Authentic Female Characters vs Gender-Swaps
By Jo Eberhardt | September 2, 2017 |
Photo by Flickr user Craig Dennis
It’s recently been announced that there is a new adaptation of William Golding’s classic novel Lord of the Flies in the works. This isn’t a huge surprise. In the modern era of remakes, re-imaginings, and even more remakes (I’m looking at you, Spider-Man), it feels like half of the new Hollywood movies released aren’t so much “new” as repurposed. Besides, the most recent film adaptation of Lord of the Flies was all the way back in 1990. That’s basically the dark ages. (At least, it is if you ask my children.)
This announcement has been met with a whole passel of outrage from every corner of the internet. Why?
Because apparently Lord of the Flies is due for a gender-swap, with this movie to include an all-female cast.
Yes, the classic tale of young English boys who revert to primal savagery when they’re stranded on a tropical island is currently being rewritten into the tale of a group of young English girls who, we can only assume, revert to primal savagery when they’re stranded on a tropical island. Never mind that this novel is taught in high schools around the world as a way of exploring the destructiveness of competitive masculinity and machismo–it’s clearly the right time for movie-goers everywhere to watch the sweet, spiritual Simone burn to death in the middle of a ritual of competitive femininity. Whatever that looks like.
Personally, I don’t necessarily buy into the rhetoric being thrown around on Twitter about how a group of girls shipwrecked on an island would all just get along and build a utopian society based around friendship, ponies, and rainbows. Pre-teen and teenage girls are just as cruel and barbaric as their male counterparts, albeit often in different ways. Rewriting the characters in Lord of the Flies is not as simple as changing their names from Jack, Ralph, and Piggy to Jane, Rebecca, and… uh… Piggy, and considering it done.
Characters don’t work like that. People don’t work like that.
Here’s the thing:
Slapping a new name and gender-identity on a pre-established character doesn’t do a whole lot of correct the gender-imbalance in films and TV. (And, as you may remember, I’m just a tiny bit passionate about the importance of female characters in fiction.) But not only does gender-swapping established male characters–especially male characters who exist specifically to highlight the dangers of unbridled competitive masculinity–not help the overall problem, it often makes it worse.
I’m going to take a slight side-step here, and talk about 2016’s Ghostbusters remake. Bear with me. I promise to get to how this affects us as writers soon.
For anyone living under a rock, last year saw a remake of the incredibly popular Ghostbusters movie–this time with gender-swapped characters. Corners of the internet exploded when the announcement was made, with scores of men proclaiming that female Ghostbusters would “ruin their childhoods”. I didn’t necessarily have a strong opinion at the time. It was a novel idea, and I was curious to see how it went.
When I finally saw the movie, my response was: “Yeah, okay, it was fun.”
It was a good movie, with good acting, and a fun (albeit repurposed) premise. I can’t imagine it having the same nostalgia-driven cult-following as the original, but… it was fun. I watched it, and then I promptly forgot that it existed. (In all fairness, that’s my response to most Hollywood movies.)
I was reminded of Ghostbusters recently, first by the announcement of a gender-swapped reboot of Ocean’s Eleven, and now by this week’s news of a gender-swapped Lord of the Flies. And, in retrospect, I hate last year’s Ghostbusters.
Hang on, put the pitchforks away.
Hear me out.
It’s not because female ghostbusters ruin my childhood. Nor is it out of a sense of misplaced nostalgia. No, I hate it because it’s a remake. Or, rather, I hate it because it could have been amazing, but it was just good.
Imagine, if you will, if last year’s Ghostbusters wasn’t a remake. Imagine if it was a continuation.
In 1989, the Ghostbusters made the Statue of Liberty walk through the streets of New York City to defeat Vigo, the angry painting. Over the next few years, ghost activity in New York decreased until the Ghostbusters finally closed up shop during the GFC. Now it’s thirty years later, and the ghosts are back. New York needs a new team of paranormal investigators. Somebody call Melissa McCarthy.
