Drawing upon Northorp Frye’s distinction between Old and New Comedy, Stanley Cavell outlines a genre called the ‘comedy of remarriage’, which are romantic comedy films that feature a ‘young pair’ who must overcome a set of obstacles to find ‘happiness’, and ultimately get married. Crucially, in the ‘comedy of remarriage’, the central drive of the plot is to get the couple ‘back together, together again’ (Cavell). I would like to consider the extent to which The Parent Trap (1998) can be read as a contemporary take upon the ‘comedy of remarriage’, for the numerous ways that the film both challenges and subverts features of the genre. Perhaps the most obvious aspect of The Parent Trap that makes it a ‘comedy of remarriage’ is that the film centres on the reconciliation of a (relatively) young, and ‘attractive’ divorced couple, Nick and Elizabeth, who are brought back together again after more than a decade, by the scheming of their twins, Hallie and Annie (Cavell).
For Cavell, the ‘genre of remarriage’ is most closely aligned with Old Comedy, for the way that it places an emphasis on the actions of the ‘heroine’, which may involve being ‘disguised as a boy’, for the ‘successful conclusion of the plot’ (Cavell). This marks an interesting point of divergence for The Parent Trap as a ‘comedy of remarriage’, as it is not the actions of a singular ‘heroine’ that motivates the reconciliation, but two ‘heroines’, Hallie and Annie, who pretend to be each other (a kind of ‘disguise’) in order to fool their respective parents, and ensure an reunion between them (Cavell). In this way, the potential for ‘social and individual reconciliation’ as a result of ‘remarriage’ for Nick and Elizabeth bears a social weight that extends beyond themselves, because their twins’ happiness is also implicated in the prospect of their romantic reunion. Indeed, for Hallie and Annie, the ‘remarriage’ of their parents promises the reconstruction of a somewhat broken family unit. Frye notes that ‘the moment the social unit crystallises is the moment of the comic resolution’, and this moment is made manifest in a wedding celebration in the films end credits (Frye). In a series of wedding pictures, we see Hallie and Annie with their parents, an ‘expression’ of the ‘renewed sense of social integration’, as a single family unit is formed.
One interesting question I found myself asking as I wrote this post was, if the ‘comedy of remarriage’ examines the ways in which couples (and wider family units) can be brought back together, is there any comedic potential in a ‘comedy of divorce’, that considers what forces pull people apart? Does the collapse of a couple’s marriage offer a comedic premise? Arguably the current contemporary context is appropriate for a film of this kind to exist, as marriage as an institution faces increasing levels of scrutiny from society as a whole.