The Big Picture: Blecch, Dull Tests

[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"

 

[Stilkon]

This is actually a thought I've had for a while. Thanks for covering this, Bob!

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

I still don't get what's so revolutionary about Mako. I found her character to be just as forgettable as the rest of them. After all, she was just "I was in danger once as a kid, this guy saved me, now he's overprotective when I want to get with this other guy, who I instantly fall in love with for no real reason". Pretty much a normal father-daughter thing going on there, and the love interest kinda felt wrong to me.

And anyway, GIANT KAIJU-RIPPING ROBOTS.

 

[carnex]

Never new about this "test" until now, and boy was I in for a surprise of how stupid people can be. Seriously, even when i already believe that everything is stupid on fundamental level up to the point of corrupting everything else something comes out from the side and surprises me. Geek culture is as bad as global one, it's only the methods of stupidity and madness that differ. And this is not first time that subversive joke ends up as measuring stick but I cant even laugh at this.

As for theaters, they do whatever they can to appeal to public. Movie theaters are not fairing well so they grab any trend they can latch on to sell few extra tickets. I don't believe for a second that they mean those ratings seriously.

And you think Mako Morri is a good character? I haven't seen worse character in movie that doesn't know its characters are just piss poor excuses in a long time. Nothing about her is realistic, interesting, clever or well written. I would call her movie prop but that would elevate her character too much for me. She is as forced as character as Jhon Matrix in Commando but with "serous character" intentions (btw, I'm one of people who see Pacific Rim as Godzila vs Supa Robboto without any charm of past B movies. Guillermo del Torro disapointed me with this after few great movies. At least it was awesome spectacle)

 

[hentropy]

Still, you have to ask, could Pacific Rim had been made WORSE by simply including a major secondary female character?

Well unless you changes one of major secondary male characters into a major secondary female character you'll need to come up with a new role for this character. This would either make the movie longer or involve removing other parts of the movie.

In summary adding more characters to a movie usually causes problems elsewhere in the movie.

Who said anything about adding characters? There is only one other female character besides Mako in the movie, and that is the Russian woman who has like two lines before (SPOILER) dying. (END SPOILER)

It would have been rather easy to make any number of those other major male characters with lines to be decent female characters. Military leader? Oh no, that can't be a woman. Math nerd/scientist? Oh no, girls can't do math and science stuff, can't be women there (although I thought Charlie Day played the best character in the movie and I probably wouldn't trade him out for anyone, male or female). Hannibal Chau? Oh no, a girl can't be some black market mastermind. Rival Aussie Jaeger team? Gotta make them two meat heads, because there aren't already enough meat heads in the movie.

In some ways making more female side characters says more than making a female main, because the female main always tends to be the love interest. Making one that does not play a love interest shouldn't be treated as some kind of challenge or quota, because it's really not incredibly hard.

I never really thought Mako Mori was that great a character in the first place. If she's the standard, then we need a better one. A woman who simply kicks ass does not a good character make. She's not bad, but hardly a complex one. Especially considering Pacific Rim's anime roots, you can look at variety of anime movies shows to find much more complex female characters, even in a culture that is still patriarchal and male-centric.

To explore a complex female character requires a lot of time so you either need to do this over a 26 episode series (such as Lain or Twelve Kingdoms) or make the entire movie about this female character. So if you want to make a movie about several characters they can't all be complex.

There's an anime OVA called Little Witch Academia that characterizes at least three good female characters in the length of 24 minutes. Not episodes, minutes. If you need examples of decent-to-good female characters in both protagonist and antagonist roles in the length of a feature length movie, you can more or less pick out any Studio Ghibli or Satoshi Kon film. It's really not as hard as you think to just create a decent character, and you can do it in a lot less time than you think. Just make them human, with sensible motivations and actions that correlate with those motivations, rather than just them being a pretty girl the hero can kiss at the end to make everyone want to cheer.

The point being that movies should at least make an effort, rather than just putting the token girl in it and have her beat up some guys in order to prove she's a good character who deserves a place in the movie.