That movie would have been awesome. Imagine, if you will, the cameos from the original Ghostbusters… The comparisons with the “other guys”… The fact that the team of female ghostbusters grew up in a world where everyone knew ghosts were real…
Imagine, if you will, a world in which movie executives actually think female protagonists can be authentic characters in their own right, and not merely gender-swapped versions of popular male characters.
Back to Lord of the Flies…
If a couple of writers are inspired to write a story about a group of girls marooned on a desert island, and the savagery that comes of it, I applaud them.
If someone wants to write a story about the toxic nature of female competition, whether it’s set on an island or a suburban high school, I say: Go for it.
But you can’t tell me that taking a classic novel about well-known male characters and changing their names is creating–or even respecting–female protagonists. All it’s doing is saying: “Female characters are only worth writing if, underneath all the window dressing, they’re simply male characters with new names.”
Reality check
I’ve just spent close to a thousand words talking about movies and Hollywood, but the majority of us here don’t write movies–we write novels. How is this even relevant to u?
It’s relevant because art imitates life, and life imitates art, and more important than either of those, art imitates art.
In an age of remakes, re-imaginings, and gender-swapped characters in movies, we need to be even more careful than usual that we’re writing nuanced, authentic characters; characters whose gender-identities are part of the life histories, and not merely components to be added on some time after the plot is finished.
For all my desire to see more female protagonists, I’d really like to see more female protagonists, not merely a string of male characters in drag.
How do you feel about Hollywood’s current “gender-swap” trend? How do you go about ensuring your own female characters are authentic, and not gender-swapped versions of male characters?
[coffee]
Jo Eberhardt is a writer of speculative fiction, mother to two adorable boys, and lover of words and stories. She lives in rural Queensland, Australia, and spends her non-writing time worrying that the neighbor’s cows will one day succeed in sneaking into her yard and eating everything in her veggie garden.
I rolled my eyes when I saw the news about Lord of the Flies, though I am curious: what would it look like, the society built by these girls? How would it differ from the one built by the boys? And why can’t the girls have their own story? (I like your Ghostbusters idea, btw)
“Gender swapping” in story terms is not–and should not–be simple. Last year, after roughing out ten or twenty pages on a new project (and these were really rough pages), I decided to make my protagonist a woman. It changed everything. Whether I did it well enough for it to ever see the light of day or not remains to be seen.
“And why can’t the girls have their own story?”
And that right there is the billion dollar question.
FWIW about your Ghostbusters idea, Jo, I read that the concept of a continuation actually *was* the initial pitch for the film, but either they couldn’t get the original team or the studio on board, so they just went with a swap instead. I’d have preferred the continuation angle, too, because it would have had such cool world building.
I’m currently in an anthology project that’s billed as a gender-swapped Three Musketeers–except that all of us writers started from building the characters, all women working for the Queen, and wondering what it would mean for any of them to be serving as warriors in a world where that was a job for men. I think the swaps can work, but only if they’re just the hook behind where the story goes, not the whole story. (Which, I think, is in line with your point!)
I don’t know whether to feel happy that a continuation was the original idea for Ghostbusters, or exasperated that it’s not the idea they ran with. Possibly I’ll settle for feeling a bit of both.
And, yes, that was exactly my point. The Three Musketeers project sounds really interesting. I’ll have to keep my eye out for it.
Good point! Gender-swaps are an opportunity to do something interesting with a character. But so often, writers stop at the surface level instead of re-imagining how that character would interact with the world. My favorite example of gender-swapping done right is Starbuck from the updated version of Battlestar Galactica. She is a wonderfully complex character, not just a lady playing a man’s role.
Yes, I absolutely agree about Starbuck. I also remember the fanboy outcry when the news was released… followed by an almost complete reversal of opinion by just about everyone who actually watched the new Battlestar Galactica.
I think that’s an important point, because gender-swapping characters can be done right if the people involved are committed to doing it properly.
