Lady of the Flies

Hey folks.

Do you ever feel that there is a deep and honest singularity to the universe sometimes that is obviously based upon a coincidence, but it makes you feel like you are so in touch with the cultural conversation and you want so desperately for scientists  to preserve your brain for millennia in order to study how f@cking brilliant you are, or at the very least, how it's possible for a human to conflate minor coincidences into messages from the beyond? Me neither. Well okay, I did this week.

I just finished reading "Lord of the Flies," because, well, I don't need a reason. It's a classic. It's such a smooth, interesting read that explores society, male socialization, violence, tribalism peer-pressure, and bullying among many other themes, through the eyes of a group of private-schooled English boys.  imagine my serendipitous surprise when I see that they are planning a Gender-bended remake of William Golding's delightfully deconstructable novel found in most 9th grade English curriculums.      

Gender is now, apparently meaningless. Creators want to pander to feminists who don't understand feminism, with their own warped, capricious version of feminist pandering .
This is yet another appallingly lazy co-opting of an established cultural narrative that actually does more harm to the feminist cause than good. There is no need for this film to exist other than to say "we don't understand the point of this story." The implications of this new project is that every plot point, every masculine trait, every petty pissing contest, every inclination to suppress ones feelings for the good of the conch-shell, and the fire, and the prospect of being rescued, every pig slaughtering tribal dance, and instinctual desire to hunt and kill...that would all just be so very similar in the context of 2017 with a group of females. It's completely disingenuous and, by design, against everything we humans tend to understand about natural socialization.

The desperately hilarious part of all this gender-bending (inherently harmless, unless of course you are remaking a film that's entire purpose and structure is commenting on a specific gender) is that a man is going to direct this movie to better bring us the vision of what Lord of the Flies from a female perspective would be.

SO in case you keeping score, this movie, on top of ruining a classic piece of literature, misrepresenting biological and widely understood social behavior in order to depict females inaccurately exhibiting said behavior. This is all for the sake, of course of girlz being #bad@ss #vengeful #empowered, and in case you couldn't wait to bathe in the feminine glory of exploiting literature in order to make a cash-grabbing crudfest with no point, well rest assured that this will all be done carefully with two males at the helm. Talk about mansplaining.

For a good laugh, here's 
the New Yorker taking the piss out of the lost conceptual guidance of this laughably bad idea.

Would there even be a character called Piggy? They'd obviously be socially aware of the fat-shaming implications wouldn't they? They'd probably just call her "Thyroid Problem" or "Big Bone," or "Stop it Karen you aren't fat at all and your asmar is just the Patriarchy giving you limitations." Oh well. Not like those details are important.

Let me be clear. If you wanted to make a story about women crashing on an uninhibited island and dealing with the trauma, do it, that might be interesting or an idea worth exploring (negating the fact that you probably have only male screenwriters at the helm.) But don't call it LORD of the Flies, you ignorant pussbag. How in the hell did they even obtain the creative license for this? I'm beyond confused.

 This is just another instance of attention-grabbing, post-modern drudgery leaking into the mainstream.
But. I haven't seen the film yet. So. Who knows. Maybe it'll be a brilliant piece of satire and I'll happily shut the eff up. I just...I just so doubt it.

Final thought: Lady of the Flies is actually just the story of how Themyscira
is formed and we get to watch Gal Gadot prance around with her #empowered lady bits on display again. Yes, I'm all for more of that just as long as Patty Jenkens is signed on because she knows how to create sympathetic females characters.

Anyways, Stay tuned for next year's release of The Boy with the Dragon Tattoo.


-CjM