They put token characters in because they need a female character but don't want to rewrite the whole movie just to add a female. The best way to prevent tokenism is for everyone to stop complaining when a movie doesn't have enough female characters. That way you'll only be left with female characters that the writers wanted to include in the story, who will generally be better quality female characters.

No one's asking them to "rewrite the whole movie". That's the point, it would just be nice if it was a factor from the start of preproduction, not the biggest factor or even a major one, just something from the beginning when you're just coming up with the basic story/characters, before anything is written in stone, that film makers say "hey, why can't this one character here be a female?" You don't have to fundamentally change much about the character itself, and often times it doesn't require any titanic changes. Just make a side female character who does things relevant to the story, and who isn't a love interest. Many times writers might want to include female characters, but it's those producers who want to make everyone male because of misguided formulaic business practices.

 

[shiajun]

I won't add much to the topic but I do have to echo the sentiment that Mako Mori is a terrible character to base anything around. Sure, she's there, but her development is absurd and unbelievable. The Sarah Connor or Ellen Ripley test would be more acceptable with popular culture's sake, though are tons of other characters to chose from that are waaaaaaaay above freaking Mako Mori. If we're going with choosing a character from recent memory, I'd say the "Daenerys Targaryen" test would be even better. Pffft...Mako Mori.

Captcha: Run away!

Alright, I'll do that, before the angryness.

 

[MarsProbe]

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.

If that's what the test is meant to measure, it seems that would be a strange criteria to pick. It seems cliched to say "quality over quantity" here but wouldn't you be more concerned with what the female characters in the film are doing over how many there are.

Therefore, would that not lead to Hostel 2 getting a better rating than Terminator 2, if you can imagine such an outlandish scenario.

In other news, this topic has reminded me to go watch Pacific Rim again sometime soon.

 

[VaporWare]

The problem here is that humans tend to get pathological about anything that gets trendy. And right now, feminism is, on top of everything else it is, trending. So the Bechdel Test is being repurposed by marketing drones that want to draw the female dollar as a bullet point about as meaningful as the litany of 'gluten free' stickers in the bottled water aisle at your local grocery store.

Now, I'm not complaining about feminism being trendy. I'm all for it.

I just wish people would stop trying to buy my opinion with it.

 

[truckspond]

I will have to start using the "Mako Mori" test with movies I see from now on. It really is confusing as to what the internet will latch on to!

 

[Eamar]

The problem here is that humans tend to get pathological about anything that gets trendy. And right now, feminism is, on top of everything else it is, trending. So the Bechdel Test is being repurposed by marketing drones that want to draw the female dollar as a bullet point about as meaningful as the litany of 'gluten free' stickers in the bottled water aisle at your local grocery store.

This guy gets it.

I'm an ardent feminist, but it's beyond irritating to see the Bechdel Test being used in marketing like this. It's being misappropriated by people who have no idea what it's actually for in an attempt to corner the feminist market, and all it's doing is feeding into the "wah, the nasty feminists want to take away our toys because they don't pass their stupid test" crowd's mindset. And then those of us who do understand the test end up having to try and explain that no, we don't have a problem with [insert movie here] just because it fails, and no, we're not saying [blatantly sexist movie] is ok or somehow superior just because it passes.

Urgh >.<

 

[Alterego-X]

If that's what the test is meant to measure, it seems that would be a strange criteria to pick.

It's strangely defined, to tell more about female presence than just the raw number of characters.

Just try to search for any show that DIDN'T have a single scene of two men talking about anything else then women. Even if you did think of one, it probably has an extremely odd scenario with very few on-screen characters, or a "last man on Earth" plot, or something.

Compared to that, the fact that 40% of movies would fail to reach something as basic has having two female characters hold a general dialogue about something other than man, reveals that:

#1: Many movies have zero or only one female character out of dozens.

#2: Even the ones that have two, are often side characters on their respective sides, and never even meet each other.

#3. Even if they meet each other, due to the general rarity of women, they don't get to talk about anything else but the male characters that they are surrounded by.


