Mama Mia! Here We Go Again With The Mommy Issues and The Daddy Issues and The Found Family
Does Your Mother Know you're a Dancing Queen? Whether your parents have you feelin' like a Super Trooper or shouting SOS, Mama Mia! has something for gays everywhere. Besides, Sophie's got a couple of dads to spare.
I, like any good, movie-loving bisexual, went through a very intense Mama Mia! (2008) phase. When Mama Mia! came out in 2008 I was in fourth grade. And I would have loved it at that age– don’t get me wrong. But I had a T.V. junkie dad and a pop-culture illiterate mom, so I was busy developing the tastes of a straight, white, middle-aged, midwestern man. That took me a long time to shake off. I’m still working on it, actually; but I’m not caught up on Better Call Saul (2015-2022) or Fargo (2014-), so I think I’m doing a pretty good job. No, I wasted an entire decade’s worth of time that I could have spent watching Meryl Streep shake her hips on the rooftop of a Greek villa to ABBA’s greatest hits.
I Heard About Him Before, I Wanted To Know Some More
“I started the first draft of this essay in the first week of June 2022, and a tweet just like that was what prompted me to write it, so I think it’s a good guess. Even though all good Mama Mia! stans know that the actual dates are July 17th (Sam), August 4th (Bill), and August 15th (Harry).”
I remember my first watch-through pretty distinctly. It was early in the summer of 2018, just a few weeks after I came home from college. It was quite possibly only mere days after my Vincent Amore viewing in Chicago. I’m not 100% sure why I decided to watch, but I’m willing to hazard a guess that it was sometime in June 2018, and I had seen a meme on Twitter with a screen grab of Amanda Seyfried as Sofie saying “June (the date)! What a night!” and a caption that said something to the effect of “today is the only day you can retweet!” I don’t know that for sure but I started the first draft of this essay in the first week of June 2022, and a tweet just like that was what prompted me to write it, so I think it’s a good guess. Even though all good Mama Mia! stans know that the actual dates are July 17th (Sam), August 4th (Bill), and August 15th (Harry).
(I Can Still Recall) Our Last Summer
I was in love. I went into full-on hyper fixation mode. I even introduced the movie to my mom and, to make matters worse, SHE FELL IN LOVE TOO. We played it on a loop in our living room for days, subjecting both my father and younger sister to what probably seemed like an ABBA-themed purgatory. My mom thought it was a great mother-daughter bonding experience. Of course, she had the same reaction when I showed her Gilmore Girls (2000-2007), which is probably something I need to talk about in a therapist’s office rather than in an essay.
But seriously, our Mama Mia! summer was intense. As you might be aware, that was the summer that Mama Mia! Here We Go Again (2018) came out, and while its inclusion of Cher was, of course, compelling, its exclusion of Meryl Streep (and her hips) means I’ve only seen it once. But I did drag my whole family to see it in our local movie theater. Actually, LaGrange, Indiana, is such a small town that the nearest movie theater is technically across state lines, but I digress. My parents even found a live production of the original musical that was being performed by a troupe based out of one of the Amish tourist trap towns in our area. So my mom got us tickets and we went to see a live performance of Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus' Mamma Mia! (1999) in a theater that was designed to look like a barn from the outside. I can honestly say Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried did it better, but it was definitely still an interesting experience. We even convinced my dad to go, and I had both of my parent’s full attention for an afternoon; a rare feat for an eldest daughter who is also a twin (but my brother had moved out by that point, so I’d cut my competition in half).
Does Your Mother Know (That You're Out)?
“Phyllida Lloyd, and the film as a whole, don’t make the audience work very hard to apply a queer lens. The feather boas? The yearning? The performances? Meryl Streep’s hips? Did I mention those already?”
When it comes to the queerness of Mama Mia!, I think it’s probably more about the perspective of the viewer, the contextual culture, and camp than it is about the perspective of authors or explicitly queer text. I will point out, though, that while the writers of the musical and subsequent screenplay are not publicly queer, the director of the film, Phyllida Lloyd, is an out, queer woman. So, speaking of the queer gaze… it’s definitely there. In fact, I would argue that having a Sapphic director fundamentally informs the way that the camera views women in the film as well as the way their sensuality– and sexuality– come across in the text.
