The Bechdel Test - I'D BUY IT FOR A DOLLAR - Page 3

Laarson's novels have issues all their own. He wrote them to illustrate the misogyny in Swedish culture, sure, but Salander is a troublesome character, with her history of sexual abuse/revenge and her checklist of "badass chick" character traits. And any discussion of Larson's books as they relate to feminism/women's issues brings up the truly disgusting nature of Sweden's laws of inheritance, which has denied the woman Laarson spent 22 years with the profits to his books.

Edit: Sorry, Zooey!

Man I hope not, or actually I don't really care what I'm considered. I love that movie and Boys on the Side. Mmm, maybe I just really like Mary Louise Parker. Naw, I love those movies.

Mary-Louise Parker is the best actress in America not named Meryl Streep. Fact.

I don't remember the conversation in the Birds, but I just watched psycho again and the the other secretary's name is Caroline.

Also when I was thinking about more Hitchcock films I'm pretty sure his first sound film, Blackmail, passes, but don't quote me on that.

Well, if we're using this test as a launchpad for discussion of sexism in Hollywood, then isn't the elephant in the room the constant and blatant sexual objectification of women in films targeted towards men?

I mean, yeah cliched as hell, but still relevant right? And I also tend to think that women are marginalized in just about every other facet of American society. I guess I kind of see gender role enforcement in movies as a symptom of how our culture still treats women, even though it gives lip service to having moved past such attitudes. I'm no expert though, just some guy.

I touched a little bit on that re: marketing on the last page, but I hear what you're saying.

Well, that's definitely a problem, too, but maybe another aspect of a far larger problem? Really, I think what we're trying to get at here (and do correct me if I'm wrong, all) is what the ramifications are of the default target audience of most films being male. And that's definitely one of them. So, yeah - relevant.

Oh man, I hope I don't come off as an asshole, but I like my women sexually objectified in some of my movies.

What I would like to see, however, is just as many movies that don't objectify women.

Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is that the male centric film industry IS the ramification - of a society that still enforces unnecessary gender roles in a plethora of different aspects. I'm not sure if I'm making sense, so forgive my clumsy articulation, please.

I think the other problem is that -- rather than a default audience being male -- there's a belief that a film can only be exclusively male, or exclusively female. (See: our book discussion) A film that can appeal to both genders needs to be marketed in a way that it appeals to men, and marketed in an entirely different way that it appeals to women.

And that idea, that men go to movies more than women, is something Meryl Streep has raged about in the press for a while now, especially when you consider her last few hits were all targeted to women exclusively, and all made fuck everybody money. Mamma Mia (directed by a woman, natch) was at one point the highest grossing film in the UK, SATC and that both were huge hits the summer of The Dark Knight, I've already mentioned Julie & Julia, etc. The mindset seems to be that teenage boys are the ones who see the most movies the most times, and even in the face of overwhelming proof, that seems to be the continuing belief.

Well, now I hope I don't come off as an asshole, but this is exactly what I'm talking about. Males are learning from the youngest ages to like this objectification enough to give a predicted consumer response in many different industries. Sorry.

I don't see this as a belief, I see it as a calculated business strategy. I'm a known conspiracy theorist, though.

I think that's what a number of film geeks are afraid of. I know when I was younger I hid my love for When Harry Met Sally... for that exact reason. Yet, it was clearly my favourite movie out in that couple of years because I actually bought it on VHS back when that cost a lot of money. I've since grown up and realized that my life can accommodate early Nora Ephron as well as early George Lucas. Just like my fiction shelves are capable of holding both Westlake and Austen. (I do have to keep them separated, though. Jasper Fforde didn't and look what happened there).

It's interesting that you bring up demographics and gender because Mrs H and I were talking about this the other day in regards to Buffy. Most people we know who are Buffy fans are male yet they should in no way shape or form be the target demographic. It's seven seasons of a coming of age story of a young woman in a non-traditional role. It's filled with love, angst, heartache, friendship, and family. But because it has monsters as the hook, it's okay for guys to watch movies with those themes. Why is it, as soon as you remove the supernatural element, guys don't feel like they can watch it ala Gilmour Girls or My So-Called Life?

