Enter your email Address

ENTROPY
  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      The Animal Form

      January 22, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      On Fantasy and Artifice

      January 19, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Tales From the End of the Bus Line: Aging Ungraciously

      January 18, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Salt and Sleep

      January 15, 2021

      Introspection

      The Birds: A Special Providence in the Fall of a Sparrow

      January 2, 2020

      Introspection

      Returning Home with Ross McElwee

      December 13, 2019

      Introspection

      The Birds: In Our Piety

      November 14, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations: Landslide

      June 12, 2019

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      The Birds: Little Birds

      December 11, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: Perdix and a Pear Tree

      December 9, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: A Glimmer of Blue

      November 23, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: Circling for Home

      November 13, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: The Guest

      November 9, 2020

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Review: Dear Marshall, Language is Our Only Wilderness by Heather Sweeney

      January 21, 2021

      Review

      Review: Shrapnel Maps by Philip Metres

      January 18, 2021

      Review

      Perceived Realities: A Review of M-Theory by Tiffany Cates

      January 14, 2021

      Review

      Review: Danger Days by Catherine Pierce

      January 11, 2021

      Collaborative Review

      Attention to the Real: A Conversation

      September 3, 2020

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      Gordon Hill Press

      December 8, 2020

      Small Press

      Evidence House

      November 24, 2020

      Small Press

      death of workers whilst building skyscrapers

      November 10, 2020

      Small Press

      Slate Roof Press

      September 15, 2020

      Small Press

      Ellipsis Press

      September 1, 2020

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Games

        Hunt A Killer, Earthbreak, and Empty Faces: Escapism for the Post-Truth Era

        September 21, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        Video Games

        Best of 2018: Video Games

        December 17, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch

ENTROPY

  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      The Animal Form

      January 22, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      On Fantasy and Artifice

      January 19, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Tales From the End of the Bus Line: Aging Ungraciously

      January 18, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Salt and Sleep

      January 15, 2021

      Introspection

      The Birds: A Special Providence in the Fall of a Sparrow

      January 2, 2020

      Introspection

      Returning Home with Ross McElwee

      December 13, 2019

      Introspection

      The Birds: In Our Piety

      November 14, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations: Landslide

      June 12, 2019

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      The Birds: Little Birds

      December 11, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: Perdix and a Pear Tree

      December 9, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: A Glimmer of Blue

      November 23, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: Circling for Home

      November 13, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: The Guest

      November 9, 2020

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Review: Dear Marshall, Language is Our Only Wilderness by Heather Sweeney

      January 21, 2021

      Review

      Review: Shrapnel Maps by Philip Metres

      January 18, 2021

      Review

      Perceived Realities: A Review of M-Theory by Tiffany Cates

      January 14, 2021

      Review

      Review: Danger Days by Catherine Pierce

      January 11, 2021

      Collaborative Review

      Attention to the Real: A Conversation

      September 3, 2020

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      Gordon Hill Press

      December 8, 2020

      Small Press

      Evidence House

      November 24, 2020

      Small Press

      death of workers whilst building skyscrapers

      November 10, 2020

      Small Press

      Slate Roof Press

      September 15, 2020

      Small Press

      Ellipsis Press

      September 1, 2020

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Games

        Hunt A Killer, Earthbreak, and Empty Faces: Escapism for the Post-Truth Era

        September 21, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        Video Games

        Best of 2018: Video Games

        December 17, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch
CultureFilmSci Fi / FantasyTelevision

Jem and the Holographic Feminisms (#1)

written by Renee Angle April 8, 2015

PART ONE: A SOUVENIR OF THE HOLOGRAPHIC ORGAN, WITH SOME SUGGESTIONS IN REGARD TO THE HOLOGRAPHIC MOTHER, SOUL OF THE RAINBOW, AND THE HARMONY OF LIGHT WITH MARGINAL NOTES AND ILLUMINATIONS.

The live action Jem Movie is slated to be released in October 2015 with a cast that includes Molly Ringwald and Juliette Lewis. It’s based on the 1980’s cartoon series Jem and the Holograms (now streaming on Netflix), which was created by Hasbro to sell a line of dolls. The movie targets the nostalgia of Gen-Xers like myself and has sought to create a legitimate new version of the story with a lineup of reputable actors. As a longtime fan of the show, I am, of course, cranky about this. I’ve been rewatching the cartoon series in an attempt to catalogue and archive those elements that are most important to understanding holographic feminism. These archives make up The League for Holographic Music, a set of paratexts affiliated with the post-internet life of the cartoon show. The movie will reinscribe outdated modes of feminism, working against the League’s grassroots efforts to catalyze a holographic feminist movement.