And sometimes female characters *aren’t* just guys in skirts. Then instead of another Superman remake, we get Wonder Woman. :)
Exactly. And thank you for bringing up Wonder Woman–I really wanted to mention it in my article, but I ran out of space.
Wonder Woman is an example of a movie done well. It’s a shame that movie execs seem to have taken the message there to be: gender-swap all the male characters and watch the money fly in.
Your response is spot on. What an awful, toxic idea. Do you suppose there’s a clever twist we aren’t imagining? Otherwise, an all-girl remake of Lord of the Flies isn’t about calling us to stretch our emotional muscles, question social norms, or see the Other through our own eyes. It’s not like a gender-swapped production of Macbeth.
An all-girl Lord of the Flies, I fear, is nothing short of a tu quoque assault on feminism. Or in practical terms, it’s a response to the successful TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, whose cast and writers make plain is a commentary on the direction of political life in America.
Hyper-masculine virtues are ascendant in this country. An all-girl Flies (if our dire fears are proven true) makes the case against the agency of feminine virtues. Girls and no better than boys, it says (we suppose), and so “feminist” perspectives are a fraud. There is only power and the exercise of it by those whose will to rule is greatest. Feminist objections are irrelevant; women have no say.
I hope that movie doesn’t get made
Beautifully said. I agree completely.
The writers working on this remake are Scott McGehee and David Siegel. To put their work into perspective, the last movie they wrote together was The Deep End back in 2001.
That movie was also based on a book from the 1940s–in that case, The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding. In the novel, the female protagonist’s husband is away in WWII and she lives with her father and teenage children. Her daughter gets involved with an older man who turns out to be something of a creep, and the protagonist’s father accidentally kills him, leaving or protagonist to try to protect her family as best she can.
In McGehee and Siegel’s movie version, however, there is no husband. Nor is there a father. Our female protagonist has only one child–a gay teenage son. When the gay son kills his lover, our protagonist must protect her family as best she can…. by hiding the fact that he’s gay, and only grudgingly admitting that she loves him despite his sexual orientation.
Somehow, these writers took a feminist crime noir book set in WWII and turned it into an insidiously homophobic contemporary drama. So when they say that want to create a more “contemporary” version of LotF, one that changes the way we think of boys and aggression, I’m pretty sure you’re right on the money with your statement that this is a tu quoque attack on feminism.
I, also, hope the movie doesn’t get made.
This is a great article. IMHO it goes beyond gender swapping, enthnic, religion, socio-economic group, gender identity, race…
Thank you for the great article and oye! Lord of Flies with girls!
Thanks, Ruth.
“For all my desire to see more female protagonists, I’d really like to see more female protagonists, not merely a string of male characters in drag.”
I agree Jo. Boys and girls are inherently different and you see this on the playground to boardrooms. It’s the same reason that you can’t just substitute a Muslim for a Sikh or a Christian for a Hindu–their mindsets are different and their actions will mirror their beliefs. Thanks for writing about what I’ve been thinking about. Funny how often that happens.
You’ve hit the nail on the head there, Vijaya. You can’t simply substitute a Muslim for a Sikh and tick a box on your diversity checklist.
Well, you can…. And it happens far too often…. But you shouldn’t.
I’ve been surprised by all the uproar about the Lord of the Flies reboot. I never thought of it as an inherently masculine story, but rather a look at how quickly people can devolve when you radically change their environment. And if anybody questions a female’s ability to be mean to another female, I guess they never went to high school. So I think this could make for an excellent reboot if they try to find the truth in the story with their new characters.
But you raise an excellent point about creating GENUINELY female characters. I’ve seen some awful examples – particularly in detective fiction – where the male author clearly thought that simply slapping a female name and some high heels on his otherwise masculine protagonist was a compelling way to create a female character. Um, yeah… no.
Golding looked at it as masculine, said it would never have worked with females in the cast.
