ABSTRACT
The film Gidget (1959) adapts Gidget: The Little Girl With Big Ideas. Gabrielle Upton’s adaptation represses much of the sexual sophistication that links the novel Gidget to Françoise Sagan, but in doing so shows the ambivalence and contradictions of Gidget’s desire. Often viewed as a ‘clean’ teen film, Gidget can be seen as countercultural, due to Gidget’s participation in the not-yet-mainstream sport of surfing. Moreover, Gidget registers feminine discomfort with the status quo and ambivalence, rather than innocence, about sexuality. This ambivalence is mobilized through the casting of Sandra Dee whose roles in the late 1950s often highlighted a teen girl’s conflicted feelings about her emerging sexuality. Gidget’s contemporary, the new teen doll Barbie, provides another contextual and comparable figure of repressed and ambivalent sexuality. Rick Altman’s critique of ends-oriented readings provides a framework to focus attention on the middle of the film—Gidget’s painful process of experiencing desire and want, of becoming single—rather than solely the formation of the couple. Gidget’s journey to Moondoggie is preceded by two alternative paths. In one, she nearly falls for the Big Kahuna. In the other, she has a homosocial relationship that teases lesbianism with her friend B.L.
