by: Nico Lang

Last week, queer overlord Meryl Streep screened her new film, The Iron Lady, for critics.  In the film, she plays Margaret Thatcher – solely to remind people that she really, really wants another Oscar.  Technically, she’s the biggest Oscar loser in history, and if you’re ever having a bad day, remind yourself that Meryl Streep has been told that she’s “not quite good enough” every year for the past thirty years.

As the performance is getting raves from just about everyone – James Franco even summoned Gene Siskel from the grave to voice his support for Team Meryl – I think this may be finally her time to be good enough.  Although this win will likely support the conventional wisdom that Meryl Streep could play anyone, this is most definitely not the case.

Without further ado, here are the parts that I beg Meryl never, ever to take.

1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Last year’s It Role, casting agents worked for months to tell just about every actress in Hollywood she wasn’t right for the part of Lisbeth Salander, the bisexual computer hacker/goth rape avenger.  However, I can’t imagine that Streep was on anyone’s shortlist for it.  Even if she could do the wig/accent combo, can you imagine La Streep going all The Craft?  She’s just not a Hot Topic kind of girl.  Probably Ann Taylor…but, like, sexy Ann Taylor.  (I’m sure they have that section. Just ask Chelsea Clinton.)

That and I’m pretty sure all of those anal rape scenes might be a bit much for the seniors in the audience.  I mean, would you want to explain to your grandma what “backdoor action” or “two in the pink, one in the stink” means?  Some discussions are best never had by anyone.

2. Janis Joplin

For years, Hollywood has been discussing a Janis Joplin biopic, with everyone from Pink to Zooey Deschanel to muppet groupie Amy Adams attached to it.  I’m fine with this happening as long as it’s anyone but Renee Zellweger, but I would like to suggest that Meryl Streep not lobby for it.  They would have to Benjamin Button the shit out of her to make her look young enough for the role, one which she still has too many teeth and brain cells left for.  [1]

Streep can play anything, but I highly doubt that slurring, alcoholic drug addicts are in her range.  And after the debacle that was Mamma Mia!, a film in which I truly believe the producers were trying to make her look unattractive, I feel that it would be best for her to avoid musicals for a very long time. (Note: Meryl, if you see Pierce Brosnan walking toward you on a film set, run away and never look back.)

That is unless they adapt The Devil Wears Prada into a musical, which just really needs to happen anyway.  The numbers practically write themselves: “Feel free/to move at a glacial pace/You know how that thrills me!”  “Is it impossible to find/a lovely, slender, female paratrooper?/Am I reaching for the stars here?”

However, do us a favor and don’t invite that guy from “Entourage” back.   As a culture, it’s best if we forget any of that ever happened.

3. Harry Potter

The obvious reasoning here would be that this can’t happen, as the Harry Potter movies are over.  However, I firmly believe that J. K. Rowling isn’t done milking every possible dime out of the series – because otherwise, Pottermore wouldn’t exist.

Mostly, I just can’t see Meryl Streep with that haircut.  I know that her coiffure in Cry in the Dark was similarly Anton Chigurh-ish, but I was too distracted by Sam Neill trying to register emotion and all the dingoes eating babies and stuff.  Her small role in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events already proved that vaguely Anglo-accents and John Lennon glasses aren’t her thing, nor is allowing herself to play second fiddle to Jim “Mr. Popper” Carrey.

And if you really want to see former pretend lesbians trying to be Harry Potter, we already have Justin Bieber for that.  [2]

4.  Batman

Although I’m totally down for more female superheroes, Streep doing the Death Metal Batman voice?  It would be like your mom going to a Marilyn Manson concert.

5. Bob Marley

In 2007, Todd Haynes released I’m Not There., an ambitious project in which five men and one woman showed us just what it was like to be as douchey as Bob Dylan. [3] Apparently, it involves being a black child on a train, hanging out with that dude from My Morning Jacket and saying the words “man” and “cat” a lot while being filmed in black and white.

If a similar project is mounted for Bob Marley – something Hollywood has been threatening to do for years – I beg Meryl not to consider being the Cate Blanchett in this mix.  Although Blanchett was fantastic as Bob Dylan, I just can’t picture Streep playing a Jamaican stoner, and for the love of all things holy, I don’t want to.  (Those dreads!  That accent!  That body odor!  Just say no to Rastafarianism, Meryl.)

