stop- motion videos, redesign the dolls, film makeup tutorials, create dedicated blogs, role- play, write fanfiction, and interact with the brand in countless other ways. Through

Monster High’s wide range of productions and merchandise, Mattel works to mediate consumers’ interactions with these characters. And due to Monster High’s success, its franchise model can be reproduced with other content, like the Mattel spin-off Ever After

High, which allow Mattel to maintain control of its intellectual property while further influencing ideas of girlhood.

As an example of mass-produced culture, Monster High both reflects and perpetuates current conceptions of American girlhood, particularly because Mattel is one of the largest toy producers in the world. Since the brand targets six- to twelve-year olds, then consumers may be engaging not only with the brand’s ostensible message, but also the depiction of an adolescence they have yet to experience. The students of

Monster High are meant to be relatable, but the brand’s productions and promotions fail to clearly express to whom the characters are meant to relate, as it offers a narrow depiction of “normal” girlhood. In line with Sherrie A. Inness and other scholars, I believe

“that a critical approach to popular culture is vitally important in a world inundated with countless popular art forms” (“Girl Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, and Woodcraft Girls” 97).

Interrogating these cultural material offers insight not only into the version of girlhood being sold, but also on how Mattel manufactures and packages that depiction of girlhood. Mattel’s emphasis on “relatable” characters domesticates its monstrous figures and offers consumers familiar values recycled from over a century of girls’ series fiction.

Monster High, through its branded fiction2, narrative media, and interactive relationship with fans, tames girls into malleable consumers under the guise of self-empowerment rhetoric. Rather than exploring monstrosity as a site of othernesss, the brand positions monstrous traits as symbols of a “normal” adolescence that relies on consumption as its defining feature. As a result, Monster High does not follow through with its (admittedly implicit) promise to challenge social norms. Instead, the brand de-radicalizes the concept of “monster” in order to be both safe for girls and for Mattel’s profit margins.

2 I have taken this term from Diane Carver Sekeres’s work “The Market Child and Branded Fiction: A Synergism of Children’s Literature, Consumer Culture, and New Literacies.” Sekeres defines branded fiction as books “that are created synergistically, tethered to other products, and that draw on literacies other than reading words printed on paper” (400). I adapt this term in order to address the webisodes and television specials, which I refer to as branded narrative media.

CHAPTER 2 EMBRACING AND ERASING LITERARY HERITAGE

Across the brand’s website, book series, television specials, webisodes, and doll lines, over forty characters with different “famous” monstrous ancestors attend Monster

High. While these heritages are often literary—the series features the children or grandchildren of figures from Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The

Phantom of the Opera, among other works—the series also draws on folklore, mythology, and superstitions. The Monster High brand enthusiastically and irreverently throws together characters rooted in traditions as diverse as Greek mythology (Deuce

Gorgon, son of Medusa) to horror (Ghoulia Yelps, daughter of the Zombies; Spectra

Vondergeist, daughter of the Ghosts; Twyla, daughter of the Boogey Man) to a smattering of different cultures’ myths and superstitions (Jinafire Long, daughter of a

Chinese dragon; Scarah Screams, daughter of the Bean Si/Banshee). Despite the appearance of multicultural representation, the depictions often perpetuate stereotypes and, similar to the characters rooted in literary works, are purposely distanced from their origins1. Frankie Stein, daughter of Frankenstein, attends high school with the

1 International transfer students, like Skelita Calaveras, daughter of “Los Eskeletos,” could allow the brand to explore diverse cultures, but instead demonstrate these issues. Her origins are rooted in the Mexican tradition of Día de los Muertos, but her design and character development do little to explore—or even explain—the traditions or history of this holiday. “Los Eskeletos” does not have a Spanish translation or a meaning directly related to Día de los Muertos. “Skeleton” in Spanish is “esqueleto,” which is close in spelling and pronunciation, but it seems like “Los Eskeletos” is a term created by Mattel. The doll’s designer, Natalie Villegas, hopes “that Skelita will inspire girls of all backgrounds to accept and celebrate diverse traditions and holidays” (Lopez). But aside from Skelita’s favorite activity—which, according to her biography, is “doing anything with Día de los Muertos” (“Skelita Calaveras”)—the character does not engage with her heritage. In fact, Skelita is not from Mexico, but rather Hexico, which is not only an example of Mattel’s cute, horror-themed wordplay, but also one of the brand’s attempts to distance Skelita from actual Mexican culture.

16 daughters of the Mummy, the Phantom of the Opera, a Mad Scientist, and Los

Eskeletos, but the Monster High narratives do little to engage with the myths and stories related to each character’s identity. Instead, the character development and narratives often work to sever the characters’ ties to the original work, excising the figures from their original contexts in order to combine them in one marketable brand.

The main cast, who appear across the branded fiction and multiple examples of narrative media, are often closely connected to supposed “original” monster lineages, but the newer and supporting characters identify with more generalized supernatural creatures, signaling a trend in Monster High’s character designs as the brand continues to expand. The vampire Draculaura, for instance, is one of the brand’s original characters and is the daughter of Dracula, while Elissabat, introduced in 2013, is the

“daughter of a vampire” (“Elissabat” emphasis mine). This distinction can be seen in many of the newer characters, possibly as a way to differentiate between characters who are modeled after the same paranormal archetype. However, the transition to less specific parental figures also distances the characters from fixed heritages. The earlier characters are the children of The Werewolf, The Mummy, The Yeti, The Sea Monster, and so on, but newer characters are the children of a Chinese dragon, sirens, a mad scientist, a werecat, and other supernatural or mythical creatures. The 2014 launch of the Freaky Fusion line introduces the children of two different paranormal creatures, offering the brand an even wider selection of ancestry while it creates new types of monsters. The brand continues to expand in this way, as the newest addition to Monster

High, chosen by fans’ votes in September 2014 to be introduced in 2015, will be merman Finnegan Wake. The character seems to have no ties to the James Joyce

17 novel after which he is named. The reference is literally in name only, as the novel (to my knowledge) does not involve mermaids or other mythical monsters. As Monster High grows, the brand is less reliant on characters tied to specific literary or cultural works, particularly as it establishes itself as a contributor to the ongoing reiterations of monster tales. But acknowledging Monster High’s additions to the retellings of these monsters begs the question, what is the brand actually contributing in its reinvention and combination of so many cultural figures?

In order to better understand the implications of the brand’s erratic compilation of cultural and literary figures, it may be helpful to consider Monster High as an artifact of postmodernism. One “fundamental feature” of the postmodernist works Fredric

Jameson discusses is “the effacement in them of the older (essentially high-modernist) frontier between high culture and so-called mass or commercial culture, and the emergence of new kinds of texts infused with the forms, categories, and contents of that very culture industry so passionately denounced by all the ideologues of the modern”

(2). Mattel’s use of high cultural figures from classic literature reflects and participates in this effacement, although in the opposite direction Jameson traces out. Rather than a high cultural work taking on aspects of mass-produced or commercial culture, Monster

High pulls from high culture and other non-mass cultural traditions, like folklore and mythology, and commodifies those figures. So while Monster High, as commercial culture, is not an example of the postmodernist break Jameson works to understand, the brand demonstrates the confluence of high and mass culture that permeates cultural materials since the development of postmodernism.

Considering Monster High as an artifact of postmodernism, rather than an example of postmodern art, in part illuminates why, despite its use of political and subversive cultural figures, Mattel’s brand fails to offer true social critique. Ignoring or reinventing the literary origins of the Monster High characters allows Mattel to fit these recognizable figures into branded narratives and better serve the brand’s goals, which— regardless of the company’s claims—are presumably to increase profits. In order to accomplish this task, Monster High practices pastiche in its combination of figures from different works, traditions, and cultures in order to de-radicalize monstrous figures previously, or at potentially, associated with political or social critique. Pastiche, like parody, involves “the imitation of a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style,” but it is “a neutral practice of such mimicry… amputated of the satiric impulse” (Jameson 17).

While Jameson’s definition considers pastiche as a practice in literature—the “blank” mimicry identifiable writing styles—he also identifies it within postmodern architecture as historicism, or “the complacent eclecticism… which randomly and without principle but with gusto cannibalizes all the architectural styles of the past and combines them in overstimulating ensembles” (18-19). Monster High’s replication of recognizable monsters serves a similar function, as the brand haphazardly combines figures from a wide, unrelated variety of texts, myths, and cultures into a single narrative.

Through its use of pastiche, Monster High severs familiar monstrous figures from their original contexts, which works to de-radicalize these constructions. The Monster

High characters are already once removed from the original figures, as they are the children of the famous monsters, not adaptations of the monsters themselves. Monster

High distances its characters from their fixed, often high-culture literary origins by

19 compiling figures not only from different texts, but also various adaptations of those texts—or myths, folk tales, or superstition, depending on the character. Most of the figures selected by Mattel to populate Monster High have already bled into cultural consciousness through various forms of media and, often, in more accessible adaptations than classic literature. Frankie Stein, the daughter of Frankenstein, is a particularly resonant example, as her characterization draws primarily on adaptations and misinterpretations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, rather than the original text itself.

Monster High further decouples its characters from their literary origins by designing its own origins for many of the monsters or eliding specific origin stories altogether.

Clawdeen Wolf, daughter of the Werewolf, does not reference a particular text in her origins, despite the authoritative “the” in her title. Similarly, Ghoulia Yelps is the daughter of the Zombies and Abbey Bominable is the daughter of the Yeti, yet no specific references are made to explain their backgrounds. These characters are modeled on mythical and imaginary creatures, but are not bound by a particular origin point and, thus, can be redesigned to fit within the brand. The resulting characters are simulacra, “identical [copies] for which no original has ever existed” (18), and reflect the depthlessness Jameson associates with postmodernism. The decontextualization of these figures allows Monster High to benefit from the notoriety of the famous parents without the stigma associated with monstrous traits, like uncontrolled violence, emotion, or power—traits, interestingly, also attributed to adolescence.

To return to my earlier question Mattel seems uninterested in contributing additional political or radical to the conception of ‘monster’ or to the understandings of literary texts in its reinvention of these figures. Monster High demonstrates an

20 investment in the (often popular) cultural afterlife of a monster’s original text, rather than the (often high culture) text itself. The ideas associated with these traditional monsters are more malleable when drawing on the cultural afterlife, which involves the figure being reconfigured and influenced by countless adaptations. Frankie Stein exemplifies

Monster High’s resistance to the original texts, as well as the brand’s participation in the cultural myths developed around these figures. When Monster High first introduces

Frankie, as a doll, in the online webisodes, and in the first book series, she is just fifteen days old, but identifies as a teenager. As the new ‘ghoul’ in school when the brand launched in 2010, Frankie serves as the consumer’s introduction to the brand’s

“perfectly imperfect world” (“Freaky Fab 13”). Similar to Monster High’s compilation of different media, Frankie, not unlike Frankenstein’s Creature, is stitched together from carefully constructed pieces ultimately meant to promote consumption. She is a perpetual teenager who whole-heartedly embraces the consumerist lifestyle promoted by fashion magazines, covering her father’s lab—her bedroom—with designer brand clothing, makeup, and other expensive purchases.

Monster High’s branded fiction and various narrative media offer different accounts of Frankie’s relationship to Frankenstein, but Mary Shelley’s original text is far less influential on Frankie Stein than the adaptations that make up Frankenstein’s cultural afterlife. According to Fred Botting, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein transformed into a “modern… myth sustained in popular rather than literary culture” as early as

1823, after the staged play Presumption: or The Fate of Frankenstein (3). Reiterations of the same story or re-uses of the same figure can amalgamate into a myth, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the “popular conception of a person or thing which

21 exaggerates or idealized the truth” (“Myth”). These other versions contribute to the cultural myth of a particular figure, like Frankenstein, who becomes recognizable and pervasive beyond the original text, despite deviations from the original version. Monster

High’s treatment of Frankenstein’s Creature reflects the adaptations, reimaginations, and revisions which make up the pervasive cultural myth of Frankenstein. As with many of the adaptations, including the 1823 staged play, Monster High attributes the name

‘Frankenstein’ to the Creature rather than Creator. On the Monster High website,

Frankie is simply labeled as the “daughter of Frankenstein,” which effectively collapses the Doctor and his Creature into a single figure while neglecting a mother figure entirely

(“Frankie Stein”). In the YA book series Monster High2, Frankie is not the daughter of

Dr. Frankenstein or Frankenstein’s Creature, but rather of Viktor and Viveka Stein, who created their green, electric-powered daughter in their own image—although their own births are left unexplained, despite the connection to the supposed “real” Victor

Frankenstein and his Bride. Monster High further distances the fun, fashionable Frankie from Dr. Frankenstein’s Creature when Viktor Stein explains that he literally built his daughter from parts he created, rather than body parts he reanimated. Viktor Stein tells

Frankie that he built her from “‘perfect body parts that [he] made with [his] hands. [He] programmed [her] brain full of information, stitched [her] together, and put bolts on the sides of [her] neck so [she] could get charged’” (Harrison, Monster High 13). The change reflects the brand’s disinterest in the source material. Instead of revisiting “a central theme of the novel: Victor Frankenstein’s total failure as a parent” (Mellor 10),

Monster High emphasizes the importance of the traditional nuclear family as well as

2 Both the young adult book series and the brand as a whole are titled Monster High. Throughout this paper, when referring to the book series, the title will be italicized.

