You know those movie adults who are extremely fun authority figures and use singing to entice children to do their bidding? I am talking specifically about Mary Poppins, Fräulein Maria in The Sound of Music, and Jack Black’s character from School of Rock, all of whom are universally adored by children for their abilities, respectively, to do housework with a click of a finger, sew clothes out of curtains, and form a secret band.
I had always imagined I would grow up to embody the movie parent figure’s adulting skills – until, naturally, like all other adults, I entered parenthood. For the record, not unlike Jack Black/ Fräulein Maria/Mary Poppins, I, too, sing with reckless abandon at home, but this just encourages my dear children to act say unhelpful things like “Please, stop”, and offer unsolicited feedback such as “Why can’t you sing anything good, like Taylor Swift? Or maybe even a real classic like Gangster’s Paradise?”
This was the first lie movies told: that singing is the key to blind obedience. Singing does not work on real-life children. Neither, it transpires, does anything else that Poppins woman did, such as clicking your fingers work when you try to tidy up. And no one in their right mind ever magically learns how to down curtains and turns them into custom-made outfits.
The (un)reasonable movie parent
Since adulthood has been so crushingly disappointing in these key areas, when it comes to dealing with children, I find myself veering more than ever towards the Captain von Trapp/King Triton end of the parenting spectrum. And after witnessing zero results six hours after the dear offspring were repeatedly told to clean their rooms, I can even find myself identifying with Miss Trunchbull from Matilda and her love for the Chokey.
If you, like me, agree that Miss Trunchbull’s methods may have been a bit extreme, but that she was certainly on the right track when giving that little toad Bruce Bogtrotter that cake, then welcome to adulthood. You have now officially made it to the other side, and have a whole new set of heroes to, if not aspire to, then at least empathise with – and no one has a parent’s sympathies more than the hapless King Triton from The Little Mermaid.
We are led to believe that King Triton rules the oceans with an iron fist, but as the mother of a teenager, I now know that King Triton showed incredible restraint when he destroyed all of Ariel’s above-the-sea collection in the wake of her declaration of undying love for that insipid Prince Eric – although the icing on the cake was Ariel’s rather brave announcement of being 16 years old and thus “not a child”.
“If this is the only way to get to you,” growls Ariel’s poor father, clearly at his wits’ end, “then so be it.”
King Triton then proceeds to whip out his trident and obliterate every useless item Ariel brought down after her illicit surface trips. It truly is the only way to get through to this bratty redhead, because when he tells her nicely, “Don’t go up to the surface”, she seems to hear, “Go to the surface as much as you want to”.
In destroying Ariel’s treasures, I am assuming King Triton was ultra dramatic with his trident to drown out the sound of her irritating wailing. My only advice to this father would be to reconsider his choice of babysitter for the future. Ruler of the ocean, and all he could drum up to control a stubborn teenager was a reggae-loving crab? King Triton should have taken a leaf out of Ursula’s book, whose devoted eels nearly pulled off her evil plans in a way Sebastian the crab can only yearn for.
However, ostensibly unreasonable movie parents do not always take the form of buff merman with magic. Sometimes they take the form of rich society mothers with pursed lips and an unadulterated hatred for dashing young men in the third class of a large ocean liner. We are, of course, talking about Rose de Witt Bukater’s mother from Titanic. Tying Rose into her corset may have been James Cameron’s way of showing this mother’s control over her daughter, but she had kind of a point. Who among us would welcome an unwashed third-class boy like Jack with open arms when we learn he is teaching our precious daughter how to spit? In public, no less? And that is before we have taken that awful boy’s taste in art. No, Rose’s mother had absolutely the right idea, and I am sure she can take small comfort from the knowledge that there was no room for Jack on that door.
The stepmother
No one has given the stepmother worse publicity than Cinderella’s father’s wife number 2, much to the chagrin of fictional stepmothers everywhere, from Isabel Kelly in Stepmom to Baroness Schraeder in The Sound of Music and Meredith Blake in The Parent Trap. Whilst Isabel was eventually able to grab the holy grail of stepmothers – acceptance – the poor Baroness and Meredith had no such luck.
As kids, we were conditioned to loathe the Baroness because of her declaration to send Captain von Trapp’s seven children to boarding school, but what on earth was she meant to do? Copy Maria, stitch them a new wardrobe and sing to them? That is what mad people do. The Baroness had the good sense to bow out gracefully – a chance poor Meredith was never given.
From the moment Meredith’s character is introduced in The Parent Trap, we are invited to heap scorn and derision upon her perfectly styled hair, ironed outfits, and later, her Baroness-like decision to ship away the dreamy Nick Parker’s daughter to boarding school. We are told she is 27 and somehow also runs her own business. We are not told this so we can applaud Meredith’s entrepreneurial skills or her ambition, but because this somehow proves she will be an unfit stepmother.
Meredith’s real flaw was accounting for only one red-headed brat in her plans to marry Nick, and not anticipating the existence of a secret twin. There is no one like a twelve-year-old with a supercilious side eye to really channel your inner dragon, but to suddenly have an extra one that no one is interested in disciplining? Even when those beastly twins stick a reptile to your water bottle and drag your mattress out onto a lake? Nick is lucky she only threw a ring at him. Meredith’s heart may have been trampled on, but she had a lucky escape. We are never told Meredith’s ultimate fate, but I hope she found the happiness she deserved, with or without bratty children in the fray.
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