What "Freaky Friday" says about women
I was 13 when "Freaky Friday" was made. I never saw it, and I never read the book. I saw the remake with LiLo a few years ago on TV. When I saw the original "Freaky Friday" was going to be aired on Film 4 here in the UK, I wanted to see it, because I heard the original film was much better than the remake.
Watching Jodie Foster brought back memories... of going to Junior High School (I grew up in Florida so the landscape looked similar to the outdoor scenes in the movie) having typing classes, wearing puka shell necklaces. Watching Barbara Harris as the mother brought back memories too.
Barbara Harris' Mrs Andrews starts her Friday morning with beauty shop backcombed hair. My mother also tried to keep her beauty shop backcombed hairdo as perfect as long as she could, with bobby pins and hairspray. And she dressed to the nines when she went outside, fully made up. She wore false eyelashes too, and she smoked.
Annabelle thinks her mother has it easy. Well, her mother does have it easy. She has a maid to do her cleaning, and an army of cleaners to steam the carpets and drapes in her house. All she has to do is pay them and remember to pick up Annabelle's brother at lunchtime. By the way, Mrs Andrews could have easily solved the problem of the food by going to the caterer and buying a buffet, which was what my mother did when she had to entertain at short notice.
In the remake Jamie Lee Curtis is an published author and a therapist. Her daughter learns that grown up life involves work responsibilites as well as empathy towards other family members. If I saw the original "Freaky Friday" back in 1976 I would have thought Mrs Andrews was old fashioned. My mother had a cleaner who came in once a week, but she also ran her own decorating business. I can't believe Mrs Andrews as Annebelle is flummoxed by an electric typewriter. Has she ever had a job in her life? As far back as I can remember we had a typewriter in our house (an electric one) and both my parents used it. My mother wrote her business letters on it.
Washing clothes and cooking meals is a snap compared to what I went through in junior high. The disasters that happen when Annabelle as Mrs Andrews tried them are so corny the Simpsons made fun of TV shows that portrayed them.
I did not enjoy it when Mrs Andrews (as Annabelle) gets handfuls of torn paper thrown over her head. That happened to me back then. A lot. I was one of the nerdy kids who could talk about Eisenhower and the Korean War. By the way, the Korean War was in our textbooks, but we never talked about it in class. My Junior High school (and high school) classes never went past World War II. Most of the teachers also didn't like nerdy kids who could talk about Eisenhower and the Korean War.
Annabelle learns that her teachers actually think she's smart, but they feel bad because they aren't reaching her. What has Annabelle learned about grown up life at the end? That she's going to grow up to be a housewife and all she needs to prepare herself for that is learning how to drive, learning how to load a washing machine, learning how to cook and learning how to keep a maid from quitting? I would have wanted to change places with Mrs Andrews, and I wouldn't want to change back. Then I could spend most of my days watching TV and paying people to clean my house.
At least. back in 1976, my junior high school (and later, my high school) encouraged me to think about what I wanted to do for my working career and gave me some training so I could get a job and support myself.