The Bechdel Test

[rowyn]

I was just thinking about this rule -- that a work should '(1) have at least two women in it, (2) who talk to each other, (3) about something besides a man' -- and it just struck me that if you invert this rule to "have two men in it who talk to each other about something besides a woman", I am not sure if any of Jane Austen's books would pass.

Huh.

Comments

[alltoseek.livejournal.com]

No, prolly not. And if all the literature in the world were like Austen's, we'd live in a dull and deprived literary world.

The Bechdel test is for representation of female characters. It's not for quality. And it's only useful in that some ridiculously high percentage of media don't pass it. Especially movies, which is what that particular comic was referring to. Novels not nearly so bad, as even many male novelists write women, for some reason.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a dude who tends to write about women, I just find women tend to be more interesting characters with richer nuances of personality. Much as I dislike the TV stereotype of men as simpleminded children who have to be kept in line by the rolling-her-eyes wife, it doesn't exist without reason.

That and, well, as the Bechdel Test points out, men have been talked about already. Talked and talked and talked about. O.o

-TG

[rowyn]

I don't find that gender makes a whole lots of difference to me in whether I like characters or not. Someday I'm going to write an outline for a story and then gender-swap all the characters when I write it, just to see what happens. :D I do usually find that gender shapes my characters to one degree or another, just like race/species does.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

I've read that Alien was written with an explicitly gender-neutral script, and then the gender of each character was determined during casting by which actor they wanted for the part.

The net result was Ripley, one of the all-time models of a female action hero.

I don't know what (if anything) to make of that, other than "write people first and genders second, if at all," but it's a tidbit I always found very interesting.

-TG

[rowyn]

I probably saw the same article you did on that. :D It's the thing that made me think it would be fun to gender-swap characters after deciding on a story outline.

[rowyn]

I suspect one reason that novels are more likely to pass is that they are much longer than movies. If you translate all the stuff that happens in a typical book onto film, without editing it down, it'd be, I dunno, like 60-100 pages per hour of film. You get much better character development in books because there's a lot more space to develop them in.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

What I find interesting about The Bechdel Test is that it's not an indicator of quality-- plenty of great literature fails (or in the case of Austen, fails the inverse). In a way, it's got a built in control-- whether the item of literature is or isn't any good doesn't alter what the BT tells you about the social phenomena it's designed to point out.

It's a brilliantly-conceived idea!

-The Gneech

[rowyn]

whether the item of literature is or isn't any good doesn't alter what the BT tells you about the social phenomena it's designed to point out.

Oh yes, absolutely. :D

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Let's see... My Little Pony has what, three male characters with speaking parts? And I don't think Spike, Discord, and Shining Armor ever talk to each other. It fails HARD.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

MLP fails hard in representation of men, period. The stereotypes about men are painful in that show. It's one of the most disappointing things about it.

[zeeth_kyrah]

I actually find that refreshing, as long as I remember that Spike is supposed to be young.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I don't find stereotypes refreshing, ever. :/

I really like MLP. But I want it to show a more balanced, thoughtful response to men. They don't have to be the stars of the show, they don't have to have frequent speaking parts, but when they're portrayed I want the interactions between the male and female ponies to be less based on... well, stereotype.

[rowyn]

I did like what was shown of Shining Armor, but OH MAN YES. I have so much hate for the portrayal of dragons-as-evil-males. x_x

Oh, and I like Big Mac, too. :) He comes across more as archetype than stereotype to me. But overall ... gah.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Overall, yes. (And that dragon as evil males episode made me rip out my hair. So did Rarity manipulating that male pony into buying things for her and teaching Fluttershy that this was how you "stood up for yourself." So did Sombra. And so does the whole "Mare and colt" thing. Colts are juvenile males. Pick one! "Fillies and colts" or "mares and stallions!")

UGH.

[howardtayler.livejournal.com]

The significance of the Bechdel test lies in the fact that when men, who (arguably) think about sex all the time, write women, they tend to write those women as romantic interests, and when they write the female POV, that's often the focus. You'd think that we'd be able to consciously overcome this, but apparently it's more difficult than that.

So the Bechdel test is a quick measuring stick that allows us to check for that bias. Measure all the cinematic releases in a given year. Measure all the genre-fiction novels from a given publisher. Measure all the webcomics during a given century (hah!) and the Bechdel test shows the bias very clearly.

Use it to measure ONE work and it's not particularly helpful. Pass or fail is just an indication of whether or not the work exhibits the bias.

Sure, we need to be more aware of our biases, and we need to write better. A quick litmus test won't give us that.