When I saw the trailer for "Annie" last fall, I frankly had no interest in seeing it. Although as a kid I enjoyed seeing the 1982 movie version directed by John Huston and starring Albert Finney as Daddy Warbucks and Aileen Quinn in the title role, this new update didn't look all that appealing to me. There wasn't a particular reason I didn't want to see the new "Annie" at first; it just didn't look interesting.
However, I became fascinated by the "Annie" remake after reading a slew of negative reviews on Metacritic.com. As a writer and filmmaker myself, I became curious to see if the new "Annie" is as much of a train wreck as some critics have been saying it is.
To my pleasant surprise, I really enjoyed "Annie." Quvenzhane Wallis strikes the right mix of "adorable" and street-wise foster kid in the title role and Jamie Foxx hits the right notes of funny and sincere as Will Stacks (the 21st century version of Daddy Warbucks). In contrast to the harsh reviews, I found "Annie" to be an entertaining family movie with decent singing and acting - performances that are certainly passable for a children's musical.
"Annie" also seemed to hold the attention of not only my niece, but my two young nephews, as well. When I mentioned the "Annie" outing with my family to a friend during a New Year's gathering, she mentioned that she had taken her sons who are around my age to see the '82 movie. One of her sons, who was around 12 at the time, said upon leaving the theater that he hated the movie, especially the fact that it made such a big deal out of "a girl being tough."
As I told my friend, my reaction as a 10-year-old boy to seeing the '82 "Annie" was completely gender-neutral. It never occurred to me that as a boy, I couldn't relate to a story with a girl as a main character.
"To me, it was not a story about a girl," I told my friend, "but a story about children." And since I was a kid, I could relate.
When an elementary school classmate recently posted on Facebook that she was excited about seeing the new "Annie" because she had always related to the character, I responded that I enjoyed seeing the '82 movie with my grandfather.
"Yes, a boy can see movies with a girl as the main character," I wrote in my reply to my classmate's Facebook post. "Even my very traditional grandfather understood that."
I had a similar reaction to another movie that I saw around the same age as a child, "Mommie Dearest." This biopic of screen legend Joan Crawford as seen through the eyes of her adopted daughter Christina was riveting to me as a kid. Christina's complicated relationship with her adoptive mother reminded me of my own relationship with my sometimes demanding and hard-to-please grandfather (without the infamous beating with wire hangers, of course!).
I'm glad that no one told me as a child that boys aren't "supposed" to like stories about girls. I'm glad that I wasn't conditioned with that kind of sexism, because it would have greatly inhibited my creativity as an adult writer.
My debut novel, "The Chloe Chronicles," centers on the adventures - and mis-adventures - of a black French Creole girl named Chloe Bareaux and her mischievous best friend, Gigi Cartier.
When I came up with the idea for "Chloe," did I set out to write a story with a female as the main character? Not necessarily. I set out to write the story that was in my head, and that story just happened to have a female in the lead role.
I've also directed a documentary titled "Lady Wrestler," about the experiences of African-American female wrestlers overcoming racism and sexism in the '50s, '60s and '70s. If I had been told as a child that boys aren't supposed to be interested in stories that center on the lives of girls and women, I never would have made "Lady Wrester."
Over the years, there have been "gender-blind" stories that have a universal appeal in which the main character just happens to be a girl. Two that come to mind are "The Wizard of Oz" and "The Hunger Games." Interestingly, neither of these stories have the female character's name in the title.
If "The Wizard of Oz" had been called "Dorothy" and "The Hunger Games" was titled "Katniss," would they not be as popular because boys wouldn't read the books or see the movies? On the flip side, if "Annie" was titled "The Hard-Knock Life," would it have a broader appeal?
In a recent interview on NPR's "Fresh Air," Meryl Streep related to host Terry Gross that despite being one of the most successful actors of all time, she still thinks women face obstacles in Hollywood. It's still rare to see a female as the main character of a big-budget, mainstream movie because men's experiences are seen as universal, appealing to all moviegoers, while women's experiences are seen as gender-specific and appealing only to women.
This stubborn prejudice against women is not unlike the way African Americans and other "minorities" are viewed by Hollywood gatekeepers. Most movies have white actors in the lead roles because white people's experiences are seen as universal, while black people's experiences are seen as race-specific.
It's a myth that people are only interested in stories about their "own kind," and that men only care about stories about men. A couple of male friends of mine were huge "Sex and the City" fans and eagerly tuned in each week to see what Carrie and her girlfriends were up to. (The show, of course, also had male characters, although they weren't the center of attention. And yes, these male "Sex and the City" fans are straight.)
The bottom line: if a good story is told the right way, it doesn't matter what gender or color the main character is.
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