The movie The Parent Trap (Meyers, 1998), starring Lindsay Lohan, held an important place in my childhood. If I were to guess, I would say I have seen The Parent Trap (Meyers, 1998) upwards of fifty times throughout my life so far. Even with all these viewings, though, I had never seen the original version of this movie, The Parent Trap (Swift, 1961) starring Hayley Mills, until last week.
Both The Parent Trap (Swift, 1961) and The Parent Trap (Meyers, 1998) follow the story of twin girls who show up at the same camp, not having known the other one existed. During their time at camp, in both movies, the girls get in trouble and are sent to the “Isolation Cabin” where they live with just the two of them for the rest of the summer. After some time of hating the other, the girls begin talking and realize that they, in fact, have the same parents, the same birthday, and the same face. The girls then hatch a plan to secretly switch places so each can live with the parent they have never met.
In both movies the differences seem to surround unimportant aspects of the plot, but when inspected further, are interesting and important. The first main difference the viewer notices is the names. Each version of the movie uses names for its characters that are popular in that time period. The different names make it more difficult to compare the two movies without getting confused. In The Parent Trap (Swift, 1961) the main characters are named Sharon and Susan. Sharon was raised in Boston with her mother, while Susan was raised in California with her father (Swift, 1961). In the remake, the main characters are Hallie and Annie. Annie was raised in England with her mother, while Hallie was raised in California with her father (Meyers, 1998). In both cases, the daughter who is living with the mother was raised in a more proper household. Sharon in the 1961 version becomes Annie in the 1998 adaptation, while Susan in the original becomes Hallie in the remake.
The most stark difference between the two renditions is the way the male gaze is present in the writing (Ziesler, 2008). The male gaze is defined as, “by positioning women as nothing more than objects to be looked at, sexualized, and made vulnerable, the male unconscious reassures itself that, really, it has nothing to fear from women” (Ziesler, 2008). Once the girls leave camp, acting in the place of their sister, they often get confused and say the wrong thing (Swift, 1961). When Sharon (acting as Suzan living with her dad) mixes up her accent or begins saying things that don’t make sense, the father brushes it off as his daughter just being silly or hysterical (Swift, 1961). If the father had just listened to his daughter and paid attention, he would have figured out that Sharon was living in his house rather than Suzan. In this situation, the male gaze blinded the father from the truth that the girls had switched places.
In The Parent Trap (Swift, 1961), the girls have a dance with a nearby boys camp. The Parent Trap (Meyers, 1998) version switches this part of the movie with a poker game among the girls at the camp. These differences show the accepted activities at a girls camp during each time period that the movies were made. In 1961, to be embarrassed in front of a group of young boys is the worst thing imaginable. However, in 1998 Meyers took the emphasis away from the approval of boys, and replaced it with personal pride over winning a poker game.
Furthermore, some of the iconic aspects of the more recent adaptation (Meyers, 1998) were not part of the original version (Swift, 1961). When getting dropped off at camp, Annie in The Parent Trap (Meyers, 1998) does a long and elaborate handshake with her butler. This handshake made its way into pop culture as young girls learned it with their friends to show their love for the movie. In the original movie, there is no such handshake or anything like it. The handshake was too unladylike to include in the 1961 version. Swift did not want to encourage other young girls to act in such a manner.
After watching the original movie, there are some parts in the more recent adaptation that make more sense. Stuart Hall (1997) would consider this to be intertextuality, which he defines as the “accumulation of meanings across different texts, where one image refers to another, or has its meaning altered by being ‘read’ in the context of other images.” In The Parent Trap (Swift, 1961), the girls sing an original song called “Let’s Get Together” by Hayley Mills. The girls do not sing this song in The Parent Trap (Meyers, 1998). However, one of the girls sings “Let’s get together, yeah yeah yeah,” while carrying out the plan to get her parents back together. For years I assumed this was just a popular song at the time of the filming, but it didn't have much to do with the plot. Rather, the song was created for the original version of the movie, and referred to in the new version as an homage. Without watching the original adaptation of the movie, I would never have known the true meaning of this line. This connection between the two movies is an example of intertextuality because the second version of the movie builds off the first instead of standing on its own.
References
Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. Newbery Park, CA: Sage, pp. 225-249
Walt Disney. (1961). The Parent Trap [Film]. USA.
Walt Disney. (1998). The Parent Trap [Film]. USA.
Zeisler, A. (2008). Feminism and pop culture. New York, NY: Seal Press. Pp. 1-21
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Great blog post, I love The Parent Trap as well! One thing that I think could be interesting in bringing into this conversation is the fact that in Swift’s 1961 version the cast is predominantly if not strictly white. Then again 37 years later in the remake we see a cast that is predominantly white. During the 37 years between these two films the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed. These two acts were major achievements in Black Americans history following the entire Civil Rights Movement. Due to the changes in society during the time between both movies I think that the 1998 version could have benefited from a more diverse cast. However, as Hall would argue “people who are in any way significantly different from the majority-’them’ rather than ‘us’...are frequently represented through sharply opposed, polarized binary extremes-good/bad, civilized/primitive.” In this case characters would be seen as white/black based upon who they were in the original film and who they interacted with in the remake. This is what Hall refers to as a “binary form of representation.” Even though Meyers did not add any people of color to the remake, I believe that this change from the 1961 cast could lead to a richer viewing for the audience. By not adding any diverse characters to the remake of The Parent Trap it depicts the notion that the strides made for blacks in America were not taken seriously by the academy. I think the idea of remakes again being dominantly white casts should be talked about more.
ReplyDeleteReference:
DeleteHall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. Newbery Park, CA: Sage, pp. 225-249
Hi Chloe!
ReplyDeleteI loved reading your blog post. Not only did I think that you articulate your thoughts very well, but The Parent Trap with Lindsay Lohan is one of my favorite movies as well. I’m not going to lie, I could not take my eyes off the page when reading your analysis of both movies because I was really unsure about which direction you were going to take with it. I can also relate to the fact that you had only seen the newer version of The Parent Trap up until writing your blog post, because although I love the Lohan version, I have never once thought about watching the original version. I want to point out that I think your connection to Zeisler’s male gaze is very clever. I would never have thought about making such a connection, but after reading your blog post, I completely can see how the male gaze “blinded” their father from noticing the difference between the two girls. After reading your first sentence, this topic instantly prompted me to think about Adorno and Horkheimer’s key concept of standardization. This concept explains how the culture industry tends to pump out the same content (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1944). That is to say, the culture industry has a huge reboot nature surrounding it because shows are remade for new audiences years later. This is clearly the case with The Parent Trap because the reboot, despite slight differences, is the same as the original. Furthermore, I was also reminded about Adorno and Horkheimer’s key concept of pseudo-individuality, the idea that the culture industry adds on some differences in order to create uniqueness (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1944). When you discuss the two movies’ slight differences, I think tying this into the blog post would have been an additional, great component because the reboot is adding on some differences to make it a little distinct from the original. Although I would have loved to see Adorno and Horkheimer’s theories, I think that you did an outstanding job relating The Parent Trap movies to what we have read about in class. You have even inspired me to watch the original version. Well done!
- Charlotte Krevitt