Jaegerbombastic said:
Loonyyy said:
Oh definitely. But most of the time the response to the Bechdel test isn't one that hasn't already been considered, particularly by those applying it. When critics, or feminists, refer to the Bechdel test, it's a back of the napkin thing, a thought exercise, a quick way of thinking about how often women are in movies, or are important in them. It doesn't say if the representations are good, or that films which pass are not sexist, or that the films which fail are. It doesn't even say if the film is good. It's just saying "Holy shit, there really haven't been that many films that have females who do anything for themselves." It's astonishing how many fail to have more than 1 character important enough to have conversations who are women, or how often when they do, that it's often about men, particularly in a romantic dynamic. And then it's really shocking, when thought of the other way "The Reverse Bechdel" when people consider that the reverse is far from true for males. As is often pointed out, Twilight passes the Bechdel test, and that's problematic as hell, yet Gravity, or a variety of others, fails, despite having a female lead. It's a quick way at getting an idea of female representation, as a trend, across the medium, and the individual films rarely matter.
And inevitably when someone considers Bechdel's point, they're mobbed with these points as if they'd never considered them, or that it wasn't what they were after, often by people who were anti-feminists to begin with, often with little or no understanding of or prior discussion of these issues, or why someone might consider the implications of the Bechdel test conditionally significant. They instantly come in thinking they're the smartest, most insightful, most informed person in the room, and procede to tell people what they already know as if it's some sort of damning piece of common sense, or god forbid, logic.
To be fair to Gravity, it doesn't pass the Bechdel Test because there are only two characters in the movie that we see on screen; a male and a female.
I don't see that as being fair to Gravity, because the Bechdel test says nothing about any individual movie, at least not among most who'd apply it. If Gravity doesn't pass, it doesn't mean shit. It's, as I said more than once, a quick though exercise demonstrating female representation. It's not about the movies that pass or fail, it's about the frequency. Any one movie is too small a sample. You can make a movie that's feminist as hell that fails the test.
I agree that the Bechdel Test is a good thought exercise to help determine whether a movie (and a videogame) is giving a fair portrayal of women or not.
Actually, I don't think it is. A movie can, and often might, focus on a single female lead, and this isn't a point against it female representation wise. Likewise, Fight Club has only one female character, but that film deconstructs more gender roles than any I've ever seen. The Bechdel Test is a thought exercise about media in total. Specifically, that at one point, the last film the author had seen by only watching films with more than one female character who interact about something other than a man was Aliens.
But the problem is that I feel a lot of people bring up the Bechdel Test like its an authoritative, academic way to determine this rather than being a fun, brainy exercise like Red Letter Media's one about describing characters without mentioning what they do and what they look like. The test's biggest flaw is that its usually done without context of whats in the movie and what the female characters do in it. Its an effective tool to point to potential issues, but its not the be-all-end-all in determining how positive a representation of women a movie has.
Of course not. But barring a few cases (The ridiculous "Film's that "passed" the Bechdel Test earned more" thing that was floating around), I rarely see that. And that film that passed thing was silly, abused the test, and didn't even get the point of the test. But that's probably because rather than being some sort of feminist critique, it was a clickbaity bit of laziness that somehow spread around the internet, giving a bunch of people who couldn't be bothered spending ten seconds to google (Hint: The only term that need be googled is Bechdel Test), a chance to give snide chuckles at them damn feminists again, when will -w-o-m-e-n- FEMINISTS realise that they're always wrong, and are destined to be forever inferior. It allowed them to dismiss the implications of the Bechdel test, and again, pat themselves on the back for not being at all complicit in sexism, but still hate those damn feminists, trying to ruin their fun. It, though completely unaffiliated with Bechdel, served to discredit the experiment in the eyes of the ignorant. It's the philosophical equivalent of wannabe smart guys quoting Einstein on "God doesn't play dice", nevermind that Einstein didn't believe in any sort of traditional God, had regular disagreements with the religious, and that he was Wrong in this statement, which was intended as a dismissal of Quantum physics. As it turns out, God does play dice, he does it often, incredibly often, on a subataomic level, and as it turns out, media does tend to have disproportionately white, male, and straight characters and stories. And people have to deal with that, because to say otherwise is to live in delusion (Hell, I even saw someone try to justify a six/seven (I think) spread of male to female protagonists as not at all predisposed to male, because P>.05 Binomially. My statistics lecturer (Who also happens to lean feminist) would have kicked their ass, and used them in an example of distorting statistics in her series next semester).
As I said, more than once, the test has nothing to do with how positive a representation it is. It's in the post you quoted. More than once. I referred to it as a back of the napkin thing. It's an engineer's estimate. It's Fermi. It's filling up the page with implication arrows for maximising and minimising(The best way to submit a physics assignment). And people's reaction to it is exactly what I'd expect, reflexive dismissal and defense, because people don't like the idea that they're favoured, that they're not the best because of talent, that they're priviliged.
It'd be sad, if it weren't so toxic.
