Category: comedy

New Body/Gender Swap Film on Amazon

SPOILERS!

Just checked out Family Swap, a Freaky Friday type story only all the members of the family swap bodies. There are two gender swaps. First, the teen-age son swaps with his older sister. Then, the father swaps with his wife.

It’s a family film, so while there are a few fun gendery scenes (the teen-age son charges another kid 10 Euros to see his boobs) it’s mostly about family more so than gender. However, the father while in the wife’s body does sleep with her lover (off-screen) and he even considers running off and becoming the other man’s mans wife.

One difference between this and other such movies is that the swaps don’t stop. We are told at the end that the family keeps swapping, and we do see the father at the end swapped into the body of their 8 year old daughter.

You can rent or buy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B09HZ8BFQW/ref=atv_yv_hom_c_unkc_1_1

U and Me on Amazon

Two teen-agers, a jock and a nerd, switch bodies. So goes the plot summary of U and Me on Amazon Prime. This 1987 gender swap comedy from Asia is particularly interested in gender roles and expectations, and we see both characters suffocating under the expectations of their new genders.

The female in this story has been raised to polite and meek. Once trapped in a male body, the other guys see her as a sissy, and she is subjected to relentless bullying. We also see her suffering extreme discomfort as she finds herself engaging in innapropriate behavior — entering the boys’ bathroom and shower, going to the beach where she is expected to take her shirt off (she doesn’t).

The guy meanwhile finds himself being subjected to the pressures to be a proper young lady. He is urged to watch his language, to be polite. His new mother makes him come shopping with her, telling him he needs to learn how to shop because he is a woman. In the movie’s best scene, he makes a speech in front of the school on how unfair life is for girls, where they are forced to always be polite and lady-like while boys can do “whatever they want.”

It’s a fun and interesting film that also has some of the usual beats– they guy realizing he has boobs he can play with, having his first period. For a time, he settles into his life as a girl, but both of the characters eventually come to feel they can’t live as the opposite sex. It’s well worth the watch. Check it out!

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Watch the Film

New Body Swap on Netflix!

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Transfers

French creators continue to produce some great TG media, with the new 6 episode science fiction series Transfers joining the instant classic, The Wild Boys as excellent examples of what can happen in this medium.

In Transfers, we find ourselves in a familiar but futuristic France where the ability to transfer people’s essence from one body to another has been invented and promptly banned.  However, as is usually the case, the banning on transfers does not end the practice but merely drives it into the black market.

The series centers around a fairly ordinary wood worker who finds himself illegally transferred (without his permission) into the body of a cop who specializes in hunting down illegal transfers.  He feels compelled to pretend to be the cop in order to avoid being caught as an illegal transfer, and so that he can be together with his wife and children once more.

So as for body swaps, the whole series centers around a swapped person and gets into all kinds of interesting questions about identity, morality and politics.  How much of behavior is genetic?  How much personality?  Is it possible to be “you” in a new body, or do you become that person?

Now, as you all know, I am all about the gender swaps, and this show has a major gender swap in the form of a ruthless middle-aged crime lord who ends up swapped into the body of an elementary school girl.  In his case, while he remains a ruthless crime lord with a taste for cigars and whisky even as a little girl, he also seems to begin to be adapted by his body.  It’s just little moments, but we see him fussing with his hair, putting it into a pony tail, or having one of his henchman braid it for him.  He also gets girly at times, sometimes mockingly, and sometimes seemingly because his new body demands it.  So, while it isn’t a big part of the show, we do get to see some TG moments that also seem to explore the notion of how much of a person is their “mind” and how much their body.  The young actress does an impressive job embodying the “man inside” and I would say should have gotten an award for her efforts!

Aside even from the body swapping elements, the show is very watchable.  It’s a thriller, a cop show, with a plot that moves and is full of twists and turns, surprises and revelations.  The cast is first rate, working from excellent scripts, and the show looks great, with first rate cinematography and lighting.

My only complaint?  Only 6 episodes!  However, the creators have stated they want to do more seasons, and if the show does well, the season ends with several interesting little cliffhangers for a future season to build on!

Check it out!

Link for NetFlix users in the USA.

I am sorry, my international friends, but I do not know where to find it in your locales.  I do know, given it was a European production, that it should be available in the EU.  The French title is Transferts, so try searching for that term!  If you find links, please share them in comments so other fans can find this amazing show!

 

 

 

 

 

Gender Bender streaming on Netflix

Check out my gender bending ebooks!

And especially My Epic Fantasy Series!