We could just say that "28% of movie characters are women", or "only 32% of character screentime is used by women", but this statistic also provides that the way female characters are positioned, they fail to meet even the most minimal expectation of dialogue that would happen in a diverse environment.

It seems cliched to say "quality over quantity" here but wouldn't you be more concerned with what the female characters in the film are doing over how many there are.

Qantity is what you can measure with basic tests and reduce to a numerial value.

Maybe the quality of femle characters is ALSO an important issue, but the disturbing lack of female characters in movies is a rather interesting statistic on it's own.

Therefore, would that not lead to Hostel 2 getting a better rating than Terminator 2, if you can imagine such an outlandish scenario.

Sure, it's outlandish, if you want to use the test as the judgement of specific movies, rather than a litmus test of the industry's general mentality.

Hence Bob's video. Like he said, some movies have a perfect excuse. A movie about Jean d'Arc would almost certainly fail it, no matter how feminist it's perspective is, because it is about a woman in a male role. Others have a personal excuse for the producer, who might not *personally* be a sexist for being interested in gangsters as a theme, but that his and many other producers' preferred themes happen to be about men, definitely raises a flag about our movie culture in general.

 

[Lieju]

Thank you.

I don't know which group annoys me more. The ones that use the test as an absolute measure or the ones that get hilariously defensive at the slightest mention of the test.

Seriously. It's a good yard stick to measure overall trends in the industry, but I thought it was established that that is all it was good for.

I think it's useful with movies that have very large casts and a lot of talking and at least an attempt to show some kind of diverse world.

There is no reason why a fantasy epic like LOTR shouldn't pass, apart from the fact that it was based on books written in the 50's.

 

[David Chadwell]

I disagree with the opening on this basis-Just because some piece of knowledge hasn't been discovered doesn't mean it is undiscoverable. This is exactly the reasoning of a creationist that demands evolution be cast away because you can't name every ancestor you've had since proto-cellular repeating chemical arrangements so instead favors "Proteus stole fire from Zues to help his creations" because of 'feels' and 'passion makes us human'.

This same way of looking at things could be applied to popular music. Mathematically, the top 100 spots have become progressingly more simple sonically since the 1960s. That has the same meta-validity and lack of individual validity that the Bechdel test does (there are good individual simple songs and complex noise) that points to the music industry as a whole attempting to mimic itself to guarantee financial success even if it undermines and ostracizes the new minded artists that are the foundation of its business in the same pathetic way triple-A games do now and Hong Kong cinema did when Bruce Lee died. That only means that we should reform our hypotheses, not throw up our hands and cry "Apollo, please drop me a base."

Long story short, the Bechdel test not serving the purpose charlatans are trotting it out for doesn't mean some assessment or means of assessment someday will not.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

This is why I've said since I first heard of it that the Bechdel Test is bullshit and doesn't prove anything.

 

[Alterego-X]

This is why I've said since I first heard of it that the Bechdel Test is bullshit and doesn't prove anything.

Well, you were wrong about that, since it proves that the movie industry has a shocking lack of films in which two women talk about something else than men.

 

[Kargathia]

I wonder if Zero Dark Thirty passes? After all it is a movie in which nearly every conversation is about one male terror suspect or another (or just straight up about Bin Laden), yes the majority of it is told from over the shoulders of two female characters.

I actually was curious enough about this to skip through the movie quickly to try and find a conversation that has more than a passing remark about something other than a man.

It fails.

The closest it gets is a female agent asking Maya whether they should do lunch sometime, but that's in a conversation that's primarily about finding some new morsel of information (about a guy) in the haystack.

So yea, the movie with quite arguably the strongest and best-written female protagonist character in recent memory fails the bechdel test. I think I can see Bob's point.

Apart from the bit where Pacific Rim was quoted as having good character development of any kind. Seriously, regardless of how cool robots vs aliens looked, that movie's character development on any front was paper-thin at best. And I'm not entirely convinced I want to hail a character as an example of good writing when I need to haul out my micrometer to compare depth.