- As I was watching Stranger Things,
I started to think about the films that had clearly
influenced the series, Stand By Me being one of them.
And the more I thought about it, the more I started
to realise that there was a clear genre that was emerging,
a genre that can pretty much be summed up
as a group of boys go on an adventure.
As well as Stranger Things and Stand By Me,
other examples of this genre might be Super 8,
It, or The Goonies.
The elements of this genre
I think are pretty straightforward.
You have to have some kind of central adventure or mystery.
There's also almost always a sense of darkness
or danger or threat, and there will be a crime,
sci-fi, or fantasy element behind it,
although it is worth noting,
and I'll talk about this later, that the boys themselves
are often not directly involved in it.
They won't be magic themselves, for example.
There may be one girl present, but it's going
to overwhelmingly be a gang of boys,
and the girl is almost always going to be
either the annoying sister or a sort of proto-romantic crush
for at least one of the boys.
This genre is a kind of coming of age film
that's significant because it goes
beyond an everyday telling of real-life growing up,
and they're some of the most beloved and critically
acclaimed films of this kind of coming of age drama.
And the more I thought about it,
the more examples I came up with.
I couldn't think of any with a group of girls
in the place of a group of boys.
So one reason might be the stereotype that girls
aren't into the outdoorsy, rough-and-tumble kind of life
that these kind of films are portraying, which,
obviously, is ridiculous.
It would be just as easy to use the stereotype
the other way around and say, well, it's unrealistic
for these boys to be going out on an adventure.
They'd probably be inside playing video games.
A variant on this is the idea
that it's unrealistic because girls wouldn't be allowed
to go outside unsupervised to that extent,
and I can see how this might have weight for some people.
I don't think it's a coincidence, for example,
that a lot of these boys adventure stories
are set in a slightly earlier era,
not just because of the nostalgia factor,
but also the suspension of disbelief,
the idea that, oh, well, back in those days,
we just roamed around and out parents told us to be
back by this time, but they didn't really check on us,
and anything could have happened.
But I also think that we're dealing with boys who go out
and find dead bodies and journey to an upside-down realm,
so, I feel like we don't necessarily
have to stick to reality.
One of the weird faux compliment arguments that I hear
are things like, girls are just smarter than that.
They wouldn't go looking for a dead body.
One, I think it's a weird virtuous pedestal
that you have put girls and women on if that's
something that you truly believe,
but also the boys who go on these adventures
don't do it because they're stupid.
They often do it for noble or moral reasons,
saving a friend, for example.
And the last reason that gets given is a little bit
more meta, the idea that these stories
are meant to be coming of age stories.
They're meant to be storing the story of people growing up
and becoming better.
There's this idea of, well, girls don't need
to go on these adventures to become better people.
They're in touch with their emotions already.
Again, take those ladies off the pedestal you have them on,
but also in other genres of coming of age films
that girls are present in,
they're often not in touch with their emotions.
It's just that often, the emotions they're not in touch
with are emotions around guilt around sex
and wanting to go out with a cute boy
rather than anything much deeper.
I think it's cyclical, right?
It's kind of like a round cause and effect spiral.
If you're a filmmaker who sees these iconic films
and wants to do an homage to them
or to kind of reflect it in your work,
if you've always seen them as a group of boys,
and we have a lack of representation of girls
having this same kind of drive towards adventure,
intrigue, then I can kind of see how it wouldn't even
necessarily consciously cross your mind
to reverse those genders in that way.
I think it's also useful to look at films and TV shows
which are similar but not quite the same
which do have girls in the lead roles.
So, for example, Winx or Witch or even Sailor Moon.
It's the girls are magic genre.
Earlier in the video, I said I'd come back to the idea
that the boys in these stories aren't magical themselves,
and I think it's this idea that even when there is
this kind of fantastical thing where they're finding aliens
or, you know, getting involved in this crime
that should be way above their heads, that they don't
have to have any extra powers to deal with it,
whereas in the girl is magic genre,
there's this kind of idea that these particular girls
have to be set apart from other girls.
They have to have something extra
in order to go on these adventures
or kind of defeat these problems in front of them.
In this example, there's also the idea that,
because they're cartoon, which are often quite positive
or joyous, there might be some sense of danger,
but ultimately, we know that it's going
to end up at the end of an episode
pretty much exactly how it was at the beginning.
There's kind of a dampening of that real charge of darkness.
The second example that kind of strays into this
might be something like Pretty Little Liars.
This is the idea that when you get a group
of girls together, even when you have the idea of,
you know, crime and what could potentially be
a supernatural element to it, what they're
more concerned about is gossip and rumour and reputation.
It's very much within society,
whereas the boys when they go on adventures
are deliberately going outside of society so that they
can grow independently into who they're meant to be.
You might also think of something like Babysitter's Club
or the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants.
These are groups of girls who have problems,
but again, their problems are entirely within society.
They are normal problems that everyday girls all go through
that they help each other with,
and I suppose magical pants that fit everyone
is a magical element, but there's something specifically
socially-based about it.
Essentially, a key difference
is the internal versus external issues.
Girls' issues in this film
is often within or about themselves,
specifically, within a social realm.
In the boys version, although they have things
that they need to work on within themselves,
it's also manifested in an external way.
It kind of leaves room for more nuance,
metaphors, and allegories, for example,
as well as this coming of age growth.
It allows for a more fullness of the narrative.
Some of the best genre pieces I think within crime,
sci-fi, and fantasy use these heightened elements
in order to tell a story which is more rich.
And I think that's also why these films become such classics
and have such critical acclaim.
So what do you think?
Would swapping the genders and having
an all-girl adventure story work,
or are there reasons why it hasn't been done before?
Let me know in the comments below.
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And until I see you next time, bye.