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Slave of the Clock
Publication 17 July 1982 – 30 October 1982 (skipped an episode in Tammy 25 September 1982)
Artist: Maria Barrera
Writer: this Tammy story is credited to Jay Over, who also wrote Jinty‘s long-running school soap opera, “Pam of Pond Hill”. As we will see, there are also a few thematic similarities between this story and others in Jinty, raising intriguing questions about what else Jay Over may have written in this comic.
Plot: Alison Thorne is a talented dancer, but that’s not the main focus of her interest; she’s a very active girl who enjoys all sorts of things, such as art and socialising with her friends. Dancing is great fun – the first thing we hear from Alison is “Dancing makes me feel good from top to toe!” – but we also hear her think straight afterwards “I’ll have to get a move on if I’m to make it to the Youth Club on time!” In short, she’s a happy-go-lucky girl who isn’t driven by ambition or focused on talent. This isn’t a problem to her, or to her parents either, and it wouldn’t be an issue for most people. Her ballet teacher Miss Dempster, though, has ambitions on Alison’s behalf (and some ambitions for her own fame as a teacher too). Dempster takes her pupil along to creepy Miss Margolia, who promptly hypnotises Alison so that the ticking of a clock will make her think of dancing… and only of dancing… as immediately shown when some friends come round to Alison’s house the next morning and put a clock to her ear to wake her up.
Thereafter, any ticking clock will not only force Alison to dance, but also to lose awareness of her surroundings. That first time, her friends leave her dancing, because she pays no attention to them, and she doesn’t even realise they have been and gone. At the next dance class, Miss Dempster is annoyed and disappointed to see that Alison is still not giving her whole-hearted attention to the class, but then she doesn’t know yet what the real key to Alison’s slavery is – the ticking clock. Another player is about to join the story, though – a girl called Kathy, who has sadly been injured and cannot herself dance any more. Alison, fairly nobly to be honest, thinks to herself that she should be careful to take Kathy’s mind off dancing by focusing on other activities. Once again, a ticking clock – this time a wristwatch – makes Alison dance at an inopportune moment – this time, when Kathy arrives. Not surprisingly, all present think Alison is just showing off in front of Kathy, very cruelly.
Alison manages to smooth over the awkwardness and persuade Kathy that she will have fun staying at their house. I expect she would do, to, but at the same time, Miss Dempster is on the phone to Madame Margolia asking what can have gone wrong with the hypnotism – and as a result, installing a damn great cuckoo clock into her dance studio… Alison nearly doesn’t hear the clock at all as she is keenly getting involved with the local youth club show for which she has firmly ruled out dancing as an option, but she has to go around town putting up posters, and Miss Dempster gets her into the studio on that basis. And of course as soon as she hears the clock, off she goes again…
This sets the pattern for the upcoming plot: Kathy gets crosser and more upset because she thinks she is being messed around, Alison gets more upset because she is mysteriously blacking out and finding herself aching the next day as if she has danced for hours, and Miss Dempster is gleeful because she is getting her way. There is a temporary moment of guilt on the ballet teacher’s part when she feels bad about making Alison dance to her command, but as soon as the prospect of a rich new pupil arises, she gets Alison to perform once again (with a ticking clock around her neck). Not that this works out the way Dempster expects – Alison is put in positive danger by her dancing unaware of her surroundings (Kathy has to rescue her from possibly falling into a swimming pool) and of course Kathy and Alison are thus enabled to band together and realise what must be happening, unlikely though it seems. (I don’t think the rich pupil was very impressed by the relentless and absorbed dancing either! so probably no win for la Dempster on that front either.)
Alison’s parents don’t believe the wild story that the two girls bring to them, of course, but the two friends go off to find and confront Madame Margolia. But Dempster meets them outside the house, and tells them that Madame Margolia has been taken ill – and died! Will Alison never escape the curse of the ticking clock? Seemingly not – even if she is not dancing all the time, her parents are now resorting to taking her to hospital for mental treatment – and a sticking wheel on a hospital trolley triggers her off dancing again, so perhaps the curse is even getting stronger. However, it is in the hospital that they find Madame Margolia – seriously ill, but not dead (what a surprise to find that Miss Dempster lied – not!). Not that they can do anything to contact her, because Alison is whisked off to see the (very unsympathetic) doctor, who says that all this forced dancing is purely in her mind, because she is scared of failing her dance exams – and therefore her parents make her take more dance lessons, with – guess who? Miss Dempster of course. Alison pleads to do her exams with any other teacher rather than her tormentor, but her father replies: “Considering the cruel accusations you’ve made against her, I think Miss Dempster’s a fine person to take you back and help you.” So not only has she to face the cause of her problems, she even has to be grateful to that person?! That’s a nasty twist.
