This is a huge deal because as people in the movie business know the absolute hardest thing in the whole world is to persuade a straight male audience to identify with a woman protagonist to feel themselves embodied by her. This, more than any other factor, explains why we get the movies we get and the paucity of the roles where women drive the film. It's much easier for the female audience because we were all brought up grown up, identifying with male characters from Shakespeare to Salinger. We have less trouble following Hamlet's dilemma viscerally or Romeo's or Tybalt or Huck Finn or Peter Pan--I remember holding that sword up to Hook--I felt like him. But it is much much much harder for heterosexual boys to be able to identify with Juliet or Desdemona, or Windy in Peter Pan, or Joe in Little Women or the little Mermaid, Pocohontas. Why? I don't know, but it just is. There has always been a resistance to imaginatively assume a persona, if that persona is a she. But things are changing now and it's in your generation that we're seeing this. Men are adapting--about time--they are adapting consclously and also without realizing it for the better of the whole group. They are changing their deepest prejudices to accept and to regard as normal the things that their fathers would have found very very difficult and their grandfathers would have abhorred.
这一点相当重要，电影行业的工作者肯定知道，世界上最难的事就是让正常性取向的男性观众在女性角色身上找到认同感，并认为他们在她的身上得到了体现。这个因素更能解释我们选择某部电影的原因，以及为什么在女性为主角的电影中角色会相对稀少。然而，这点对于女性观众来说更容易接受，因为我们从小到大接触到的，从莎士比亚到塞林格的作品中，几乎都是男性角色，因此理解哈姆雷特、罗密欧、迪波尔特、哈克·费恩或是彼得·潘内心的窘境对于我们而言并不是一件困难的事。我仍记得握住剑柄的感觉，我觉得我就是那里的男主人公。但对于异性恋的男孩们而言，要想他们与朱丽叶、黛斯迪蒙娜、《彼得·潘》中的温迪、《小妇人》中的乔、小美人鱼或是宝嘉康蒂产生共鸣，是非常非常困难的。原因我不清楚，但事实就是如此。一直以来，如果是女性角色的话，人们一般都不会去寻求认同感。而今，按你们这代人的看法，这种状况已有所改变。男人总是在不断适应，为了整个群体的利益，他们有意识地适应，甚至他们会在自己都意识不到的情况下改变自己。他们最深层的偏见也会随着社会的变化而不断地改变。同样的一件事，也许他们的父辈会觉得很难，祖辈甚至会厌恶。
