Media portrayal of women—the Bechdel test and SF

[matgb]

Two posts in a row by completely different blogs, both discussing the Bechdel Test, which I've always found fascinating^[1]. If you're not aware of it, it's a fairly simple little test to apply to an entertainment:

1. Does it have at least two women in it,
2. Who [at some point] talk to each other,
3. About something besides a man.

See? How easy is that to fulfil as an objective? Everything should pass that one, right? Shame it's not true. Shame that, in reality, a huge amount of stuff, including stuff with strong female lead characters, fails it. Even authors that consciously try to ensure their work isn't sexist manage to fail it regularly, as Charlie Stross has found out. It seems though, that despite many of the writers gender neutrality failings, Doctor Who doesn't do too badly, even taking into account the added complication of the significant central character being male.

Of course, the test isn't perfect—there are some perfectly good films where none of the characters are realistic, male or female, and in some it would be innapropriate to try to fulfil it. But for most shows or films, that are supposedley 'realistic', don't you think it should be a fairly normal thing to manage? Charlie's conclusion goes further than I think I would, but he's probably not too far off^[2]:

The current decade is characterized by ... a socially conservative culture, of retreat from liberalism, and a strong anti-feminist backlash. Our popular media, far from being the bastions of liberal values ... are actually belwethers of popular culture, ... reflecting our culture's normative values back at us ... What they're showing this decade is really rather disturbing if you happen to agree with the core feminist ideological belief that women are real people too, not just baby factories and sex objects.

TV has always been bad ... but of late, the messages coming at us out of the mass media are nothing short of toxic. If movies and TV objectified people of colour the way they do women, the only reasonable conclusion one could draw would be that a concerted propaganda campaign was under way to return us to the unquestioned institutional racism of the 1950s.

Given that I watch a lot less TV than most people, and even fewer films, is he right?

---

[1] Or scary, or just Plain Wrong, depending on how bad the film or show in question actually is. I'm pretty sure it was innerbrat that first made me aware of it.

[2] I'm excising a lot of text from this quote, marked by elipses, I do think the whole post is worth reading in its own right though.

Comments

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Think about Batman. There were only three female characters of note (if you don't count Heath Ledger inna wig blowing up the hospital) one was weak or evil, depending on your point of view, and the other two were women in refrigerators.

[innerbrat]

ACK!

Some of us were waiting til cheap ass Tuesdays to watch the movie!

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

WAH! Sorry!

[innerbrat]

Eeeeh and then I've just wandered into fandomsecrets and been spoiled worse, despite warnings.

Meeeeh, at least I can hope that one of the fridgings is what I doubt it is (or I would have heard...)

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

I don't get the women in refrigerators thing. o_o what did I miss?

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Ramirez is both weak and evil. Barbara Gordon exists only to get kidnapped and be motivation for Ned Flanders Gordon, and Rachel exists to be a trophy to be fought over by Bruce and Harvey, and then to get blown up and further Harvey's story.

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

No i just meant the refrigerator thing. Am I taking the phrase too literally?

I agree with everything you just said.

[matgb]

innerbrat's written loads on it, have a look through her stuff on comics, I think there's also a blog and a wikipedia entry. Basically it comes from a comic in which a character had a girlfriend introduced to the readers who was then killed off (and apparently put in his fridge) a few episodes later, revenge spiel etc.

The analytical term is for female characters (or I think children) who exist solely to provide motivation for the main character, or to be rescued—Rachel is a classic, and Barbara is fairly close in TDK for example...

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Refrigerators#Women_in_Refrigerators_Syndrome

[caseytalk.livejournal.com]

I dunno. The last time I watched television was months ago and when I do, it's usually non-fiction -- Countdown, documentaries, that sort of thing. I haven't seen any fiction on TV since. . . I dunno.

The last film I saw was Wall-e, which fails the test but I still think it's a good flick. I also saw Get Smart, which also fails but it was based on a TV show from the 60s that failed the test, too.

I think the film industry isn't to blame as much as the viewers are. The film industry will give us what we pay for. Films that pass the test tend to be labeled by audiences as 'chick flicks' (Steel Magnolias, Terms of Endearment, Postcards from the Edge) and half the population goes to see them only if forced to by members of the other half. If women talking to one another about something other than men would sell as much as the blockbusters do, then the film industry would crank it out. They're not out to change the world -- they're out to make money.

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

Caseytalk, I recommend that you read this blog post (http://thehathorlegacy.com/why-film-schools-teach-screenwriters-not-to-pass-the-bechdel-test/), which looks at the way that the higher ups in the film industry simply don't give non-"chick-flick" films that pass a chance-- the reason no one pays to see them is because they don't get made, not because people are unwilling.

