DOING IT WRONG| I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong. |
| -- Benjamin Franklin. |
Once
upon a time there was a comic strip. In this strip, called
Dykes to Watch
Out For, two women are out on a date, deciding
which movie to watch. One of the women decides that she
doesn’t want to watch a movie unless it fits the following
criteria:1. There must be at least two (named) women in it,
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something other than a man.
The woman laments that the last movie that passed was Alien, because the women talked about… the alien. Which makes sense because, even more interesting than men were aliens shooting out of people’s stomachs.
And thus a phenomenon was born. When you look at the test, called the “Bechdel Test” after DTWOF creator Alison Bechdel -- or sometimes the Bechdel/Wallace test, giving credit to test inspiration Liz Wallace -- it appears deceptively simple. After all, if Alien can pass, the bar must be low… am I right? As it turns out, not as much as a woman and a genre fan would hope for. In fact, Alien was a little ahead of its time because, apparently, hordes of zombies or hostile swamp monsters could descend on unsuspecting populaces and all the women would get to do is scream or talk about… men. So, while I cheer Ripley and company, I despair a bit about all the other movies out there.
Really,
it is downright disturbing how few films do pass these
simple three questions, because it’s not some litmus test on
women-friendliness, or feminism. It simply shows the
presence of women at all as characters with any depth.
28 Days Later isn’t so much a movie about women as it
is zombies, and it passes, while Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,
which is a movie about a woman, does not.
Furthermore, we geeks are not alone. Even romantic comedies
geared towards women within the genre oftentimes do
not pass either. An example of this is Kate and Leopold,
which is all about love and time travel, and is what you
might call a “chick flick”. Frankly, I find it difficult to
label movies as “chick flicks” if they have only one main
female role and aren’t really nice to women at all. In terms
of movies like Kate and Leopold, I’d much rather
see Hugh Jackman in Wolverine anyway (he was much
more naked there). What I find the most fascinating thing about the Bechdel Test is that people twist themselves into rhetorical knots either defending movies that clearly do not pass or debating the merits of how a movie did or did not pass. I have seen internet debates that would make the most ardent Harry/Hermione shipper blush. For example, there is an argument about
whether
or not the redone Star Trek passes because a brief
conversation between Uhura and her roommate is about lab
work and Klingons before going straight into talking about
Kirk -- while he is in the room. (At least no one broke
Godwin’s
Law! Additionally, the fact that none of The Lord of
the Rings movies passed caused a lot of internet
flaming by fans who feel it shouldn’t be criticized on those
merits. (Hobbits apparently preclude sexism because… OMG,
hobbits!) Some fans have gotten defensive perhaps because
they feel that that this test is telling them that something
they love is sexist. But don’t blame the test! Talk to Peter
Jackson on that one. Or, indeed, Tolkien. In reality, this test is a little like the BMI (body mass index), which measures weight. For example, a body mass index says very little about an individual (a 250lb body builder with 10% fat would have a BMI in the “obese range”). However, it is very telling about a population. The Bechdel Test is the same. While a movie here or there may have a reason for not passing (and could still be women-friendly and not pass!), the fact of the matter is that so many movies do not pass as a whole. When the bulk of films do not pass even a low bar on female characterization, the situation becomes problematic.
As
sort of a field test, I went into the Geek Speak
archives and looked at a sample of 32 movies I had watched
(and remembered) or could at least reference their ability
to pass the three questions. Of these movies, 18 pass and 14
do not. Of the ones that do pass, some do so dubiously. (For
example, in
Inception, Mal and Ariadne have a brief
conversation about love, but it was really about Cobb. Since
his name is never mentioned, though, it still passes.) While
I was heartened to see that a little more than half of the
movies that I picked out passed the test, it is pretty
telling that nearly half of them did not. While I love geekery and am always excited for newer, geekier things, genre is often served up with the regular message that my feelings and outlook on life are just not as important as a man’s. In doing research for this article, I came upon a blog post where someone asked: “But why do [women] have to talk to each other?” At first, I had no response, because the statement was just so… offensive? Stupid? Messed up? But really, when you think seriously on it, what makes characters realistic and plots move forward are the exchanges they have, and the reactions to those connections. To have these interactions focused entirely on men makes female characters by definition more poorly written than the male ones. So, to Ignorant Blog Commenter: In order to have fully realized female characters they have to speak. To each other. Frankly, it really isn’t too much to ask to have representatives of 50% of the population relate to each other in meaningful ways.
I
know I’ll get some response to this article from indignant
people that think I am getting down on scifi/fantasy as a
genre. I suppose that’s partially true. We are all here at
Geek Speak to critically engage with the genre of
media we love the best. That’s why we
debate
the merits of Harry Potter or look deeper into the
meanings of Buffy Season 6. We can be aware of faults
and love a work despite them. But there is a difference
between loving, say,
Army of Darkness despite its weak -- and only --
female character (because Bruce Campbell is awesome! Better
than hobbits!) and endorsing the idea that Sam Raimi gets a
pass on disenfranchising female characters in all his
movies. (Spider-Man
and Spider-Man 2 also don’t meet the requirements,
although
Drag Me to Hell does.) No one in the genre should
get away with this kind of intrinsic sexism in their movies.
Furthermore, I find fault with the idea that just because something is beautifully done that it should be above criticism for its faults. Avatar is a great example of this, as it is a stunning movie with some problematic elements. We can say it was the cinematography was gorgeous while still calling James Cameron to account.
With such a low bar, many of these directors are asked to simply hop over it, while they continue to insist on doing the limbo instead. This does a disservice to us all. The best movies and books are like people: they all have their good points and bad ones. And like people, we should require that our associations (in this case, our beloved genre) become better.
--
Sara PaigePostscript: If you’re interested in my random sampling, and how I came to my Geek Speak statistics, please see below for the list I compiled on those movies that do and do not pass the Bechdel Test.
Further Reading
The Top 13... Geek Goddesses, by Rachel Hyland and Kate Nagy, Issue 5, July 2010
The Top 13... Genre Heroines Who Kick Ass, Literary Division, by Rachel Hyland and Kate Nagy, Issue 5, July 2010
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