Does 'iCarly' Pick Up Where 'Clarissa' Left Off?

Now entering its second season on Nickelodeon, breakout hit and “Hannah Montana” rival “iCarly” has continued to carve out its own distinct place in tween hearts. Last Saturday an hour-long special of the show, “iDate a Bad Boy,” hit a ratings high with 6.5 million viewers. Not surprisingly, this celebratory announcement was soon followed by one introducing the upcoming iCarly video game to be released on Wii and Nintendo DS this fall. From the press release:

In the iCarly videogame, the possibilities are truly endless as players help Carly, Sam, Freddie and the other characters from the hit TV series craft all-new webisodes of the show in an original storyline designed specifically for the game… The innovative iCreate mode provides opportunities for gamers to add their own touches to the webisodes by swapping out props, characters, color schemes, audio, intros, outros and more.

While I have to admit I’ve never seen an episode, as a child of the nineties it’s hard not to read descriptions like this and flash back to Carly’s quirky, techy predecessor, Clarissa Darling of “Clarissa Explains It All” [played by Melissa Joan Hart]. During the course of an episode Clarissa would regularly whip up customized computer games to virtually play out her latest scheme, usually involving some type of revenge on her younger brother or getting her own car. And despite being completely unrealistic and worked in with hardly any explanation (no pun intended) of how she came to posses these programming skills, it was hard not to admire them. At the time, I would have gladly supplemented my CD-ROM collection of “Oregon Trail” and “Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego” with some version of Clarissa’s DIY gaming template.

Lucky for today’s tweens, their merchandising wish is the market’s command. But I think there’s more at stake here than just extending the iCarly franchise. The game (and the show) tap into something deeper that always drew me to Clarissa and, as I’ve mentioned before, has often troubled me with shows like “Hannah Montana”—realism. Sure, girls can (and should) pretend to be pop stars, and yes they can (and should) play games that encourage this fantasy. Still, it’s refreshing to see a premise and a game that inspires girls to set and reach more tangible, dare I say, marketable goals like creating and customizing their own web content. It just goes that one extra step past recognizing and celebrating the fact that girls are gamers, too, and embraces the reality that they might also be future game developers or web video producers.

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