Films & Feminism

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Re: Films & Feminism

Postby 52xMax » Thu Aug 31, 2017 5:01 am

Instead of learning their lesson, it seems like Hollywood loves to double down, and in addition to the current gender-bending reboots such as Ocean's 8, it's been announced that a new adaptation of William Goulding's Lord of the Flies is in the making, featuring a "female lead" cast.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/w ... es-1034139

I'm just wondering if any of the people involved in this project saw the 1990 movie or read the novel, because I think everyone is missing the moral of the story...but whatever. I guess people will vote with their feet on this one too, like they did with 2016's Ghostbusters.
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Re: Films & Feminism

Postby Grimstone » Thu Aug 31, 2017 5:33 am

52xMax wrote:Instead of learning their lesson, it seems like Hollywood loves to double down, and in addition to the current gender-bending reboots such as Ocean's 8, it's been announced that a new adaptation of William Goulding's Lord of the Flies is in the making, featuring a "female lead" cast.


More movies with female leads? This is terrible news!
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Re: Films & Feminism

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Thu Aug 31, 2017 7:27 am

Grimstone wrote:
52xMax wrote:Instead of learning their lesson, it seems like Hollywood loves to double down, and in addition to the current gender-bending reboots such as Ocean's 8, it's been announced that a new adaptation of William Goulding's Lord of the Flies is in the making, featuring a "female lead" cast.


More movies with female leads? This is terrible news!

Yeah, I mean, they all have bug eyes!
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Re: Films & Feminism

Postby Krashlia » Thu Aug 31, 2017 8:45 am

I hope they avoid 30 year old "teenagers" and get a Piggy thats actually unattractive. And please do not void the benevolent Christ figure in fem!Simon, or the significance of the feared jungle beast (who may be figurative/imaginary as Simon alludes). And please don't take away the Nobility and Prudence of Ralph, or the Vindictiveness and Authoritarianism of Jack and the Savagery of Roger.
That scene where the hunters phallically rape/kill that pig? don't change it. Or give it a more "female" nature by having them use traps before tourturing it to death.

Show at least one quietly tense moment with at least one member of the cast washing away menstrual blood. Why? Because its blood, its pain, its innocence ending and growing up. And don't fail the bedchel test. By goodness, no male should need be discussed until that Captain shows up at the end.

My point? Don't tone it down or make it less harsh because "HurrDurrr Girls amirite?". Keep it up, or add slight and new dimensions when relevant to the difference.
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Re: Films & Feminism

Postby SandTea » Thu Aug 31, 2017 11:02 pm

I love that it's not the mra gamergater types that are the ones pissed about this. Just goes to show we are all silly.

I don't really have an opinion on this seeing as the scripts not even written yet. I'd be fine with a shot-for-shot word-for-word remake, I think, as a "ladies can be bad in the same manner guys can be" way. I'm also fine with them exploring how it would differ.

I will note that there's no good reason to call it lord of the flies if it is basically a completely different story that also has a pudgy girl with broken glasses and a pigs head on a stake, Like mean girls. (There was a pigs head in that right?)

There is certainly potential. Potential for good and bad. My guess is I'll not like it just because the black and white is so ingrained in me that seeing a HD color version just doesn't seem right.
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Re: Films & Feminism

Postby 52xMax » Sat Sep 02, 2017 1:12 am

Grimstone wrote:
52xMax wrote:Instead of learning their lesson, it seems like Hollywood loves to double down, and in addition to the current gender-bending reboots such as Ocean's 8, it's been announced that a new adaptation of William Goulding's Lord of the Flies is in the making, featuring a "female lead" cast.


More movies with female leads? This is terrible news!


