The Archies First Look: Who Used to Read the Comics? Who Likes the trailer? Who Blindly Trusts Anything Zoya Akhtar Makes to Be Good?

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Thank you Kirre for the heads up on the Archies trailer!!!! A lovely think to think about on a lovely Sunday morning.

Trailer! It relies surprisingly little on people knowing the comics. There’s the reference to Pop Tates, but that’s really it. No Jughead hat, no blonde and brunette, not even a Mr. Weatherbee. It’s more the vibe of the comics, milkshakes and bicycles and dances. I’m very curious what Zoya is going to do with all of this, if it’s going to be slightly surreal and homage-y the whole time, or if it’s going to just use Riverdale and Archie Comics as a jumping off point to tell an original story among teenagers?

Now, let’s talk Archie Comics!!! I grew up reading them, we had a family friend a few years older than us who gave us her hand me down collection, and then they were sold at the grocery store check out counter and if we were good at the store, Mom would buy one for us.

The thing that’s a little different about Archie Comics is that they have the “digests” which bring together stories from all eras. If you get, say, a Betty & Veronica digest, you would have half a dozen separate Betty & Veronica stories in one book, all from different eras of the comic, all mixed together. The world of Archies existed in every era simultaneously and never really changed. Whether a story was written in 1962 or 1992, it was still about high school and cars and dating.

Archie comics started at a very particular time in America. The idea of “teenagers” is primarily an American invention and it came from the 1940s then really took off in the 1950s. Before, you were a child, and then you were an adult. There wasn’t this limbo time in the popular consciousness when you were both at once. It’s real simple to see that shift if you just look at high school graduation rates. In 1930, only 29% of American youth graduated high school. Most of them dropped out, got married, started working, were adults (I have a couple uncles who did this). By 1940, that number had jumped to over 50%. By 1964, it was over 75%. For the first time, you had a mass culture of young adults who were still in school, still living at home, but old enough to date, drive, have part time jobs, have disposable income, do things. Thus, teenager culture!

When Archie Comics started, the characters weren’t exactly teenagers either, they were more kids torn between staying children and having crushes. Jughead’s whole “I don’t like girls” thing was because he hadn’t hit the girl-liking stage yet. Archie and Betty were best friends as children, but now they were in the “crush” age and he liked Veronica. And so on and so forth. Within a few years, however, teen culture exploded and suddenly there were fashions, songs, activities all specific to “teenagers”. And Archie comics jumped on the bandwagon.

I never really related to the specifics of the Archie storylines. Like, two girls who are friends but also competitors for a guy is a premise I could accept in fiction, but not sympathize with. However, I very much enjoyed these stories of “big kids” who DID things. They went to school, they had chores, they had siblings, they had parents, just like I did. But they also were involved in local political issues, volunteered, organized, were friends with Santa Claus, invented things, traveled in time, and so on. That was really cool! That you could be a “kid” but still do all this stuff and have all these adventures and things.

And that’s what, I hope, Zoya is going to try to achieve in her film. The feeling of being not quite an adult yet, but still caring about things, trying to make a difference, DOING real things. Maybe even setting aside your little personal storylines for the Big Reasons (I always liked how Reggie was never the Big Bad, if a developer was trying to tear down Pop Tates or something, Reggie was on the right side of things).

I do find it interesting how drastically she changed things to bring that teenage vibe to an Indian setting. For instance, no blondes. It would have been easy to give a platinum blonde dye job to one of the characters, but that wouldn’t have been a “Betty” character thing to do, so her Betty is a natural dark haired character. Also, no parents that I can see. It’s a hill station boarding school (I think), an Indian familiar concept of middle-class high school but not the same as it would be in America for the same middle-class kids. I think Zoya is going for the feel of Indian in the 1960s when pop culture was beginning to emulate that “teenage” vibe from the West, and the Archie comics were first popular.

28 thoughts on “The Archies First Look: Who Used to Read the Comics? Who Likes the trailer? Who Blindly Trusts Anything Zoya Akhtar Makes to Be Good?”

  2. The boarding school is usually the privileged teenagers… but Zoya has said somewhere how those are the stories she is able to tell.

    Gosh i don’t know if I’m going to be able to watch this, it triggers traumatic memories from my teenage when i was trapped in my family home. I even tried to make a case to go to boarding school and they wouldn’t let me

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  3. I think I’m in the camp where I have blind trust in Zoya.

    I grew up reading the Archie comics at my grandparent’s house in the summers, and at one friend’s house whose older sister had a collection. I was always fond of them. I bought a bunch of used ones for my boys to read, and they hate them. In fairness, I kinda don’t see why I liked them so much, but then I wasn’t reading them as an adult or even a teenager, I was reading them as a kid. Thankfully my own teenage friendships were much more real than the female ones depicted in the comic.