I know there’s only one openly queer character, but Mama Mia! is super queer to me, and to Phyllida Lloyd, and nothing can take that away from us. Or maybe it’s just Amanda Seyfried in a low-cut swimsuit, dripping wet, and crawling on her hands and knees across the beach towards the camera while she sings “Lay All Your Love On Me,” (thanks, Phyllida)! Regardless, a musical strung together by ABBA’s greatest hits is inherently campy, and even I know that as a gen-Zer born in rural Indiana in 1998. Beyond that, Phyllida Lloyd, and the film as a whole, don’t make the audience work very hard to apply a queer lens. The feather boas? The yearning? The performances? Meryl Streep’s hips? Did I mention those already? For a movie that’s centered around a straight couple, it sure is gay!
One of the things that really makes Mama Mia! queer, though, is the way it triggers both my mommy issues and my daddy issues at the same time. A mom who is somehow overbearing, withholding, and living through you vicariously all at the same time? And you simultaneously want to rebel against her and can’t stand to disappoint her? A drive to find and bond with father figures whose role(s) were largely minimized by said all-encompassing mother? So you have no other choice than to pull a fast one on mother dearest and invite all of your possible dads, who you only know about because you stole her diary and who don’t know about each other, to your beach wedding? Then you all proceed to work through your feelings by singing ABBA? Very interesting! And that’s not even to mention a very MILFy Christine Baranski singing a VERY MILFy rendition of “Does Your Mother Know,” which I always pretend is her asking the audience (me) if my mother knows I’m gay.
Building Me A Home, Thinkin' I'd Be Strong There
If you’re still not convinced that Mama Mia! is some of the queerest cinema you’ve ever seen, I have the final sparkly nail to hammer into that cute little Grecian coffin: found family. As I’ve discussed previously, found family plays a very specific role in queer media. There are lots of reasons for that, and found family certainly exists in lots of “straight” cultural phenomena. But, I think found family is so popular in queer media because it gives us hope.
Being queer is different from a lot of other aspects of a person’s identity. When it comes to things like race, class, religion, cisgenders, and heterosexuality, people are very often sorted into like groups from a young age, and often within the pre-existing family structure that they were raised in. In these cases, people have real, concrete examples of what those parts of their identity look like as adults in the form of their family members. But it is much rarer for queer people to have that experience (will all the gay cousins in the room please raise their hand?).
Now, I could talk about the phenomenon of queers being drawn to each other from a young age, almost always before we have any real understanding of our own sexuality or gender, but I think that needs to be its own essay, if not an entire peer-reviewed study. But my point is that we often find ourselves searching for our identities and seeking out others who share those identities in a way that is not usually as universally systematic as it is in our community. And I can personally attest to the fact that having a queer-found family can be life-changing.
Take A Chance On Me
“Sofie doesn’t just end up with one dad, she gets three. They don’t know who her biological father is and they don’t care, because she shows them all exactly who she is and they all choose to love her for it. ”
The thing I always loved about Mama Mia! was that, in the end, Sofie doesn’t just end up with one dad, she gets three. They don’t know who her biological father is and they don’t care, because she shows them all exactly who she is and they all choose to love her for it. I know some fans are obsessed with figuring out who the “real” dad is, but I’ve never wanted to shatter the fantasy of having three dads who choose to love their daughter.
When All Is Said And Done
It’s been a while since I watched Mama Mia! with either of my parents. My mom and I are still working on finding healthy mother-daughter media to watch together, and I have too much of my father’s taste for her anyway. But at least my dad and I have gotten to the point in our relationship where he watches my recommendation and then he says, “Wow, that was actually really good!” every time, and I say, “Yeah I know, that’s why I recommended it to you!” every time.
Anyways, I hope I’ve convinced you that Mama Mia! is like really very super queer because having three dads sounds pretty gay to me! Even if none of them can really sing all that well.
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Thanks to my friend Zoey Fields for featuring my piece The Night Before The End of The World part one and part two last week on her blog The Learning Curve.
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