So some Swedish movie theaters have decided to institute a new rating system to let viewers know whether or not the films they show pass the Bechdel Test — that is, if at any point in the film two female characters have a conversation about something other than a man.
Over in the Men’s Rights subreddit, a fella with the classy handle classypedobear takes strong exception to this terrible affront to human decency. His argument?
Wait. WHAT IS WRONG WITH TALKING ABOUT KITTENS?
Thanks, AgainstMensRights subreddit!
Jurassic Park 1 & 2 (legit pass, adult women who’re well rounded characters [and don’t take shit from men] talking to girls about dinosaurs and such), and then 3 goes all “one woman cuz we need a mother”.
She had sex and got pregnant, but she was at her own at the end of the movie.
Since Sunshine Cleaning has been mentioned – I may be forgetting a subplot, but I believe it ends without anyone getting romantically paired off.
Haven’t seen Dark World yet, but the Thor movies are unexpectedly good at these issues. There are 4 named female characters and, despite having by far the best excuse to fill the cast with white people of any of the Marvel movies, there are two non-white Asgardians.
…Does he think that women never talk to each other, or does it just not occur to him that the word “anyone” includes women?
BRAVE BRAVE BRAVE
Bechdel recently (for a given value of recently) released “Are You My Mother”, which focuses on her relationship with, yup, her mother, who is still alive. One of the more cerebral things I’ve read recently, and required several reads to get all of. Well recommended.
If I may waste everyone’s time:
[MEANWHILE, in an office directly across from the clock tower]
“I understand your concern, Susan, but we’ve already decided how the funds will be spent. If you were so passionate about guard rails, you should have said something at the meeting.”
“I wasn’t at the meeting.”
“Oh? You should have been there!”
“You rescheduled it.”
“I sent a mass e-mail several minutes in advance.”
“To everyone but me! Why is everyone against adding railings to the clock tower?!”
“It would harm the aesthetic. And nobody wants to deal with the Heritage Committee. And nobody cares. Can you name one other person in this entire town who would care about a guard rail?”
[CUT TO SCREAMING HERO]
[and back to the office]
“I didn’t think so.”
Gelar: Well played.
Gelar, that is awesome.
@Gelar: *clapping*
I just had a revelation of sorts. A woman in my Swedish feminist group on Facebook asked for TV series with funny women. I wrote that she could check out American sit-com community. I really had the feeling that in community, men and women get about equal screen time (and also, women also get to be wacko, it’s not just wacko men and women playing “straight man”). Then I looked at the ibdm page for Community. And really, the group of friends that the plots focus on consist of four men and three women, and the three constantly recurring side characters are all men.
I haven’t actually checked men/women screentime, but considering the above, chances are men dominate.
That’s just such a good illustration of how even a feminist like myself can easily be fooled into thinking that men and women are equally represented when there’s actually a majority of men.
Arctic Ape: You’re Finnish? Can you explain sisu?
That’s an interesting point, Dvärghundspossen. I read somewhere that the writing staff of Community is about 50/50 men and women, which may explain why it’s better at female character stuff than most sitcoms. But “better” still doesn’t mean “totally equal.”
Fargo is my number one favorite movie. Marge is my favorite female fictional character. She’s a female sheriff who is portrayed in a completely straightforward manner, does her job well, and still has a regular life that she enjoys (instead of this “tortured hero” crap that every other movie and tv show does with cops). And she’s the hero of the movie. But I had to stop and think if she even talks to another woman in the film. She does — but she’s talking about a man! So you’re right, doesn’t pass the Bechdel test. Although, another one of my favorite films, Inglorious Basterds, also doesn’t pass the test but features an awesome female hero, too.
OT, but I love this cat (especially the look he gives the camera at about 1:03):
Btw, today I forgot to bring my headlamp to work. Since we live out in the forest, kilometres away from the nearest street light, I had to walk five hundred metres through pitch dark forest from the bus stop to my house. I considered calling a random man and demand that he give me a ride with his car, but in the end, I walked home by myself, and only nearly hit a tree twice.
That MensRights thread is a goldmine for completely missing the point. My personal favorite:
Blockquote Fail. It was supposed to end after </blockquote
The Die Hard films are a guilty pleasure for me. I see the first film as a backlash film of the 80’s, however. Yes, Holly is shown to be a strong woman. However, a major plot point is her “betrayal” of John by trying to focus on her career and by no longer using his name. At the end of the film, to illustrate her redemption as a character, she reclaims the McClane name.
And while I enjoyed his daughter’s sassy attitude while she was abducted by terrorists, I was completely squicked out by the beginning of the film when we see John literally stalking his ADULT daughter on a date and assaulting her boyfriend for kissing her. WHAT THE FUCK. She wasn’t a sixteen year old girl going out with an adult man and being confronted by a protective father, she was a woman in her 20’s at that point.
Both mother and daughter are merely women in peril, waiting to be saved by John, regardless of their spunky attitudes. Counter that with the final film, when we meet John’s son. He’s his father equal in every way, working as a spy, and goes along with his father on his task of saving the world.
The gender conventions in the Die Hard film franchise are very “traditional” and in many ways problematic.
Dvärghundspossen, then I misunderstood your post. Sorry.
Chie, thing is John is a big stupid lug. He has never been anything more, and that’s why the female leads are so compelling. The character (John) is technically misandry.
Yeah, the romantic renewal is problematic. She does eventually get out for good, though. But I don’t see Holly and Lucy passively accepting that they have been damselled. They are actively thwarting and causing problems for the terrorists and sticking up for themselves. They will never back down. I think they are amazing characters, placed in less than ideal situations.
The thing I really can’t get past (now that we have this last film) is that they added a “buddy” character in Justin Long (who was very charming in the role, I admit) to accompany John and to be his comedic foil in the fourth movie and kept the daughter as a hostage. Then in the last movie, we meet the son, and he gets to be the “buddy” character and the comedic foil, giving him a status that was never given to either Holly or Lucy. It just really irritated me.
Okay, so thinking about the comments, and particularly about the “reverse Bechdel” I quoted above, I think I reason why the MensRightsters are so confused:
They think that the Bechdel test mandates that female characters never talk to each other about men, because (a) they think all women are the same, so of course all women’s interactions in a movie have to be the same and (b) if they were to come out with some kind of test for movies (see above) it would be an all-or-nothing proposal, whereas the Bechdel is kind of a minimum bar for representing women’s relationships with each other (which not all movies need to do, but too few do).
“The Help” clearly passes the Bechdel Test. It is a drama with a predominantly female cast that is not centered around their romantic relationships. The good guys are women and the bad guys are women.
On the other hand, “The Color Purple” has a mostly women as the major players, but all of the bad guys are men. Thus, all they have to discuss is how the men treat them. Similar situation with the movies “9 to 5”, “Waiting to Exhale” and “Kill Bill”. Seems that most of the conversation between women in movies is discussing how to deal with the male antagonist.
Exactly, it’s just a very simple way to illustrate the extremely limited ways in which our culture portrays women in fiction. Women are half of humanity, but if you judged the population based on what’s on television and in the movies, you’d think that white men comprised about 75% of the world’s population.
I was trying to figure out what Good is trying to say and then I realized I didn’t care.