I'd also recommend doing a Ctrl+F for "Jack Ketch" on that post, and read his comment-- basically, if a film is popular when it "shouldn't" be, then it gets labelled as a "non-recurring phenomenon"-- this label is used to justify not making more of those films, even when more "non-recurring phenomenons" occur.

[matgb]

Curiosity—which referral checker d'you use? I'm finding weird results from Blogpulse and Google at the moment, which is annoying me.

[matgb]

It's not so much a good/bad film analysis tool, more a 'are the female characters actually realised and treated as characters' test—it can equally be applied to action films &c where none of the characters is in any way realised. And of course it's harder for adaptations of old stuff to pass, even when they try they fail a bit.

And I agree with your last point, but I think there is an issue with the 'non-recurring' mindset—look at massive successes like Brokeback Mountain—sure, it could be a one off, but a romance movie about two men? Built in slash, but Holywood hasn't done it again and I suspect because they think it's a one off. If it fits their expectations of success it gets copied and copied, but if it's different then it doesn't.

And I also dislike the idea that films have to be 'chick flicks' in order to have realised female characters—SB and I both dislike that sort of movie, we want explosions and blowing things up, but why are only the male characters allowed to be 3D? I have no problem with ensemble films that have mutliple female roles, but they seem very unusual (although more common than in the past—both AvP movies, The Mist and others seem to pass a lot better as examples).

[pmoodie.livejournal.com]

Of course there's another problem with this Bechdel Test. There are some stories that are worth telling that have nothing to do with sexual politics, and might not have any female characters in them at all. Just as there are some stories that might have no male characters at all. Or there might be a heavy slant towards one gender or the other. It doesn't mean there's necessarily anything wrong with these stories, but we seem to be heading into a climate where they'll be regarded as cultural embarrasments. That makes me uncomfortable.

I agree that the makers of fiction have a certain responsibility to portray characters realistically, but their main responsibility is to entertain.

[matgb]

It doesn't mean there's necessarily anything wrong with these stories, but we seem to be heading into a climate where they'll be regarded as cultural embarrasments. That makes me uncomfortable.

Honestly? The online critique of such portrayals is strong and vehement, and we both read several blogs that have it prominent, but overall we're nowhere close to heading into such a climate, if anything we're heading in the wrong direction—that's what makes me uncomfortable.

And if we ever did? Look at how stuff that's now considered horribly outdated and sexist isr eceived—stuff like Carry On or most Hammer: it's excused as 'of its time' and has fans including vehement feminists.

I'd like to be in a media culture that allows female characters to be portrayed as realistically as male characters—that they're not is the problem, the test is a simple way of demonstrating it.

Sure, there will always be exceptions, but that's fine as long as they're justifiable.

[pmoodie.livejournal.com]

You're right of course.

I just get twitchy when people talk about forcing the creators of films, tv programmes, plays, books, whatever, to follow some prescribed set of rules. Art tends to excel when it breaks rules, not when it abides by them.

Also, forcing creators to include a certain number of female characters and to give them a certrain amount of screentime not only smacks of "art by numbers" but is also another form of positive discrimination, it seems to me.

Better to change the culture so they do it without having to be told to, but how we achieve that, I don't know.

[innerbrat]

While the Bechdel test isn't bad as a rule of thumb, it's not the be-all and end-all of good female characterisation in a story, as the author of the Dr. Who post seemed to imply. More often that not, for example, the plot revolves around a man, and so two important women talking about the man - be he the antagonist or more importantly, the protagonist, may be better then theem talking about something not relevent to the plot.

Buffy and Willow discussing the big bad of the season, who is usually male, would be an example. Or - I dunno, it's not my genre, but two women on CSI talking about the murderer.

If movies and TV objectified people of colour the way they do women, the only reasonable conclusion one could draw would be that a concerted propaganda campaign was under way to return us to the unquestioned institutional racism of the 1950s.
I put forward that they do.

[davegodfrey.livejournal.com]

It isn't until The Season That Didn't Happen that Red Dwarf passes. And that's only if you go along with the joke.

Lots of genre stuff isn't going to pass. I'm not sure Prime Suspect does all the time. Something like CSI could fail because while the female characters might be excellent they never actually meet.

[tiredstars.livejournal.com]

I think it's a useful quick test that needs to be applied with a modicum of intelligence.

It makes me think of Pixar, who've been criticised for the fact that none of their films has yet features a female lead (to my knowledge). For a company that works primarily in the realm of fantasy that's pretty shocking. At least disney films have the excuse that they tend to base themselves - very loosely - on traditional stories. I wonder how many Pixar films would pass this test. I suspect none of them.