ABSTRACT
The transmedia phenomenon Gidget began as a first-person novel, Gidget: The Little Girl With Big Ideas (1957) by screenwriter Frederick Kohner. The novel Gidget: The Little Girl With Big Ideas is based on the experiences of a real teen girl, Kathy Kohner, Frederick Kohner’s daughter, who initially wanted to write the story herself, highlighting her groundbreaking efforts to join the masculine world of surfing in Malibu. While many recent critics have compared Gidget: The Little Girl With Big Ideas to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957), to determine its countercultural bonafides, the novel is much more clearly in conversation with the first-person teen girl novels of Françise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse (1955) and A Certain Smile (1956). Pamela Moore’s Chocolates for Breakfast (1956) and the novel My Lovely Mamá! by Mathilde (1956) show the trend of female-centred or narrated books exploring female desire and sexuality, and their reception indicates the degree to which the marketplace sought an ‘American Sagan.’ The novel Gidget parodically imitates and Americanizes Sagan’s female-centred existential novels to present a narrative of a teen girl’s desire, transmuting the decadent alienation of Sagan’s narratives to emphasize the girl’s freedom and autonomy as a surfer.
