“If Only Me Aunty Had Bollocks, She’d Be Me Uncle”
I talked about roles written for men going to women in this post, and serendipitously, my issue of Entertainment Weekly this week has an article about Angelina Jolie’s sex change in Salt. However, check out this line:
“In the original script, there was a huge sequence where Edwin Salt saves his wife, who’s in danger,” says [director Phillip] Noyce. “And what we found was when Evelyn Salt saved her husband in the new script, it seemed to castrate his character a little. So we had to change the nature of that relationship.”
O RLY, Phillip Noyce? “CASTRATED,” seriously!? And in the original script, the helpless damsel-in-distress thing was just fine? Because she doesn’t have, oh, BALLS? Blech.
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Angelina Jolie, Celebrities, Feminism, TV, The Office
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While I understand your point (how ridiculous it is that a woman can’t rescue a man without somehow taking away his manful manliness), the title of the post and calling the casting decision “Angelina Jolie’s sex change” are uncomfortably essentialist in a very cissexist way.
Thanks for your input, Angelica, I appreciate it! The title of the post is from The Office UK, but I’d love to know what I should say in lieu of “sex change.” That’s a genuine question; I don’t want to be cissexist if I can avoid it.
I think the problem may be that it wasn’t Angelina Jolie’s sex change, it was the decision to change the sex of the character. I doubt cissexism was the intent, it was just slightly misdirected.
Anyhoo, castrated? Seriously? WTF.