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In the future, you are not your body; you are data.  And, in this future world, corporations and governments can strip your data from one human body (called a sleeve) and place it in another, or even just store you indefinitely as information either with consciousness or within a simulated world.  This is the SCIFI basis of Altered Carbon, the name of both a book and a TV series.

Obviously, this opens up a lot of possibilities for gender swapping and exploration.  In the book and in the movie, it is clear that the main character, who identifies as male and embodies the tough guy investigator type (Deckard in Blade Runner, Mike Hammer in Mickey Spillane novels…etc…) has spent some time in female sleeves.  He mentions it in the book, and in the show when people scan his ID, all his former identities come up, and several are clearly female.

Unfortunately, neither the book nor the TV show delve too deeply into the gender games.  For those who enjoy the much more rare female to male swap, there is a fun sequence where a main character, Kristin Ortega, brings her grandmother back in the body of a hulking, tattooed and very male goon in order to celebrate El dia de los Muertos.  The actor does not over play the feminine mannerisms, and is actually very good at embodying a grandmother enjoying spending a holiday with her family.

All of the characters we meet seem to identify as straight male or female regardless of their sleeve’s sex, and there is little sense that the body swapping has led to any major changes in society in terms of how people perceive male and female.  It largely reflects our mainstream world with a SCIFI filter.  However, there is some interesting action, and the little taste of gender bending that’s there was enough to fire up my imagination.

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Another Netflix series based on a novel that gets into some gender bending is Kiss Me First.  

Get Book Here

Kiss Me First follows a young woman who spends a great deal of her time in a virtual reality game, using the name Shadowfax.  This show delves into identity more intentionally than AC, and without giving away too much I will reveal that there is a character in the virtual world who is not what she seems!  We also have characters logging in as other people, and lots of questions about what’s real and what isn’t.  I would love to see more gender stuff in future installments, but again what is there and what is potentially there got my imagination working.

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Lastly, a more straight up gender bending French film called I am Not an Easy Man.  In this film, like Second Nature, a chauvinistic male finds himself transported to a mirror universe where gender roles are revered.  Women are the aggressors, and they hold most of the money and the power.  Men are expected to do their best to look attractive for the women and are viewed as the lesser sex.  It’s a fun and interesting take on the usual story as the man finds himself struggling to deal with being objectified …etc… and there is a little body image stuff as at one point he contemplated putting inserts into his underwear to give himself a bigger butt.  The acting is all good, and the film does make some nice observations about gender and politics.

Check them out and let me know what you think!  I get lonely out here in my virtual world and would love to hear from you!  Thanks for reading!  Don’t forget to brush your teeth!

Inside You– the scoop!

Inside You

Watch this movie, people!  Watch it!

It’s right here on Amazon!

As a fan of gender swapping fiction, I have seen and read movie after movie and book after book.   So, it’s pretty rare that I come upon a swap story that offers anything new.  Mostly, they can do something better, or come up with a different voice, tone or manner of presentation.   But most of them, especially if they fall into the more specific “freaky friday” mode, will pretty much just run through a series of the same beats.

Inside You does do that a little, but even when it’s running along the same beats, the writer direction Heather Fink, a student at NYU film school, often manages to find ways to ground the story in contemporary gender-wobbled reality, with behaviors and experiences rooted in the characters.

Wait.  Did I forget to run through the basic story?   Stephanie and Ryan live together and have dated for years.  Their relationship has stagnated.   Then, they switch bodies.   Now, Stephanie was, like many young, modern women, all about wearing comfortable clothes, so when Ryan finds himself in her body, there is no sudden need for him to start wearing stiletto heels and mini-skirts.  However, he does get curious, and since he is trapped in her body anyway, he spends a day playing dress up and giving himself make-overs.  it’s exploration that he now feels free to do, and that sense of exploration does not stop with clothes.

This movie delves frankly into sex issues, with some fun role reversal.  For example, Stephanie really want to know what it feels like to get a blow job, and now that Ryan is the girl she wants him to do it.  Ryan is not totally into the idea, and we then get to see play out what happens all the time anyway; the guy pressures the girl for oral sex, and she is not cool with it.  Eventually, Ryan gives in because he feels it will save the relationship, leading to a very funny scene.    Then, he turns the tables insisting that Stephanie pleasure him in return.

It’s this willingness to look at relationship and how they each end up doing things to please the other that allows this movie to stand out from the crowd.  In addition, Fink has some fun and interesting ideas concerning what to do with a camera, and she uses the camera well to tell the story.

Now, this film was made with 30,000 dollars, and there are some limits visible and audible in terms of the production.  However, watch it.  Just watch it.  This movie is all about the story, and it really doesn’t matter if it looks perfect or not, because it has heart!

If you don’t like Amazon, find it at any of these places linked from their blog.