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William Golding...you know? the novel's author wrote:Girls say to me, very reasonably, ‘why isn’t it a bunch of girls? Why did you write this about a bunch of boys?’ Well, my reply is I was once a little boy — I have been a brother, a father, I am going to be a grandfather. I have never been a sister, or a mother, or a grandmother. That’s one answer. Another answer is of course to say that if you, as it were, scaled down human beings, scaled down society, if you land with a group of little boys, they are more like a scaled-down version of society than a group of little girls would be. Don’t ask me why, and this is a terrible thing to say because I’m going to be chased from hell to breakfast by all the women who talk about equality — this is nothing to do with equality at all. I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been. But one thing you can’t do with them is take a bunch of them and boil them down, so to speak, into a set of little girls who would then become a kind of image of civilization, of society. The other thing is "why aren’t they little boys AND little girls?" Well, if they’d been little boys and little girls, we being who we are, sex would have raised its lovely head, and I didn’t want this to be about sex. Sex is too trivial a thing to get in with a story like this, which was about the problem of evil and the problem of how people are to live together in a society, not just as lovers or man and wife.

I boldened the relevant parts for your convenience. I wouldn't go so far as saying that women are superior to men (or vice-versa, I believe we are complementary in many different ways), but I think the point was made.

This supports my actual stance, the one you chose to ignore in pursue of a strawman.

I'm just wondering if any of the people involved in this project saw the 1990 movie or read the novel, because I think everyone is missing the moral of the story...but whatever. I guess people will vote with their feet on this one too, like they did with 2016's Ghostbusters.

This much is clear even after only watching the Simpsons parody, which actually featured boys and girls.

Another thing is that doing the same thing men did decades ago, except to a lesser degree of success, yeah, I just don't think that's the best way to send the message that women are strong, independent, or whatever it is they are trying to say. Especially when the people at the helm of the project happen to be two dudes.

Why are you doing gender-flip remakes at all? Wonder Woman did really well, and so did films like Lucy and Atomic Blonde, which are original takes on silly genre staples with female leads. And then there are major franchises such as the Hunger Games, Divergent, Twilight, and (to a lesser degree) even Pitch Perfect, which might not be quite as 'feminist' as some would like, but remain clear examples that movies lead by women can perform at the box office on their own without having to be at the shadow of being affirmative action heroes.

Maybe I'm wrong, and this lady of the butterflies or whatever actually turns out to be good, but based on previous experiences and all the information that has been released about the project, i wouldn't keep my hopes up.
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Re: Films & Feminism

Postby Grimstone » Sat Sep 02, 2017 4:35 am

Except, no point was actually made here... it's basically just him saying "I don't think a group of girls can represent a scaled-down version of society as well as boys can" without giving any good reasoning or basis for thinking this.

William Golding wrote:Don’t ask me why, and this is a terrible thing to say because I’m going to be chased from hell to breakfast by all the women who talk about equality — this is nothing to do with equality at all. I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been.


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Re: Films & Feminism

Postby SandTea » Sat Sep 02, 2017 1:46 pm

"affirmative action heroes" (don't you mean heroines?) and "ladies of the butterflies"?

Damnit, I've been trying so hard...

Alright remember composure, sandtea.

I was going to quote that same paragraph from the author but was lazy. Here's a different take that might help your consideration.

The author said that a scaled down version of society would be better described by a group of boys. I agree with that sentiment. It fit very well with how things were. If youtube comments and perhaps even current events are any indicator, 'feminization' is rampant. Rampant, I tell ya! A more modern take on what the societal structure is currently is not out of the (soft?)ballpark and it could work. Again there is no script so IDK.

I don't think it's inherently bad that men are behind the wheel. I'm fine with women writing male characters. I'm not sure they are even trying to say women are strong, independant, or whatever, just to tell a tale that I fully admit will probably not be as good. Not because it's gender switched but because I've got my rose glasses on. I just mean, don't discount it off hand because ghostbusters sucked.

Long story short, this isn't even a story yet.

fake edit- one thing I'm not looking forward to is I have a very bad feeling this is going to be, uh, blue lagoon-ey. The bad girls are probably going to be catholic school girls and I really hope they don't do one of those 'leg up' shots of under-aged skimpy deserted island clothes shots. I do think this could go awfully but it also could go ok. I don't think it'll surpass what it's trying to but I'd love to be surprised if it does.
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Re: Films & Feminism

Postby Marcuse » Sat Sep 02, 2017 7:10 pm

I'm in two minds about this. I'm almost certain that the people making this, from the comments posted, will have misunderstood the point of the piece and will fail to make a full throated depiction of the book (for reference I have both read the book at length in school and watched the previous movie in full). The whole point is to show how people tend to cruelty, tribalism and violence even in a group of previously unassuming children. That feral nature is supposed to be just beneath the surface all the time, waiting for the opportunity to arise again.