A somewhat related phenomenon: There is a very famous writer of crime novels whose audiobooks are read by someone with a great many awards, but whose command of the voices of female characters leaves a great deal to be desired. Every time we listen to one (we do a lot of cross-country driving) I find myself thinking, “Gee, I didn’t realize that character was actually a transvestite.”
Thanks for your comment, Keith.
Golding definitely made a number of comments about how the story wouldn’t work with female characters — although I’m not sure that he necessarily thought of it as a critique of competitive masculinity. I think he was just a guy writing in a different era who couldn’t imagine that girls could be as cruel, savage, or, indeed, “real” as boys. It was also in relation to Lord of the Flies that he commented that women are far superior to men–a reflection of his belief in women being inherently less “primal” than men.
All that aside, however, the way the book is taught in schools is absolutely in regards to toxic masculinity. When I read it as a teenager, I found the actions of Ralph, Jack, and Piggy completely indecipherable. I couldn’t imagine myself in any of those roles. The only character I empathised with even a little bit was Simon–and we all know how well he survived. (Spoiler: He was voted off the island.)
Now, I don’t for a moment agree with Golding that girls can’t be vicious, cruel, and savage. As you say, I went to high school. And yet the way that girls are mean to each other is very, very different to the way that boys are mean to each other. Perhaps that’s a biological gender difference, perhaps it’s a learned gender difference. Probably, it’s both. It doesn’t mean that either gender is more prone to savagery when removed from the constraints of society, but simply that the way that savagery manifests can be incredibly different.
So, the way I see it, there are two ways this all female reboot can go:
1) The plot remains the same, but the characters are female instead of male. There is no way those characters will feel authentic–they’ll be male characters with high heels and female names.
2) The characters are authentic and well-developed, and the story plays out accordingly. In which case it’s not Lord of the Flies. It’s a completely different story–a story with the same base premise, sure. But Star Wars and Harry Potter have the same base premise–that doesn’t mean you can stick some rolling blue text at the beginning of Philosopher’s Stone and market it as a reboot of A New Hope.
Jo,
My thought on the current gender-swapping trend in Hollywood is “blech.” It seems that, in the effort to swing the pendulum the other way, good storytelling and character development have been left out in the process (in the ones I’ve seen). They’ve done pretty much what you said, which was merely put females in male parts without really exploring the differences and creating entirely new storylines based on those differences. I loved your idea of a continuation of the original Ghostbusters, by the way.
And when it comes to writing, we should avoid doing the same. After all, Little Men wasn’t a retelling of Little Women with boys’ names.
Thanks for another thought-provoking article.
Thanks, Mike.
Jo–From the point of view of a male offering a comment here, your post is an IED waiting to take him out. But I’ll risk it.
I understand you to say that trotting out remakes of big action/violence-dependent movies with female casts enacting male behavior is bogus (except in terms of dollars and cents). I agree completely. I also doubt that studio executives can be persuaded to commit millions to innovation, except for technology/special effects.
In my view, the real question has to do with what posts at Writer Unboxed so often deal: empathy. To the degree a writer/screenwriter is capable of developing characters who reflect attitudes and attributes unique to women, that writer is doing something authentically imaginative.
But to talk of differences between men and women is to flirt with political incorrectness. Is violence gender neutral or not? I suspect only women creating characters uniquely female–characters that can be adapted for small films–are likely to convince us one way or the other. In the current climate, male writers would lack clout.
Thanks for a skillfully written post on a difficult topic.
Hi Barry. I debated writing this post for exactly the reasons you describe here–talking about gender differences is a bit of a battlefield. Thanks for weighing in, regardless of your IED concerns. :) (I visualised writing this post as walking a tightrope over a minefield, so I hear you.)
For good or ill, gender is part of our identity. If I was born a boy, my life would be different in many, many ways. Not because my core personality would necessarily be different, or because my values or ideas would necessarily be different, but because the world would have treated me differently–and I would have, in turn, treated the world differently.
