[BONUS] Episode E - Nancy Drew (2007) Feat. Victoria Scott
On this extra special bonus episode of Be Gay Solve Crimes, we're investigating the beloved american classic Nancy Drew, joined by our own beloved american class act and dear friend Victoria Scott, host of the podcast Tran Girlismo!
Specifically, we're covering the 2007 eponymous film that literally none of us remember existing.
Join us as we give ourselves Precocious Darling Dysphoria, take turns dunking on a leather-jacketed 12-year-old boy who is somehow already locked on the path to getting Me Tooed, and Nova and Lucy get into an escalating arms race that threatens their very sanity.
Be Gay Solve Crimes are on Bluesky, where you can also find each of the team: November Kelly, Mia Mulder, and your local librarian Lucy, who writes all the music for the show.
If you're reading this, thanks so much for subscribing to the Patreon! It means the absolute world to us. Mia Mulder will return to us next week for Inspector Gadget 2.
Comments (60)
God rewatching teen movies from this era as an adult is crazy bc we really spent our formative years in a philosophical milieu that can be summed up as "its gay to be alive"
I would go for the Famous Five as the closest British Nancy Drew equivalent, featuring George, blatantly a trans boy
Listening to Nova sink into the Nancy slough of despond as the puns Nancy accrue
I think youd have a good time with The Kid Detective (2023)
Wrong episode lol
Lucy (aka Nancy Lu) was on fire this episode. Corky is the kind of awful boy that is Andrew Tate's primary audience. Remember that viral video of some children gleefully shouting that they hate women when they meet some manoshpere dickhead and he has a brief moment of horror as he realised what he was inflicting on these kids? (He then deciding to go right back to it.)
Getting reverse-nonced by a 12 year old like he's a damn isekai protagonist
"how many of these jokes do you have?" "Nancy Few" I grew up on Hardy Boys and my sister grew up on Nancy drew. Bought in bundled five volume sets from Sam's Club. I also bought some Hardy boy books released in the 2000s. I remember wondering "damn how old is Franklin W. Dixon?". In the 90s/00s books, the Hardy Boys get groomed by the CIA and Joe Hardy's girlfriend dies in a car bomb. I learned what jiujitsu was from the old books. There's a child detective themed episode in the latest Futurama season, and the voiceover keeps calling Amy Wong "the boyish Amy Wong" and she keeps reacting angrily And of course who can forget that one and Donald Glover kid private detective movie, whatever it was called. Mystery Team? The Nancy Drew going from pleasantville to the scary big city reminds me of early venture Brothers.
One of my fave things to do when I have the time is play Nancy Drew games while getting high on stream. I’m really bad at puzzles and it takes forever and I scream the entire time.
Victoria, as far as figuring out where her hometown in "another state" is, what if the people of their town are State of Jefferson separatists?
Alright, the hat bit or the white tie that's been mentioned so much elsewhere *mostly* didn't apply to me, but now I'm feeling very called out by Lucy's anachronistic fit observation. I'm pretty sure the profile on my Facebook account I haven't opened in ten years still shows me dressed like an old timey pugilist
"her moccasins were stolen" Oh no, her Nancy Shoes!!!
I feel Nova so hard... A nancy Chew... the horrid creatures
Oh there's those Alfred Hitchcock books with the boy detectives that get a Rolls Royce with a driver & they manage to con their way into more miles
"Did Nancy Drew serve.... yes, Nancy Slew"
Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb
This isn't so much a future episode suggestion as a potential reference text for future episodes, but if you haven't already heard of "The Girl Sleuth," by Bobbie Ann Mason, it's a look at various depictions of, well, what it says on the tin, but specifically how different fictional teen girl detectives defy the gender norms of their time or really, REALLY reify them, to the extent of at least one series (Honey Bunch) basically doubling as a (horrifyingly racist) primer for How to Become The Worst Kind of Southern White Woman. It's been a hot minute since I last read it, but if memory serves it predominantly skews towards US detective series, and it also has a section on how the original Nancy Drew novels got updated with each generation that passed since the 1930s.
Caught perfectly between the trans masc jokes and the trans femme growing up experience so really getting sniped on all sides
Love the intensity of flirting between Lucy and Nova at any and every point
delightful episode, as always.
Will you guys ever cover life is strange? The first one of those games is actually a teen detective story, even if the lesbian time travel aspect of it is also very significant.
me wondering whether max caulfield possibly had an influence on my gender as i load more film into my camera in front of my wall-mounted collection of blue morpho butterflies and also i'm a girl now
Listening to BGSC talk about Nancy Drew reminded me of the Canadian mystery film The Kid Detective (2020), which is about an Encyclopedia Brown style kid detective. He is a hero in his small town until he fails to solve a missing person case. Smash cut twenty years later, and he has never recovered. The Kid Detective is now a 30-something never-do-well slacker who cannot get on with his life. Nobody respects him. He doesn’t know who he is or what he wants, and then he catches a break in the missing person case. For some reason, typing this up has reminded me of another Canadian mystery film that may or may not fit the BGSC criteria. Disappearance at Clifton Hill (2019) is about a girl who witnesses a child abduction, but nobody believes her because nobody reports the kid missing. Smash cut to twenty years later, and she is a never-do-well slacker that nobody respects. She has become an unrepentant liar because nobody believes she saw an abduction. Things get wild when she catches a break on the missing kid and starts investigating.
