So Areg and I went to see Doctor Strange last night. Freakin' awesome visuals--totally worth seeing in 3-D (go for IMAX if you can!), and I predict an Oscar winner for visual effects. It's the kind of movie that grinning with excitement when Areg reminds me that someday feature-length immersive 360 movies will be possible.
Interesting thing, though....
Maybe I was just primed by the Wonder Woman trailer (vastly superior to the first one I saw), but about halfway through the movie the thought popped into my head: "This would be a lot more interesting if Doctor Strange was a woman." I mean, think about it: literally nothing would have to be any different. Plot, costume, dialogue, jokes. Even with the "oh-my-god-we-don't-have-a-love-interest-will-people-think-he's-is-gay-if-he-doesn't-have-a-not-bald-lady-in-his-life-halp" kiss, a woman Strange probably might not even offend more people than Brave did,* since some wise person on the script writing team pointed out that there's next to no relationship to support an actual snog. And of course women are allowed to kiss each other on the cheek.
But think about it: replace the main character with a woman but don't change anything else...and yet, everything would change.
Just think about the way characters talk about Strange's egocentrism: sure, it's an issue, but it's not going to completely derail his life. Heck, it's often a joke! Egocentric women, on the other hand, aren't seen as amusing and independent, they're seen as anti-social bitches who will drive everyone else away and then curl into a twitching ball of misery because they're alone. But if you drop Strange's ego on a woman without rewriting anything--suddenly you have a little cine-world in the multiverse that's accepting of the fact that it's not completely unnatural for a person, regardless of their gender, to get wrapped up in their very real strengths and accomplishments.
Strange is written well enough for the genre, unlike certain maligned star ship captains, but he's nothing we haven't seen before. Male, white and wealthy, highly intelligent, snobby, snarky, creative thinker, unusual banks of useless knowledge, voracious appetite for learning... He's basically Tony Stark with magic instead of mechanics. (Wait, who did you think I was talking about?)** Even the emotions are familiar: realization that he needs another/bigger purpose, the drive for discovery, betrayal by a mentor, determination to overcome the big bad at any cost. There's nothing really unique about these feelings, and the script seems to know that, considering how quickly these scenes flashed by. Instead of building up a character, the story can tap in to the framework that's been built for other superheroes--which is the kind of shorthand that makes fanfiction so great, since it allows the creator to focus on other aspects of the construction (in this case, the visuals).
But put that tried and true but a bit tired framework onto someone other than your standard white male--like a woman or someone of another gender, a person of color, a person with a disability, etc.--and you suddenly have something unique. Viewers would flip out in both good and bad ways. What does it mean that a woman's story doesn't hinge on an important significant other? Can a woman function when she focuses on studies and self-improvement rather than interpersonal relationships? How can a world exist where no one congratulates a doctor on overcoming the odds of their sex, gender, color, or ability to become extraordinarily skilled? Would it seem even more unrealistic that no one points out that the initial accident was their own darn fault? How would it alter our perspective to see camera angles that aren't focusing on breasts and hips, which are under loose and, frankly, silly-looking clothes? (Okay, so Marvel's actually done a good job with Black Widow on that one.)
One of the few good points of 2016 was that we actually got to see some of these questions answered with the Ghostbusters reboot. Still, making Strange a woman would remove that element of gender-conscious comedy that was built into the Ghostbusters script.
I have this fantasy that some day a director will fall in love with a script and decide, with no reason other than "because we can," to reverse the sexes of all the characters. Doctor Strange would be a perfect movie for this experiment--and I guarantee you, it would be good, visually stunning fun no matter what the cast looked like.
* Offend people morally, I mean--obviously there would be fanboys threatening violence and death.
** I'm rereading Marvel 1602 and I noticed that, aside from the costumes, Strange, Fury, and King James have extremely similar faces.
P.S. I started writing this on Facebook but then it got waaaay too long. Then I remembered, oh yeah, I have this blog that I haven't used in over a year. Might as well get some use out of it!