Imagine how different your life would be if you were female.
Empathy is the key ingredient in being able to do that, of course. And, as you say, that’s really what writing is all about.
“Imagine how different your life would be if you were female.” Yes, that’s exactly the challenge for both sexes, to so imagine it. Because of patriarchy for thousands of years, I know for certain you are right in giving emphasis to how women are treated and how they respond. But I am a respectful reader of Stephen Pinker. When he takes issue with two hundred years worth of assertions that nurture is all and nature is little or nothing, I nod in agreement. Granted, women continue to face more dismissiveness and stereotyping than men do. But I believe it’s a mistake to ignore what is unignorable: men and women are not just different physiologically. They are not just the product of external forces.
But there I go again, fiddling with the funny little package in the middle of the road. Thanks for responding in detail.
Spot on, Jo.
My SF WIP has a genetically-engineered female protagonist. Because she is an experiment, her fertility is locked up until she’s deemed a success. A key part of the story is her effort to unlock it herself and have a child. There’s a lot of consequences to her doing that, a lot of people unhappy (and happy, of course) about it, and eventually, war as a result.
There’s no way you can gender-swap my MC’s experience. From talking to mothers, I’ve concluded that I as a male cannot really understand what it’s like to carry a child for nine months, birth that child, and breastfeed that child. It’s a joy I will only be able to appreciate from the sidelines, and it’s a huge part of many mother’s lives.
Not all stories will have gender such an integral part of them, of course. Ripley, from Aliens, wasn’t even a woman until they picked Siguorney Weaver for the part, and that worked great. And the original Ghostbusters could have has a mixed-gender cast (I think Egon, especially, could have been fun as a woman, playing against Murray’s sleazy male.)
But I wouldn’t even dare write my MC in this story without my wife and female friends’ feedback to keep her real.
Interesting article, thanks for the thoughtful read. Gender roles are certainly in flux in our culture, so it makes sense to see folks experiment with new ways of casting characters that defy traditional norms. I’m not a fan of reboots because they typically aren’t well done, and are kind of the low hanging fruit for Hollywood. Mean Girls meets Lord of the Flies could be an interesting story. I guess I don’t trust Hollywood to do a good job with it.
I really try and write strong female protagonists. Who knows if I do it well? I run across so many admirable women in all sorts of settings, I don’t ever feel tempted to borrow from a menu of masculine traits to make her strong. Of course, I live in the south where we have the Gretchen Wilson Effect.
Thanks again for the compelling article.
I think you’re in the majority in not trusting Hollywood to do remakes well!
I agree that Mean Girls meets Lord of the Flies sounds interesting. However, if that concept is done well, it’s something completely new–and yet we’re only being “promised” a gender-swapped LotF.
I just spent some time googling Gretchen Wilson, trying to figure out what the Gretchen Wilson Effect would be… Pretty sure I’ve got it from context, but as an Australian, the term was completely unfamiliar to me. Thanks for introducing me to a new phrase. :)
Couple thoughts: First, the basic premise on a remake is that the original was worth re-examining. LoTF got a lot of traction simply because it was cheap (small book, small price tag for schools), and boys would read it. Those are not the hallmarks of anything that deserves to endure, per se. That Hollywood would rather re-make what amounts to high school pulp fiction rather than explore No Man’s Land with an honest sense of story craft is pathetic.
Second: romance, my friends. It’s the largest literary genre, and you can’t remake it, because it’s about how to create a whole, healthy psyche. Women need and deserve fair representation in popular culture, but as writers, there’s at least one corner of the bookstore where we’ve made that happen, and very successfully so.
Thanks, Grace. I agree on both counts.
