The Big Picture: Blecch, Dull Tests

[zvate]

The Bechdel Test is a good metric of a certain type. It does not guarantee a good movie but if a film can have dozens of viable characters and not manage two female ones who can interact with-out referencing a man; THAT IS A PROBLEM! and the movie suffers because of it. There are actually more women on the planet than men so when a film can't manage more then one, even if it is a strong female presence, that film should be criticized until everyone gets the message. It can still be a good movie but that failing is something worth noting.




Also what the heck is it with everyone and Mako Mori? I recently saw the movie over the new year and it wasn't a matter of her being strong or weak... The woman got like 15 minutes of airtime and however much nuance she tried to inject into the one note role of monster butt-kicking there just wasn't enough to work with for me to actually pretend there was anything special or particularly well rounded with the actual character. Movie-bob seems to think a strong female character can be somehow judged by body count: it cant.

 

[SKBPinkie]

Repeat a joke often enough, and it becomes fact.

Which is also why memes are mostly dumb.

 

[C.S.Strowbridge]

The Bechdel test should be combined with the Mako Mori test. Pacific Rim might have one strong female character, but only one. It falls for the Smurfette Principle trope. (Men are the standard and women are the exceptions.) Yes, it is better than having no female characters, or females characters that are only there to support the male protagonist, but it is still flawed.

 

[Piorn]

Waaaaait, Alien doesn't count because the Alien is a metaphor for rape i.e. assault, forced insemination, unwanted pregnancy, horrible birth etc., and thus it counts as male. *flies away*

But seriously, good episode. Crying sexism at everything doesn't solve anything.

 

[Darth_Payn]

Wait, wait, wait: People take the Bechdel Test SERIOUSLY?! I t was meant to be satirical in the first place!
Oh, what am I saying, this the Internet: where satire and irony come to die.

As for Swedish movie theaters showing individual movies' Bechdel ratings, I'd like to hear from an actual Swedish person about that.

 

[Furrama]

But The Croods was a terrible movie, why are you putting the "main" girl in the good list? Because she can punch good? We have how many female characters in the movie and they still can't talk about anything other than a guy? And they sold the movie like it was Brave in the stoneage, but it turned out to be all about _the dad_ and _the new young man_ and _the dad_ trying to stay relevant.

Sorry, no, just no. That one actively makes me angry.

Also Tauriel, while I was okay with her being there, adds nothing to the movie other than a checked box. Also a love triangle that I don't understand. I appreciate the gesture, but, like Legolas in this case, she doesn't really need to be there in the narrative. If you have to have Legolas and you wanted a lady elf, then fine! Great! I was expecting her to be a guard captain or maybe one of a few women that helped Legolas on his hunt for the dwarves, (if that must be there). Hey, one of the main dwarves could be a secret woman, (with a beard and all), and nobody would know until she finally says a line in movie 3. And then kicks butt in the battle! Would you care if one of the non talking dwarves was a lady? I wouldn't. Maybe if we actually saw Lobelia Sackville-Baggins instead of just cutting her out of the movie?

 

[vid87]

I thought I remembered seeing that the test was originally from a comic strip (I think Bob himself had pointed it out before) but it's still amazing that a comic-strip has birthed what's essentially a modern philosophy.

Also, I find it interesting that this debuts the same week Jim talks about taking jokes at face value - well done Escapist if that was planned.

 

[Mangue Surfer]

You see, the objective of this and other test is to be, well... objective. They don't enter in the realm of quality because there's a lot of subjectivity involved. For instance, for me, everything points that the Hobbitology will be the worse big budget trilogy of all time. But some people love it. And use it like an example. And.... Sorry I can concentrate in the text. Every time I thing in the Hobbit... starting laughing.

Really sorry.

 

[MatsVS]

Indeed. Pacific Rim fails the test, because even if it manages to have more than one female character, they are still few enough (and only one of them is a major character), that something this unrealistic can happen.

Just how many scenes were in Pacific Rim about two men discussing something else than women? There was that first scene, then the second, then the third, the fifth, the eighth, ninth...

Maybe Pacific Rim deserves a pat on the shoulder for having a strong female protagonist, but it also demonstrates that writers still tend to think of men as the default gender, filling stories with them, and only add a few special female characters where absolutely necessary.

Well said. Let's imagine for a moment if the test was inverse, and that to pass it you had to have two named male characters you had to talk to each other about something else than a woman. The final list would only include EVERY SINGLE FILM EVER MADE. There is more women than men in this world, so that the result should be so drastically different just makes absolutely zero sense, unless we start analyzing the industry through a feminist prism.

Surprised how completely Bob missed the point here. The test is a tool to determine the quantity of female characters, not the quality. No one ever claimed differently, so not really sure what the point here is supposed to be.

Honestly, all I've seen is people claiming the test claims differently; mostly people who are trying to set up a nice strawman to knock down. The test was, is, and will remain a good test of the industry, though, when looking at how many (or rather few) movies in total manage to pass.

Isn't the proof sort of in the pudding, though? I mean, if you look at the test itself and nothing else, that is literally what it's measuring.

Like you said, tho... People like to score imagined point against the test, preumably in some attempt at scoring imagined points against feminism as some sort of monolithic institution. These are silly people, not really worthy of time and consideration.

 

[schwegburt]

Wait, wait, wait: People take the Bechdel Test SERIOUSLY?! I t was meant to be satirical in the first place!
Oh, what am I saying, this the Internet: where satire and irony come to die.

As for Swedish movie theaters showing individual movies' Bechdel ratings, I'd like to hear from an actual Swedish person about that.

The Bechdel Test definitely shouldn't be taken seriously in its own right. But it does highlight some of the issues regarding female characters in Hollywood. That one or a dozen movies don't pass the test means nothing. But as Bob pointed out, when you realize almost no movies have two women talking about other shit does say a lot. Why would we have so hard a time finding such a benign behavior like that? Nearly every movie would pass a male Bechdel test, so why does the reverse remain so monumentally difficult to find?

 

[RoonMian]

Bilingual bonus in the title... In German "Blech reden" means "talking nonsense"