Surfing with Juliet: The Shakespearean Dialectics of Disney’s Teen Beach Movie

Abstract

This essay examines the intertextual relationships between Teen Beach Movie (dir. Jeffrey Hornaday, 2013) and the 1960s Beach Party movies, West Side Story, Romeo and Juliet, and other films and plays. Shakespeare operates as a consistent intertext in order to elevate Teen Beach Movie’s cultural status; to mark the superior intelligence and enlightened sophistication of its young protagonist, a twenty-first century female surfer who finds herself transported to a 1960s beach movie musical called Wet Side Story; and to mark the ironic cluelessness of male teens who are unaware that they are citing him. Despite pervasive and clever uses of intertextuality and self-reflexivity, TBM reifies conservative cultural gender norms even as it openly questions them.