Great column, Jo. I was underwhelmed with the remake of Ghostbusters. But then remakes smack of a dearth of creativity to begin with. As for gender-swapping the characters in LOTF, me thinks I am being taken for yet another cheap Hollywood ride. WHY do it? Other than upgraded special effects, what is the point? Maybe I’ll be surprised (if they do it and if I see it.) But if Hollywood can’t come up with good stories on its own, why not adapt a story from some of the great novels out there with a built-in female cast. Take Jeff Vandemeer’s Annihilation, for example. Though having said that, I shudder to think of what HW does to great stories….They’d probably insert some sappy romantic angle or cute family -in-peril theme.
“Remakes are so hot right now.”
I feel like the ‘why’ has been replaced by ‘why not’ in the care of most of the recent remakes. Although I think part of it is that a gender-swapped LotF has name recognition and a built-in audience–if only of people who want to see it so they can complain about how awful it is.
I know many think there are differences between men and women when it comes to virtues or lack of them. I personally believe (and see) that women are truly as cruel and barbaric as men, maybe more so. They don’t care who they go after, man or woman. That’s why women are in the state they’re in now–women are not your friends, and there is no “sisterhood” of women because they’re female. They’re not necessarily virtuous at all. Men can be virtuous as well.
But when you’re going to do a re-make of a classic and gender swap, I do believe you must make those new gender characters their own, finding themselves in their own world and personal situation. A continuation of a story, to me, would be a reasonable approach, because the gender swap would possibly make sense and work in it’s own right. The writer has to remember that the viewers/readers already have an established theme in their minds. That’s what the writer battles with. In Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty Trilogy, she worked with the backdrop of a classic fairy tale, and merely carried it forward (no gender swap, of course). But many authors like re-writing fairy tales or myths. I don’t see much gender swapping in those, maybe because it’s the theme of helpless damsel needs valiant prince. I think it would be very interesting to gender swap some of those. Men find themselves in predicaments, too, and why not have a strong female to the rescue (oh, that’s what happened when the three fairies rescued Prince Philip from the dungeon in the classic Sleeping Beauty! Makes me think.
You’ll get no argument from me that women can be just as cruel as men, but the methods are generally different. I have no problem with setting up the premise of a group of girls trapped on an island devolving into barbarism, but, as you say, they need to be authentic characters with their own stories, not gender-swapped versions of the originals.
One of my favourite picture books is The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch, in which a dragon captures a prince, and the princess has to go and rescue him. It’s a fun take on the “damsel in distress” trope.
I’ve always thought that if there was a female dominant society, we’d function more like Wonder Woman Amazonion society. I wouldn’t want women to devolve into savages. Another movie that explored such devolution brilliantly is Speilberg’s Empire of the Sun. Great movie
Hi, Jo:
You could get fired from Google for bringing this up, you know.
Moving right along…
Actually, what you’re talking about isn’t unrelated to the Google story. One of the best pieces I’ve read about it was from a liberal writer from Slate, Willliam Saletan, writing for the conservative Weekly Standard. (It’s titled “The Conversation Google Killed,” and you can find it online if you …. wait for it …. wait for it … Google that title and Saletan’s name.)
My favorite takeaway: “[T]he problem isn’t difference; it’s how we talk and think about it.”
I was told to change my protagonist from a man to a woman for my most recent novel (since, you know, editors are crowing over “strong female protagonists” now). I didn’t just change my hero to a woman. I created a whole new character, pushing the story forward for her own unique reasons–i.e., it wasn’t just the character that had to change. The story had to change.
You can’t just flip a switch. And admitting that men and women are different does not equate with thinking one is less than the other. It’s paying attention.
But the trap, as Saletan points out, is in how we think and talk (and write) about it. I’m lucky. I have great women friends who inspire me–and keep me in line. Maybe that’s the trouble with the bozos who green-light these projects (or muck them up in development): They don’t know how to be a friend to a woman.
Or, like so many men, they just don’t listen.
(BTW: You made me laugh out loud with: “In retrospect, I hate Ghostbusters.” Sometimes those things in the rearview mirror aren’t just closer than they seem, they’re lousier.)
Interesting article, David. Thanks for pointing it out. I like his conclusion that we should talk about traits rather than biology. There is no need to link traits to gender, race, religion, etc. in order to talk about them.
