Find out why many people criticize the plan to adapt William Golding's classic novel into an all-female movie.
- Sep 1, 2017
AceShowbiz - A new "Lord of the Flies" movie is in the works at Warner Brothers and many people are not digging it. The reason why it comes under fire is because it will have all-female cast members, instead of all males like the original 1954 novel which was written by Nobel Prize winner William Golding.
"An all women remake of Lord of the Flies makes no sense because... the plot of that book wouldn't happen with all women," one commented on Twitter. Another wrote, "Uhm lord of the flies is about the replication of systemic masculine toxicity. every 9th grader knows this. u can read about it on sparknotes."
An all women remake of Lord of the Flies makes no sense because... the plot of that book wouldn't happen with all women.
— roxane gay (@rgay) August 31, 2017
uhm lord of the flies is about the replication of systemic masculine toxicity
every 9th grader knows this
u can read about it on sparknotes https://t.co/EQFyuSA3MV
— froy (@froynextdoor) August 31, 2017
There was also a critic who quipped, "Imagine having such little interest in seeking out original stories about girlhood by women that you remake LORD OF THE FLIES with girls." Another deadpanned, "A female lord of the flies where everything goes fine and they create a society on a secret island wait this is the start of wonder woman."
imagine having such little interest in seeking out original stories about girlhood by women that you remake LORD OF THE FLIES with girls
— JamesHurleyVEVO (@soalexgoes) August 30, 2017
A female lord of the flies where everything goes fine and they create a society on a secret island wait this is the start of wonder woman
— TechnicallyRon (@TechnicallyRon) August 31, 2017
The original book follows a group of boys stranded on an isolated island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves. Golding once explained why he filled the island with boys only, "I have been a brother, a father, I am going to be a grandfather. I have never been a sister, or a mother, or a grandmother. That's one answer."
"Another answer is of course to say that if you, as it were, scaled down human beings, scaled down society, if you land with a group of little boys, they are more like a scaled-down version of society than a group of little girls would be," he continued. "I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been. But one thing you can't do with them is take a bunch of them and boil them down, so to speak, into a set of little girls who would then become a kind of image of civilisation, of society."
The author continued, "The other thing is, 'why aren't they little boys AND little girls?' Well, if they'd been little boys and little girls, we being who we are, sex would have raised its lovely head, and I didn't want this to be about sex. Sex is too trivial a thing to get in with a story like this, which was about the problem of evil and the problem of how people are to live together in a society, not just as lovers or man and wife."
The upcoming movie will be written by Scott McGehee & David Siegel. "We want to do a very faithful but contemporized adaptation of the book, but our idea was to do it with all girls rather than boys," Siegel told Deadline. "It is a timeless story that is especially relevant today, with the interpersonal conflicts and bullying, and the idea of children forming a society and replicating the behavior they saw in grownups before they were marooned."
McGehee said it would be an "opportunity to tell it in a way it hasn't been told before, with girls rather than boys, is that it shifts things in a way that might help people see the story anew. It breaks away from some of the conventions, the ways we think of boys and aggression. People still talk about the movie and the book from the standpoint of pure storytelling."
He added, "It is a great adventure story, real entertainment, but it has a lot of meaning embedded in it as well. We've gotten to think about this awhile as the rights were worked out, and we're super eager to put pen to paper."
