Shoreside Shortcomings: Gidget
3October 2, 2021 by abs6978
Francine Lawrence is a 16 year old girl who, after her friends try to force her to go ‘man-hunting’ with them, revolts and begins to spend her days as a regular on the beach. Although she likes boys, she claims that she hates dates and refuses to go out with Jeffery Matthews, the boy her parents want to set her up with.
Francine joins the local surf crew to the disapproval of many surfer dudes already in the gang. The group hazes her and begins to call her by her titular nickname, ‘Gidget.’ The less than clever portmanteau of the words ‘Girl’ and ‘Midget’ may sound offensive (which happens to be the primary reason I chose to watch this movie in the first place) but Francine is in fact not a ‘little person.’ Her age, rather than her height, is the driving factor in Gidget. She is an average sized 16 year old girl who, when juxtaposed with the college aged surfers, is only about half a foot shorter than most. I might be biased though because I’m only about an inch taller than Sandra Dee, the actress who played Francine. Aside from the nickname, Francine also deals with some groping and with being shoved underwater as an ‘initiation’ into the gang.
Having become a regular in their group, the guys lay off of their harassment after a while and Francine develops a crush on Moondoggie, the surfer who rescued her while she was swimming and inspired her to start surfing. He seems to have no interest in her though as he already has a girlfriend, but that doesn’t stop Francine from hiring another surfer (nicknamed Loverboy) to help make him jealous by taking her to the Luau for all the surfers in the area. When Loverboy passes the job off to Moondoggie himself, her plan is foiled and she claims she was trying to make Kahoona (the leader of the surf gang) interested in her instead. Afterwards, Francine ends up going back to Kahoona’s shack with him, which is where the most problematic incident of the movie occurs. Kahoona, unlike the other surfers, is not college-aged. He’s in his thirties – twice Francine’s age! At his shack, she tries to convince Kahoona to have sex with her. And after a short while, he made a sexual advance leaving her visibly scared and uncomfortable. He stops just short of doing anything, but the situation itself was disturbing.
Because of this incident, Francine’s parents seize control of her social life. Upon making her go out with Jeffery Matthews, Francine discovers that is the true identity of Moondoggie. In the end, she ends up with a more age-appropriate partner (although he was an active participant in her hazing early in the film).
How was Gidget received? Gidget boasts a fairly high 86% audience score and a middling 55% from critics on Rotten tomatoes. Which one is more apt though? Personally, I would have to agree with the critics. The movie is a fantastic artifact of behavior and style from the 50’s, but beyond that it is not a very fun watch. It’s inappropriate nature may be vital to the teenage comedy it tries to be, but it … falls short. My biggest takeaway from the film is that teen slang from the time was not “just the ultimate!”
Category 50's Movies, Movies, Old Movies | Tags:
I think this movie seems rather interesting, it gives a lot of insight on the way women were perceived and treated by men in the late 50’s-60’s. The writers did a good job in displaying how women wanted to things that weren’t seen as “womanly activities” such as surfing. She also has that defiant yet flirtatious personality that was shown in these older movies. Although it seems like a corny movie now, I might actually watch it after reading how you broke the movie down. What did you think of the way Gidget was treated throughout the movie? Do you think her behavior towards the surfer boys was typical of women then and even now? I think a good source to get information on these movies is Rolling Stone, they always have good reviews on movies. Overall this was a really interesting movie to read about since I’ve never heard of it before, maybe I’ll check it out!
I really love your analysis of this movie! Although it seems like a cool concept to have a girl doing something typically not feminine, from how you describe the movie, they focus on all the wrong things. I feel as though so many movies are ruined by these forced romantic storylines, but this one is especially disturbing considering the fact that Gidget is only 16 and had a 30 year old making advances on her! It’s always interesting when the critic and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes have a discrepancy — I think that to an audience this might just be a silly teen movie, but the critics may have realized just how weird some of this content was. I’m excited to hear about the next movie you’ll be watching!
I really liked how you analyzed the movie and the different events that it portrayed. You would think that a movie about a girl that tries something new, even with the disapproval of the people around her, would focus on that interesting change. Instead, from your analysis, it seems like it portrays an entirely different view. We see them changing the narrative from an independent surfer’s story to a girl who is just there for relationships and has to be subjected to sexual advances by disturbing men, an event commonly found today. So, I really liked how you incorporated statistics of critics’ reviews that addressed this as well. Overall, do you believe that they did this on purpose or unintentionally?