Also, it’s not just that I don’t want to hear Meryl Streep, who really is a lovely vocalist, sing “Redemption Song.”  It’s that, after four years at a liberal private college, I never want to hear anyone sing it ever again.  Please, young white men of America, learn other songs on your acoustic guitar, as long as they aren’t by Dave Matthews.  That beanie you found for “only for ten dollars” at Urban Outfitters does not make you “in solidarity with the oppressed.”  It makes you look like an asshole.

6. Medea

As in the case of Bob Marley, the issue of blackface may prove a challenge for Ms. Streep.  Although The Help did prove that there’s a huge audience for white women bastardizing the black experience, my Meryl would never do that.  [4]

For instance, try to imagine Streep involved in this exchange:

Medea/Meryl: “Joe, did that thing just push you?”

Joe: “Sho’ did.  She don’t know about us, we Baptist. We tear this place up.”

Madea/Meryl:  “Girl, I will set it off up in here!  I will do a drive-by in this church. She don’t know me!  You better be glad you at church.  Jesus just saved your life, Hallelu-yer!”

Milay: “I’m tired of dealing with black people.  Always late. And ignorant.”

Medea/Meryl: “She don’t know me.  I’m a straight-up thug.  I shot Tupac!  Yes, I did.  We was arguing over a parking place. I didn’t kill him, though.  That wasn’t me.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t un-Nancy Meyers Streep enough for this.  In fact, the only way I could see this happening is in a fake trailer during Tropic Thunder 2: Thunder Down Under.  Like Eddie Murphy in everything, she could play every character, even both of the people watching the movie in the audience.  And I’m positive that if Streep also played the director, it would automatically be better than every film Tyler Perry has made so far.

7. Steve Jobs      

Although Aaron Sorkin is busy thinking about adapting a Steve Jobs biopic, this role just isn’t right for Meryl Streep.  With the (sort of) exception of Death Becomes Her, Meryl Streep has lived in every movie I’ve ever seen her in. [5] This already puts her ahead of Jobs.

8. Kim Kardashian

Mostly, I don’t want anyone to play Kim Kardashian, especially Kim Kardashian.

However, the only way I would let this happen is if the producers allowed a Death Becomes Her reunion to happen and cast Goldie Hawn as Kourtney.  This would actually be two-for-one awesomeness, as the film could double as a First Wives’ Club reunion and invite Bette Midler along.  They could cast Bette as Khloe Kardashian, for she’s already well versed at playing drag queens.  (See: her performances in everything.)  Like every other movie she’s been in recently, Diane Keaton would play their wacky, sex-crazed mother, while Bruce Willis portrays their botox-happy father figure, something he learned a thing or two about from being married to Demi Moore.

Wait.  Stop.  No.  We can’t give the Kardashians more things…can we?

Nico Lang is the Co-Creator and Co-Editor of In Our Words and a first-year graduate student in DePaul University’s Media and Cinema Studies program. Lang is a Change Coordinator for LGBT Change, the Co-Founder of Chicago’s Queer Intercollegiate Alliance and a film critic for HEAVEMedia. His work has been featured in the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, the New Gay and on his mother’s refrigerator. Nico is also a tireless advocate for the brussel sprout, a delicious vegetable he feels has gotten a bad rap.  Follow Nico on Twitter @GidgetLang.

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[1] Kids, this is why you don’t do drugs.  This is what happens.  You die and then no one can stop them from letting Renee Zellweger play you in a movie.

[2] If you haven’t already seen it, French and Saunders do a great Harry Potter parody, where Dawn French plays Harry Potter.  What else do you need in your life?

[3] Note: I really love Bob Dylan.  I love him so much that I stopped grooming my hair once for months, just to get his signature Jew-fro.  But remember that party scene with Donovan from Don’t Look Back?  You can’t deny that douchery.  Armed with that expertise, Geena Davis could win an Olympic medal in that shit.

[4] Arguably, Tyler Perry already has the marketed cornered on this anyway.

[5] She charitably dies off-screen in The Bridges of Madison County.  If I didn’t see it happen, that means it didn’t happen, right?  Right.