I spent much of Friday night
and some of Saturday morning watching the long-anticipated adaptation of Neil
Gaiman’s The Sandman on Netflix. I have heard some complaints (or to be more
accurate, I have heard many complaints about the complaints) about the race-
and gender-swapping that occurred between the adaption from the comic to the
show. Frankly, I don’t care one way or the other; it makes surprising little
difference to the storytelling, which remains superb. But then it is neither horrifying
blasphemy nor a brave necessary redressing of an error. As far as characters
are his creations, he has every right to control their representation. But while Neil Gaiman can retrofit his own work
as much as he likes, I do not think he should have made the DC canonical figure
of Lucian into Lucienne (though I think I can see the dramatic reason why he
did it).
Nor do I have any problem
with the character of Lucifer Morningstar being played by a woman. Angels (even
fallen angels) have no gender; this is why Gaiman himself first imagined
Lucifer as the androgynous rock star David Bowie. There is no reason why it
should matter one whit whether the devil is played by a man or a woman. But I
was rather hoping for something more like this:
Tilda Swinton as the angel
Gabriel in “Constantine”
Rather than this:
Sorry, that was actually
Florence Foster Spencer, renowned as The World’s Worst Opera Singer. Here is
Gwendoline Christie as the Netflix Sandman Lucifer:
You can see my momentary
confusion. I’m not saying the Fallen One cannot or should not be played by a
woman; I just don’t know if this lipstick Lucifer would be the image I would
choose for the role.
I don’t know, though. She’s
giving off kind of a Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) vibe. I guess that’s
pretty evil?
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