Frankie’s perfection. Unlike in many retellings of the Frankenstein myth, Frankie’s creators—explicitly and exclusively referred to as her parents in the text—by no means regret creating her.

Despite its omission of Mary Shelley almost entirely, the book series Monster

High does not ignore Frankenstein’s broader popular culture presence. Monster High’s version of the “real” Frankenstein, Frankie’s grandfather, incorporates the movie adaptations in its history. In fact, the horror movies from the 1920s and 1930s are blamed for driving monsters into hiding, because the monsters, who prefer the label

Regular Attribute Dodgers (RADs), were depicted as “‘horrifying, evil, bloodsucking enemies of the people’” (Harrison, Monster High 28). According to Frankie’s father, humans, referred to as “normies,” and RADs “‘worked together, socialized together, and fell in love with each other’” until “‘RADs were being cast to star in all kinds of films, like

Dracula, Phantom of the Opera, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’” (Harrison, Monster High 27).

The monsters who could not act, however, were replaced by humans impersonating them. Frankie’s “‘grandpa Vic’” could not memorize his lines, so “‘he was portrayed by a normie actor named Boris Karloff’” (Harrison, Monster High 27). Monster High is certainly not the only revision of the Frankenstein figure that privileges the movies over

Mary Shelley’s original text. According to Esther Schor, “Boris Karloff’s impersonation of the monster looms over all later visualizations of him” (81). Later adaptations recall the

“broad, overhanging brow” and “huge, sutured hands nakedly jutting from too-short sleeves” (Schor 61), despite the absence of such descriptions in the original text.

Monster High also identifies Karloff as the origin of Frankenstein in popular culture, but the series considers him to be a poor, and insulting, imitation of the “real” Frankenstein.

As a result of the negative depictions in films, RADs “‘became outcasts overnight’” and

“‘experienced violence and vandalism’” (Harrison, Monster High 28). They begin to pass as human, hiding their unusual traits so effectively that “normies” no longer believe in the existence of monsters.

Monster High’s contribution to the Frankenstein myth ignores the literary origins and contorts the movie history, but Frankie’s green skin, stitches, and bolts—despite the lack of reanimated dead body parts—acknowledge the monstrous inspiration behind her character. Her name and physical design continue to associate her with the broader cultural conception of Frankenstein’s Creature, but her female, teenage form and high school environment set her apart. Distancing Frankie Stein from the political or radical critiques in the various adaptations makes it easier for Mattel to manipulate the character to serve its own ends. In the original text, “Mary Shelley mounts a powerful critique of the early modern scientific revolution: of scientific thinking as such, of the psychology of the modern scientist, and of the commitment of science to discover the

‘objective’ trust, whatever the consequences” (Mellor 18). Many adaptations, except the

“most utopian” according to Jay Clayton, “share with Shelley’s Frankenstein the ambitions both of criticizing the methods of science and yet producing sympathy for the living creations of science” (Clayton 88). Monster High makes little attempt to engage with these issues, as the brand’s message primarily concerns—at least ostensibly— accepting yourself, freaky flaws and all. Frankie learns the danger of reanimation when she tries to build a boyfriend and the result is HooDude, a sloppily-made voodoo doll whom she rejects (MonsterHigh, “HooDoo You Like”), but the mistake serves to critique

Frankie’s desperation for a boyfriend rather than the consequences of creating artificial life.

While Monster High works to distance its characters from their literary origins, the brand still adds to the cultural conceptions of these figures—especially for a younger generation of girls who may not have been exposed to the traditional (male) versions.

As Anne K. Mellor points out, “the survival of Frankenstein’s creature, in story, film, myth, and literary criticism opens the way for ever new, possibly more constructive readings of Shelley’s ‘monster’” (24). Because Frankie is purposefully decontextualized from her origins, even if consumers are familiar with Frankenstein, tracing the literary and cultural history does little to enrich the individual’s understanding of this character.

The brand does not encourage girls to seek out other Frankenstein stories or works of classic literature or, for that matter, to engage with the social and philosophical questions these figures invite, but instead promotes the consumption of other Monster

High products. However, that does not mean consumers will not associate Frankie with other versions of Frankenstein as they confront them in popular and literary culture.

Even though the transformation from Frankenstein’s Creature to Frankie Stein does not rely on knowledge of the original text, it does offer yet another version to keep this figure present in cultural memory. Monster High is increasing the number of representations of

Frankenstein in the cultural consciousness, but it does not reflect similar political or critical aims as some other adaptations.

With the transformation of primarily male monsters, often political and critical figures, into young female characters, Monster High’s “fantastically fabulous kids of the world’s most famous monsters” (“Library”) had the potential to challenge the traditional

25 notion of girls’ play as “closer to mundane—that is, domestic—reality than boys’ play”

(Seiter 76). Radical or subversive critique, implied by the brand’s engagement with monsters and its ostensible rejection of traditional beauty norms through monstrous traits, could challenge consumer assumptions about what girls’ doll play should entail.

However, these characters sell products and promote consumption, rather than engage with complex ideas or critique social norms. They are identified as monsters, but they do not indulge in monstrous behaviors. Frankie, like all of the Monster High characters, has been stripped of her original context as well as any radical critique or commentary generally associated with the Frankenstein figure. In fact, many Monster High students’ characterizations often work to erase the monstrous habits of his or her literary ancestors. For example, rather than justify Dracula’s thirst for human blood or the

Werewolf’s uncontrollable animal urges during the full moon, the line introduces vegan

Draculaura, who faints at the sight of blood, and tame Clawdeen Wolf, who displays some wolf-ish traits but does not actually become an animal. Both characters work against some of the defining traits that make their ancestors monstrous. Draculaura demonstrates feminine sensitivity to animal cruelty and Clawdeen displays appropriate self-control. Negating potential radicalism or unappealing behaviors serves Mattel’s best interests, as “the imperatives of profitability and minimalization of financial risks” demand maximum mainstream appeal (Romalov 83). The brand de-radicalizes these monsters by curbing their agency and power, limiting their use of supernatural abilities—if they have them at all—to present “normal” teenagers only vaguely connected to their monstrous progenitors. Mattel can then attribute values to these

26 characters, regardless of the viewer’s previous knowledge of the related cultural myths, in order to maximize profit and maintain control of the brand.

Thus, Monster High benefits from the notoriety of these figures—the “brand” of the monster, so to speak—without risking alienating consumers with the subversive or radical implications embedded in many monster stories. The broader conceptions of these monsters become branded, as well, and become associated with Monster High.

The media employed by Mattel work together to build a brand identity and engage consumers, often by providing content that encourages users to interact with these characters as fellow students at Monster High. Through the various branded narratives,

Monster High offers new context for these figures. Frustratingly, Monster High presents itself as a progressive brand, with themes that seem to challenge the social norms generally reaffirmed by dolls, such as an emphasis on white standards of beauty, middle-class values, and the socialization of girls as future mothers, wives, and consumers. The brand’s message—expressed in the dolls, branded fiction, and narrative media—repeatedly encourages girls to celebrate their “freaky flaws” and to embrace their unique selves. However, while Monster High ostensibly promotes self- acceptance and tolerance, it does so by depoliticizing the connections to literary figures and directing girls’ aspirations by standardizing the adolescent experience. If the large heads, thin bodies, and overextended joints were meant to mock cultural conceptions of girlhood as unrealistic, then these characters could have functioned as critiques. Neda

Ulaby jokingly describes the dolls as the “underfed love children of Tim Burton and Lady

Gaga,” but the description is surprisingly apt. The characters have similar slender body types, which can be seen in the doll lines and visual representations, and conform to

27 traditional standards of beauty—in spite of the fangs, gills, and stitches—with delicate features, large eyes, styled hair, and clear skin. The visual representations of these characters always involve heavy makeup and impossibly high heels—even while playing sports—while the book series inundates the reader with countless brand names and bodily descriptions. Rather than critique unattainable conceptions of girlhood, the brand reinforces them with these depictions.

Mattel’s portrayal of girlhood through the branded fiction will be more closely examined in the following chapter, but it is important to note that even with superficial

“freaky flaws,” these sanitized characters remain firmly entrenched within heteronormative social structures, negating the radical impulses suggested by the brand’s design. Each character has an individual identity, but Monster High ultimately promotes white, upper-class adolescence as universal. Frankenstein, Dracula, and the

Werewolf have been pushed into the same mold and the characters’ unique heritages, often fraught with political implications, are ignored to better depict this supposedly normal adolescence. The resulting portrayal of girlhood is, similar to Pattee’s description of the Sweet Valley series, an “aspirational model not unlike a Barbie doll” that offers a

“model of feminine success” (Pattee, Reading the Adolescent Romance 101). Mattel’s new franchise seems to be offering something new for girls, when it is actually just recycling familiar content. We see this not only in the inspiration behind the characters, but also the structure of the narratives and the representation of girlhood.

CHAPTER 3 TEENAGE DREAMS

Part of Monster High’s popularity stems from its use of recognizable literary and cultural figures, which have been severed from their original, potentially subversive origins, to create characters who are remarkably unremarkable despite their green skin, fur, or fangs. Even if users have not encountered these figures in other iterations, the monsters exist in the cultural consciousness and work to expand the brand’s presence.

The “famous” monsters, however, are not enough to explain the appeal of the brand.

After all, Barbie is a fairly well-known figure herself, but her decline in popularity indicates she is in danger of being outdated. Monster High offers consumers a product line that seems new and on-trend, but ultimately recycles both the monstrous figures and the narratives presented in the branded fiction. The brand strongly echoes patterns established in over a century of girls’ series fiction, including universalizing white, upper- class experiences, heavily emphasizing “appropriate” girlhood, and glorifying consumerism as a mode of agency. Domesticating the monsters and placing them in familiar narratives makes Monster High “safe” for girls’ consumption—and Mattel’s bottom line.

Much of the series’ branded fiction and narrative media relies on treating the monster characters as “normal” teenage girls, but each production inhabits a slightly different universe, as the brands lacks continuity between the two book series, the webisodes, the TV and DVD specials, and the diary sets included with many of the dolls. Due to the wide variety and high quantity of narrative fiction, I will focus on the young adult (YA) book series as a case study for the brand’s efforts to “bring the

Monster High characters to life by developing a fantasy world that resonates with tween

29 and young teen girls” (Hyland 56). The books offer themes found across the narrative media and fall in line with earlier girls’ series fiction. The YA series Monster High includes four books, published between September 2010 and May 2012, and focuses on Frankie Stein, Draculaura, Clawdeen Wolf, Cleo DeNile, and book-exclusive character Melody Carver as they attend Merston High. It is one of the earliest examples of Monster High narrative fiction, predated only by the first volume of webisodes, and was aimed at the brand’s original intended audience, tween and teen girls. As such, examining this book series allows me to investigate Mattel’s original brand marketing strategy as it attempts to attract girls who felt “‘a little too old’” for dolls (Crumpley). The book series is only one of many points of entry to this brand, but it is one of the only media directly specifically at an older audience, as the books require a certain level of reading competency—unlike the webisodes or TV specials, which can be more broadly accessed. As “books that sell as one product of a brand” (Sekeres 410), this series works to attract consumers, primarily girls, who will, ideally, continue to engage with

Monster High through consumption of other Mattel products. Monster High participates in the brand’s strategy of appearing different—helped in part by its bold cover designs, monstrous characters, and strong self-empowerment rhetoric—while actually repeating patterns proved successful in previous girls’ series.

