Gender reverse?

[koganbot]

Finally saw The Hunger Games.* Had the thought that it would not work to gender reverse the two main roles. By "not work" I mean "not work for me as a viewer of a current American or Western European movie or TV show, as opposed to in life where it may well come reversed and 'work' as such." And "not work for me" doesn't mean I wouldn't accept it

Comments

[koganbot]

As for The Hunger Games: I don't know what I feel about it. It was good enough to see again. Very good acting. But in the movie, at least, its world and its bad guys just aren't all that interesting, and the script makes far less than it could have of the fact that all but one contestant has to die.

The reason I don't think the genders are reversible is that I don't think we as a culture believe anymore in the strong guy or in the wild guy, either, as a hero. Difficult to start with him that way as anything but a jerk. Would have to be a comedy.

It might work in music (still on my list of things to do is to read your Libertines week; they're a band I know almost nothing about). The first two Eminem albums work very well, and they're not that old or out of date. Or even out of date at all. But the protagonist there isn't Eminem or Slim Shady as a character(s) in his songs, but the actual artist Eminem/Marshall Mathers himself. And he's got a sense of everything problematic about what he's doing. I don't attribute his subsequent decline to his persona or to the gender role going obsolete, but just to the principle "Punks don't grow; they stop." And to his personal problems.