That same dedication permeates “How Rock & Roll Infiltrated Saturday Morning Cartoons,” an unofficial JemCon kickoff panel discussion and Q&A. Newark has even compiled a “Jem Drag Stars” playlist on her YouTube channel, featuring detailed makeup tutorials and drag performances themed around the characters. There’s also Truly Outrageous: A Jem Fan Film, a Kickstarter-funded live-action short named after a key line in the chorus of the show’s theme song, and a Spain-made short film, MisfitSized. T-shirts mash up Jem characters with art in the styles of Duran Duran, Queen, Mötley Crüe, Poison and the Misfits (who share a name with the Holograms’ rival band on the show). Jem lives on via fan art and detailed websites dedicated to the brand. Thirty years after the cartoon initially went off the air, and three years after a poorly received live-action feature-film reboot, the Jem universe - or “multi-universes,” in the words of Samantha Newark, who provided the speaking voice for both Jem and Jerrica on the cartoon - remains a vibrant, creative space. It whisked me away.”Īngel Olsen Preps Eighties Covers Album, Drops 'Gloria' had a romance, but it was never the whole point of the story. “Here was a heroine that owned her own business, was a humanitarian, ran an orphanage, took care of her sister. In hindsight, Turner, who sports a detailed, full-color tattoo of Jem on her right calf and ink depicting a rival bandleader named Pizzazz on her left calf, also recognizes how the show informed her feminist worldview. “I think I identified a little bit with Jem losing her parents.” “It was such an escape, and so different from the regular narratives that you had about mom and dad,” Turner says of the cartoon, which follows the adventures of a philanthropic-minded orphan named Jerrica - proprietor of an orphanage for teenage girls, the Starlight House - who has a rock-star secret identity/alter-ego, Jem. One Christmas, she woke up to find he had bought her every single Jem-related doll available at the time other times, he would set an alarm and wake her up early so she could watch the show before school. She grew up with a single father who supported her love for all things Jem. But on this particular late August weekend, she’s in Cleveland, attending JemCon, an annual gathering for devotees of the colorful Eighties cartoon Jem and the Holograms. By day, Jennifer Turner works in law enforcement in Vancouver.