Casting the pronouns
It’s Lia Thomas / Laurel Hubbard / Rachel McKinnon all over again.
Eddie Izzard will lead the cast of Joe Stephenson’s UK feature Doctor Jekyll, a modern interpretation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde which places a woman in the lead role.
That is, Joe Stephenson is rethinking Doctor Jekyll as a woman, but then casting a man in the part, so not rethinking it as a woman at all.
Talk about having it both ways. “I’m making Jekyll a woman! And I’m casting a man as that woman! Am I original and quirky or what?!”
A new and more convoluted way to take away one of the few opportunities women have.
“It’s wonderful to be able to reimagine this classic story in a modern way,” said Izzard.
It’s wonderful to take a female part away from a woman, said Izzard.
Top-grossing 100 films:
- 66% of speaking or named characters were male and 34% were female. This is a gender ratio of 1.9 males to every 1 female.
- Only 28% of all speaking characters in action films were girls and women, which was not meaningfully different. A similar pattern emerged for female characters in animation (33.3%).
- Only 14 of the 100 top movies in 2019 featured a gender-balanced (45%-54.9% of all speaking roles filled with girls/women) cast.
But hey, no doubt Eddie Izzard plays a woman much better than any woman could possibly do it.
Can you imagine the uproar if someone decided to do a new movie version of The Grapes of Wrath in which the Joad family is African-American and then cast Leonardo DiCaprio as Tom Joad?
In blackface, no less!
Isn’t this really just casting Izzard as the lead, and telling him that they are reimagining the role as a woman to humour him?
A quick google search shows that the male/female Jekyll and Hyde has been done at least twice already in movies. Probably more than that. So, yeah, another tired retread of a retread of a tired trope switch to the original work. This dull beaten down bunch of “artists” that we have now are really not able to create much new in the progressive cage they have locked themselves into.
Just like Shakespeare!
Maybe he’ll even add in a scene in which Ms. H. pretends to be a man.
Perhaps Dr. Jekyll could change into a hideous, blathering troon.
A director friend of mine directed Sister Act once. She cast a TiM in the female lead.
Jeckyll and Hyde re-imagined as panto!
With a pantomime dame in the lead role!
Funny thing is that portraying Jeckyll as trans is probably as ‘hip’ and ‘revolutionary’ (and more importantly, free publicity generating) as casting a standard-issue woman would be.
It’s a while since I read the book but I’m sure the Doctor’s sex, gender, sexuality and favourite football team have no real relevance to the story.