My wife still thinks the guy that got the boot at Google deserved it, because his memo ends with some pretty harsh exaggerations and snide conclusions. I haven’t read it yet, so I can’t comment knowledgeably. But I know better than to disagree with my wife. :-)
Let me tell you, David, writing this article in the wake of the Google letter was…. nerve-wracking. Yeah, let’s go with that.
I really like that line: “The problem isn’t difference; it’s how we talk and think about it.” Thanks for sharing that article.
Perhaps you’re right, and the problem is those people who don’t know how to be friends with women. Or those who really do think that women are some kind of alien species that’s impossible to understand.
Good article, Jo! These remakes to me show lack of imagination. And what could be more fatal to a story?
Thanks!
I’ve never been a fan of remakes, especially when the original film was done well. And I’m not in favor of gender swapping. Characters are written to be genuine and human and substantial for who they are deep inside. The portrayal of those characters in a film need to do justice to the story’s vision. Flipping gender or plugging some random person of color into a traditional white role in an attempt to show diversity is wrong. I’ve argued this on the academic level for years. If a theatre department wants to develop diversity the program needs to select plays that are written outside of the “white” playwright circle. Choose works from ethnically diverse playwrights and cast accordingly.
That said, last year I saw an All Female Version of JULIUS CEASAR, and I was blown away. The setting was in an all girls boarding school (teenagers), and the impact of the power struggle and the violence of the murders in such a setting, somehow (and horrifyingly so) made the message of the play come alive for today’s society. I came out of the theatre thinking, wow, Shakespeare really missed the mark. As a result, I can’t imagine seeing a traditional version of the play now. However, I think this was a one time deal that worked because the director was TRUE to the STORY. That is the bottom line. Reinvention for the sake of reinvention is never good.
Gosh, Jo, you really stirred something in me today. thanks. Great post!
“Characters are written to be genuine and human and substantial for who they are deep inside.”
Exactly. And that’s not because “men are good at X and women are good at Y”, but because every individual character (and person) is a sum of all their experiences, and their gender identity is one of those every-day lived experiences.
As I was writing this, I was thinking about how this probably applies to race as well, but I feel incredibly unqualified to talk on that particular subject.
The all-girls Julius Ceaser sounds interesting. But then, it sounds like it was done in such a way that the gender-swap wasn’t necessarily the main selling point–it was about changing the context through placing it in an unexpected setting (that just happened to feature female characters).
Read Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens to see what happens when teen beauty contestants crash on a desert island. Yikes!
Couldn’t agree more, Jo.
And I must say, this is why I actually liked the new Wonder Woman. They didn’t make her masculine, she remained a woman. The good, the bad, the honest. My daughter left the theater saying, “Finally, a super hero movie I can relate too.”
Hugs
Dee
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT (Gift of Travel)
Oh, I love that response. That makes me smile.
Stepford Husbands, anyone?
I mentioned this article to my coworker and she mentioned that she read the gender-swapped Twilight novel and while the characters remained the same, she found it more convincing.
In my first draft of this article, I had a paragraph about gender-swapped Twilight — largely because it’s the only example I could come up with of gender-swapping in books.
I haven’t read the gender-swapped versions myself, but by all accounts, there are some improvements over the originals. Or, rather, female-Edward is well-developed and somewhat kick-ass female vampire. Male-Bella, on the other hand, seems to be a caricature of a teenage male, so it’s probably not perfect.
In any case, your co-worker is not alone in feeling that gender-swapped Twilight was more convincing.
If an all-female remake of Lord of the Flies is set in 2018, it would not just be a gender swap but a culture swap as well, and I think the difference between 1940s and 2010s culture might well overshadow any gender difference issues.
