RE: Attention TV & Movie Producers: Please Stop Re-Writing Male Parts for Women
I think you are right in your point, but there's a bigger picture to be seen. When you say "you are so creatively bankrupt when it comes to women that you have to re-appropriate male roles for them because you can't come up with anything decent that's original", I would say, to most producers in Hollywood or TV, "you are so creatively bankrupt that you can't come up with anything decent that's original AT ALL". What you are pointing is just one aspect of this lack of originality.
You mention, for instance, the female Ghostbusters. The question is, why did they do Ghostbusters again? Ghostbusters already happened like 30 years ago and it was awesome, why are we doing it again? And why couldn't they come up with an original story? I'd prefer to watch a story about 4 women obsessed with the Ghostbusters who wanted to imitate them or follow their legacy, or something like that. But that remake, with or without women, should not have been done.
We are watching the same stories again and again. How many more James Bonds, Batmans, Supermans and Spidermans will we have to put up with? Poltergeist, Point Break, Jurassic Park, Mad Max, Independence day, Baywatch, The Mummy, IT... Not to mention sequels of stories that should have been left as stand alones, there will be a sequel of the Gremlins, for god's sake!
They just look for something that gives them a chance of a certain sell, instead of a whole different story which they don't know how the public will react to it. Before the 2000, I don't know, maybe there was something about the instruction of people in films that made them take the risk to tell what they wanted to tell. But now, they rather remake some story that was successfull in the past, "so why can't it be a hit now?". And now what "sells" is having female heroines, they are confronted now with a female audience that it's in fact more empowered and demands to be portrayed as heroines as well. And why would they make the effort of creating new female characters, with a whole century of characters that they can rehash? And with a female audience that will expeditiously buy it?
It's all a matter of demand and sale. We just have to stop buying.
That's something else I've been irritated about for ages. Why all the sequels? So many sequels. And remakes. You're absolutely right. How many freaking Spiderman remakes do we need? There are things that should definitely have been left ALONE. Another Gremlins? Oh, gods. No. Just no, no, no, no. It was fine as it was. We do NOT need another.
The entertainment industry has been creatively bankrupt for some time. I read somewhere that Hollywood now prefers to bank on projects they know have built-in audiences, which means either sequels/re-makes, or adaptations of novels with big readerships (as an author, I don't mind that so much ;) ). It's a matter of not wanting to risk money on things they don't know will do well, and of just not seeming to have any new ideas.
I still find it insulting that they keep re-doing traditionally male roles and giving them to women, and I would feel the same about giving traditionally female roles to men. If someone makes a Pride and Prejudice with the male and female roles reversed, I may have to hurt someone. Grrr. Doing ruin good roles by gender-swapping them. Make something new.
The economic and social forces at work these days make it so we can't have nice things. :<
Not to mention race-swapping!
https://www.facebook.com/MRodOfficial/videos/10152740619492406/
There's that, too.