As other scholars have discussed, in greater detail and with more skill, girls’ series fiction is rooted in nineteenth century traditions, like romanticism and sentimentalism, and developed throughout the twentieth century in part due to the

Stratemeyer Syndicate’s standardization of the form1. In the eighteenth and nineteenth

1 Including Johnson, Carpan, Hamilton-Honey, among others

30 centuries, the “girl’s journey from marriageable to married, maiden to matron, is the focus and fascination of many literary texts” (Vallone 2), and early girls’ series texts took up these concerns to not only appeal to female readers, but also to teach and reinforce cultural norms. Throughout the nineteenth century, girls’ reading “was often seen as a tool for reinforcing proper religious and moral behavior” (Hamilton-Honey 3). Although didacticism quickly lost ground to “action and excitement” in girls’ series (Hamilton-

Honey 9), the twentieth century produced countless series depicting white, upper- or middle-class girls as the ideal version of girlhood. Carpan explains that “girls’ series books featuring wealthy and popular girls allow readers to feel like they belong, while ensuring girls understand and obey the rules of the system” (xii). The “system” here is the complex of cultural norms, regulations, and expectations to which girls were trained to conform in order to be socially acceptable women.

In the course of the twentieth century, with the exception of books published during World War I, girls’ series began heavily emphasizing individualism and consumerism, often linking the two for its young readers. Adventure stories “focusing on such new technologies as motorcars, planes, and moving pictures were most popular between 1910 and 1920,” along with school and college stories (Carpan 33). School stories originally emphasized female friendships among groups of girls, but by the late

1920s focus shifted “to the adventures of one special girl who was not yet ready for romance and marriage” (Carpan 38). Of course, romance and marriage—regardless of the characters’ interests—were the eventual ends to almost all of the series where the girls aged beyond adolescence. However, girls’ series began to lose popularity as the heroines aged from teenagers to women, so many series—particularly those produced

31 by the Stratemeyer Syndicate2—began producing protagonists who remained perpetual teenagers. Even before the publication of the famous Nancy Drew series, the

Stratemeyer Syndicate perfected the formula for mass-produced girls’ series, as

Edward Stratemeyer—and after his death, his daughters—created and outlined series that were then written by ghostwriters, allowing the Syndicate to be both prolific and standardized. According to Carpan, Edward Stratemeyer used the Billie Bradley series to “fine-tun[e] his single-character girls’ series, presenting readers with a spunky well-to- do girl detective who could focus on other people’s problems, because her own physical, emotional, and financial well-being was already established” (46). The

Stratemeyer Syndicate produced series to appeal to the widest audience possible and learned how to improve each new series based on its predecessors, with girls’ series often following the patterns of successful boys’ series.

Series fiction continued to grow and develop throughout the twentieth century, but its characters remained largely white, upper- or middle-class, and it continued to focus on consumption. During times of great social disturbance, many series reflected the time period in which they were published—for example, those series produced “in the early 1940s portrayed young women who stayed on the home front supporting their boys, army nurses who cared for injured soldiers, and journalists who investigated spies” (Carpan 66). Incorporating details from particular time periods, however, not only served to date the books, but also potentially prevented the series from functioning as escapist fiction for its readers. Mystery and adventure series began losing popularity,

2 After the “Ruth Fielding series waned in popularity as Ruth became a career woman, wife, and mother,” the juvenile fiction factory “gave up” the practice of featuring protagonists who aged out of adolescence (Carpan 59).

32 replaced in the 1950s by romance series and in the 1960s and 1970s by the rise of the problem novel and the development of young adult literature as a genre. At the end of the twentieth century, girls’ series began portraying girls with special powers, followed by a surge of series about spoiled rich teens during the early twenty-first century

(Carpan xv). Throughout each publishing trend, the books continued to be produced in series meant to attract fans to the series, rather than to a single book.

Despite being mass-produced and often dismissed as less than literary by critics, girls’ series fiction demonstrates not only how girls are culturally represented, but also the spending power of girls craving stories meant for them. As Emily Hamilton-Honey explains “[s]eries books both reproduce and challenge our culture’s ideas about what it means to grow up female in the United States and elsewhere” (230). Particularly true when series fiction first developed, girls’ series often work to shape readers into “useful” members of society, whether that means morally upstanding women, polite bourgeois wives, or responsible, dependable consumers. However, these series also contribute to girls’ culture in important ways, because even though, as Sherrie A Inness argues, these books “can also help to perpetuate traditional gender relationships and class stereotypes” (“Introduction” 10), these series are also designed specifically for girls in a culture where girls are often expected to cross-identify with male protagonists, but generally boys are not expected to do the same with female protagonists. Ellen Seiter explains that “conventional wisdom has it that boys will not watch girls on television but girls will watch programs for boys” (145), so advertisers assume that “a female trademark for a children’s product will immediately turn away every boy in the audience”

(149). Thus, children’s cultural works with a male protagonist are more like to be

33 marketed as universal, while those with female protagonists are marketed specifically for girls. Seiter identifies the “ghettoized culture” of the girls’ market as one where “for one girls were not required to cross over, to take on an ambiguous identification with a group of male characters” (158). So even if these works are snubbed by critics, they are often embraced by girls3. Girls’ series fiction remains prevalent and profitable, as demonstrated in the continued popularity of series like Nancy Drew and the development of new mass-produced series.

Monster High repeats many of the patterns established through the publication history of girls’ series fiction. It aligns itself with past and contemporary girls’ series by presenting upper-class characters living fantastical lives which promote individualism and consumption. As the twentieth-century girls’ series “[drew] on organizing patterns, categories of series, and promotional strategies that derived from writers and models that emerged and flourished during the previous century, when series first began”

(Johnson 147), it is no surprise that series from the twenty-first century continue to do the same as they attempt to shape readers into acceptable members of society.

Following the conventions established by earlier girls’ series fiction allows Mattel to minimize the risk in launching a new brand—after all, if these patterns led previous book series succeed, they could help ensure Monster High’s success. Many of the girls’ series conventions, however, seem out of place with Monster High’s seemingly progressive rhetoric and its monster-chic stylistic attempts to set itself apart from other

3 Of course, the labels of “girls’ books” or “girls’ toys” and “boys’ books” or “boys’ toys” unfortunately reinforce a gender binary that pressures individuals into conforming to gender-based play and leaves little to no room for gender non-conformity. Throughout this paper, I discuss girls as the primary audience for Monster High not because the audience is exclusively female, but because girls are Mattel’s targeted audience, as evidenced by the brand’s placement in Mattel’s “Other Girls’ Brands” division.

34 products directed at young girls. Examining Monster High’s branded fiction in context with the broader history of girls’ series fiction facilitates a stronger understanding of how the brand is largely preservationist, socially training readers to “understand and obey the rules of the system” (Carpan xii) like so many earlier series. Monster High ultimately connects individualism and consumerism not only to personal happiness, but also social harmony.

The Monster High series began as Mattel’s intellectual property, rather than an independent series, meant from its inception to function as one product in a diverse brand. In pursuit of an older audience, Mattel hired Lisi Harrison, who, as the first book cover announces, is “the #1 bestselling author of the Clique,” to write a YA book series that could attract tween ad teen consumers to the product line. Harrison’s series The

Clique follows the early twenty-first century trend by focusing on spoiled rich girls who make up the popular clique at an all-girls middle school, although the protagonist of the series is middle-class Claire, who moves in at the beginning of the series. Mentions of class are suspiciously absent in Monster High, but based on the characters’ spending habits and lifestyles, the girls making up the popular clique at Merston High are equally upper-class. Rather than offer a contrast with a middle-class newcomer, Monster High introduces two new students: Frankie Stein, who is fifteen days old and naively optimistic about monster-human relations, and Melody Carver, who is at first unaware of the existence of monsters but is familiar with feeling like an outcast. Similar to the

Clique, these two new students try to find their places in the social hierarchy while navigating relationships with their family, friends, and boys. As a result, Harrison’s work with Monster High more closely resembles contemporary chick lit than terrifying monster

35 stories, as the characters, despite their monstrous traits, strive to be accepted as

“normal” teenage girls.

While writing the Monster High series, Harrison purposely used the monster theme to depict the high school experience, explaining in an interview with Seventeen magazine that she often used “monster traits as a metaphor for adolescence” (“The

Clique’s Lisi Harrison Heads to Monster High”). This strategy may be part of making the characters “relatable,” but by doing so, Harrison also presented characters who are stereotypical and depleted of potential radicalism. Although their green skin, fangs, and gills should makes these girls extraordinary, their depictions so heavily emphasize their

“normalcy” that the characters are in fact extra-ordinary, unremarkable aside from their ability to spend thoughtlessly and face no consequences. The monstrous traits are meant to represent feelings of otherness or strangeness that all teenagers supposedly experience. The narratives then work to erase these differences, because, as the series’ rhetoric dictates, everyone should be socially accepted as the same. By making the characters superficially different, but conforming to stereotypical depictions of teenage girls, the series does little to challenge conceptions of what “normal” adolescent girlhood should look like. Instead, Monster High explains that since everyone is unique, no one is really different. As Melody notes in The Ghoul Next Door,

“except for the whole neck-bolts-green-skin-stitches-electricity thing, Frankie Stein was completely normal” (Harrison, The Ghoul Next Door 18). Melody can ignore Frankie’s external differences because the green monster—or RAD, the label that the community in the text prefers—does not challenge preconceived notions of what a girl “should” be.

Frankie may challenge the social norms established within the text, as she pushes for

36 normies and RADs to openly and peacefully coexist, but she conforms to social expectations for her gender, age, and class. Rather than truly celebrating difference, the series emphasizes that anyone—green skin and all—can be normal. Monster High’s version of “normal,” however, based on its character depictions involves being white, upper- or middle-class, and heteronormative.

Even though series books are often read as contemporary fantasy or escapist fiction, they are often read by girls younger than the depicted characters or intended audience. Carpan argues that “[w]hile girls enjoy reading about the exciting adventures of their fictional friends, they are drawn to the series because they know they are unrealistic” (xiii). But Carpan goes on to note that “by the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, more preteen readers were reading teen series books… Most of the genre paperback series appealed to preteens or tweens” (130). As a result, these books model an adolescence these readers probably have yet to experience. Monster

High demonstrates a particular adolescence, which is labeled as “freaky” but marketed as universal, to prepare the tween audience for “all the awkward moments that teens experience in their high school years” (“Mattel Unveils”). Implying these experiences as universal, however, may alienate readers who exist outside of the constructs so heavily marketed as “normal.” Young readers in particular consume this representation of adolescence without personal experience, but in combination with many other depictions of American girlhood. So while the girls’ series may function as fantasy, and perhaps are meant to, they can also work as exposure to how adolescence “should” be.

Like many other girls’ series, Monster High establishes an appropriate or expected girlhood through its narratives and its characters’ behavior and attitudes.

Similar constrictions can be seen in earlier series fiction as well. For example, despite the inherent adventure and independence promised in The Girl Scouts and Camp Fire

Girls books, according to Carpan, the series ultimately “promoted domesticity, femininity, and heterosexual love” (39). In fact, rarely have series fiction challenged gender norms, aside from World War I series that depicted, partially as propaganda, girls participating in the war effort (Hamilton-Honey 7). The monster-chic aesthetic does not prevent Monster High from heavily emphasizing social roles, femininity, and control, as the female characters, despite sparks of agency and independence, remain firmly entrenched in social structures that limit their choices and define their identities. In

Monster High, Frankie Stein champions for the RAD community to come out of hiding, but her motivation are primarily a distaste for the turtlenecks covering her green skin and her interest in a normie boy, Brett. Clawdeen Wolf challenges the patriarchal pack mentality of her family, but cannot escape the expectations of feminine beauty standards and spends most of the series waxing her fur. And Draculaura’s boyfriend

Clawd Wolf refuses to acknowledge her at school, but she never confronts him and his avoidance is never explored or resolved. These three characters are the core of the main cast, and their behavior is indicative of the other female characters. Monster High presents acceptable girlhood as one deeply invested in heteronormative relationships, an impossible standard of beauty, and consumerism.

Girls’ series, Monster High included, work to socialize readers by marking the boundaries of girlhood and expressing to girls just how different they can be, while remaining acceptable. Although the monstrous traits offers an opportunity to question or interrogate gender identity, the series fails to explore this avenue, presenting, instead, a

38 cast of characters rigidly adhering to traditional gender norms. The branded materials encourage female users to emulate the characters and embrace their natural selves.

