Before she portrayed everyone’s favorite troublemaker Georgina Sparks on The CW’s hit teen drama “Gossip Girl,” Michelle Trachtenberg played the very different yet still devious lead role in the 1996 adaptation of the beloved Louise Fitzhugh book, Harriet the Spy. The film, which revolves around the life of the precocious 11-year-old Harriet and her insatiable desire to be the best writer in the world, was met with mixed reviews. Yet, if you ask people who came of age during the ‘90s, you’ll find that many of them felt a kinship to Trachtenberg’s spunky Harriet M. Welsch that is very much akin to the same kind of love held for other literary heroines like Louisa May Alcott’s Jo March or L. M. Montgomery’s Anne Shirley. At the time, critics were quick to fault the film for its fairly dark portrayal of adolescence — Rita Kempley of The Washington Post described it as “a dark slice of this ruminative child’s inner life” — but while it’s true that Harriet the Spy avoids the certain kind of slapstick comradery audiences have come to expect from movies about children, its characters and its message have mostly stood up against time.
Much like the book, the film draws us in to the surprisingly vast world of young Harriet and her two best friends Sport (Gregory Smith) and Janie (Vanessa Lee Chester). The three project a very “us against the world” shared ethos as they give each other matching semi-permanent foot tattoos (which must not be seen by anyone if they want to avoid a “swift and painful death”) and rally against their middle school’s popular rich girl Marion Hawthorne (Charlotte Sullivan). But Harriet sets herself apart with her devotion to a private black and white composition notebook which she carries around everywhere writing down all her observations no matter how small or mundane. At home, Harriet is mostly just tolerated by her wealthy parents who rely on Harriet’s unconventional nanny Ole Golly (a delightfully Mary Poppins-esque Rosie O’Donnell in her heyday) to care for and raise their daughter instead. But when Harriet’s mother’s jealousy interferes with Golly and Harriet’s relationship, Harriet is forced to navigate the trials and tribulations of 6th grade all on her own.
The film spends a lot of time enforcing Harriet’s devotion to her notebook. It is as much a part of her as her love of tomato and mayo sandwiches and her trademark yellow oilskin raincoat. She relies on it to help her process the ever-changing world around her, and it is the one place where she allows herself to be brutally honest about the world. Obviously, Harriet the Spy takes place during a time pre-social media, but this doesn’t stop her from getting into trouble for the things she writes. When Marion steals and reads Harriet’s notebook to all their peers, they shun her for the admittedly incredibly mean things she wrote about them. Determined to make her pay for her meanness, they launch a full-on campaign against her, Sport and Janie included, in which they do everything from pouring vibrant blue paint all over her during art class to forming a spy catcher’s club that follows her and harasses her on her daily spy route. No one understands cancel culture quite like Harriet Welsch.
This is perhaps the most timeless part about Harriet the Spy. Watching it in 2023 feels almost like experiencing a sign from the past in which Harriet tries to warn all of us that we need to be mindful about the things we say, foreshadowing the current culture where what you say in public and online just might come back to haunt you down the road. Of course, if you’re to take the film’s advice (which is that no matter how true something is, sometimes lying is preferable to, you know, being a dick) then we would be living in a world where everyone is politically correct to your face while ultimately harboring different viewpoints behind closed doors — a take that’s not without its problems. But the more admirable message that isn’t hammered home quite as hard in the film is that instead of being quick to judge like Harriet does in her notebook, it’s good to remember that behind every face is a unique story that’s worth exploring.
Hidden amongst the drama of Harriet’s notebook is a quiet commentary about class and the things a person can get away with if they have access to money. While Harriet is depicted as the brainy observer amongst her peers, she’s not the only one with a keen understanding of the world. Sport, who lives with his struggling artist father, makes for a good antithesis to Harriet and her wealthy artist parents, and while he puts on a cheerful demeanor at school, Sport’s home life is decidedly fraught with his father’s financial and personal struggles that Sport is forced to compensate for by taking up the housework and chores (something that Harriet cruelly takes advantage of later in the film, to everyone’s disappointment). Ole Golly and her partner occupy a decidedly lower class than the Welschs’, and they never really get the respect or credit they deserve from the people signing their paychecks. Even the individuals that Harriet spies on during her daily route are made up of a complex array of class structures. The Hong Fats, a Chinese immigrant family who own a local grocery store that Harriet likes to observe, represent an interesting dynamic between Mr. and Mrs. Hong Fat and their teenage son Frankie who is a first generation Chinese American. Not much time is afforded to these characters (which is a shame), but in the few moments they do occupy the screen, a lot is being said about the nature of making it in America when you are a person of color.
In these ways, the film casts a critical lens on wealth in America, and while it never really makes it the main focus of the movie, there’s no denying that Harriet and her access to wealth are at least in part responsible for her brazen confidence and ability to get away with her juvenile crimes. The critics in 1996 were right when they felt that Harriet the Spy captured a dark version of adolescence, but as time has gone on, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. While Harriet’s spunk and devotion to her future career as a writer is what draws us in to the film, it’s really that very darkness and discreet commentary on the realities of class warfare that give Harriet the Spy the edge that still makes it work as a movie today. In that regard, those who hated the film nearly three decades ago, might do well to revisit it, taking up Ole Golly’s advice by “giving it a closer look.”
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