The Gender Swap is in fashion, and that’s a great thing.
Nope.
The Gender Swap is a gimmick that profits off pretending
to be more inclusive than it is.
Remaking beloved stories
with women or people of color in the starring roles
can shake up old material, infuse it with fresh energy,
and even weave in a timely social critique while you’re at it.
In theory.
But in reality, Gender Swaps frequently end up disliked,
disappointing, or just kind of “eh.”
This is Take Two: a series brought to you by The Take—
—where we compare two opposing sides
to a cultural question of our times.
Today’s inquiry: Is the Gender Swap Really a Good Thing?
Take 1 will argue that, no,
Gender Swaps are a shamelessly commercial form of tokenism
resulting in bland storytelling, and they need to stop.
Take 2 will argue that, yes,
when done right, Gender Swaps are a valuable and important way
to rework classics for our modern era.
The Gender Swap sounds like a good idea in theory,
but in practice, much of the time it yields
only a flat shadow of the original.
Fundamentally, the Gender Swap is a form of tokenism.
Women are handed a secondhand story, and the subtext of this is:
you may be starring in it, but it isn’t yours.
In reality, Gender Swaps are frequently still written and directed by men,
betraying that this is more or less a gimmick driven by
commercial opportunism.
And despite their female star power,
Gender-Swapped stories often end up feeling like they’re still
largely about the men of the original.
“It was a mistake, uh. But it-it happened.”
“I was upset. I got into a self-destructive pattern.”
As the New York Times’ Amanda Hess writes about Ocean’s 8,
when Danny Ocean’s sister Debbie visits Danny’s grave,
“she keeps one eye on her brother’s tomb,
half-expecting him to crawl out."
“You would’ve loved it.”
“Before, live with
a friend, Daniel Son.
Boys are easier.”
The Gender Swap is also often treated as a band-aid to gloss over
problematic aspects of the original.
As Hess writes, the women starring in gender-swaps are "subtly expected
to fix these old films, to neutralize their sexism
and infuse them with feminism, to rebuild them into good movies
with good politics, too.
They have to do everything the men did, except backwards and with ideals.”
Meanwhile, the pressure
for these movies to rehabilitate the politics of these older stories
means that the female characters are pretty tied up sending woke,
PC messages about female empowerment
and acting like role models.
“Somewhere out there is an eight-year-old girl lying in bed,
dreaming of being a criminal.
Let’s do this for her.”
Frequently, they’re also up against a one-dimensional male villain—
standing in loosely for the fact that all men are awful.
A lot of media coverage focuses on why male fans of the originals
don’t want Gender Swaps made,
but increasingly it’s actually feminists who object
to the lack of depth or thought in simply assuming stories
would play out the same way if you sub in women for men.
When you just switch the gender and/or race of the main characters
without altering anything else, the character motivations and actions,
and even the ultimate message of the film, might feel off.
As Amanda Mannen writes for Cracked,
whereas the 2000 Mel Gibson movie What Women Want is based around
the fact that men like Gibson’s character have
“never had to think about what women want
in order to be successful,”
"Almost every woman I know thinks I'm an asshole."
reversing the gender of this premise doesn’t really make sense,
“because women have to understand what the men in their lives want
if they ever want to get anywhere...
what lesson is [the protagonist] going to learn?
That she needs to be more sensitive to the needs of men?”
The best argument against the Gender Swap is that, overall,
it’s creatively limiting.
Many Gender Swaps end up being just “fine.”
And is that really good enough?
When done right, the Gender Swap movie
makes us rethink our assumptions about gender norms,
while still letting us have plenty of fun with a narrative
we already know and love.
When 1940’s His Girl Friday was adapted from a stage play
about two male journalists, making one lead female
allowed for an insightful commentary on what it was like
to be a working woman in that era.
“You're a newspaperman.”
“That's why I'm quitting.
I want to go someplace where I can be a woman.”
“You mean be a traitor.”
“A traitor? A traitor to what?”
“A traitor to journalism. You’re a journalist, Hildy!”
Even when a Gender Swap
isn’t an excellent or groundbreaking piece of art,
it’s still a good thing.
Popular classics and beloved franchises
are getting remade and rebooted all the time.
So if they’re going to happen anyway,
why not put a woman or a person of color
in the starring role?
Why not make them inclusive and at least try to address
issues of gender or race?
"Okay, I don't know if it was a race thing or a lady thing,
but I'm mad as hell."
Due to the big followings of the originals,
these movies are likely to reach big audiences—
thus giving an important and much-needed platform
to people who aren’t the usual white guys.
And arguably, shaking up the makeup of the cast
automatically renders the remake at least somewhat more interesting.
It’s an inherently fun breath of fresh air—
and not your typical blockbuster experience—
to see lots of women interacting together onscreen
in a big-budget movie.
"I don't have that many close female friendships.
And book clubs are the worst, so I just thought, you know,
this could be something fun to share."
