All-Female "Lord of the Flies" Remake

In late August, Warner Bros. announced an all-female remake of Lord of the Flies. Reactions to the news were fast and clichéd. By and large, they went something like this:

William Golding, the author of Lord of the Flies, stated that he intended to write a book about what we, today, would refer to as "toxic masculinities," a book he said could not be written of girls:

“If you, as it were, scaled down human beings, scaled down society, if you land with a group of little boys, they are more like a scaled-down version of society than a group of little girls would be...I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men; they are far superior and always have been. But one thing you can’t do with them is take a bunch of them and boil them down, so to speak, into a set of little girls who would then become a kind of image of civilization, of society.”

The rejoinder to Golding’s statement—and to those who place it at the forefront of their critique of Warner Bros’ project—can be summarized by a single question: "Have you seen Mean Girls? Heathers? Carrie?" (The list could go on.)

Without a doubt, both perspectives are legitimate. The problem is that at the heart of either position lies a gender stereotype.

We rarely recognize, let alone admit, that stereotypes exist for a reason: They are rooted in the cognitive functioning of our brain (c.f. Asch’s ‘central organizing traits’ or Gergen & Gergen’s ‘ready intelligibilities’). Moreover, stereotyping, as a process, is enhanced by the Western cultural imperative to order the world through the categorization of 'objective properties' of discrete objects. (Only think of Sesame Street’s well-loved song “One of these things is Not like the Other.”)

The upshot is that stereotypes, especially gender-stereotypes, are a consequence of that ordering, and should not be dismissed and thrown out with the bathwater.

Rather, they should be the start of a lively conversation on human nature (maybe one that can, in 2017, include insights from evolutionary neuro-psychology), or spark a discussion about the interplay between (new) gender norms and current understandings of the process (and neurological depth of) internalization.

Golding’s famous frame-up of the Nature vs. Nurture debate was penned in the aftermath of WWII. Unintended as a commentary on stereotypes, it was instead a cautionary tale, giving voice to secret fears that were not crushed by the horrors of war: the suspicion that the atrocities born of difference were inevitable, if not somehow legitimate.

If the axis of difference (rather than some mash-up of primal impulses and toxic masculinity, or the female version thereof) retains primary emphasis, Golding himself might reconsider his position on women, taking into account the following:

• “Belonging” is a requirement of survival, for men and for women alike. This fact, attested to by evolutionary neuro-psychology, is the linchpin of Lord of the Flies.
• Difference sorely threatens group solidarity for men and women alike. This is another fact affirmed by evolutionary neuro-psychology, and the central dynamic in Lord of the Flies.
• Shame is pre-linguistic and coded as “pain” into the developing brains* of men and women alike. Another fact substantiated by evolutionary neuro-psychology, and the catalyst underlying the formation of Jack’s tribe in Lord of the Flies.

In other words, evolutionary neuropsychology challenges the idea that our key primal motivations, which come into play in this hypothetical "state of nature," are deeply gendered.

Rather, "belonging" to a tribe is the human strategy for survival, and the need to belong is hardwired into both male and female brains.

Shaming is the best-known human strategy to manage difference, which threatens group cohesion.

If young women are to follow Golding’s script and be cut adrift from the constraints of society, they might well eschew more “femininity” than he--or we--care to admit.
The fact of the matter is, we don’t know.
But surely 34 seasons of “Survivor” gives us some hints.
(To be fair, even though several episodes did have three--and even five--solely female finales, girl’s and women’s relative powerlessness in society has afforded no opportunity to determine whether the adage “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” applies to them equally. Power, of course, being equated with the ability to rise above social constraints.)

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Without a doubt there are “primal” neuro-biological differences in "the tribe" of men versus "the tribe" of women. But if it can be successfully argued that Golding’s primal masculinities are aligned with human motivations, then perhaps the means by which girls meet human needs in a "state of nature" will, in significant ways, mimic the dynamic that sprung up between boys in Lord of the Flies.

The question is, is this all the male film-makers are trying to say with this movie? The point of grounding gender-stereotypes in evolutionary neuro-psychology is to (hopefully) illustrate that the questions are much bigger than the cultural framework that Lord of the Flies implicitly employs.

How would including a Muslim girl, a transgender boy, a girl suffering from autism, in addition to an overweight, un-cool female “Piggy," influence dynamics?

If the filmmakers take on the challenge of giving us more than a gendered tit-for-tat and if they explore other dimensions of the breakdown of civilization, they may give us an important mirror through which we can assess, and critique, much more than a gendered 'state of nature.'