However, the characters are not “natural,” as they are permanently wearing makeup and constantly striving to be perceived as physically beautiful. In Monster High, the characters conform to traditional notions of femininity, regardless of their “natural” states. The “freaky flaws” are, more often than not, rejected by the characters, rather than embraced. Additionally, most of the “freaky flaws” these characters must learn to accept are traits consumers would, presumably, never have to face, such as green skin, unpredictable detaching limbs, or fangs. The monstrous traits represent awkwardness in adolescence, but for young girls, they can also symbolize physical attributes that set them apart from other girls. These traits seem to stand in for “real” flaws, which the brand teaches girls to hide or remove. Girls can be scouts or tomboys or even monsters, but they must continue to reaffirm heteronormative social structures and, eventually, be reincorporated into the dominant mode. As Michelle Ann Abate discusses in Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural History, “[i]n spite of the libratory potential and personal benefits of tomboyism, it is not often seen as a lifelong identity” (xix). Like the adolescence these monstrous traits are meant to represent, girls are expected to grow out of their extraordinary girlhood interests in order to be ordinary, acceptable women.

The female characters in Monster High are by no means incapable, but they are almost relentlessly focused on themselves and their own desires. Often, their actions relate to freeing the RADs from having to hide as humans, primarily because each girl thinks she is too fabulous to hide. In this way, the series seems to promote self-esteem and female empowerment. However, a closer examination of the characterizations

39 reveals that the progressive rhetoric is problematically tied to consumption and preservationist impulses. While the girls are not helpless, they also are not powerful.

Deuce Gorgon, son of Medusa, can turn whatever he looks at to stone, while another student, Heath, can spit (or, more often than not, sneeze) fire and Melody, in the final book Back and Deader than Ever, can persuade others with her voice, but most of the teenage monsters—or RADs, as they are called in the book series—cannot use or do not have supernatural powers. Frankie, Draculaura, and Cleo show no signs of supernatural powers, although they still have monstrous traits to hide. Clawdeen Wolf, in many ways, is the exception to the rule, as she has and uses her werewolf abilities from the beginning of the series. While Clawdeen is not described transforming into a werewolf until the third book, Where There’s a Wolf, There’s a Way, she is shown from the beginning of the series to have keen hearing, strong athletic abilities, and a sassy attitude. Focusing on Clawdeen will allow me to demonstrate how Monster High conforms to traditional conventions of girls’ genre fiction while appearing to be different.

Clawdeen differs from her fellow RAD teens in a number of interesting ways. She is one of the only female characters who actively uses her monstrous abilities without negative consequences, the only main female character without a love interest, and also one of the few minority characters. Although her race is not explicitly discussed, the visual depictions in the branded narrative media suggest she is African-American or another minority based on her brown skin. Despite the male-dominated nature of pack mentality described in the series, Clawdeen actively resists the patriarchal structure of her family, rolling her eyes at the idea that the “boys were supposed to protect the girls” because “this girl didn’t want protection” (Harrison Where There’s a Wolf 7). Clawdeen

40 is often trying to prove she is the “alpha,” particularly with her five brothers (Harrison,

Where There’s a Wolf 51). And when she is desperate to throw her Sweet Sixteen party despite being in hiding, Clawdeen emphatically tells her mother that she “‘can work every power tool in Dad’s shed. [She] can run faster than every boy in [her] grade. [She] get[s] straight As, [she] can make [her] own clothes, and [she has] never once seen the inside of the principal’s office” in an attempt to “‘prove that [she is] old enough to make

[her] own decisions’” (Harrison, Where There’s a Wolf 207). Clawdeen is both capable and interesting, but she also conforms to the expected standard of girlhood by waxing her fur for most of the series and heavily investing in makeup, beauty, and grooming. In many ways, she proves that girls in Monster High can have interests beyond shopping and spa days, but she also demonstrates the limits of this established girlhood.

Regardless of your natural state or abilities, pretty makes you powerful.

The connection between monster traits and adolescence is particularly apparent with Clawdeen, as her werewolf transformation functions as a heavy-handed metaphor for puberty. When the series, in the third book, first mentions Clawdeen’s transformation, it is described as her “monthly battle with rapid hair growth, insatiable hunger, and extreme irritability” (Harrison, Where There’s a Wolf 1), which could easily describe her menstruation cycle instead of her lunar cycle. The book further connects wolfish traits and puberty when Clawdeen comments that her brother’s “big-boy fur” grows in at thirteen years old (Harrison, Where There’s a Wolf 3). The connections are not particularly negative, because even though Clawdeen’s transformations are inconvenient, there are also benefits. As the full moon approaches, the “usual warning signs” of her approaching transformation include her “auburn hair and nails [growing] at

41 least half an inch since lunch,” a “firing” metabolism that makes “the tight aubergine mini-dress she had put on an hour earlier loose around the waist,” and her “yellow- brown eyes [radiate] fierce passion” (Harrison, Where There’s a Wolf 145). However, her “time of the month” also involves wanting “to cry, rip her friend’s tongue out, or both” while Draculaura teaches her to drive (Harrison, Where There’s a Wolf 177). Although

Clawdeen is the only female teenage werewolf depicted in the series, the other teenagers do not identify her moodiness as abnormal.

If Clawdeen’s transformation is meant to represent puberty and theoretically prepare readers for their own “transformations,” what else might readers take away from this depiction of girlhood? Readers will not necessarily conform to the girlhood presented in this series, but the characterizations could impact what readers perceive or define as “normal,” or acceptable. For the girls of Monster High, being “normal” is inextricably tied to their physical appearances. The series establishes a standard of beauty that requires the girls, RAD and normie alike, to purposely change aspects of their physical appearance. Before the monsters are exposed in the series, each RAD teenager must hide their monstrous traits in order to pretend to be a normie, in addition to the beauty and grooming regimens that most of the girls go through in order to be perceived as beautiful. Clawdeen is the most at odds with the traditional beauty norms upheld in the texts, because her werewolf heritage means she grows what she considers to be excessive body hair. While Clawdeen is not particularly embarrassed by her body hair4, she still conforms to a standard of beauty that restricts the “appropriate”

4 In the other media, Clawdeen is not embarrassed by her fur, but she still holds herself to a standard of grooming. On her online character biography, she comments that “[her] hair is worthy of a shampoo commercial and that’s just what grows on [her] legs”

42 amount of hair. She spends three-quarters of the series getting “rigorous body wax[es]”

(Harrison Where There’s a Wolf 4) and avoids being seen when she hasn’t waxed, texting her friend, “WANNA HANG? SOMEWHERE SHADY. I NEED A WAX. ”

(Harrison, The Ghoul Next Door 85). Before Clawdeen can participate in the Teen

Vogue photo shoot arranged by Cleo, she claims she “‘will need a full body wax’”

(Harrison, The Ghoul Next Door 154). Before the age of sixteen, Clawdeen must work— by getting full body waxes, among other regimens—to comply with traditional notions of feminine beauty.

Many of the characters hide or alter monstrous physical attributes, but readers are far more likely to experience “excessive” body hair than gills in their lives. When the

“freaky” flaws mirror cultural standards readers may actually face, Monster High’s treatment could communicate to girls that beauty treatments like waxing as a teenager are necessary and, possibly, expected. Clawdeen does stop waxing once the RADs come out of hiding, but she is in no way less invested in maintaining a standard of beauty. When she no longer has to pretend to be a normie, Clawdeen is still always glamorously styled. At school, “Clawdeen’s arms and neck were covered in luxurious fur” because she “was in perpetual Hollywood glam mode since she had cut back on waxing and upped the grooming” (Harrison, Back and Deader than Ever 9). The normies, who RADs once tried to emulate for their own safety, begin to adopt “freaky” flaws, like “synthetic pelts in a multitude of textures and colors” attached to their collars and sleeves (Harrison, Back and Deader than Ever 10). So even though the series

(“Clawdeen”). Her online biography continues with the claim that “plucking and shaving is definitely a full-time job, but that’s a small price to pay for being scarily fabulous” (“Clawdeen”).

43 suggests that it is best to “be yourself,” a girl’s natural state still needs to be managed or fixed.

The final book of the series, Back and Deader than Ever, offers a glimpse at a different type of girl, one who is confident despite what the narration identifies as a significant flaw. When Melody joins an all-girl rock band, she is astounded by her band mate, called Nine-Point-Five, a “blond in tight cutoffs and a half shirt that exposed a roll of belly fat that didn’t seem to faze her” (Harrison, Back and Deader than Ever 33). Not only do Nine Point Five and her bandmates have an eclectic style, but the girl has the gumption to not even care about her exposed stomach. The next time Melody sees this character, she comments on the “unapologetic belly bulge” again, because it is “the first time Melody had ever seen a girl this comfortable in her own skin” (Harrison, Back and

Deader than Ever 86). The belly bulge is mentioned multiple times, always in combination with Melody’s surprise that a girl would willingly expose herself in this way.

The imperative to accept yourself is challenging to see through the other characters’ shock that an overweight girl would be this confident. This depiction is undercut, however, since Nine Point Five is not only a minor character lacking a doll version (or a visual adaptation of any kind), but also the only character not described as fit and thin.

Nine-Point-Five’s confidence is overshadowed by the countless examples of the other female characters altering themselves to fit in. The other girls—in particular the main monsters, who have doll versions—are described, over and over again, as beautiful with formfitting dresses, full faces of makeup, and flawless fashion sense. Admittedly, emphasizing beauty is expected for a series developed as part of a fashion doll line, but

44 this series upholds a specific femininity and associates it with a “normal” girlhood which remains unachievable for most readers.

Through its depiction of girlhood, Monster High reinforces the white, upper-class experiences universalized in many series books. Carpan discusses, a number of times in her study of American girls’ series fiction, how “series books, for both preteen and teen readers, remain largely the domain of such wealthy white girls” (7). According to

Carpan, these protagonists generally “have everything any girl could want, including indulgent parents who give her the latest fashions and current technological gadgets, a big house, opportunities to travel, and the adoration of everyone she meets” (Carpan

147). Hamilton-Honey, writing about books from 1865 to 1930, confirms that series books promoted “a white, Protestant, middle-class standard that would have been unreachable for a significant portion of the population” (11). In Monster High, the girls all appear to be upper-class, as they shop for expensive clothes, continuously drop brand names, and spend significant time at the spa. At the beginning of the series, Melody and her family arrive in Salem, Oregon, in “their new BMW diesel SUV,” which is “one of the many overtures her parents had taken to show the locals that Beau and Glory

Carver were more than just great-looking wealthy transplants from the 90210” (Harrison,

Monster High 1). Clawdeen, Draculaura, Cleo, and Blue (Lagoona Blue in the other branded media) have “usual Saturday afternoon plans” involving the “three S’s— sunning, spa-ing, and shopping” (Harrison, The Ghoul Next Door 2). The girls often throw around brand names—in particular Cleo’s favorite, Herve Leger—and when prices are mentioned, they are always exorbitant, like the $175 “breath-strip-thin black tee” that “looked as if it had been pulled off a hitchhiker” Melody wears to perform with

45 her band (Harrison, Back and Deader than Ever 134). In an attempt to make her seem less materialistic than the other characters, Harrison’s narration explains that Melody only agreed to wear the shirt because it looked like it belonged to a hitchhiker—and yet, most readers would probably agree spending $175 on a shirt is a privilege of the rich, fashion-conscious or not.

The Bratz line, in stark contrast to Barbie, portrayed girls of various, though unspecific, ethnicities. With Monster High the series, as well as Monster High the brand,

Mattel seems to be attempting a similar balance, in contrast with the history of girls’ series books. Early twentieth-century girls’ series, like Nancy Drew, originally portrayed minorities, if at all, in racist, stereotypical ways. For Nancy Drew in particular, the prejudicial depictions became an issue, as parents complained and the publisher forced the Stratemeyer Syndicate to revise the series. Harriet Adams, Edward Stratemeyer’s daughter who took over the company with her sister, “had trouble understanding the problems with the stereotypical portrayals of Jewish and African American characters,” so she “she simply eliminated these characters in the revised books, whitewashing

Nancy’s world” (Carpan 95). However, as the girls’ series progressed throughout the twentieth century, depictions of minorities did not necessarily proliferate or improve. The author of Sweet Valley High, for example, tried to make “the stories more realistic” by

“adding minority characters,” but not until late in the series (Carpan 121). The inclusion did little to help sales, as SVH Senior Year “faltered” despite the “more diverse cast of characters, including gay, Hispanic, and African American teens” (Carpan 132). While there are a handful of minority characters in the series, “white” is overwhelming presumed as the default race.

Because the series makes no effort to justify Frankie’s chosen ethnicity and it does not comment on Cleo or Clawdeen’s ethnicities aside from referring to Cleo as

“latte-colored” (Harrison, The Ghoul Next Door 2), Monster High participates in girls’ series’ history of white girls’ experience portrayed as the default, universal experience.