The premise of the cartoon series concerns Jerrica Benton and her alter ego, Jem, a pop rock star who inherits a holographic computer, Synergy, after her father passes away. Jem and her band the Holograms have many adventures revolving around giving concerts, making movies and record albums, publishing fashion books, and many other artistic endeavors. They are constantly pitted against rival band The Misfits and their manager, Eric Raymond, whose dubious business practices jeopardize the health, sanity, and safety of Jem and the Holograms and the residents of the Starlight House, a halfway house for foster children run by Jerrica Benton.

Synergy introduces herself in the first episode as, “the ultimate audio visual entertainment synthesizer.” She changes the Holograms outfits before their performances or in between hurried moments of the day and creates mirages to distract the bad guys who are often trying to kidnap or harm Jem and the Holograms.

I imagine one precursor to Synergy could have been the color organ, an instrument with screens, much like television screens, that projected colors and shapes as music played. The colors and shapes corresponded in precise ways to the music notes being played. Many artisans experimented with versions of the color organ during the Victorian era. This one, built by Bainbridge Bishop in 1893, looks a lot like Synergy. (The title of this essay is borrowed from Bishop’s book A Souvenir of the Color Organ, with Some Suggestions in Regard to the Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light).

 colororgan

Synergy

Synergy

Still, Synergy may have more in common technically with a machine called the “Clavilux,” a device invented by Thomas Wilfred. According to the Handbook of Holography, the Clavilux, “consisted of various spot and floodlights controlled by rheostats and used prisms, filters, and projection screens….” The Clavilux was intended to display images in addition to just color, making it an important variant.

clavilux

The Clavilux and Bainbridge Bishop’s color organ were Victorian versions of MTV, a precursor to the music video, the genre that changed my generation’s viewing habits.

It was as a latchkey kid growing up in the 80’s that I was first introduced to the cartoon series Jem and the Holograms. Before coming home to Synergy after school each day, I was first met by a giant oak hutch with a 24-inch television encased behind a set of rolling wooden doors. It is important to note that parents (whether out of apathy, lack of awareness, or ambition) allowed my generation to swim in this new collective unconscious that was MTV. According to Vladimir Propp’s functions of a fairy tale, it is the absence of the parents that allows the hero to proceed with his/her adventure. The same is true for Jem and the Holograms; her story mirrors the story of the show’s intended audience, kids like me, left without parents. Through the course of the cartoon series, we learn that Jerrica’s father (Synergy’s creator) first intends to “broadcast live holographic music shows into every home in America” using his invention. After he learns that he is dying he adjusts his plan, to have Synergy serve as a mother, guide, teacher, and friend to Jerrica and her sisters (who are also band mates). He programs Synergy’s “matrix with the voice and likeness” of Jem’s mother who died years earlier in a plane crash.

I learned a lot from the TV, especially things my mother didn’t want me to know. The television became the Holographic Mother, who in her trinity (laser, beamsplitter, mirror) became omnipresent, summoned on demand. The Holographic Mother was the voice inside my head telling me to change the channel or turn it off. I didn’t always ignore it, even though she couldn’t reinforce her rules with physical presence. It is in part, because of this motherly role, I have begun to classify the hologram as a kind of cyborg, not an automaton.

Wikipedia.org - Hologram_diagram.JPG

Wikipedia.org – Hologram_diagram.JPG

laser=me

beam splitter=real mother

lens= my understanding of my mother’s rules about the television

mirror=my context

object=television, 2D image

hologram=Holographic Mother

The hologram existed in my mind; I embodied that voice, took it on, and became a mother to myself. Yet, the voice remained a separate and distinct creature, a holy ghost, a sound and logic with its own set of emotions and directives that brought the television’s two-dimensional technology into three. Michael Talbot explains this idea in his book The Holographic Universe: “Creating the illusion that things are located where they are not is the quintessential feature of the hologram.” Is that why the television made it appear that more people were in the house than ever were, to cover up the spooky (un)settling noises of our two-story condominium or the sound of the wind on hot afternoons? Is that why my sister and I used the television as an oracle to answer important questions about the day and our future lives, like whether we would we do our chores, or how much money would we have when we grew up? We never got simple answers. The Holographic Mother raised us with questions, with surreal, riddle-like answers.

To be clear, the Holographic Mother and television are not one in the same. Holographic Motherhood is what sometimes gets created in the transaction between the reader and the text. This transaction between reader and text is what creates a third dimension—the place where holographic motherhood can exist. (This transactional reading theory is an idea I co-opted from Louise Rosenblatt’s The Reader, The Text, The Poem. Roland Barthes refers to this same phenomenon as the “blind field” in Camera Lucida.)

