The Famous Five musical

[CrossPurposes]

What to do with George in an adaptation of The Famous Five?

www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/sep/20/childhood-holidays-everyone-wishes-they-had-the-famous-five-return-in-a-musical

That article is peak Guardian.

I've no idea if it is still available somewhere but when my DDs were young we had a video of the stage musical. They loved it. It looked a lot of fun to go and see. My gut feeling is that that version would be more enjoyable and suitable for young children.

Oh Ffs, no. The whole point of George was doing what ever boys could as well as they could as a girl.

Rejecting gender stereotypes of the 1950s.

How immensely sexist.

George was an archetypal rad fem.

Here it is. Perhaps someone should revive this one and they can compete. I know which one I'd go to.

www.amazon.co.uk/Famous-Five-Musical-Smugglers-Gold/dp/B00004CV40

Most journeys to a trans identity don’t incorporate touching grass, so I think it’s interesting that George’s love of nature was brought up in response to the identity question. It made me wonder if the interviewee has a secret GC streak… but perhaps she’s just emotionally intelligent. I rather liked that answer, considering how difficult it is to talk about this subject.

I actually think this is gold.

"The endeavour is to hold the various possibilities in the air, adds Harvey. “There’s a moment after the show ends where she might turn around and say ‘I’m a boy’. I think there’s a moment when she might say ‘I’m non-binary.’ And a moment when she turns around and says ‘I’m a woman and I refuse to be defined by society, you sexist bunch …’ We want to leave all those doors open for her and the audience at the moment where we encounter her.” "

Interesting that there are thre options seen to be open to George -

1. to identify as male
2. to identify as non binary3) to identify as a woman who rejects stereotypes and sees the other options as sexist...

Very insightful and clear there I'd say.

The director (Tamara Harvey) seems to have realised that trans/non-binary is a sexist ideology.

The endeavour is to hold the various possibilities in the air, adds Harvey. “There’s a moment after the show ends where she might turn around and say ‘I’m a boy’. I think there’s a moment when she might say ‘I’m non-binary.’ And a moment when she turns around and says ‘I’m a woman and I refuse to be defined by society, you sexist bunch …’ We want to leave all those doors open for her and the audience at the moment where we encounter her.”

Oh wow, so George rejects the trappings of femininity and escapes into nature with her dog and this is about her being trans and not a criticism of sexism, gender stereotypes and patriarchy - in fact it reinforces sexism, gender stereotypes and patriarchy because real girls, apparently, are more like Ann.

FWIW I preferred Ann because her acts of bravery, I think, are equally as important for more 'girly' girls and those who are scared and shy.

Ooh good spot.

I agree that comment by Tamara Harvey is gender critical in the pure sense.

I like a few other girls identified with ‘George’. In those days however it was looked upon as a stage some girls went through rather than requiring a girl to have hormone treatment and mutinying surgery. The vast majority of us came out of it fine!

How odd. For those who even believe in gender, what would you say George's 'pronouns' are? George is clearly she/her in Enid Blyton's books. Not they, him, ze etc.

I remember going to see that and waiting at the stage door for 'Timmy's' autograph (paw print ink stamp!)

Dick was Jon Lee, who then made it big in S Club 7 - I kept the autograph in the hope they'd be world famous .. never mind.

She is absolutely she. She just didn't like the stereotypes of girls cooking, cleaning and sewing, while the boys were brave and got to have all the fun. Absolutely fair enough.

That’s why a lot of us want to do the boys because we saw the boys had all the fun. However when we tried fighting with boys we realised we did come off worst.

George was often described as a 'tomboy' and I always understood that to be a girl rejecting female stereotypes, preferring being a strong, active girl. In the books, she often shared a room/space/story lines with Anne and they were frequently bracketed together as 'the girls' by the people around them. Definitely a she/her and a strong GC feminist in the making 💪

I think the ridiculous nonsense which is going around these days just confuses girls. I knew I was a girl even though in certain ways I liked acting as a boy. These days I might of been totally confused if some of these nutters had got hold of me

Enid Blyton stated multiple times that George was based on herself. So there is literally no question about George's identity. She is a tomboy who will grow up to be a writer of children's stories, marry a man and have two daughters.

Let's hope Tamara Harvey stays with a more nuanced approach 🤔

BBC News - Royal Shakespeare Company appoints first female artistic director
www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-62972411

Hope she improves things. Last productions I saw there were rubbish.

On a side note... I thought the recent series of Malory Towers handled the character of Bill well... she was one of the girls, no hint of anything else, just preferred trousers and horseriding to dancing and dresses, as expected of girls at that time.

I always thought George was like that.. pushing back at expected roles rather than want to physically be a boy. I felt like that. O know my aunts, cousins, friends etc had also had similar feelings.

You get that in other books of the same period... girls pushing back against societal expectations.

Hachette [book publisher] is very much part of those conversations. Their policy is that they remove, change and re-edit the stories and books on an almost continual basis.

Let's hope they don't re-edit George's pronouns.

Reading those books as a child in the 50s & early 60s, I never thought about George getting older and what she'd do then. I accepted her just as she was.
I suppose kids now have gender ideology pushed on them so much that they may instantly see George as trans.
So the swirling possibilities for her future may pass them by.

And isn't it sad that we see a suggestion of being the type of woman she wants to be as something to be happy about, simply because its included at all.

Remember there are still a great many tomboys who identify as girls. What a shame this reductive 'NB' view of anyone gender non conforming has to be touched on these days, particularly when Enid Blyton has told the public George was based on her as a young girl.

George is a great role model I think that girls don't have to label themselves into an identity if they don't fit a stereotype.