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Start Date
24-6-2022 12:00 AM
End Date
24-6-2022 12:00 AM
Abstract
Remakes and reboots are a common practice in Hollywood, and in the 2010s, this practice included a trend of reinventing older properties with the twist of gender-swapping the central roles. The release of, for example, Ocean’s 8 (Ross, 2018) and Ghostbusters (Feig, 2016) allowed audiences to re-envision franchises with largely female casts. This move on the part of studios could be viewed as a sincere attempt to balance the longstanding inequalities in relation to gender on screen. It could also be cynically construed as a brazen attempt to squeeze more money out of successful franchises by drawing in a larger (female) demographic. Whatever their purposes, the films’ premises imply a direct gender switch, which would theoretically lead to a reverse in the amount and content of male versus female dialogue. But is there really an equitable reworking of dialogue? Are gender roles truly reversed in these reboots? This talk will utilize a videographic criticism approach to answer these questions through a comparative analysis of Ocean’s 11 (Soderbergh, 2001) and Ocean’s 8, as well as Ghostbusters 1984 (Reitman) and 2016. By reediting the original films to include only moments when women speak, and reediting the reboots to include only the moments when men speak, we can directly compare the amount and content of dialogue. Placing these reedited versions side by side, I can draw concrete conclusions about gender roles and the equality, or continued imbalances, in gender-swapped reboots.
Reinventing Franchises: Gender Swapping and (In)Equity
Remakes and reboots are a common practice in Hollywood, and in the 2010s, this practice included a trend of reinventing older properties with the twist of gender-swapping the central roles. The release of, for example, Ocean’s 8 (Ross, 2018) and Ghostbusters (Feig, 2016) allowed audiences to re-envision franchises with largely female casts. This move on the part of studios could be viewed as a sincere attempt to balance the longstanding inequalities in relation to gender on screen. It could also be cynically construed as a brazen attempt to squeeze more money out of successful franchises by drawing in a larger (female) demographic. Whatever their purposes, the films’ premises imply a direct gender switch, which would theoretically lead to a reverse in the amount and content of male versus female dialogue. But is there really an equitable reworking of dialogue? Are gender roles truly reversed in these reboots? This talk will utilize a videographic criticism approach to answer these questions through a comparative analysis of Ocean’s 11 (Soderbergh, 2001) and Ocean’s 8, as well as Ghostbusters 1984 (Reitman) and 2016. By reediting the original films to include only moments when women speak, and reediting the reboots to include only the moments when men speak, we can directly compare the amount and content of dialogue. Placing these reedited versions side by side, I can draw concrete conclusions about gender roles and the equality, or continued imbalances, in gender-swapped reboots.
Bio
Chelsea McCracken is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at SUNY Oneonta. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Communication Arts. Her research often focuses on gender and sexuality, and in one of her larger projects, she utilizes digital editing software to analyze dialogue and gender representations. She has published work in Screen, Media History, and Asian Cinema.