***

Like the changing colors, light, and patterns projected by the color organs of previous centuries, Synergy uses Jem and the Holograms’ bodies to play out the of choice of colors, shapes, and textures she makes in selecting the band members’ outfits. The impulse to match sound and sight is a biological one. There is an empathic, human quality to Synergy’s technology. Synergy uses logic and imagination to analyze each girl’s personality and then selects appropriate clothes. She draws on the human traits of Jerrica’s mother to accomplish this and is an example of the mother who anticipates the child’s every need. These needs are unapologetically met and delivered holographically. She is synesthete and empath, light-filled cyborg.

This leads me to a question: How does Synergy keep the girls clothed on stage, or anywhere for that matter? For the holographic clothing (or any of Synergy’s holographic projections) to be seen, Jem/Jerrica uses “remote micro processors”—her Jemstar earrings—to project the holograms. It’s consistently hard to believe that she is able to project such large-scale mirages with such a small pair of earrings. It would have been more in keeping with 1980’s technology to create a holographic stage with all the necessary mirrors, lasers, reference beams, and other accouterment. However, this would restrict the narrative of the show too much, not to mention the bodies of women.

Jemstar earrings

Jemstar earrings

Jem / Jerrica Benton

Jem / Jerrica Benton

The skin is the largest organ of the human body. It is dressed and undressed with the eyes. In the case of Jem and the Holograms, the eyes of 1980’s boys. Synergy’s laser light may play interference, but other images exist between our imagination and the holographic projection.

In an interview, head writer Christy Marx mentions that the show was designed to appeal to girls but to prevent boys, who controlled the TV remotes, from changing the channel. To address this challenge, they added a holographic computer and a lot of action scenes to the narrative. Some may argue that another, perhaps more subliminal appeal for these boys would be the knowledge that in reality these girls may actually be wearing little or no clothing. The only thing standing between these young women’s naked bodies and the viewer is the laser light reflections of a holographic computer with enough power to be a defense industry secret.

For me, the wardrobe changes of Jem and the Holograms were actually central to the show’s narrative arc. The suspense actually didn’t center on the car chases and the airplane crashes, or what the characters weren’t wearing. The show centered around what combination of clothes the girls were wearing and for what occasion. What would Jem wear to ski in Colorado? Sight see in China? Produce and perform in a magic show? I found myself anticipating and relishing these wardrobe changes, constructing possible outfit combinations in my own mind prior to Synergy unleashing her lasers. The time and effort it takes to create these outfits in the viewer’s imagination is where the real pleasure of watching the show lies. It results in the viewer actually dressing Jem and the Holograms, rather than undressing.

Still, one can read Jem and her bandmates’ holographic fashion as a way to keep girls reliant on the machine/mother who dresses them. One can read the girls’ impulse to use such a powerful machine in such a frivolous way as anti-feminist in character, a set of dolls who have not fully realized their subjugated status, not only in the world, but also within their family unit. The girls’ choice to use Synergy as a wardrobe manager (she offers and demonstrates this skill to the girls in the first episode) makes it so fashion is not something Jem and her band mates have to think about, whether they wish to appropriate or subvert the trends of the day or fall in line with a uniform. This leaves them time to compose music, volunteer, run a major record label, travel the world, produce and direct their own movies, fix Synergy when she breaks, adopt children, help others and still enjoy fashion.

The fact that the Holograms’ wardrobe is not one of the constraints of their lives or even a defining aspect of their identity is a real asset. The ability to change their clothes frequently, to undefine their style, is not just a coping mechanism for dealing with an inequitable society or a political statement about their personal worth. The show suggests wearing fashionable clothes is both a survival skill and a desirable attribute of a happy life. Who or what’s to say this message isn’t so far off? (Two recent books that get at this same idea are Women in Clothes edited by Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, and Leanne Shapton and Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism by Linda M. Scott.)

Jem and the Holograms

Jem and the Holograms

It is certainly a luxury to have a holographic computer. It is also a luxury to have the time, energy, and resources to select one’s own clothing thoughtfully, in the same way that anticipating the girls’ outfit choices while viewing the show is so pleasing. But, Jem and the Holograms frequently aren’t afforded the luxury of time. They are often living in survival mode, coping with an emergency situation. Synergy is what allows them to materialize themselves both as agents in the creative and cultural marketplace as well as in their personal lives. While the television I grew up with was ubiquitous with basic channels being widely available, cable TV and MTV was a luxury and a resource for real parents to draw upon (or reject or be ambivalent towards). Conversely, Synergy is a one-of-a-kind machine. Jerrica Benton receives her, like a princess receives her crown, as a birthright.

