Zeitgeist 復習
映画「リリーのすべて」の監督を務めたトム・フーパー氏がインタビューに応じ、映画製作の経緯や自身の体験について語っています。
Ahead of the release of “The Danish Girl” in Japan, award-winning filmmaker Tom Hooper spoke with The Asahi Weekly on how he came to create a movie about Lili Elbe, the transgender woman and first person known to undergo gender reassignment surgery, and why the subject is close to his heart.
He said that he hopes audiences in Japan would see the underlying theme which is to embrace tolerance toward difference: “I don’t think any society was hurt by greater tolerance. If it (the film) opens up people’s minds to being more tolerant and more compassionate about difference and to see at the bottom we’re all souls struggling to be true to ourselves that would be a great thing.”
（中略）
Q: Why do you think it took a long time to get the film off the ground?
A: Certainly the world has changed a lot in seven years. When I first started talking about it, “The Danish Girl” was seen as a hard film to finance, a hard film to cast. I think I talked about Eddie Redmayne, and everyone said “You’ll never finance a film with Eddie Redmayne,” and now, he’s won an Oscar (laughs). I think there has been a tipping-point moment in thinking about transgender issues, thanks to Caitlyn Jenner, and thanks to television like “Transparent.” There’s been such a great increase in awareness. So I think the film is now more in the zeitgeist than seven years ago, so in some ways we’ve been very lucky.
（以下省略）
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201604060013.html
今回取り上げる単語はzeitgeistです。『ジーニアス英和辞典』（第５版、大修館書店）には「時代思潮、時代精神」と載っており、LDOCEでは”the general spirit or feeling of a period in history, as shown by people’s ideas and beliefs at the time”と定義されておりました。
ここで、さらに気になったのはthanks to Caitlyn Jennerの部分です。Caitlyn Jenner氏について調べてみると、アメリカの陸上競技選手で、1976年のモントリオールオリンピックの金メダリストであることがわかりました。本名はWilliam Bruce Jennerですが、2015年に性同一性障害であることを公表し、女性化した姿で雑誌の表紙を飾ったことで話題になりました。
映画製作の話が出た当時、フーパー氏は今回の映画はあまり受けないと思われていましたが、Caitlyn Jenner氏が性転換手術を受けたことによって、映画公開までの７年間で世界の流れ（観客の関心）が大きくかわったことを意味していることがわかります。
(flyingbird)
