Doing the Fairy Tale Quest

Contesting the Author in the Video Game Jenny LeClue: Detectivú

in Girlhood Studies
Author:
Stephanie Harkin PhD Candidate, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4781-4891
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2022.150208
Keywords:
Bluebeard; curiosity; detective; gaming; interactive media; mobile phone; mystery
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Abstract

Despite the encouragement of women's and girls’ curiosity in matriarchal and oral fairy tale traditions, their patriarchal print production in Western Europe reframed this trait as undesirable. Fairy tale print productions also troubled the tales’ transformative and communal form in establishing versions that would receive ongoing duplication by attaching prominent authorial figures. In this article, I investigate the teen girl detective game as a format that reflects upon and updates these values. Taking Mografi's Jenny LeClue: Detectivú as my case study, I interpret the text as a postmodern fairy tale revision that unsettles the master narrative and the notion of the singular authorial figure. The game encourages the player's active investigatory participation while presenting a narrative that invites collaboration and a critique of the conservative author.

Contributor Notes

Stephanie Harkin (ORCID: 0000-0002-4781-4891) is a PhD candidate in the department of Media and Communications at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. Her research focusses on interactive designs of girlhood and coming-of-age themes in video games. She has previously published on girlhood and video games in Games and Culture (2020).

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Girlhood Studies

An Interdisciplinary Journal

Cover Girlhood Studies
Article Category:
Research Article
Page Count:
18
Keywords:
Bluebeard; curiosity; detective; gaming; interactive media; mobile phone; mystery
Print Publication Date:
01 Jun 2022
Online Publication Date:
01 Jun 2022
Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022

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