So do I think that a filmmaker whose stated opinion is that women are better than men will really delve into that feral heart for the movie when he's depicting women? If his interpretation of women is of perfect elfin ubermensch, he's missing the point of what the piece he's adapting is making. Whatever the merits or otherwise of remaking something with a gender flip, I'm not hopeful for this based on that alone.

Which of course is rather patronising. Anyone with half a jot of experience of women knows they can, in the right circumstances, be just as cruel, feral and violent as men. Sometimes equality means letting Klatchians be scheming bastards as well, but I strongly doubt someone with the stated aims and intentions this guy has will have the guts to put something to film that says, in essence "women, you can be just as shitty and evil as the men who were written in this role before".

I also echo the concerns that a female led version of LotF will probably be very prone to sexualisation, which will be skeevy and weird.
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Re: Films & Feminism

Postby Grimstone » Sat Sep 02, 2017 9:02 pm

Marcuse wrote:So do I think that a filmmaker whose stated opinion is that women are better than men will really delve into that feral heart for the movie when he's depicting women? If his of women is of perfect elfin ubermensch, he's missing the point of what the piece he's adapting is making. Whatever the merits or otherwise of remaking something with a gender flip, I'm not hopeful for this based on that alone.


That(women being superior to men) is the opinion of the man who wrote the novel(is this the opinion of the film makers as well?)...

Which of course is rather patronising. Anyone with half a jot of experience of women knows they can, in the right circumstances, be just as cruel, feral and violent as men.


Exactly...
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Re: Films & Feminism

Postby gisambards » Sun Sep 03, 2017 9:54 am

I think a female reboot of LotF falls into much the same category as female Ghostbusters when it was first announced - there's actually nothing at all wrong with it in theory, but there's a good chance the filmmakers will go about it in completely the wrong way.
It's entirely incorrect to say that a Lord of the Flies situation couldn't happen with a group of girls. All that William Golding quote demonstrates is that even very intelligent authors can be very wrong about their own books. I certainly think it's incorrect to suggest that an author's opinion about their own book should be considered the final word, if others think it can be disagreed with. Particularly in this case, where he's not actually talking about the real book, but why he thinks a hypothetical alternate version wouldn't work - all he's really saying is that he personally would be unable to write a version with girls, only arrogantly and wrongly extending it to saying that therefore no-one could.
There would almost certainly be some differences between a group of boys in that situation and a group of girls, but anyone who thinks women genuinely wouldn't be capable of the same level of savagery is just wrong, and if anything is managing to be insulting to both genders - as much as Golding was saying he thought it was women were better, what he's really buying into is the the stereotype that women are more delicate, and of course he's quite explicitly saying that men are worse and more prone to savage behaviour.
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Re: Films & Feminism

Postby Grimstone » Sun Sep 03, 2017 10:29 am



to recap..

max: the author thinks women>men

me: that's just silly

*crickets*

marcuse: the film makers are wrong(women>men)

*everyone seems to agree with this*

me: yeah, that's what I said.. wait, what? the film makers? I thought it was the author..

*crickets*

gisambards: the author is wrong(women>men)




Okay, seriously.. is it both the author and the film makers who believe this or just the author, what's going on here?
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Re: Films & Feminism

Postby gisambards » Sun Sep 03, 2017 10:48 am

It's the author, as he was using it as an argument for the story not working with women. The filmmakers have thus far made no comment on the relative merits of either gender.
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Re: Films & Feminism

Postby Marcuse » Sun Sep 03, 2017 12:08 pm

That was probably a mistake on my part. I'm still sure the filmmakers won't have the guts to make a movie about the evil inside of every man and woman in a movie filled with female leads, nor will they manage to avoid getting skeevy about the characters either. But my comments about the movie maker were incorrect.
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Re: Films & Feminism

Postby ghijkmnop » Sun Sep 03, 2017 10:35 pm

Redacted
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Last edited by ghijkmnop on Thu Mar 14, 2019 5:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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