Throughout the first three books, Frankie must disguise herself as a human and cover her green skin. With no explanation as to why, the text indicates that her human costume portrays her, and her parents, as white. In the first book, Frankie’s complaint about her makeup is that “something about the color white” was “so unappetizing”

(Harrison, Monster High 164). Her “‘normie-colored makeup’” (Harrison, The Ghoul Next

Door 67) is “[p]each-colored” (Harrison, The Ghoul Next Door 187). With white presented as the default race, Cleo’s Egyptian heritage and Clawdeen’s potentially

African-American background are expressed in stereotypical ways. Cleo writes in

“hieroglyphs” for “notes, lists, or birthday cards” for her father (Harrison, The Ghoul Next

Door 2) and often exclaims “Ka!” in moments of frustration, but otherwise her Egyptian roots are rarely mentioned. Furthermore, both girls are exoticized, as can be seen when

Clawdeen is described: “Her looks—yellowish-brown eyes, a mess of auburn curls, long manicured fingernails painted bronze—were just as striking as Cleo’s but in a more wild, feral way” (Harrison, Monster High 83). Very few of the characters are described using similarly animalistic language, despite many of them being, similar to Clawdeen, monsters that are part animal or other non-human creature. If Clawdeen is African-

American, which is not explicitly stated in the text, then this association with wild or feral behavior problematically resonates with a history of de-humanizing African-Americans, and in particular African-American women, by associating them with animals.

Interestingly, Clawdeen is also described as the “Shakira-looking one” of the two

“attractive alternative girls” (Harrison, Monster High 54), but these descriptions are never revisited or fully explained. The other characters are identified by stylistic choices, such as Draculaura’s preppy-goth look, but only Clawdeen and Cleo are described in these exoticized terms. In the brand’s broader narrative media, the newer characters are more diverse, but readers do not see this development in the books, nor are the characters used to explore the cultures they are meant to represent. Instead, the brand, and in particular the branded fiction, offers a cast of characters that appears diverse, while the use of token minorities reinforces white (and heteronormative) as the default experience.

Although the series does not explicitly address the race of its characters, Monster

High troublingly draws on civil rights movement rhetoric to draw parallels between discrimination against monsters and racism in American culture. The RADs often discuss how they have to hide to avoid persecution, not for supernatural abilities but for their appearance. The Stein family covers their mint-colored skin because many normies “‘are afraid of people who look different’” (Harrison, Monster High 27), while the werewolves remove their fur and the vampires hide their fangs for similar reasons. After the RADs are exposed, the teenagers’ return to school recalls the protests held outside of American public schools during the process of desegregation. As Frankie approaches

Merston High, she saw “[t]o the left, a smattering of RAD supporters wore monster costumes and chanted” (Harrison, The Ghoul Next Door 80), while on the right, “a group of sixty-plus parents and students” protested against RADs (81). Normies against the

RADs object to their strangeness and possible danger, despite no evidence that the

48 monsters are actually danger. In the third book, the narration makes the most explicit connection to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, comparing Frankie Stein to Martin

Luther King Jr., because she, too, “dreamed of living in a nation where people would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” (Harrison,

Where There’s a Wolf 27). Frankie, in her determination to free the RADs, thinks that the “sooner she realized that dream, the sooner she could get started on Katy Perry’s and live the teenage one” (Harrison, Where There’s a Wolf 27). This connection not only equates discrimination against the RADs with racism, but also implies that prejudice can be easily overcome. Once Frankie can solve the trifling problem of discrimination against RADs, she can achieve her actual goal—which, according to Katy Perry’s anthem, is the “teenage dream” of an ideal romantic relationship. The absurd juxtaposition of these two “dreams” indicates Monster High’s disinterest in political commentary, despite the echoing of civil rights rhetoric. Frankie’s priority is not making institutional or systemic changes as much as pursuing her own happiness. She claims to want equality for all, but really what she wants is enough acceptance to facilitate the individual “dream” promised in pop music.

In order to further depict RAD discrimination as an issue of inequality, Monster

High does briefly acknowledge the struggles of minorities. It is important to note, however, that the characters are only discriminated against based on their monster status. When Clawdeen claims the controversy over RADs will probably be over in a few weeks, her brother asks, “‘Who told you that? The other minorities on this planet?’” followed with, “‘You mean the ones who have been fighting for equal rights for, I dunno, about five thousand years?’” (Harrison, The Ghoul Next Door 48). It is unclear if her

49 brother is being hyperbolic or if he is referring to discrimination reaching beyond

America’s relatively short history, but Clawdeen and her family face no prejudice for being African American, which would presumably be one of the minority groups her brother facetiously suggests she ask about equal rights. In this way, Monster High tries to distance the civil rights and equality rhetoric it espouses with the issue of race.

Throughout the series, being a RAD seems to be both a separate race and not, while the racial identities of these characters are not fully acknowledged. If being a RAD is meant to represent race, the metaphor strangely links being a minority and an adolescent, as the monster traits are also meant to represent the awkwardness experienced by tweens and teens. As the series also draws on LGBTQ movements’ calls for equality and acceptance, particularly through the teens’ investment in Lady

Gaga fandom, the monster traits may strive to represent a general feeling of otherness.

However, referencing different movements while equating the monsters’ persecution with racial discrimination, particularly while largely ignoring race, is problematic because it reductively essentializes all discrimination as the same experience.

The younger generation of RADs encourage expressing their monster traits instead of hiding, while the older generation, after experiencing discrimination in their youth, want to stay hidden to stay safe. Frankie, Clawdeen, and their friends wanted “to show the normies that the RADs ‘eccentricities’ weren’t something to fear but instead something to celebrate” (Harrison, The Ghoul Next Door 3). The teens challenge the normie and RAD adults’ fear, asking “Why were adults so afraid of taking a stand?

Could a job really be more valuable than human decency? Progress more terrifying than stagnation? Coexistence more threatening than war?” (Harrison, Where There’s a Wolf

192). These questions, strangely, ignore the danger that “taking a stand” may invite, as the RADs could face persecution should they expose their true selves. Once the RADs are revealed, however, the adults want to further retreat and create their own school. As

Mr. D, the series’ version of Dracula, declares, “‘Toleration is sublime. But integration?

Assimilation? Those can be toxic. Allow them to enter our systems, and they will corrupt our DNA, weaken our bloodlines, annihilate the very things that make us special’”

(Harrison, Back and Deader than Ever 114). These comments complicate the connection between RADs and persecuted minorities, as it echoes principles of eugenics. Readers, however, are meant to reject Mr. D’s tirade in favor of the younger generation. Clawdeen voices the teens’ concerns about the new school, because they

“‘tried so hard to fit in with the normies. This feels like a step backward’” (Harrison, Back and Deader than Ever 116). Ghoulia Yelps, daughter of the Zombies, silently acknowledges “there was something to be said for a facility that catered to the needs of

RADs in ways that normie schools couldn’t. Because denying the differences wasn’t the answer either. RADs would never reach their full potential like that” (Harrison, Back and

Deader than Ever 130). In the end, the RADs build their own school and invite the normies to attend, implying some sort of power shift, but not necessarily equality.

If being a RAD is equivalent to being a minority, a member of the LGBTQ community, and/or an adolescent, Monster High offers a simple solution to the issue of discrimination—“be yourself.” The characters do not have to make any major efforts to eliminate prejudice, except to stop hiding. And, of course, spend money. Once the

RADs come out, so to speak, they face some harassment, but no violence. Relatively quickly, they are mostly accepted by the general community, in part thanks to

Frankie’s—and other RADs’—spending habits. As Back and Deader than Ever explains, it “had taken weeks of shopping in Salem before the salespeople began treating

[Frankie] like a normie. Now she was a VIP. But Voltage Important Person status wasn’t granted after a single spree. It took time and trust” (Harrison, Back and Deader than

Ever 2). Within weeks, Frankie and the other RADs are accepted in the community, and a shopping trip to Portland proves that the “RADs’ growing acceptance was starting to spread beyond Salem” (Harrison, Back and Deader than Ever 5). At school, the students go through “diversity-training assemblies” to learn “how to coexist peacefully,” and as a result, RADs “were trending up this semester” (Harrison, Back and Deader than Ever 11). As mentioned earlier, normies begin wearing “freaky” chic accessories meant to mimic the monster traits of various RADs. Many of the RADs date normies, with little concern about the “corruption” threated by Mr. D. The series implies that despite superficial differences, everyone is the same, thus discrimination can be easily overcome without addressing broader inequalities.

Monster High’s solution to discrimination reflects an understanding of prejudice as an individual, rather than systemic, issue—and thus a problem that can be solved without major structural changes. The series participates in what Malini Schueller describes as a “pedagogical narrative” of “ostensible racial diversity and ideological consensus” that is “based on an ethnicity concept of race in which everyone is ethnic, equally positioned, and included in the national narrative” (49). The ostensible multiculturalism thus “supports a neoconservative color blindness that appropriates diversity while denying structural inequalities” (Schueller 49). Schueller’s article addresses multicultural imperialism within academia, but her discussion of token

52 multiculturalism resonates with Monster High’s presentation of social acceptance. After the RADs reveal themselves, Frankie’s normie boyfriend, Brett, comments, “‘[i]t’s crazy that people don’t even notice the color of your skin anymore. They just see… you’”

(Harrison, Back and Deader than Ever 50). The emphasis on color blindness reinforces the idea that racism persists because of a few aberrant individuals, while obscuring the systemic inequalities and perseverance of the problem. By connecting RAD discrimination with racial prejudice, the series’ depiction of monster acceptance suggests that the problem of racism can be easily solved—or, more concerning, already has been resolved. Monster High’s emphasis on individual relationships bolstered by consumerism implies that discrimination and prejudice can be overcome through individual actions, rendering institutional change unnecessary.

Through these individualist actions, the characters appear to have some sense of social justice, but the impulses are tied to personal desires. Self-interest is often presented as social consciousness throughout the series, as the teenagers fight to free the RADs in order to be able to fully integrate into heteronormative society instead of reimagine it. Lagoona Blue explains to Cleo that if normies do not accept them, they will

“‘never land [their] dream jobs’” (Harrison, The Ghoul Next Door 156). The other teens have different motivations, as Frankie wants to show off her green skin and Draculaura would like to smile with her fangs. By focusing almost solely on themselves and their own desires, these girls do ultimately improve life for their community. In the first book,

Frankie, desperate to go to the Monster Mash dance, convinces her friends that going as themselves—and pretending they are in costume—is a way to get normies to accept

RADs. At the dance, Frankie literally loses her head while kissing her crush, leading to

53 the RADs’ exposure. The RADs originally resent that their secrets have been revealed and they all try to disappear. Clawdeen and her family go into hiding, retreating to their bed and breakfast inn in the woods, but Clawdeen does not want to hide. She wants to throw her Sweet Sixteen birthday party. She continues to plan it from the B&B and the night of the party, she convinces her mother to allow her to attend. At the party,

Clawdeen cannot fight the full moon and transforms. Clawdeen “was done with hiding.

The Wolfs had spent generations avoiding public transitions—it was their greatest fear,”

(Harrison, Where There’s a Wolf 234) but she embraces the public spectacle. Her friends join in and literally put themselves on display, dancing with Clawdeen while normies photographed them. One of the teen RADs remarks that as “they were letting their freak flags fly,” they were “[u]nited as a community” (Harrison, Where There’s a

Wolf 238). Clawdeen’s selfish determination to throw her birthday party yields positive results. The confrontation at Clawdeen’s party ultimately leads to the RADs coming out of hiding and being accepted.

Monster High undercuts the characters’ activist impulses by tying their actions to self-interest and then putting these examples of agency in conflict with declarations about how girls are “supposed” to act. In the beginning of the series, Frankie wants to make a difference for the RADs, but she becomes disillusioned by her lack of impact on the community. She shies away from activism, like run for a spot on the school’s

Balance Board, explaining that “‘every time [she] tried, [she] messed up’” because she

“‘was too busy thinking about boys and concerts and fun’” (Harrison, Where There’s a

Wolf 243). When Brett asks her, “‘[i]sn’t that what you’re supposed to be thinking about?’, Frankie considers “the TV shows, movies, and books for girls her age… Boys,

54 music, and fun were a big part of them all. Changing the world single-handedly? Not so much” (Harrison, Where There’s a Wolf 243). Although the series does attempt to nuance this claim, in part by offering girls who do change their community, the texts still define “normal” girls as those interested in “boys, music, and fun” rather than changing the world. Frankie is supposed to think about boys and fun, because that’s what

“normal” teens do. Readers are thus encouraged to claim interest in social issues, but not necessarily be active—or at least, to focus on individual actions useful for Mattel, like consumption5.