In fact the lessons go surprisingly well, though of course at first Alison is trembling like a leaf and hardly fit to dance. Miss Dempster is feeling guilty again and forebearing to use the power of the clock, and Alison gradually relaxes more and enjoys dance again. Temptation falls in Miss Dempster’s path once again though – can she get Alison into the International Ballet School, where it’s been her dream to have a pupil? By now we know how weak la Dempster’s will is, of course. And yes, the climax of the story is that although Alison had started to happily believe she was cured of the dancing fits, instead she is once again made to dance, for her teacher’s benefit not her own. This time the International Ballet School judges clearly reject Alison’s mechanical, hypnotic dancing, making it very clear just how misguided Miss Dempster’s actions are on all fronts – and a surprise guest appears in the form of a wheel-chair bound Madame Margolia. Alison is finally cured, though Margolia and Dempster require the two friends’ silence as their part of the bargain. There is a last reward for faithful sidekick Kathy though – the limp she has had since her injury is psychosomatic, so Margolia is able to cure her of it with one last application of (benign) hypnotism.
Thoughts: There are some silly aspects to this story – hypnotism is intrinsically an over-the-top trope, and this has the hypnotic subject nearly dancing to her death, which can strike the reader as absurd. On closer read, though, it is a pretty disturbing story, not to say chilling.
The main feature of it is perhaps that it is a ‘grownups know best’ story: protagonist Alison is quite happy as she is, and there is objectively nothing wrong with her, but a grown-up has other ideas of what’s best, and rides rough-shod over the girl protagonist’s clearly-expressed desires and aims. Miss Dempster thinks that it is a waste that Alison doesn’t use her dancing talent; in just the same way, Susie Cathcart’s grandmother thinks that Susie should be using her intellect rather than her gymnastic skill, and so makes her into the “Prisoner of the Bell“. Similarly, headmistress Purity Goodfellow uses her mystic drug to turn the schoolchildren of Edenford into a paradise along the lines that she deems best – even if the girls need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the infirmary where she will administer the drug. I could continue with more examples – for instance “Battle of the Wills” also has a determined grandmother who makes her granddaughter practice hated ballet rather than the gymnastics that she loves, though no mind-control is seen in that story. It is not the most frequent story theme in this comic, but you can see how it would strike a chord with the readers. It’s striking not only that the girl character expresses her desires clearly and unmistakably, but also that the grown-up simply dismisses them as foolish, worthless, clearly unacceptable – and other grown-ups are likely to be persuaded into this view too, even if they had started out on the side of the (actually perfectly nice and normal) protagonist.
Of course, the grown-up is pretty clearly shown not to have known best, in the end. As with Miss Dempster, their manipulations clearly fail on their own terms, and don’t produce the desired result even if they had seemed promising initially – free will does triumph over coercion, though it’s a long road in getting there. That’s pretty subversive to me, in a kids’ comic – it’s not just saying that grownups can get it wrong, but that they can positively be against you even when they’re not obviously evil. Dempster is very chilling – she is not as witchy-looking as Madame Margolia (a stately crone if ever I saw one), but she just doesn’t seem to care about Alison, except in flashes that are overcome all-too-easily. It’s a proper emotional abuse story, done quite strikingly. Dempster persuades herself that it’s for the right reasons, or that it will be worth it in the end, but not only does she ignore Alison’s stated wishes and aims, she disregards the pleas and the begging that the girl is driven to by the end. Lies and the use of her power for her own ends – Dempster does not look or act conventionally evil, never descending to cackling, but she is inhumanly self-absorbed nevertheless. Madame Margolia is far from innocent (quite apart from having applied the hypnotism in the first place, she also demands silence as her payment for taking it off, which is pretty much barefaced cheek on her part) but she can see the cost of the slavery much more clearly than her younger associate. If Dempster ever got the power to do hypnosis herself, I would be far more worried for the fictional world than with it staying in Margolia’s hands!
A Resource on Jinty: Artists, Writers, Stories 
Glad to see Slave of the Clock is here now. There were two comments in Tammy over the drawing of ballet. One reader, who said she was a dancer, said she was impressed with how accurate it was. But another reader wrote in to disagree, citing the example of the first panel above, which was reprinted above the first letter. Certainly the ballet is very badly drawn in that panel, but in other panels in the story it looked more beautiful and accurate.
