Movie Story Type: Gender Bender
There are genres (e.g., Action, Comedy, Drama). Cross genres (e.g., Action-Thriller, Comedy-Science Fiction). Sub-genres (e.g., Romantic Comedy, Action Adventure). And then there are what we may call movie story types. In Hollywood development circles, people use them as shorthand. If you go here, you will see several that we’ve featured on GITS including Contained Thriller, Road Pictures, and The [Blank] From Hell.
This week, we look at more movie story types. Today: Gender Bender.
Gender Bender movies can involve a male character playing a female. A female character acting as a male. It can be conscious effort on the part of the character. Or there can be magic involved, a body switch or swap.
Some example of gender bender movies:
Some Like It Hot (1959): When two musicians witness a mob hit, they flee the state in an all female band disguised as women, but further complications set in.
Victor Victoria (1982): A struggling female soprano finds work playing a male female impersonator, but it complicates her personal life.
Tootsie (1982): An unemployed actor with a reputation for being difficult disguises himself as a woman to get a role in a soap opera.
All of Me (1984): A dying millionnaire has her soul transferred into a younger, willing woman. But something goes wrong, and she finds herself in her lawyer’s body — together with the lawyer.
Just One of the Guys (1985): Terry Griffith has got it all — looks, popularity, the perfect college boyfriend, and an article that’s a shoo-in to win her a summer internship at the local newspaper.
Switch (1991): A sexist, chauvinist pig gets his just desserts when his angry ex-girlfriends murder him and he is reincarnated as a woman.
Prelude to a Kiss (1992): A couple fall in love despite the girl’s pessimistic outlook. As they struggle to come to terms with their relationship, something supernatural happens that tests it.
The Crying Game (1992): A British soldier is kidnaped by IRA terrorists. He befriends one of his captors, who is drawn into the soldier’s world.
Mrs. Doubtfire (1993): After a bitter divorce, an actor disguises himself as a female housekeeper to spend secret time with his children held in custody by his Ex.
Shakespeare in Love (1998): A young Shakespeare, out of ideas and short of cash, meets his ideal woman and is inspired to write one of his most famous plays.
Boys Don’t Cry (1999): The story of the life of Brandon Teena, a transgendered teen who preferred life in a male identity until it was discovered he was born biologically female.
The Hot Chick (2002: An attractive and popular teenager who is mean spirited toward others, finds herself in the body of an older man, and must find a way to get back to her original body.
White Chicks (2004): Two disgraced FBI agents go way undercover in an effort to protect hotel heiresses the Wilson Sisters from a kidnapping plot.
It’s a Boy Girl Thing (2006): Sworn enemies find themselves in each other’s bodies, and use this to ruin each other’s lives.
She’s the Man (2006): When her brother decides to ditch for a couple weeks in London, Viola heads over to his elite boarding school, disguises herself as him, and proceeds to fall for one of her soccer teammates.
As is evident in the above list, gender bending is one of those conceits that can work in a number of genres from broad comedies to dramas, satires to social commentaries.
It seems like the preponderance of these movies is men-as-women. That could simply be a reflection of the fact that Hollywood’s conventional wisdom says women will see movies starring men or women, but men much prefer male leads. Perhaps that extends to men playing women, too.
Psychologically these type of movies do allow moviegoers the opportunity to play around with the idea of what it would be like to be a member of the opposite sex, men to get in touch with their feminine side, women with their masculinity.
One gaping hole I see in the list of movies: Where is a thriller gender bender? There’s Psycho and Dressed to Kill, but their respective gender bends are used as revelations made late in each film. Is there a thriller waiting to happen where a character plays a member of the opposite sex throughout the story?
What other qualities and dynamics do you think are present in gender bender movies? What other films of note belong in the list?
[Originally posted November 3, 2011]
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