Of course, series and branded fiction is not obligated to train girls into revolutionaries. In fact, most companies and parents would probably prefer if it did not.

But closely examining Monster High, particularly in relation to the dominant trends in girls’ series fiction, allows us to confront what this series communicates about being a girl and how that serves to benefit Mattel. The ostensible message of Monster High is to embrace differences and accept others, but the series implicitly encourages readers to conform to a standardized girlhood that falls in line with over a century of girls’ series fiction. Normal girls, according to these series, are primarily white, middle- or upper-

5 The promotion of a consumption-based girlhood is not specific to Monster High, as American girls’ series fiction throughout the twentieth century promoted consumption as a method of female identity building. Series heroines “exercised agency as consumers and developed individuality through their purchases” (5), so readers were “encouraged to develop a distinct personality through choosing and consuming products” (Hamilton- Honey 6). However, twentieth century readers were encouraged to practice “tasteful and practical consumption” (Hamilton-Honey 6). Twenty-first century series follow the emphasis on consumption, but rarely work to regulate or limit it. As Carpan explains, “[s]uch chick lit series as Gossip Girl, The Clique, and The A-List feature shallow young women who are consumers of everything—the most expensive food, drink, drugs, technological gadgets, clothing, makeup, and accessories their parents’ money can buy” (143). Monster High’s characters behave in this manner, continuously dropping brand names as they shop with impunity, and the brand as a whole encourages its audience to do the same.

55 class, American, heterosexual, invested in their physical appearance, and valued by their position in nuclear families. Monster High attempts to challenge some of these norms by celebrating freaky flaws over perfection, but it does not actually disturb the status quo. According to Carpan, girls’ series fiction often struggles with this contradiction, as it “informs readers that they can have some measure of freedom… but it is women’s duty to give up their own lives and become the nurturing member of a family” (26). Nancy Tillman Romalov discusses a similar issue in early twentieth century girls’ adventure stories, which “set about negating, disrupting, or dismissing the radical possibilities that might have been realized” (82). Furthermore, Sherrie A. Inness explains in her work on scouting novels that serial fiction attracts girls because it

“depict[s] scouting as offering them escape from stereotypical gender roles, along with a great amount of physical freedom,” but that offer “does not hinder the scouting movement from working to construct suitably socialized bourgeois women” (“Girl

Scouts” 93). Although some girls’ series fiction did challenge traditional gender norms, predominantly girls’ series fiction ultimately upheld social structures so girl readers would become socially acceptable women. One might assume that in the twenty-first century, these conflicts would no longer exist, but Monster High continues this pattern by encouraging girls to be unique or strange, while actually teaching them how to conform.

Similar to some other girls’ series fiction, Monster High positions its female characters to be active, independent, and different, but does not follow through on the premises implied by monstrous girls. The characters, despite taking individual action, remain firmly embedded in nuclear families and, to a lesser extent, heterosexual

56 relationships. The series ends when the community and the various families, in particular the strained father-daughter relationship of Dracula and Draculaura, are harmoniously reunited. In the final line of Back and Deader than Ever, Dracula and

Draculaura walk “arm in arm” across “the threshold to Monster High and joined the others. They looked like every other father and daughter. It was fang-tastic!” (Harrison

237). This focus on the familial unit recalls the trend in eighteenth and nineteenth century texts that “[w]hen the girl is ‘successfully’ integrated into the socially sanctioned place already prepared for her—‘no place like home’—the story ends happily” (Vallone

156). The emphasis on female friendships remains constant throughout the series, but a vast majority of the female characters are involved in heterosexual romantic relationships, which often take precedence in their lives.

I am not arguing that Monster High hopes to rescue its female readers, or even that the series is purposely socializing girls. Presumably, Mattel’s primary motivation is to promote its brand, increase profit, and maintain its dominance over the fashion doll market. Similar to the brand’s use of recognizable cultural figures, adopting the tropes of girls’ series fiction aligns the series with known, familiar properties despite the appearance of difference. By conforming to patterns established by successful girls’ series, Mattel mitigates the risk of a new intellectual property. Recycling a century’s worth of narrative trends, however, necessarily makes Monster High considerably more preservationist than it ostensibly appears. In her study on girls’ culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Vallone explains that the “girl, however, is not trusted to enjoy freedom or believed to possess the ability to maintain it. She needs and, so the ideology goes, deserves to be regulated and domesticated” (120). Mattel, in the twenty-first

57 century, also works to control its girls, despite their monstrous appearances, by domesticating its characters through the heavy emphasis on consumption, the continuous connections between physical appearance and social acceptance, and the unquestioned conservation of traditional gender norms.

Monster High’s domestication of both girls and monsters may indicate anxiety about empowered—literally, as these girls are supernatural—girls, but, interestingly, there is one aspect of the characters’ lives that remains unregulated. While the series presents the characters’ monstrous identities—and, by extension, their adolescence— as something to be managed, it continuously promotes the girls’ rampant consumerism.

Frankie, Clawdeen, and their friends continuously spend money, collecting the markers of Mattel girlhood—primarily, expensive clothes, makeup, and beauty processes.

Consumption represents not only an indication of class and status, but also a way to actively seek social acceptance, as Frankie’s experiences of shopping without her normie makeup demonstrate. Throughout the series, consumerism allows the girls to gain independence, despite the fact that they are spending their parents’ money, because their purchases become a method of self-expression. Ultimately, consumerism becomes the defining feature of Monster High’s model of girlhood.

CHAPTER 4 CONSUMPTION-BASED GIRLHOOD

On Mattel's corporate “About Us” webpage, the company confidently declares it is “creating the future of play.” As part of its vision, Mattel encourages consumers to

“play to grow,” “play together,” “play with passion” and “play fair” in not only English, but also Italian, French, and Spanish, among other languages (“About Us”). In fact, multiple pages on the company’s corporate website announce Mattel’s vision for the “future of play,” as well as the company’s importance and success in the toy industry. According to the company biography on its news page, Mattel is “the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of toys and family products” (“Newsroom”). By positioning itself in this way, Mattel presents itself as not only a profitable company, but also as an influential and responsible entity shaping children’s play. As such, investigating the Monster High franchise model, which the company launched differently than earlier intellectual properties, can help illuminate Mattel’s attitude toward girlhood, play, and dolls in the twenty-first century.

In earlier chapters, I focused primarily on Monster High’s first book series in order to investigate the literary ancestry of the brand’s characters and its use of genre conventions in its presentation of girlhood. But now I would like to turn my attention to

Monster High’s marketing and broader merchandising to better examine the consumption-based girlhood being promoted through Monster High as well as Mattel’s attempts to mediate play. Whether Mattel is actually invested in making “good” girls or not through its vision for the “future of play,” Monster High works to create good consumers, both by creating characters that promote consumption and by offering a seemingly unending variety of branded products. As the franchise continues to grow,

Mattel’s interactions with popular appropriations of Monster High products reveal a conflict between Mattel’s stated intentions and its brand management. While Monster

High’s rhetoric promotes self-esteem and individuality, Mattel’s franchise promotes an

American girlhood defined primarily by consumption of mass-produced materials.

With Monster High, Mattel developed not only a popular fashion doll line, but also a transportable franchise model. Unlike with earlier intellectual properties, Mattel launched Monster High across a wide range of product lines simultaneously, rather than waiting to see if the doll line’s popularity warranted “games, TV shows and books based on the item” (Hyland 1). Chief Executive Robert Eckert referred to Monster High as “‘the beginning of what we see as some opportunities to create franchises like this going forward’” (Hyland 56). Even more explicitly, Tim Kilpin, General Manager of Mattel

Brands when Monster High launched, explains that the brand was “the ideal property with which to launch out new franchise model – a sustainable business strategy that we believe is the future of brand management” (“Mattel Unveils”). Thus, Monster High represents a model of how Mattel might launch properties in the future.

Since its inception, Monster High has worked to expand beyond just doll play.

Because multiple product lines simultaneously shape the Monster High characters, my analysis of the branded products is particularly indebted to Diane Sekeres’ work on branded fiction, “The Market Child and Branded Fiction: A Synergism of Children’s

Literature, Consumer Culture, and New Literacies.” Similar to American Girl, which

Sekeres discusses in her article, Monster High embodies its characters in doll lines and offers the same characters across a number of media platforms, creating market children, or “virtual character[s] imagined through the consumption of multiple products

60 associated with a brand” (Sekeres 403). Although Monster High is a fashion doll line, and Mattel largely known for producing dolls, individuals do not need to own the dolls in order to access the Monster High characters. Girls can access these market children through two book series, as well as a graphic novel and multiple activity books, along with webisodes, television specials, and straight-to-DVD movies. Furthermore, Monster

High engages with consumers online through its website and social media networks, like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Monster High’s franchise model, promoted across multiple platforms, allows Mattel to promote brand awareness and potentially influence individual play.

While individual experiences vary widely, the corporate-driven narratives and products can contribute to the construction of playspaces and the conceptions of market children. Sekeres argues in her analysis of different brands that the individual consumer

“constructs a playspace through reading, playing with toys alone or with friends, using products alone or in community with family or friends, and spending time online interacting with games and people who have similar interests” (406). Thus, the significant amount of branded material Mattel offers can influence how users interact with and imagine the Monster High characters. The time spent online with Monster High is particularly interesting because consumers can interact not only with games and people who have similar interests, but also with Mattel and the brand itself. Thousands of fans, according to the numbers of users following the social media accounts, engage with the brand online. Thanks to these platforms, broader audiences, including Mattel executives and academic scholars, can access the evidence of fan interactions and make inferences about individual play.

With its presence on media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube,

Monster High facilitates user interaction with the brand and promotes the consumption of branded products. Monster High’s first social media account was on Facebook, which the brand joined in December 2009, prior to the release of the Monster High dolls. The brand’s social media presence expanded after it officially launched, as the Monster High

Twitter account has been active since February 2012 and now has 54.7 thousand followers and over three thousand tweets. Monster High also has an official Instagram account as well as a blog on Tumblr called the Gory Gazette, which is modeled on a school newspaper. The Gory Gazette launched in January 2012, while the brand opened its Instagram account in October 2013. As of October 2014, the Instagram account has over seventy-five thousand follows and over 350 posts. Monster High also has a strong presence on YouTube, where it releases webisodes, music videos, trailers, and toy instruction videos on its official channel with over 279 million views and over

415 thousand subscribers. The webisodes are narrative content that can influence how users conceptualize these characters, but some of the other videos are even more direct interventions, as they literally demonstrate how to play with certain toys or branded materials. Social media networks were not originally conceived as new avenues for corporations to reach consumers, but Monster High demonstrates the potential for success with this tactic.

When discussing the company’s approach to Monster High, the producers and designers emphasize how they want to connect with fans, in particular through the brand’s online content. The official social media accounts offer a different type of interactivity than narrative content or the dolls, because Mattel employees can not only

62 respond to, but also learn from fans’ online activity. In an interview in 2011, Ira

Singerman, a producer at Mattel, explains that “one of the great things about the animated stories is that we are able to see, almost in real-time, what the fans are thinking… we read all the comments and what the fans say is really important to us”

(“Early 2011 – Franchise interview”). Mattel employees track online usage, read comments, and respond to posts, in order to learn what girls want from this brand, but these interventions also allow the company to access fan-produced materials. In the same interview, Vice President of Marketing for Mattel’s girls brands, Lori Pantel, explains how the designers are “inspired” by girls’ creations, and, as I discuss later, they develop products based on what they see online.

However, instead of working with girls as co-collaborators of this brand, the interactivity offered by Monster High’s online media facilitates new ways for Mattel to co- opt and mediate play. Mattel is familiar with using media to build a brand, as Barbie—as well as other Mattel intellectual properties—stars in numerous television specials, games, books, and other media. Barbie’s struggle to keep up with “exciting” children’s properties such as Dora the Explorer taught Mattel executives that “the secret was the

‘content.’ Each doll needed to be accompanied by a story, provided by the sold- separately DVD, and supported by merchandise that give the animated sets and props material form” (Orr 13). Mattel began offering “content” for Barbie after establishing her as a fashion doll line, but Monster High launched with these accompanying stories, in the form of book series, webisodes, and character diaries. According to Lisa Orr,

Mattel’s interest in providing “content” meant “relying less on the girls’ own imaginations and more on telling them how to play with the doll” (13). As a result, this provided

63 content purposely works to influence, and possibly restrict, girls’ play. Although the

Mattel executives and designers emphasize the importance of the fans’ opinions and productions, the brand’s online practices work to preserve the corporate-designed narratives, rather than encourage imaginative or alternative play.

