Today I watched the Parent Trap as it is my all time favourite film and as I know the film really well I knew that the female characters were represented differently and I knew exactly what sceens to look at to prove this.
I first of all watched the final scene in the 1961 version, where the parents have their heart to heart, and did a textual analysis on it. I also watched it with auto commentary. This was done by David Swift the director and Hayley Mills the actress who played the twins in this version and by listening to the commentary it gave me extra information on how the mother was represented in this film by the director.
I then watched the same scenes in the 1998 version and also did a textual analysis and made note of the differences.
By doing the textual analysis and looking at both films really closely from another point of view it made me realise that the mothers are represented completely differently. When I realised that the original was done by a male director and the remake was done by a female director it all made sense. I realised that in the original there was obvious signs of the "Male Gaze" which Laura Mulvey talks about but in the remake it was definitely more obvious that there was a "Female Gaze".
When I realised this I went back through the film and realised that the dad's fiances are also represented differently in both.
I didn't think I was going to get much out of this film but I thought I would just compare them as they were 2 versions of a film I love and know really well and it would ease me lightly into comparing films. But from doing this research I have decided that I am definitely going to use this as one of my case studies as it brings up alot of things for me to talk about.
I also need to do a bit of research to see if anyone else has come across a "Female Gaze" or is it something that no one has really gone into depth about.
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