Modern children would probably be struggling to cope without technology. I find it difficult to believe in modern preteen kids of either gender having the skills to hunt pigs, light fires etc whereas 1940s girls might well have done. Though I suppose the smokers among them might have a lighter to start a fire…
My initial reaction to the idea was to throw my hands up in horror, but then I wondered how I would write it. The answer I came up with is something like a sleepover gone horribly wrong, preteen girls behaving like a hen party… Maybe they’d even find a way to brew alcohol… Or more likely, find something dodgy to smoke…
Jacqui and her gang are the ladettes who sit at the back of every classroom and mess around, with too much make up (which they’d have to improvise) and bottle-blonde hair. If they’re American, they’d be the cheerleaders.
Rani is the girl who is expected to get straight As and be a doctor.
Miss Piggy, like the original,has asthma, and is suffering from having lost her inhaler, as well as representing the obesity epidemic.
Simone would be the nerdy gifted loner, who never used social media.
In place of the original focus on the ills of early 20th century macho militarism, it becomes about the culture of anti-authority and peer pressure to underachieve and to be popular and conventionally good-looking that exists in so many schools these days.
I think it could work. Or it could be an awful load of negative stereotypes, depending on how it is written and produced.
I love all those ideas, and I definitely think it could be an interesting story to write.
My point, however, is that in creating those new characters (because that’s what they are), you’re not doing a “remake” of the original movie with an all-girl cast. You’re writing an entirely new story that’s based on the original premise.
I do agree with you, though, that the culture-swap is likely to have just as much–if not more–of an impact on the story. I don’t know… I just don’t have any faith in the writers doing a good job with it.
This. Just… this.
Like someone said, this can also be applied to race as well. As a black man, it upsets me when writers change an established white character to black. The worst part of it is that some white people think that all black people are happy with these kinds of changes, but that’s not true. Most of us want our own characters!
I feel that when writers change these things, they’re catering to the few minorities out there who don’t really love the franchise, but want to see it just because there’s a black/female character in it (I know women aren’t minorities, but in fiction, they’re treated as such). In the process, they make the real fans upset.
The lesson here for writers is, if your work has monochrome/chromosome casting (search it up on TV Tropes), you should still TRY to change that. But don’t do it just because that’s what you think your readers want, otherwise you’re going to end up with stereotyped characters. Don’t decide, at the end of your book, that your work isn’t diverse enough, and replace all the “John”s in it with “Jane”s or “Jamal”s. Create diverse characters because you WANT to, and if you do, think about how their race/sex affects their lives, because it affects everything.
Thank you so much for your comment. I really love hearing your take, especially in regards to how similar this is for race-swapping characters. As I mentioned above, I had a feeling the effect would be similar, but I don’t feel at all qualified to make such a statement.
An authentic character is the sum of his or her life experiences. In most cases, as you say, you can’t simply change a character’s name in the interests of “diversity” without also changing the character’s life experiences, which, in turn, change the story.
I really like your statement: “Most of us want our own characters!”
That is it exactly. Stop trying to dress up your leftovers in clothes you think will appeal to us, and just give us our own damn characters.
My intitial thought upon hearing about the Lord of the Flies remake was, well that’s stupid! Girls would make it a completely different story. And I LOVE your idea for Ghostbusters. I might’ve gone to see that movie.
Thank you!
Word!!
Great post! Thank you!! :D
I love this article. I’m just starting to seriously pursue a writing career, and I stress over my female characters. Do they portray strength? Vulnerability? Compassion? All of these things that real women are, or are they coming across too shallow, too stereotyped? I tend to create male protagonists, and I worry that I’ll be shamed for not creating female leads. I shouldn’t have to be concerned about this, just with writing a good story, but our current cultural climate demands it.
It’s so sad that male characters are so much the “default setting” that even women struggle to write authentic female characters, isn’t it? It reminds me of the ad campaign #likeagirl from a few years ago.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being a woman and writing a male protagonist. If that’s who your story is about it, write his story. But I do worry that we shy away from writing female protagonists because we’re scared to do it; because we instinctively think “like a girl” is an insult.