“She­boots” aren’t the solu­tion to Hollywood’s gen­der gap

When Brides­maids was released in 2011 it broke new ground for female-cen­tric block­busters. Since then, how­ev­er, Hol­ly­wood has moved away from mak­ing orig­i­nal women-led films towards ​‘she­boots’, where a pop­u­lar fran­chise is recast with the male roles going to women. The next in pro­duc­tion is Ocean’s Ocho, the lat­est remake of Ocean’s Eleven, which will see the pri­ma­ry con­men played by San­dra Bul­lock and Cate Blanchett. Although it has been stressed that the actors will not be play­ing lady-ver­sions of the male roles, it will be inter­est­ing to see what Olivia Milch is able to do with the screen­play with­in the con­straints of the genre.

Then, of course, there’s Ghost­busters, to date the most talked-about she­boot. Direc­tor Paul Feig has com­plained that peo­ple only men­tion his film with the premise of the ​‘all-female’ ver­sion and that we don’t talk about ​‘the all-male Expend­ables’. Well, we’re fair­ly cer­tain that if you recast Steel Mag­no­lias with men in the lead roles peo­ple would refer to it as the ​‘all-male’ Steel Mag­no­lias. Whichev­er way you slice it, in their cur­rent guise gen­der swap movies are not a sign of progress for women in the film industry.

Why is it that we still refer to female led films in rela­tion to their male equiv­a­lents (see Bridesmaids/​The Hang­over) or only give women oppor­tu­ni­ties in big fran­chis­es if they are play­ing male char­ac­ters that have pre­vi­ous­ly proved to be prof­itable (Expend­abelles). Why are women con­stant­ly cast in roles that are tied to the trope of mas­culin­i­ty? Take Star­buck in the Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca TV reboot – she smokes cig­ars, gam­bles, swears, gets into fist fights. Mak­ing her a woman in this instance is pure gim­mick­ry. It’s the same deal in The Heat: San­dra Bul­lock is tough and arro­gant but gets results and Melis­sa McCarthy plays a pot­ty-mouthed rebel, mak­ing it a mis-matched bud­dy cop movie that we’ve seen many times before. Hav­ing women tak­ing on these males tropes may help the audi­ence iden­ti­fy with the char­ac­ters, but only in the sense that they con­form to basic stereotypes.

Hol­ly­wood often expe­ri­ences trends where every­one jumps on the same band­wag­on off the back of a sin­gle suc­cess. It’s lazy but per­haps to be expect­ed in this risk averse busi­ness. Yet there is a pos­i­tive sea change occur­ring, with sev­er­al roles that were writ­ten for men being adapt­ed for women – from Julia Roberts in Secret in their Eyes to Emi­ly Blunt in Sicario and Char­l­ize Theron in The Gray Man. We need more of this open-mind­ed­ness about the gen­der of lead char­ac­ters, but it shouldn’t be done for the sake of it. Don’t make James Bond ​‘Jane’ Bond; write a new dead­ly super spy who just hap­pens to be a woman.

Female actors – not to men­tion movie­go­ers – deserve bet­ter than safe gen­der swap reboots. At a time when Hol­ly­wood is no longer able to hide its head in the sand with regards to cer­tain inequal­i­ties, we may well look back on this time as a tran­si­tion­al phase towards a brighter future for women. The wor­ry for now is that if films like Ghost­busters and Ocean’s Ocho prove suc­cess­ful, Hol­ly­wood might see gen­der swap films as a long-term solu­tion. Equal­ly, if these films per­form bad­ly at the box office, it will like­ly be seen as a failed experiment.

We need to see uncon­ven­tion­al screen­plays writ­ten with female actors in mind. We need women pro­duc­ers push­ing the agen­da to get these films made, and a greater oppor­tu­ni­ties for women behind the cam­era. Despite the dis­ap­point­ing back­lash to Ghost­busters, it’s clear that audi­ences are ready to see more col­lab­o­ra­tions between pre­dom­i­nant­ly female casts and crews – all we need now is for Hol­ly­wood to answer the call.