    In the comic the kids are never seriously worried about money or food, putting them into a boarding school in India makes a lot of sense. A boarding school eliminates a lot of familial stresses and just lets you focus on the friendships like the comic did. And I full on support the lack of blondes.

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    • Yeah, I don’t think of the Archie kids as super privilaged, but probably in terms of life experience middle class America=privilaged India. They had a certain level of freedom from worry and ability to explore as teens.

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  4. I am with Genevieve. I trust Zoya and Reema. I don’t mind if they bring in some teenage drama/romance into the film but I see them also bringing in some serious issues with the protests.

    I love the vibe and the music. I love that the characters are not exactly like their American counterparts. I love that there are no blondes. Although, Margaret, I am pretty sure I saw Jughead wear a hat — just not like the ones from the comics. It gives me hope that Zoya and Reema will Indianize this in the right away.

    It’s making me nostalgic and so so happy. AHHH! I am so excited!

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  5. I do blindly trust Zoya. The comics were such a big part of what it meant to grow up in America, accessible to everyone, you could inject your own meaning. I liked the back and forth in time that the digests embodied. I feel like this film could easily spawn a series that spanned different times as well (has that been established yet?) so I’m delighted. I also like that so far we’re just seeing Suhana as part of an ensemble. Let us get to know her apart from her family legacy!

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  7. Pingback: The Archies First Look: Who Used to Read the Comics? Who Likes the trailer? Who Blindly Trusts Anything Zoya Akhtar Makes to Be Good? – News Hour 24/7

  8. I really like the look and feel of that trailer. Combine that with the Zoya factor, and I’m quite interested to watch it.
    I’ve never read even a single issue of Archie, though. I only know it via TV tropes, where “Betty and Veronica” is the name for their kind of love triangle.

    Speaking of : Filmikudhi, I’m sorry to report that my daughter has already been unfaithful to your son. As soon as a pretty new face shows up in the sandbox – and he only speaks Telugu so far, all the better for her to boss around.
    They were so cute when they started kissing.

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      • You’re right, of course. This type of “sandbox love” (the German term is just too appropriate) never turns into true romance. The chances are much better for someone she hasn’t actually met yet.

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    • I love this! Also, your daughter’s personality seems to fit my son’s type. There are two little girls at daycare who are clearly smarter than him and definitely boss him around and he AODORES them. Daycare calls them his two girlfriends, since they are constantly hugging and pulling him and Mr. Toddles is perfectly comfortable letting them boss him around.

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    • Oh, look at us matching up our kids in arranged marriages from the get go! My husband has a strong set of high school friends and most of us had our first kids within a year and a half of eachother (age 32-35 for the adults) and we totally did this. There were more boys than girls in the baby crew so we fought over the female babies. Now the kids are 14. Now we try to pretend this never happened, but when I read these comments, it all comes back to me!

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      • We grew up with the kids of my parents’ best friends. The boy was my sister’s age, so everyone would always pair them up. He has now married another woman of the same slightly unusual name – and we consider him and his sister almost – cousins.

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  9. I think the trailer had a homage to the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai gazebo scene. The trailer looks fine, but all the new kids seem to be styled very similarly in their debut movies now. It’s uncanny.

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  10. I also have blind trust in Zoya, just like I have in Karan Johar (I actually liked Kalank and saw what he was doing there…though I do feel like this is his SLB phase we’re in now!). With Zoya everything she’s done I’ve loved (and tangentially I also love Reema’s solo work with Talaash and Gold…she may be low-key more interesting in her choices than Zoya).

    As for the Archies entry point…never read one in my life! I only got into comics a few years ago and then focused most of my energies on reading Saga and a few of the more feminist superheroines like Batwoman and Ms. Marvel. However, I’ve always been curious about the reboot of the Archies by Mark Waid with Fiona Staples artwork. I think I had the first volume but never got into them…maybe need to try again.

    I was watching Zoya’s interview with Anupama yesterday and she was talking about immersing the newcomers in a filmmaking book camp and then making them watch a lot of 60s musicals and musicians to get them in this mode for filming. Looks like her meticulous planning and direction paid off completely. This isn’t a genre I’m automatically drawn to, but the look of this film is right on point immediately. I think the cast looks great (and it’s so nice to see a whole bunch of fresh faces at once).

    Now if she and her team could just wrap up Made in Heaven season 2!!!!

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  11. Pingback: The Archies First Look: Who Used to Read the Comics? Who Likes the trailer? Who Blindly Trusts Anything Zoya Akhtar Makes to Be Good? - Siyal News

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