Karen Gillan has joined Dwayne Johnson in defense of her Jumanji costume, tweeting on Wednesday, “Jumanji! Yes I’m wearing child sized clothes and YES there is a reason! The payoff is worth it, I promise!” This tweet comes in addition to rumors about the plot of Jumanji that have begun to surface in the wake of peoples’ reactions to the aforementioned costume. One such rumor, from Jeff Sneider over at Mashable, says that the plot revolves around four teenagers stuck in detention who are sucked into the game, occupying “avatars” to complete the game’s challenge, which is to find a hidden jewel.
If true, this rumor, plus the numerous defenses, would potentially substantiate claims that these characters are all parodied caricatures of adventurer archetypes, which is something we touched on in our write-up earlier this week. Thus, if each of these characters is, in fact, a caricature, then the potential for subversion of sexist tropes exists.
Of course, all of the above, aside from the defenses from Gillan and Johnson, are based on rumor and conjecture. It’s true that we only have this one official photo and a small handful of set photos, so there isn’t a whole lot we can glean from looking at all of them.
With all of that being said, however, it’s not uncommon for movies to attempt such subversion of sexist tropes and only end up reinforcing them. While I hope that’s certainly not the case here, and there’s certainly much potential given the stars involved and their penchant for injecting humor into otherwise overly-dramatic proceedings, I still find myself hesitant.
As I wrote in the earlier post, it is difficult to trust after having been stung by the movie industry’s similar requests in the past. Put me down as somebody who remains curious but with some definite reservations as to how this will all turn out. I can respect a person sticking to their creative guns and creating a world that could potentially justify something that would otherwise be problematic. But at the same time, and I feel like the same can be said for a lot of viewers, knowing what we know about such previous treatments, it is, as I said then and as I’m saying now, just hard to trust.
(via New York Daily News)
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