The rich girls’ parents were more impressed with Alison’s dancing and took Dempster straight on board. But then they didn’t see Alison dancing non-stop and the girl kicking her out. The girl doesn’t mention it to her parents either. But I wonder if she was so keen on Dempster as her parents were after that.
Even ballet has commented on how too much dancing can be bad for you, especially if it is forced. In “Giselle”, there were the Willis, who are spirits of girls who had died because of broken romance. In revenge, they force men to dance until they die from exhaustion.
I thought it was cheek that Margolia blackmailed Alison into staying quiet when she says she is going to the police over the matter, by saying she would not release Alison from the power if she did.
“Dracula’s Daughter” was another ‘grownups know best story’. Mr Graves is using strong-armed tactics to force his ideas of education down a school’s throat, and even thrusts it on the teachers, butting in on their lessons and trying to force them to teach things his way. But at a parents’ meeting, the parents come out on his side, saying their kid needed discipline and such.
Glad to see Slave of the Clock is here now.
Yes, it took me a while to get to it – it was shaming me every time I looked at my Drafts! I was glad to get it up, it was an interesting re-read.
I wonder if Jay Over wrote “Dracula’s Daughter” too.
There are a few moments in this story where Dempster does look truly evil. One is when she is driving home from the rich family, all full of triumph at the success of her plan. The girls try to stop her to give the exhausted Alison a lift, but she just drives by, thinking she does not need Alison anymore now she’s got what she wanted.
Another is when she thinks she has the power to make Alison dance. She is all full of glee, thanking Margolia and dropping by Alison’s place, telling her she has the power to make her dance, so it’s no use fighting her.
The last is at the International Ballet School, where Dempster is watching Alison from the wings, anticipating triumph that Alison will pass the audition and she will achieve her dream to have a pupil at the school. But she is brought back to earth pretty quickly when she is told Alison has failed! She is furious, demanding they take another look at the way Alison is dancing. But then Margolia tells Dempster that dancing like a clockwork doll is not what they want at all. And it proves, once and for all, that the power of the clock is not the way to develop Alison’s talent into a professional dance.
It was also revealed that Margolia has used the “power of the clock” on other students in the past, which had nothing to do with Dempster. So she had no regard for students’ feelings or wishes either, or for the ramifications of interfering with someone’s mind.
Now, I am going to be out for a bit because I am working on a new piece of OuBaPo.
Now, I am going to be out for a bit because I am working on a new piece of OuBaPo.
Looking forward to that!
This was one of my favourite stories; I couldn’t wait for the next instalment.
It is a bit ironic (and funny) that this serial was replaced by another dancing story, though a more lighthearted one. This was “Father’s Footsteps” where the fathers of two families feud over dancing: Morris dancing vs Highland dancing. Their daughters, who are friends, try to make them see eye to eye.
It must have been a thrilling read!
There certainly have been loads of stories of girls being forced by their parents into doing ballet, music or other activities because it’s what the parent/guardian wants and has no thought for what the girl wants. In some cases, parents force the girl into the activity even when she lacks the talent for it (unlike Alison) and would never make the star the parent wants her to be. I don’t think there was much in Jinty on this type of theme, come to think of it. DCT cranked them out in quantity though.
This is a rare ballet serial I have seen that does not have “ballet”, “ballerina”, “dance” or “dancer” in the title. In fact, there is no reference to ballet or dancing in the title. The only other one I recall was “Jill’s Only Joy” from Tammy (the only time I saw John Armstrong draw a ballet story), but could there be others?
It’s true, they are mostly very clearly signalled aren’t they. I do have thoughts some day of writing a post about the most usual ways that stories were named (very focused around and descriptive of the main characters usually).
Four years before “Slave of the Clock”, there was another story in Tammy about being hypnotised into doing ballet to ticking instruments, “Dancer Entranced”. Trina Carr’s father pushes her into ballet (in an over-enthusiastic sort of way rather forceful and demanding, which is more often the case) because he believes she’s inherited her mother’s genius for it. But Trina just seems to have two left feet. Then, after an encounter with a hypnotist, she can dance brilliantly whenever his metronome is ticking. Or so she thinks. In the end Trina discovers she really is a brilliant dancer. She just needed confidence, and the hypnotism was imaginary.
I wonder if this story was Jay Over too? It certainly was a popular story and was one of my favourites.
Oh, and Tammy’s last ballet story, “Lonely Ballerina” (not counting “I’m Her – She’s Me!”, which had ballet elements), reunited the creative team from “Slave of the Clock”.