In the novel what we have is a very young person who had at one time been a boy but has since been totally neutered. I would personally believe he'd be more concerned with his lost humanity than his lost gender, all the more so since what'd been removed would have provided the bulk of the hormonal changes thrusting him into a masculine adulthood. I suspect he doesn't give a hoot about his gender because he has nothing to give a hoot WITH.gattoparde59 wrote:Part of this would be easy if you take things back to the novel. There you already have a boy vampire even though he does not seem to give a hoot about his gender.
I think we can take it as general agreement that LMI isn't a closely faithful remake. A bit more troublesome is the assertion that the LTROI movie itself is somewhat less than completely faithful because a great many of us didn't see an androgynous being in eLina, we saw a girl. I'll bet the significance of the "reveal" shot eluded most one-time casual viewers, and there've been quite a few on this very board to admit they didn't understand it until they'd come to visit here.
In LMI, there's absolutely nothing to hint that Abby isn't exactly what she appears to be: a girl eternally stuck with living a few minutes past menarche. This carries subtle subtext with her budding relationship with Owen that isn't present in the novel. Among other things, Owen isn't apparently obliged to struggle with the idea of homosexuality because his version of Eli never steps out of the bathroom, drops his towel and says "Just so you know." What we do have is Owen peeking in on Abby's showering and registering no unusual reaction at all, very strongly implying that what he sees is exactly what he expects to see (and implying he knows what to expect).
Creep, yes, but not necessarily horror. To the preponderance of an American audience, a potentially carnal relationship between a middle aged man and a preteen boy is simply untenable. Here is the very large risk of overwhelming the delicate tendrils developing between a vampire Owen and a distressed human Abby by shoving the whole movie too far into the arena of American sexual politics. LMI is already pretty pressured; most folks express marked discomfort at the idea that twelve year olds could be inclined to romance.gattoparde59 wrote:Hӓken could be brought over from the novel pretty much intact save the whole "resurrection" part and obviously the explicit scenes. Enough to have Hӓken confessing his love for Owen and there is creepy enough there for several movies.
I don't think this alone would do it.gattoparde59 wrote:As for making the vampire's friend a female, there are no end of things that might traumatize a young girl. She could be living with her father and the mother could be the big disappointment in her life.
It's easier to think of a boy turning his back on society because boys tend to be a bit more rebellious, independent and prone to risky activity than girls to begin with. Pile on top of this the kinds of stressors seen with either movie Oskar or Owen, and add the choice between continuing to endure such an existence now heavily overcast by the aftermath of a set of murders in his presence, I'd actually claim that either boy's decision to run off with his girlfriend is a no-brainer. It helps that the boys can be very confident that their girlfriends can survive on their own; they'll be taken care of.
We know what drove Hakan into the bargain in the novel, but we don't actually "know" what drove him into it in the movie. We have fears, yes, and suspicions, but there have been reports of people not picking up on the paedophilic implication. With what's given in the movie, the man could just be a half-rotted fruit salad.
We also don't know what drove Thomas into the bargain with Abby, but here, the implication is a lot stronger. Whether Abby intended it or not, Thomas was seduced into it. This can't be the only impetus; boys between the ages of (say) eleven and sixteen can fall in and out of love two or three times a week. The interaction between Abby and Owen itself suggests what general kind of early history Abby and Thomas might have had.
With Thomas' and Abby's apparent decades-long relationship comes fundamental transgression in the implication of a man having continued to be intimate with a child long after he has himself ceased to be a child. While it's superficially unacceptable to American sexual sensibilities (this is actually probably true of the Anglosphere in its entirety), it's also a bit more readily understood: a boy and a girl met, committed themselves to each other, and this commitment survived.
Just as I claim that human Abby needs to be living with her father in this re-imagining that wants to stay as close qualitatively as possible to LMI (and not necessarily to either novel or movie LTROI), Owen's isolation needs to be made more complete by having a female companion. A man might be able to tell Owen about why present-day boys are fascinated by this comic book hero or that particular kind of toy - might, in other words, be able to infiltrate a boy more successfully into a present-day boy's culture. A woman won't necessarily be able to explain locker room humour, for example, and might be completely nonplussed at a boy's or man's fascination with sports or weapons. It'd make it that much harder for him to blend in socially.
Girls don't tend to be so openly rebellious. They might flout convention by dressing in bizarre ways or listening to - I guess you could call it "music" - but they still tend to be caregivers and nurturers at their core. A girl cresting puberty tends to be already more a woman than a boy cresting puberty a man, and the girl will have much more need to feel like she belongs and isn't (seen as) being too transverse in any way to the mainstream society into which she knows subconsciously she's one day going to have to try to integrate herself.
To further frustrate matters, it seems girls are far more emotionally resilient than boys.
They can survive greater adversity because they're less likely to deny it, less likely to "bottle it up". There's a statistic floating around somewhere that boys attempting suicide are four times more likely to be "successful" than girls because they tend to use more physically traumatic means; this may be true, but I have a suspicion that girls' attempts might tend to be less "committed" precisely because of that resilience.
This means there are more influences working against Abby's decision to run off with vampire Owen; it isn't such a "no-brainer". We can accept that a preteen Thomas did so, boys will be boys, yadda yadda, and so his early history with vampire Abby is a fairly easy exercise in "filling in your own blanks". Vampire Owen's female companion's early history with him will probably need quite a bit more hinting (but not necessarily outright explanation), as would human Abby's eloping with vampire Owen. My heart is telling me it could be done, and plausibly without Owen's longtime companion being an overt whack job, but I'm in the same fix Lombano is in: my heart isn't telling me how it could be done. I'm an old man; what do I know about being a girl!?
I'm toying with the idea of letting human Abby be like me: congenitally hearing impaired. Few things could be more isolating, and I would imagine it's much more devastating to a girl than to a boy. I understand that children with such impairments today are accommodated with special programs to address the issues of socialisation, but such attention was not generally available to such children in the '80's. Here's a girl who doesn't know the words to popular music, rarely overhears the other girls talking about who's who and who isn't, and so on. She's most definitely not part of the scene, and is frequently mocked and upbraided for her ignorance and her "aloofness". Here is a girl who very easily could run away from home and turn her back on the society of which she'd never been truly a part, and away from which she'd frequently been pushed in millions of subtle ways.
And here's a girl who very well could express the kind of loyalty to a monster that Thomas had for Abby, so long as she believes he loves her.
I've not read Little Star, and so can't comment on Teresa. I have read Handling the Undead, but am ashamed to admit I don't remember any of it. It was a great read, and I don't regret one penny of the money I plunked down for the hardcover, but I just don't remember itgattoparde59 wrote:Flora in Handling the Undead, or especially Teresa in Little Star could serve as models for the character. Teresa would of course have to more sympathetic that what we get in Little Star. She could be a weird, incipient Goth Girl with virtually no friends.