Despite the brand’s insistence that its Facebook page is meant “for guys and ghouls of all ages to talk, share ideas, and unearth the latest Monster high news!”

(Monster High, “About”), the Monster High producers seem to use the social media to monitor individual play. When individuals use the Monster High characters in their own cultural productions, Monster High often either incorporates the new practice into the official line, thereby preserving the dominance of the corporate narrative, or ignores it.

One of the most concrete examples of this practice is the Create-a-Monster product line, which has recently been redeveloped into the Inner Monster design lines. The

Monster High Create-a-Monster line and its newer iterations offer consumers the chance to customize Monster High dolls. In an interview prior to the line’s launch in

2012, Lori Pantel, Vice President of Marketing for Mattel’s girls brands, comments that they when saw girls “literally creating their own characters… taking existing characters and modifying them, writing their whole backstories” online, they were “inspired” to “give girls a chance to literally build their own characters—the ultimate in customization”

(“Early 2011 – Franchise interview”). After noting this trend in fan usage, Mattel produced a doll line in which consumers could customize dolls. Co-opting this fan practice allowed Mattel to both mediate play and profit from popular usage.

However, the Create-a-Monster line works against the customization many fans try to achieve by redesigning these mass-produced dolls. Individuals, in particular adult

64 fans, who were already customizing their dolls did not need to purchase yet another product from Mattel in order to do so. The Monster High Create-a-Monster line offers users the chance to build a “new” doll from pre-designed pieces, including two sets of arms and two sets of legs. The Design Lab and Color-Me-Creepy sets soon followed, which allowed users to design not only the dolls’ bodies, but also their faces and other decorations. But these mass-produced products inherently impede truly unique customization. The earlier Create-a-Monster sets and add-ons provide limited options, with a set number of options (usually two to three) in terms of monster breed, individual features, and designs. Later iterations work to reconcile this issue, offering blank faces and more combinations, but can only go so far, as they remain mass-produced toys. In

2014, the Create-a-Monster line was replaced by the Inner Monster doll line, which

“have creepy cool transformative features and killer ways of emoting” (“MONSTER

HIGH® Inner Monster”). The Inner Monster dolls come with, according to the product page on shop.mattel.com, “eye-changing/brain feature, one additional interchangeable face plate, one wig, a peggable/interchangeable skeleton and chest plate, eight emoticon pieces, one over-the-top fashion, two pairs of shoes, one purse, one headband, doll stand, brush, fill-in-the-blank diary” (“MONSTER HIGH® Inner

Monster”). This new product line offers a new element of play—where one can literally change the doll’s face and expression, as well as write the character’s diary—but still allow Mattel to guide customization, as the faces are predesigned and each doll can only “express” a limited range of emotions.

The customization line continues to expand, with the prices rising as the products become more complex. In October 2014, a new product line called the Monster Maker

65 will be released. Using the Monster Maker software, consumers can “create a personalized design on [their] own tablet or computer device” and “[c]hoose from spooktacular styles available” to design “custom faces with unique looks… for the ultimate in customization” (“MONSTER HIGH™ Monster Maker”). However, the customization would still be through the Mattel product and, thus, be limited by the available options and the abilities of the machinery. While the Create-a-Monster, Inner

Monster, and Monster Maker sets allow younger or less experienced consumers to customize dolls, they must do so through Mattel. These lines appear to make the practice more accessible to fans, but they also can prevent fans from deviating from expected play by customizing dolls not intended to be altered. Prior to Mattel’s intervention, fans were already customizing dolls, usually with much more skill, but now that an official, branded product is available, individuals may be less likely to attempt to customize on their own. Thus, the company successfully incorporates the trend of customizing dolls into the official brand in order to not only profit, but also to encourage girls to play within the Monster High universe (and product lines) rather than outside of them or independently. In this way, Mattel facilitates and controls what was once unexpected or even potentially transgressive play through new products.

By offering the Create-a-Monster product line and its later iterations, as well as expansion packs, Mattel encourages the continual consumption of more branded, mass-produced materials. Monster High works to mediate individual play, and its expansive product lines repeatedly express to consumers that one version is never enough. The brand as a whole functions to encourage broader consumption of Monster

High products, particularly as each product line is continually expanded, improved upon,

66 or redesigned to offer new versions. The successive “waves” of doll lines demonstrates the emphasis on continuous consumption. The characters appear not only in different media, but in different waves, often characterized by particular activities, like Picture

Day or Sweet 1600, or associated with a television special or DVD release, like Scaris:

City of Frights. Frankie Stein, for instance, has appeared in at least twenty-eight different doll lines, with different clothing, hairstyles, accessories, and on occasion monster-identifiers1 appropriate to the themes. As discussed in the previous chapter, the Monster High students happily practice rampant consumption, but as dolls, and as market children, they are also consumable products. With such a wide variety of options, there is no definitive doll version, but rather ten or more different sides of the same character. In this way, the dolls are both collectible, as individuals can acquire a set of different dolls, but also disposable, as the market children are not limited to the one physical figure. The characters promote consumption through practice, and so do the social media accounts. The Twitter and Instagram feeds consistently advertise new products and brand expansions, introducing new characters as commonly as DVD releases, and link the user to the other branded media. The brand’s construction encourages consumers to their individuality and exert agency through continued consumption of Mattel products.

Monster High, despite its efforts to promote self-esteem, defines its girlhood almost exclusively through consumption. The Create-a-Monster doll appeared to offer girls the power to customize dolls, but only with the products specifically mass-produced

1 The Freaky Fusion doll line features Frankie dressed like Clawdeen Wolf, complete with fangs, and the Power Ghouls doll line presents Frankie as the superhero “Voltageous.”

67 to be customizable and only if they could afford to purchase the ever-expanding line.

Similarly, the girlhood Mattel offers girls appears to facilitate agency and self-esteem.

However, while the ostensible message of the brand is meant to empower young girls, the branded fiction and narrative media promote consumption, primarily with a focus on

Mattel products as well as stereotypical markers of femininity, like beauty regimens and clothing. The connection between individual identity and consumption is particularly clear in the series Monster High, as it recycles narrative tropes from nineteenth and twentieth century girls’ series fiction, but the franchise model continually reinforces it.

I do not mean to imply that consumption and self-esteem are mutually exclusive, but rather that Mattel’s actions do not prioritize the individual girls over the broader capitalist impulse. In “Believing in Girls is Good Business,” Lori Pantel explains that because the “Monster High doll brand has become fortunate enough to have gained the successful reach many brands work toward,” they “feel more responsibility to use that platform to bring girls an empowering message.” But, as Pantel’s title reveals, the priority is how girls are good for business—not the other way around. Disappointingly, what seems like social critique in Monster High, in particular the manifestation of monstrous characteristics, is ultimately a reaffirmation of a version of “normal” girlhood in which girls are defined largely by their relationships, appearance, and spending habits. Monster High, and other Mattel lines, convince consumers, primarily young girls, that they can access their “true,” “unique” selves through these mass-produced products. Through the wide array of available options and the continuous production of new materials, Mattel encourages girls to possess as much of the Monster High product line as possible, which impressively ranges from fashion doll lines, book series, DVDs,

68 costumes, makeup kits, and other merchandise, while the brand is further promoted through social media and other online content. The amount of branded material is, frankly, overwhelming, offering collectors quite the challenge as doll lines and other products are discontinued and replaced with newer, flashier versions. By tying girls’ identity to consumption, Monster High further perpetrates a girlhood that must be acquired through capital.

Of course, Mattel’s promotion of a consumption-based girlhood does not negate alternative uses of these products. As Robin Bernstein, among other scholars, notes,

“[c]hildren do not passively receive culture. Rather, children expertly field the co-scripts of narratives and material culture and then collectively forge a third prompt: play itself”

(29). Mattel’s interactive content thus can become a tool for girls to create their own products—both in personal playspaces and online. Monster High appropriates cultural figures and familiar tropes to achieve its own ends, but consumers—children and adults alike—can do the same. Even when provided with branded media, interactive content, and direct engagement through social networks, consumers create—and broadcast— their own alternative narratives and unexpected uses. A quick search online uncovers countless examples of fan-made Monster High art—from fan fiction to visual renderings to multimedia projects to role-playing communities. Monster High fans happily share productions like fashion shoots, doll modifications, new characters, and stop-motion videos. These creations range in skill level and production value, as well as in the age and gender of the creators.

For example, through her family’s YouTube channel Kittiesmama, eight-year-old

Emma creates monthly makeup tutorials which often involve transforming herself into

Monster High characters. Her “Monster High Cosplay or Halloween Costume Makeup

Tutorials” playlist has thirty one videos, with over 4.5 million views. The individual videos have been viewed between 400 thousand (Kittiesmama, “Monster High Sirena Von Boo

Makeup Tutorial”) to over 28 million times (“Frankie Stein Monster High Doll Costume”).

Kittiesmama has often been retweeted and promoted by the official Monster High account, but lack of recognition does not, for example, prevent the creator(s) of the

YouTube channel Katralisskitty from producing over twenty videos featuring Monster

High dolls. While many of the videos on YouTube that utilize Monster High dolls incorporate the corporate-designed narratives, maintaining or continuing the character development from the branded media, Katralissakitty’s videos purposely contain the horror elements so carefully excised from the brand. Katralissakitty features multiple videos marked “*For mature audiences*” and on the “About” page, the creator warns viewers that “This channel is rated PG-13 due to violence, gore, mild language, and abstract concepts” (Katralissakitty). The channel has had over three million views, with over 17.5 thousand subscribers. In the Katralisskitty videos, the characters participate in behavior unfathomable within the Monster High branded media, like drinking alcohol, having sex, and committing homicide2. While these videos offer diverse treatments of these characters, and demonstrate how fans can play in unexpected or transgressive

2 The Katralissakitty channel has a series, “This is War,” which depicts a war between the fairy tale characters of Ever After High, a Monster High spinoff franchise, and the monsters of Monster High. The characters diverge drastically from the branded narratives, but often maintain the same names. The channel also features a video titled “Blondie Lockes and the 3 B**ches,” which, due to its use of Ever After High dolls, is not particularly relevant to my point, but does demonstrate the way fans can work against Mattel’s restrictions and reinvent both the original stories and the corporate-driven narratives through such productions.

70 ways, it is important to note that Mattel rarely, if ever, recognizes the fan productions that do not align with the branded narratives.

The Monster High fans creating new cultural works are not, presumably, working in an official capacity for Mattel, but they are producing content that the company can use. Monster High, through its online practices, seems to purposely engage more with fan usage that reflects the corporate-designed narratives, which emphasize consumption. The brand’s Twitter and Tumblr accounts, for example, often post

Kittiesmama’s makeup tutorials and other Monster High-related productions. In

“Monster High Elissabat Doll Makeup Tutorial for Halloween or Cosplay,” Emma not only announces the doll’s release in stores, but also publicizes the upcoming DVD release. Presumably, the official brand was involved with this video, as the description offers a link “to see a freak peek of the Frights, Camera, Action DVD” (Kittiesmama,

“Monster High Elissabat Doll”). Mattel can further benefit from popular usage by legitimizing certain fan-made productions through official promotion. Eight-year-old

Emma is a fan, a creator, and an advertisement. Like the Monster High dolls, she is both a consumer and a product to be consumed.

Ultimately, Mattel’s vision of “the future of play” seems to involve monitoring and mediating girls’ play, rather than inspiring their imaginations. Children “do things to

Barbie that Mattel never dreamed of” (Clark 180) and the same is true for Monster High, but Mattel’s brand management implies how the company wants consumers to interact with these characters, and thus reveals its priorities. With Monster High, Mattel improved on its previous attempts to engage consumers with branded content by not only offering narratives and merchandise, but also interacting with consumers through

71 social media and creating products that mimic, and as a result attempt to replace, unexpected usages of the dolls. The franchise model developed with this brand allows

Mattel to both benefit from and shape individual play with Monster High products, at least for those fans engaged with Monster High online. While girls may actively challenge and subvert Mattel’s constructions, participation with the branded fiction and narrative media involves constant reminders of the company’s intended uses. Mattel’s interventions and the resulting reaffirmation of official characterizations and appropriate usage influences how consumers perceive these characters—and, by extension,

Mattel’s consumption-based girlhood. The predominantly conservative messages may frustrate those hoping for a subversive or radical series, but the brand’s success indicates that Mattel’s new franchise model can be expected, at least, to effectively disseminate those messages.