"You're becoming a criminal because you're lonely?"
Just plugging a woman into a male role
and dropping female characters into a typically male environment
can still produce some surprising narrative moments and insights,
without other major updates needed.
“Why are women better suited to the con than men?
No man will ever believe a woman is smarter than he is.”
And the financial success
of these enterprises can lead
to more female-led franchises and original movies getting made.
As Jesse Hassenger writes for The Verge,
“No one wants flipped remakes to take the place of incisive,
original stories about marginalized groups, but...
If familiar brand names can be used to tell stories that don’t only
reflect a white, straight, male point of view,
that’s more justification than most remakes can boast.”
While the Gender Swap throws women a bone
and makes some surface-level nods to girl power, it’s simply not enough.
Even when it departs significantly from the original,
the Gender Swap story does have to retain some elements
of its predecessor;
therefore it’s never going to be fully informed by the sensibility
of the reboot characters.
Female actors end up having to pantomime through
what is still, at its core, a male story.
Women and people of color need the opportunity
to tell original stories—
to create new classics, that are shaped fully by
the perspectives of characters and creators who aren’t beholden
to any predecessor.
"Thank you, Your Highness.
But I had no need of saving."
Regardless of what it does—
there’s a level on which no Gender Swap can escape
being contrasted with and scrutinized against a male template.
Today even whole sub-genres of original movies get treated
like Gender Swaps, even though they’re not.
Movies about “women behaving badly” or “acting out,”
which feature female characters
behaving in ways we tend to associate with men,
“I’m glad he’s single, I’m going to climb that like a tree.”
or immediately find themselves assessed by critics and audiences
through references to male examples.
When Bridesmaids came out, it couldn’t escape comparisons
to The Hangover,
just as Booksmart couldn’t avoid being branded the “Female Superbad.”
We have to get away from this tendency to always view
the female in relation to a white, male reference point.
And we have to overcome the widespread assumption
that people will only care about female stories
if they bear a resemblance to an established male narrative.
“We are not one-dimensional.”
So while some Gender-Swapped remakes may have offered
a valuable foot in the door to prove that people want to watch
more diverse casts take the lead,
now it’s time to go further and demand an end
to superficial, opportunistic tokenism.
While it’s valid to criticize some Gender Swaps for being shallow,
today we’re seeing versions of this enterprise
which are a lot more than just a superficial casting gimmick,
and which become truly original stories.
We might rename this deeper version of the Gender Swap The Gender-Shift,
because it shifts the focus of the narrative to recenter
around a character of another gender.
Looking at some examples,
we can devise a few rules for what makes the Gender Swap
into a Gender-Shift:
In the Gender-Shift, the main character isn’t just a copy of the original
except with a different appearance.
She’s her own person,
with a totally different temperament, journey, and worldview.
"Psychologically speaking, Vengeance rarely brings
the catharsis we hope for."
And since she’s a new character, we meet her without preconceptions,
instead of holding her up against an original.
It helps when female characters are conceived of and written as women,
rather than remaining essentially male characters
who happen to be played by female actors.
Most crucially, a Gender-Shift reflects
the main character’s experience of not being a white guy.
It tends to explicitly include and comment on
the constraints and conflicts of gender norms.
“For all your noise and bluster,
you’re just a silly little girl with no one around to protect her.”
We’re given a view into what it’s like to exist in our most iconic,
beloved story-worlds if you just so happen
to be a woman, girl, or person of color.
“You are not some fragile maid.
You are a warrior, and you are strong.”
Versions of the Gender-Shift might revisit a known story
through the eyes of a neglected, sidelined character,
or might simply look at a historical time period
from a generally different-gendered view than we’re used to seeing,
“Your mascara is running.
If you’d like to go fix yourself, then we can continue this later.”
exercises which can yield thought-provoking insights
into what it was like to be a woman in past eras.
"And it is high time I should tell you my story myself."
Not surprisingly, it makes a difference when women or people of color
are involved in the writing or directing,
leading to a story that’s informed by the actual perspective
of a marginalized person.
And it’s important that the ultimate message evolves
to reflect the new story’s point of view.
"Never be ashamed of what you are."
"They don't call you 'demon' or 'witch.'"
In the Gender-Shift, the updated character
also gets to shape her story stylistically—
from the visuals, to the music,
to the overall tone and texture of her narrative world.
“Isn’t this fun? It’s just like a sleepover.
We should order pizza. Make cosmos.”
There’s a powerful significance to reinterpreting a mainstream story
about a white guy through the perspective of someone
who was originally on the sidelines, a bit player, or not even there at all.
The gender-shift can revitalize narratives we care about
and make us think about where our society is at today.
So what do you think?
Should we keep making Gender-Swaps, or put them to rest?
And what do you think is the best Gender-Shift out there?
Tell us whether Take 1 or Take 2 has you convinced,
and be sure to subscribe to Netflix Film Club!