Ok I'm feeling better about the hat thing but I was feeling very called out for a while. You're right, that's exactly it, uncomfortably with modern gender presentation leading to anachronism. I've been calling it "having the Beau Brumell who lives in your head taken out and shot."
crucially uncomfortable with the contemporary norms of your AGAB specifically. every “guy” i know who chooses to dress anachronistically would happily dress in modern fashion styles if they were women, and vice versa. bodes real poorly for Jacob Rees Mogg, i’ll tell you that much
Idaho mentioned! And how much it sucks mentioned! Also, as someone whose experience with Nancy Drew is limited to a few episodes of the CW show it's very funny that the first thing said about her on this ep is "she does not fuck".
My first exposure was the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (1977) show. I hunted down whatever streaming service it was on just last year and tried to watch an episode. I survived maybe 10 minutes before I had to turn it off. Sigh, the things I liked or at least watched uncritically as a kid are staggeringly awful to me today
there were nancy a few times i was howling laughing at this episode
getting chloroformed is enrichment for Nancy.
she really does get knocked out SO many times in those books
Justice for Nancy Proust joke
The "Pre-pubescent boy who's a sexpest for older girl" has GOT to be my most hated children's media character trope. I'm convinced the old-ass writers and producers are the only ones who are holding this type of character up and it's like they decided together that he ALWAYS has to be there and they treat him like he's the crowd favorite even though nobody likes him. "Well SOMEONE'S gotta perv on the pretty girl because that's how we know girls are pretty but this is for kids so just make it a young child so it's not creepy. Also he's pathetic but you kinda wanna root for him, you know? If you think about it that nearly grown woman is kind of a bitch for not giving the 10 year old a chance. Come on! Just kiss him one time!"
I'm wondering if it's downstream of 16 candles?
Taking a big risk here and asking for a Sam Vimes episode, desperately hoping that the monkeys paw will not curl and give us a The Watch (2020) episode instead
As a trans man who started expressing this very early in life before most people expected they'd ever have to think about trans people beyond a gag in a movie or a documentary about Strange People, my mom's main reference for comprehending what I was going through was definitely George/Georgina from the Enid Blyton books she read as a kid. Except she kind of expected me to be like George/Georgina in the way that I'd magically Become Normal JUST at the point where it goes from being a quirky kid phase to Actual Queer Implications. No such luck, mother.
The section on dressing anachronistically shot me square through the heart as a former boy who desperately tried to make trench coats work and did own a top hat.
Bill has asked me to let you ladies know that he loves the show but he'd prefer if it was in an RSS feed like many of November's other podcasts so he can listen to bonus episodes through his bespoke podcast client. Much regards and God Bless America.
tell bill he can find the option to generate his own bespoke RSS feed via the “Add To Podcast App” button
Lucy's continual horror references appear. We the people (me) , demand a slasher covered - Donald Pleasance in Halloween is a detective
Gramsci drew was inspireddddd
As a child i saw this movie in theaters and i walked out. It radiated a hateful caucasity. It spoiled any interest i couldve had in nancy drew.
In case you're unaware, in the entire third act of the 1938 film Nancy Drew... Detective, Ted Nickerson is dressed in a nurse's uniform with a skirt and a starched cap.
oh this is absolutely next on the list for when we return to nancy drew in future
Historically the UK "not quite definable Youth detective" belonged to Enid Blyton so it's probably best not to enquire too far about where the UK version of Nancy Drew was
That explanation of future trans women who wear anachronistic clothing doing so to avoid contemporary standards of masculinity was one of those moments where you have an outside voice explain your whole deal to you - and as someone who was essentially accidentally named by her friend, I love it
happy to be of service 🫡💛
I am once again bugging people to watch Los Angeles Plays Itself.
Fantomette?!??
*Leo dicaprio pointing(dot)jpg* rush mentioned, she just like me fr
Well I mean I AM an artist but…. …….I also have a big old case of the ADHDs
Nancy Drew wearing loafers is sacrilege. I remember the originals when she had an infinite collection of smart pumps in a variety of neutral colours perfect for sneaking around dark secret passages in the middle of the night.
Oh, btw, right now there's a season of the magical girl giga-franchise Pretty Cure (where every few years or so there's a new "generation", like Power Rangers), which has a detective theme. It's a show aimed at little girls, so I figure the gender thing might be fun to dig into.
That does it, I'm getting into Precure
Nancy á la recherche du temps perdrew
Could paint u a vintage Nancy Drew style poster/logo if desired, is the idea to show all 3 hosts investigating a Mystery?
Esoteric Ebb Mentioned!
I grew up on Encyclopedia Brown mysteries. Which also had a Tomboy that was the muscle for the physically weaker detective.
The Encyclopedia Brown books resonated with me as a Pleasure to Have in Class kid. You, the reader, have a chance to solve the case! By knowing the right bit of trivia!
The Expanse confirmed !!!!!!
Nancy Drew? I sure hope she did.