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION

In my introduction, I claim that the Monster High characters are not actually monsters. Mattel is not interested in teaching its audience about the origins of these monsters, exploring the social critiques often associated with monstrosity, or depicting its characters as monstrous at all. The Monster High characters, fangs and fur aside, are meant to be relatable teenagers, not terrifying monsters. Instead, the characters’ monstrous traits represent the “universal” experience of feeling “like a monster” (Pantel).

Through the books, webisodes, and television specials, Frankie, Draculaura, and

Clawdeen, along with their “monstrous” friends, “capture all the awkward moments that teens experience in their high school years, the powerful bonds of friendship and the challenges of fitting in – all delivered through a ‘monster’ chic aesthetic and tone”

(“Mattel Unveils”). Monster High has redefined monstrosity, not as being “repulsively unnatural” or “an abomination” (“Monstrosity”), but as a universal experience connected to adolescence. The original monsters are rendered unnecessary, aside from the physical manifestations of their monstrosity—the fangs, gills, and manicured claws— that have been reimagined as cute and chic. The Monster High characters’ monstrous traits represent the feelings of difference and isolation that all teenagers supposedly face.

In this way, Mattel exploits the feelings of monstrosity that everyone supposedly experiences—those of otherness, isolation, and alienation—in order to promote a version of girlhood that follows many trends established by girls’ series fiction while ignoring the radical roots of the literary and cultural figures. Monster High’s depiction of girlhood universalizes white, middle- and upper-class, heterosexual experiences as

“normal” and, through the franchise’s construction as well as the branded narratives, ties individual identity to consumption. While Monster High is meant to appeal to a broad audience—supposedly spanning race, class, and nationality, as the brand produces videos and merchandise internationally—the experiences of these characters are remarkably uniform and conventional. Admittedly, the lack of critique does not set

Monster High apart from other dolls, as most Mattel products, as well as their competitors, promote a particular, often unattainable girlhood, but Monster High’s unique aesthetics, for a fashion doll line, in combination with the series’ rhetoric promoting self-esteem and acceptance of others implied the branded intended to offer girls something new. Instead, Monster High’s subversion is superficial, as the books’ values, the dolls’ aesthetics, and the products work not to encourage engagement with classic literature or challenge social norms but promote brand awareness and increase profit.

Monster High and its franchise model are indicative of how Mattel approaches girlhood, play, and dolls in the twenty-first century. With Monster High, Mattel capitalizes on the trend of paranormal-themed adolescent cultural materials, but even if interest in the paranormal ebbs, the company still has a transportable franchise model that can be reproduced with other content. The franchise model has proved successful—not only in promoting Monster High, but also a consumption-based American girlhood. It is not particularly surprising that Mattel, as a cultural producer, encourages the consumption of mass-produced materials. However, as Mattel is “the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of toys and family products” (“Newsroom”), investigating its

74 approach allows for a discussion of not only how such products reflect conceptions of

American girlhood, but also how Mattel shapes these conceptions.

Mattel has already began reproducing this franchise model, as it unveiled the spin-off, Ever After High, in 2013. As Monster High became an international success,

Mattel launched Ever After High as an international success in 2013. The webisodes are released in multiple different languages simultaneously and the book series is published in both English and Spanish. Some improvements in brand management can be seen in Ever After High, which is both more controlled and more cohesive across product lines. Ultimately, however, the content of the franchise may not matter, if the brand works to promote, above all else, further consumption. Because even though

Mattel’s “[w]orldwide gross sales for Other Girls brands were down 11%, primarily due to Monster High®” in the second financial quarter of 2014, this drop was “partially offset by… Ever After High®” (“Mattel Reports Second Quarter 2014”). Based on current sales, it seems likely that Monster High will soon be eclipsed by its spin-off, but this replacement does not signal Mattel’s failure. Rather, this shift indicates the success of

Mattel’s new model of franchise management, which has the potential to be more profitable than an individual brand’s longevity. When interest in fairy tales wane, Mattel can conceivably fill its franchise model with new content, producing new brands that allow Mattel to maintain its relevance. Thus, with this franchise model, Mattel can maintain its dominance of the fashion doll market and, by extension, its influence over

American girlhood.

LIST OF REFERENCES

Abate, Michelle Ann. Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural History. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2008. Print.

“About Us.” Corporate.mattel.com. Mattel, Inc., 2014. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.

Bernstein, Robin. Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights. New York: New York UP. 2011. Print.

Botting, Fred, ed. "Introduction." Introduction. Frankenstein: Mary Shelley. New York: St. Martin's, 1995. N. pag. Print.

Carpan, Carolyn. Sisters, Schoolgirls, and Sleuths: Girls’ Series Books in America. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2009. Print.

Clark, Beverly Lyon. Kiddie Lit: The Cultural Construction of Children’s Literature in America. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins UP, 2005. Print.

“Clawdeen Wolf.” Monster High. Mattel, Inc., 2013. Web. 1 Nov. 2013.

Clayton, Jay. “Frankenstein’s Futurity: Replicants and Robots.” The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Ed. Esther H. Schor. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2003. 84-99. E-book.

Crumpley, Charles. “Monster Gaffe by Mattel?” Los Angeles Business Journal 21 May 2010: 58. General OneFile. Web. 1 Dec. 2014.

“Early 2011 – Franchise Interview.” Monster High Wiki. Wikia, n.d. Web. 4 Aug. 2014.

“Elissabat.” Monster High. Mattel, Inc., 2013. Web. 1 May 2014.

Forman-Brunell, Miriam. “Interrogating the Meanings of Dolls: New Directions in Doll Studies.” Girlhood Studies 5.1(2012): 3-13.

Formanek-Brunell, Miriam. Made to Play House: Dolls and the Commercialization of American Girlhood, 1830-1930. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998. Print.

“Frankie Stein.” Monster High. Mattel, Inc., 2013. Web. 1 Nov. 2013.

“Freaky Fab 13.” Monster High. Mattel, Inc., 2013. Web. 1 Nov. 2013.

Hade, Daniel. “Curious George Gets Branded: Reading as Consuming.” Theory into Practice 40.3(2001): 158-165.

Hamilton-Honey, Emily. Turning the Pages of American Girlhood: The Evolution of Girls’ Series Fiction, 1865-1930. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co, Inc., 2013. Print.

Harrison, Lisi. Back and Deader Than Ever. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2012. Print.

Harrison, Lisi. The Ghoul Next Door. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2011. Print.

Harrison, Lisi. Monster High. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2010. Print.

Harrison, Lisi. Where There’s a Wolf, There’s a Way. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2011. Print.

Hyland, Alexa. “Mattel Bets on Creature Features: ‘Monster’ Line Looks to Stalk Tween Girls.” Los Angeles Business Journal 31 May 2010: 1, 56. General OneFile. Web. 1 Dec. 2014.

Inness, Sherrie A. “Girl Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, and Woodcraft Girls: The Ideology of Girls' Scouting Novels, 1910-1935.” Nancy Drew and Company: Culture, Gender, and Girls' Series. Ed. Sherrie A. Inness. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular, 1997. 89-100. Print.

Inness, Sherrie A. “Introduction.” Nancy Drew and Company: Culture, Gender, and Girls' Series. Ed. Sherrie A. Inness. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular, 1997. 89-100. Print.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 1991. Print.

Johnson, Deidre. “From Abbott to Animorphs, From Godly Books to Goosebumps: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Modern Series.” Scorned Literature: Essays on the History and Criticism of Popular Mass-Produced Fiction in America. Eds. Lydia C. Schurman and Deidre Johnson. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. Print.

Katralissakitty. “About.” YouTube. YouTube, 25 Feb. 2012. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

Katralissakitty. YouTube. YouTube, 25 Feb. 2012. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

Kittiesmama. “Frankie Stein Monster High Doll Costume Makeup Tutorial for Halloween.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 6 Oct. 2011. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

Kittiesmama. “Monster High Cosplay or Halloween Costume Makeup Tutorials Playlist.” Online video playlist. YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

Kittiesmama. “Monster High Elissabat Doll Makeup Tutorial for Halloween or Cosplay.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 16 Mar. 2014. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

Kittiesmama. “Monster High Sirena Von Boo Makeup Tutorial! Collab CuteGirlsHairstyles & KITTIESMAMA.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 12 Oct. 2014. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

“Library.” Monster High. Mattel, Inc., 2013. Web. 1 Nov. 2013.

Lopez, Tracy. “Skelita Calaveras – A Doll for Día de los Muertos! {Giveaway!}.” SpanglishBaby.com. Spanglish Baby, 29 Oct. 2012. Web. 5 Sept. 2014.

“Mattel History.” Mattel.com. Mattel, Inc., 2001. Web. 1 Dec. 2013.

“Mattel Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2013 Financial Results and Declares Quarterly Dividend.” Mattel.com. Mattel, Inc., 31 Jan. 2014. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.

“Mattel Reports Second Quarter 2014 Financial Results.” Mattel.com. Mattel, Inc., 17 Jul. 2014. Web. 20 Jul. 2014.

“Mattel Unveils New Monster-Themed Franchise.” Mattel.com. Mattel, Inc., 4 Jun. 2010. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.

Mellor, Anne K. “Making a ‘Monster’: An Introduction to Frankenstein.” The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Ed. Esther H. Schor. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2003. 9-25. E-book.

“Monster.” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2014. Web.

Monster High. “About.” Facebook.com. Facebook, 13 Dec. 2009. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

“MONSTER HIGH® Inner Monster Scared Silly n Shockingly Sweet.” Mattel.com. Mattel, Inc., n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2014

Monster High. Instagram.com. Instagram, Oct. 2014. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.

“MONSTER HIGH® Monster Maker.” Mattel.com. Mattel, Inc., n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2014

Monster High. Twitter.com. Twitter, Feb. 2012. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

The Monster High Gory Gazette. Tumblr.com. Tumblr, 2011. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.

MonsterHigh. “HooDoo You Like.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 19 May 2011. Web. 1 Dec. 2013.

MonsterHigh. YouTube. YouTube, 25 Sep. 2007. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

“Monstrosity.” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2014. Web.

“Monstrous.” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2014. Web.

“Myth.” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2014. Web.

“Newsroom.” News.mattel.com. Mattel, Inc., 2014. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.

Oppenheimer, Jerry. Toy Monster: The Big, Bad World of Mattel. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009. Print.

Orr, Lisa. “‘Difference That is Actually Sameness Mass-Reproduced’: Barbie Joins the Princess Convergence.” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 1.1(2009): 9- 30. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Feb. 2014.

Pantel, Lori. “Believing in Girls Is Good Business.” TheHuffingtonPost.com. The Huffington Post, 8 Jun 2012. Web. 4 Aug. 2014.

Pattee, Amy S. “Commodities in Literature, Literature as Commodity: A Close Look at the Gossip Girl Series.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 31.2 (2006): 154-175.

Pattee, Amy. Reading the Adolescent Romance: Sweet Valley High and the Popular Young Adult Romance Novel. New York: Routledge. 2011. Print.

Romalov, Nancy Tillman. “Mobile and Modern Heroines: Early Twentieth-Century Girls’ Automobile Series.” Nancy Drew and Company: Culture, Gender, and Girls' Series. Ed. Sherrie A. Inness. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular, 1997. 75-88. Print.

Schor, Esther. “Frankenstein and Film.” The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Ed. Esther H. Schor. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2003. 63-83. E-book.

Seiter, Ellen. Sold Separately: Parents & Children in Consumer Culture. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP. 1995. Print.

Sekeres, Diane Carver. “The Market Child and Branded Fiction: A Synergism of Children’s Literature, Consumer Culture, and New Literacies.” Reading Research Quarterly 44.4 (2009): 399-414.

“Skelita Calaveras.” Monster High. Mattel, Inc., 2013. Web. 1 Aug. 2014.

“The Clique’s Lisi Harrison Heads to Monster High.” Seventeen.com. Hearts Communication, Inc., 14 Sept. 2010. Web. 1 Dec. 2013.

Ulaby, Neda. “Fangs and Fishnets For the Win: ‘Goth Barbie’ is Monstrously Successful.” Monkey See. NPR, 17 Jul. 2013. Web. 1 Dec. 2013.

Vallone, Lynne. Disciplines of Virtue: Girls’ Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. New Haven: Yale UP, 1995. Print.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Mary Roca received her bachelor’s degree in English from the University of

Florida, Gainesville in 2012. She holds a Master of Arts degree in English from the

University of Florida, where she is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in English.