譯/王麗娟
A planned film adaptation of "Lord of the Flies," the 1954 novel that examined the inherent evil of humanity through an island of boys without adult supervision, will have a provocative twist: This time, the island will be full of girls.
The concept alone invited immediate scrutiny on social media. But skepticism was inflamed by a fairly common Hollywood story: The film about girls will be written and directed by two men, Scott McGehee and David Siegel.
小說《蒼蠅王》出版於1954年，透過在島上沒有大人監督的一群男孩，探討人性本惡的問題。籌畫中的改編電影《蒼蠅王》，則做了一項具挑釁性的轉變：這次，島上盡是女孩。
光是這個概念就在社群媒體上立即引來檢視。而且這種看衰論還因好萊塢相當常見的一個故事而加重，這部女版電影將由史考特麥基席和大衛席格這兩個男人編寫和執導。
Using girls "might help people see the story anew," McGehee said.
"It breaks away from some of the conventions, the ways we think of boys and aggression," he said. "People still talk about the movie and the book from the standpoint of pure storytelling. It is a great adventure story, real entertainment, but it has a lot of meaning embedded in it as well."
麥基席說，啟用女孩「或許可幫助人們以全新的眼光看待這個故事」。
他說：「它擺脫了一些傳統，我們對男孩和侵略的思考模式。人們還是從純講故事的角度來討論這部電影和小說。這是一個很棒的冒險故事，真正的娛樂，但其中也不乏許多深意。」
Theirs would be at least the third adaptation of "Lord of the Flies," after a 1963 version and another one in 1990. Warner Bros. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the book — spoiler alert — things go badly for the preteen boys, classmates from an English boarding school who become stranded on an island without adults. They first try to work together to survive, but their new society quickly unravels as distrust and violence set in. A favorite of high school English classes, the story has for decades been seen as a cautionary look at how members of mankind can treat one another poorly.
兩人的電影至少是繼1963年和1990年兩個版本之後的第三個《蒼蠅王》改編作品。華納兄弟未立即回應外界要求，對此事發表評論。
在這本書中─劇情透露警告─這些青春期前男孩的情況變得很糟糕，他們是英國一所住宿學校同班同學，在沒有大人情況下，受困在一個荒島上。一開始，他們試圖共同求生，但隨著不信任和暴力進入，他們的新社會也快速崩解。這本小說是高中英文課的最愛，數十年來，這個故事被看待成是一個前車之鑑，可了解人類社會成員可能如何傷害對方。
But is it about mankind or about men? Flipping the gender dynamics would lead to an entirely different story, several people argued on Twitter.
In an undated interview, the author of the book, William Golding, who died in 1993, said he was often asked why he wrote about boys instead of girls. He said that it was partly because he grew up as one, but that gender was also crucial to the larger point of the novel:
"If you land with a group of little boys, they are more like scaled-down society than a group of little girls would be. Don't ask me why, and this is a terrible thing to say, because I'm going to be chased from hell to breakfast by all the women who talk about equality. This has nothing to do with equality at all. I mean, I think women are foolish to pretend they're equal to men — they're far superior and always have been. But one thing you cannot 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 civilization, of society."
不過，它針對的究竟是人類還是男人呢？有些人在推特上說，翻轉性別動力將帶來一個全然不同的故事。
在一個未註明日期的訪談中，1993年去世的小說作者威廉．高汀說，他常被問到為何寫的是男孩而不是女孩。他說，部分是因他是男孩，但是男孩這個性別在小說的更大觀點中也至關重要：
「和一群小男孩一起降落，他們要比一群小女孩更像個縮小的社會。不要問我為什麼，說這句話是件可怕的事，我會被談論兩性平等的女性追到天涯海角。這和兩性平等完全無關。我的意思是，我認為女性假裝她們和男人平等是件愚蠢的事，她們優越得多，而且一向如此。但是有件事你無法透過她們來做到，你無法找來一群女孩，然後這麼說吧，把她們壓縮成一組女孩，讓她們成為文明或社會的某種形象。」
沒有留言:
張貼留言