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Notes -
I finally got around to watching Obsession (there was a discussion on it here). I’ll keep my opinion on it to myself for the time being, but I also began pondering a bit if a gender-swapped version of the movie would a) ever get made b) ever be successful as a relatable story.
I asked myself this question because I know that among feminism-adjacent normie women, especially young urban single women, it’s hugely popular to keep complaining about immature, clingy, icky, cringey, thirsty, creepy, boorish, deranged, potentially violent and even murderous manchildren, not to mention that mainstream society basically keeps egging such shrieking on. So on one hand, a movie like the one above but with the sexes reversed would obviously reinforce all these normie female prejudices and they would presumably lap it up. On the other hand it might end up cutting too close to the bone and come across as too uncomfortable and horrifying.
(I once heard the argument on the LPOTL podcast in the context of the Chicago Rippers that unlike the serial killers who have become really infamous in America, there are ones whose deeds were so horrendous and frightful that there were only scarce attempts to portray them in the media at all because they were bound to elicit extreme revulsion, disgust and anxiety, being unfit for normie exposure. I’m guessing something similar is in effect in this case. Or take the Handmaid’s Tale as another example: ‘fun horror-fiction for women who work in the American-style cubicle-world precisely because it’s so utterly unrelated to the miseries and terrors of their own lives’.)
And then it occurred to me that they whole story just…simply wouldn’t work with the sexes reversed. It would be neither plausible nor relatable. I just can't picture a woman acting and emoting plausibly like the male protagonist in the movie. What do you think?
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