1964 'Woke Up Woman' trope/ proto-genderfuck movie

I watched a movie called Goodbye Charlie (1964) last night that was UNCANNILY similar to classic Popslash Explosion -era (ca. 1999-2001) Woke Up Magically with the Reproductive Physiology and Visible Secondary Characteristics Associated with Femininity fic (the fandom term for which used to be sex-or-gender swap-or-switch, and at some point progressed to genderfuck). This era in popslash was seminal to the development of modern media slash fandom and was probably the single strongest contributor to the next phase of development of this trope and its variants. (Citation needed, but source is that I was there reading in most of the major trending media slash fandoms of the time.)

SO ANYWAY this is the first movie I've found that is this close to the fandom template! A lot of people like to point to Star Trek's original series as the source of various tropes, but this is a exception. There is a classic episode of TOS where Kirk is trapped in a woman's body, but ( it doesn't fit )

. I've always figured this one didn't have any real parallels in movie and tv! So I was pretty surprised to find even this much.

Here's a summary of Goodbye Charlie (1964, dir. Vincente Minnelli, starring Tony Curtis, Debbie Reynolds and Pat Boone), adapted from George Axelrod's 1959 play Goodbye, Charlie: ( Read more... )

But in spite of obvious differences, there are a lot of similarities to this particular early generation of gender-stuff fic:

• The transformation serves the purpose of teaching a lesson related to gender (albeit not the same one as in fanfiction): check


• Exploiting for humor scenes of the character in the "female" body participating at least briefly in objectification of other women: check


• The affection and attraction between the transformed character and the BFF is addressed, resisted, and then develops past the resistance: check


• The "female" body affects the transformed character by making them open to, curious about, and apparently happy to enjoy the actual transformation into a SUCCESSFUL feminine body inhabiter (ie recognized as a sexy woman by all who behold them, having mastered the art of... essentially... drag, ie the performance of glam hyper-femininity): check


• A further transformation removes the inconveniences/impossibilities posed by romance with the transformed character: check (usually in slash this is a transformation back to their original body, but with a new awareness of gender and sexuality)