***

In The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot explains that it is possible “for every portion of a piece of holographic film to contain all the information necessary to create a whole image.” When a holographic plate is cut, the whole image can still be projected using only a fragment of the film. This idea was tested by Karl Lashley, who adopted the hologram as a metaphor when doing his research on memory and the brain. He taught rats to run a maze, then surgically excised portions of their brains and retested them in order to determine if he had also cut away the localized section that contained the memory of the maze run. No matter what portion of the brain or how much Lashley took, the rats continued to be able to run the maze.

The hologram when cut retains the whole in every part. Fully realizing Holographic Motherhood requires understanding our memory works the same way. As Fanny Howe elucidates of memory and consciousness, “our memories are part of one great memory.” Nostalgia pricked from the lobes of babes. Nostalgia met with the luster and leanness of the future. An eternity happening now.

The essence of the Holographic Mother is ethereal but it has material properties. She is the body unmaking rather than securing its coherence and integrity. She enacts life as a souvenir of light, a three-dimensional sound, resounding. She is capable of pixelating and comingling the five senses in order to braid us all back to the mitochondrial DNA, biology’s supreme set of motherly directives, proof that god is woman. A woman who began to segment my life, neatly, into 30-minute episodes, which can be recalled, rerun, and spliced in a Technicolor of sentiments and language over and over. Each time a segment plays, it is the first time.

 

This is the first installment of Renee Angle’s four-part Jem and the Holographic Feminisms series. Subsequent installments will appear in eight-week intervals through October 2015.

Jem and the Holographic Feminisms (#1) was last modified: August 18th, 2015 by Renee Angle
claviluxcolor organholographic motherhoodjem and the hologramsJem and the Holographic Feminismsjem movie
0 comment
0
Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
Avatar
Renee Angle

Renee Angle's writing has been published in Western Humanities Review, The Volta's Heir Apparent, Diagram, Practice New Art + Writing, Sonora Review, EOAGH, I'll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing By Women, and in the chapbook Lucy Design in the Papal Flea (dancing girl press). She lives and works in Tucson, AZ where she is an archivist for The League of Holographic Music and an Education Programs Coordinator for The University of Arizona Poetry Center.

previous post
Comics I’ve Been Geeking Out On: The comics of our lives
next post
Why I Take Pictures of Food (and Post Them on Instagram)

You may also like

Custom-made badge of anthropomorphic fox bust in profile with the word KYELL behind him.

Name Tags #1: Fursonas

May 11, 2017

Broadway Went Dark: What Happens When Artists Lose their Medium

April 11, 2020

The Beast of LGBTQ+ Representation: How Disney’s New Beauty and the Beast Movie Reinforces Old Stereotypes

March 15, 2017

SAD GIRL by Zack Anderson

January 9, 2017
Facebook Twitter Instagram

Recent Comments

  • Lei Yu wow so beautifully written!

    Review – : once teeth bones coral : by Kimberly Alidio ·  January 18, 2021

  • Lisa S Thank you so much for your kind words and your feedback. I can only hope my story is able to help someone who needs it.

    WOVEN: This isn’t love ·  January 8, 2021

  • Ann Guy Thank you, Josh. And glad you didn’t get tetanus at band camp on that misguided day.

    A Way Back Home ·  December 24, 2020

Featured Columns & Series

  • The Birds
  • Dinnerview
  • WOVEN
  • Variations on a Theme
  • BLACKCACKLE
  • Literacy Narrative
  • COVID-19
  • Mini-Syllabus
  • Their Days Are Numbered
  • On Weather
  • Disarticulations
  • The Waters
  • Session Report series
  • Birdwolf
  • Comics I've Been Geeking Out On
  • Small Press Releases
  • Books I Hate (and Also Some I Like)
  • The Poetics of Spaces
  • Fog or a Cloud
  • Tales From the End of the Bus Line
  • 30 Years of Ghibli
  • Cooking Origin Stories
  • YOU MAKE ME FEEL
  • Ludic Writing
  • Best of 2019
  • The Talking Cure
  • Stars to Stories
  • DRAGONS ARE REAL OR THEY ARE DEAD
  • Foster Care
  • Food and Covid-19
  • LEAKY CULTURE
  • Jem and the Holographic Feminisms
  • D&D with Entropy

Find Us On Facebook

Entropy
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

©2014-2020 The Accomplices LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Read our updated Privacy Policy.


Back To Top