Starbuck can't be a woman!
Which is basically what Ursula K. LeGuin spends a long time saying here.
LeGuin isn't talking about Starbuck, actually, but about Helen Mirren playing Prospero. I...suspect most people here would have their interest amplified by this Prospero becoming Prospera, but LeGuin basically spends a long time saying it's an amazing and brilliant performance but is wrong wrong wrong because...Helen mirren is a woman.
It...rather speaks for itself if you read even the first few paragraphs, but I think what really had me headbanging was when she was using other Shakespeare charcters to explain why it was a bad idea? But she was completely missing the part where all the characters she used lived in a society with endless rules and constraints regarding gender, and in those cases to have a genderswap like this appears to be within the established story, where only the character's gender is and everything plays out the same, you'd essentially have to flip the entire society. Which is, you know, not a bad idea, but completely different from Prospero's case, where he's living alone on an island with his daughter nd magic folk, completely isolated from that society and its rules. Which, IMO, makes it the perfect framing for this kind of experiment.
Trailer for the movie:
Click to viewI...am withholding Ultimate Judgement regarding Caliban until I've seen it.
Meanwhile, I understand that there's a new Arthuriana series called Camelot (But not based on the musical?) with Eva Green as Morgana? I suspect everyone but me already knew about this. I...admit casting an actress I love as my mythic girlfriend and not naming itself after a character I'm almost always disinterested in and making the queen the black servant (Three words for you, people: Princess. In. Disguise. Only acceptable excuse!) and advertising the epic manly bond makes me likely to check it out much more quickly than certain other shows. Though...is it just me, or are most of the cast except Philip Winchester more movie peoplethan TV people?