I do have a certain love for the movie High Fidelity, I prefer it over the book on some levels (Rob is more sympathetic, has some dimension and isn't falling too heavy on the side of unlikable curmudgeon. In the book he's more of a typical Englishman bred to be devoid of emotion). I have a stupid history of trying to get a decent copy of this movie on DVD and failing three times, including when I got it in a double set with Grosse Pointe Blank. Every copy I bought skipped in the same place. I ended up ringing the Australian Disney distribution number and spoke to some asshole suit who said to just watch it on another player. So, of course, I got this via other means. I'm sure if I bought the Bluray the issue wouldn't be there, or it's possibly on one streaming service. But I do watch it every now and then as my goto feelgood romcom with the level of snark and sophistication I don't get from other romcoms.
The movie adaptation works. So why in the fuck has someone from Hulu decided to greenlight a "female reimagining of this, where Rob isn't just turned into a straight white woman with the same issues, but she has to be a black queer woman who resembles Marie De Salle? And why does Barry's character have to be replaced with an obese black woman. And Dick's character is just a gay guy (I think). And they're just pop culture nerds working a used record store in America instead of the UK (PS I know the movie is set in the US as well, I don't have an issue with this). The author is a producer of this series (possibly just EP in name), but I watched the trailer and just asked "Why?" for nearly two minutes. "Why does this exist? What purpose does it serve? Did we ask for this? Was there a cult following of the book/movie that were hitting Twitter demanding a reboot in series format?"
This is how I felt when they rebooted Heathers for the "modern era" and I have refused to this day to fucking touch it. It might be amazing, I just cannot, just as I cannot with the musical.
I'm reading reviews about High Fidelity so I can fill myself in without watching, and I'm bummed Parker Posey plays the role of the forgotten woman looking to offload her husband's impressively expensive singles collection for next to nothing out of revenge. That'd be a fun scene to watch on its own, I guess. I'm not going to sit through the rest to see it.
These reimaginings seem to exist to correct perceived mistakes in the originals. Disney's doing it, does this mean everyone else has to? Are writers going to lose their integrity because they want to redo their work and make it fit a current or mainstream audience. Sometimes it was to correct grammar. Why? Why didn't you get an editor to do the job properly the first time? Or you just wanted to have "fun" gender swapping and you made a bigger mess than what you started with. Plus, isn't there an inherent issue with doing this? "Swapping" implies you subscribe to the two gender notion. You can't "swap out" female for nonbinary. Or you can, but it's not technically the same. Maybe it is, but gender swapping still suggests you're swapping opposites. Binaries. (you're sort of sounding more like someone who still uses the term "genderbender"). Aren't we meant to be post-gender now? Aren't we meant to stop this? Does every woman's story get to be retold from the position of a man? You want a role-reversed Pride and Prejudice? I'm sure it exists but you can hear people crying foul on this because how fucking dare you try to tell a woman's story from a man's perspective? But you can gender swap any male character in history, reexamine their make up from a feminist perspective whilst still maintaining the original "flaws", and that's supposed to be okay? Or celebrated? Or encouraged? We don't need this, there's an article making this argument exactly but still somehow speaking favourably of the show regardless.
I'm so fucking confused. And I'm also tired of it. What you're saying to writers or any creators of anything, your art is out there to be reimagined, rebooted, retold, resold in a different package whether you like it or not. (I won't go into a fanfiction rant because its problematic nature). Of course if you're doing this properly and legally, permissions are required unless you're good and dead for the prerequisite amount of time. Of course you're in the position of power where you can go full Salinger and say "no and get off my lawn", you could even put it in a will that your estate can't grant permissions until the law overrides your decision. (I don't know if you could make a perpetuity clause from a legal standpoint). Or you could say, yes but I want in on this and you can steal some creative control so the other party doesn't have a fuckin' free-for-all.
Thankfully the author wrote his own piece on it for Rolling Stone. He sold the TV rights with the movie rights and this piece is positive and supportive and that's fine. I'm glad. But I don't have to like this or its existence or watch it. A lot of the time I don't and that's when people like me get strung up for having ignorant opinions because we never absorbed the material in its entirety. It's why Game of Thrones detractors who didn't watch much or any of the show were derided so vehemently. There's no law that states you must consume all art to voice an opinion. You're supposed to sit through Wagner's Ring Cycle before you can say, yeah I know that one song from all those movies and shows but the rest, meh. If the artist in their efforts failed to engage you with the art and your opinion is "I don't like it, I won't engage fully, I'm not interested, I'd prefer not to", it's a valid response. It's how I ended up hate-reading certain books because of the tiresome accusations of "you can't voice a negative opinion of something you haven't even read". But me learning about its contents and reading a part of it and hating it, I've attempted to engage and I don't want to continue. Forcing people to just sit through this shit, to read it out of spite, to listen to it before they can form any opinion, it's not fair and it's not how art should work. I don't want you sitting beside me in a theatre watching a movie you don't want to see because I forced you to see what I perceived as a brilliant or worthwhile movie. I write and I can't make you read my books. I simply can't. I'd rather you say no thank you than hate read it, resent me and say negative shit about it. If your trailer doesn't get me to watch your show, I'm never going to watch it. I have a dissonance in doing this with reboots anyway, my brain will just make constant comparisons, constant criticisms. I'm a puritan when it comes to original texts. If I loved it as it was, changing it will make me hate it. You took something I saw little to no fault with and made it faulty. And you thought you were making it better too, sooooooooo...
No.
I would like this to stop. I thought by making original things that weren't entirely derivative (that is hard, I grant you, all art now is technically derivative) that I would be noticed or appreciated for trying to be unique. It's actually the worst thing you can do, it seems. Deviate from the familiar and expect to be disregarded. Regurgitate it and reap the rewards.