A lot of Buffy's charm, at least for men, is that it's a pretty girl kicking ass (see also: Xena, Alias, two other shows that used that premise to smuggle in themes/disguse the fact that it was a show about women). The only defense I've seen for the so-called "girl shows" (like Gilmore, Grey's, Gossip Girl) from men who want to disguse the fact they watch it usually boils down to "chicks on it are hot" or "my wife makes me watch it." Take that for what you will.

I admit that's why I started watching Buffy but it got me hooked on all the other things around it.

I've yet to watch Gilmore Girls. Not out of any fear of my sexuality being questioned (I LIKE WOMEN!) but just because every preview of it look boring. Is it good?

And how does Glee fit in to any of this? And has it made Nordling gay?

Glee is a high school show, so there's a lot of talk about boys. I got bored with it fast, so I can't attest to that. GOSSIP GIRL is my show that I watch that calls my sexuality into question.

Gilmore Girls is very good, although it suffers from Sorkin Syndrome (the creator/writer/voice of the show leaves before the end of the show and the show suffers). Rory can be a frustrating character and they never really come up with a male equal for her, but it's a solid show for much of its run. There's a wonderful two-episode arc with Lorelai's relationship with her father that gets me all verklempt. I was skeptical, but I'd give it a shot.

Since we're talking about tv, I'll be that guy and bring up MAD MEN, which is as much the women's show as it is the men's, but they hook you with Don Draper and the aesthetic. Although that show is -- well, it's not problematic, but it does have an increasingly large audience who miss the point. (That it's cool to smoke and drink and objectify women in the workplace/Christina Hendricks is hot.) And although it's a big fat pulpy gothic romance, TRUE BLOOD is another example of tricking the boys into liking a show about women & minorities with boobs, beasts, and blood (the Joe Bob triefecta).

There's also, I've heard, the "Chuck Bass is kinda cool" argument for watching Gossip Girl. Or so they tell me.

Gilmore Girls was fucking great (minus that one season I didn't nor will I ever watch) and I will fight whoever says otherwise. In fact, I think a rewatch might be in order for me.

I'd say minus Mad Men, Deadwood is the one show that did best regarding their female characters, paradoxically considering its setting.

Thank God. If it didn't have an audience would it have lasted like it has? I'm constantly amazed every time I think about how a show that subtle and internal is moderately successful. It's everything most television isn't.

Personally the Bechdel Test DEFINITELY made me think about women in movies in a way I haven't before, so there's that. I don't feel guilty that most of my favorite movies don't pass the test, I just feel surprised that so few of ALL movies past the test.

I'm not afraid to watch "Chick Flicks", but that's because Woody Allen taught me at an early age that "Romantic Comedy" isn't a bad word. Where many guys on these boards like watching silly action movies when they don't feel like thinking too hard, I prefer watching silly romantic comedies.

I don't watch Merchant Ivory styled period films though. Something about them rub me the wrong way. Pride and Prejudice may taste like pumpkin pie, but I don't know because I won't watch the Mother Hubbard. One of my great shames is that I can't bring myself to go see Barry Lyndon, which I don't even think is a romance or anything. Just the fact that it takes place in that time period kills it for me.

My point is that my favorite comic book movie is Tank Girl, and that should give me super feminist immunity from girls who come up to me after I perform my music and give me shit because I used the word "bitch".

Chuck Bass is kind of cool (and proof that Ed Westwick and Leighton Meester are the only people with careers past the show), in a "he's one step away from saying 'Serena, don't just stare at it, eat it' kind of way." And I like how the show wants us to convienently forget that this tortured neo-Heathcliffe tried to rape a fourteen year old girl in the series premiere, except when it's convinent not to. But he did apologize, so it's okay. I guess.

It's a catch-22. I know enough people who watch the show and get what it's saying about the characters to know it has an audience that gets it, but if that Mad Men photo contest (that Carpet's friend was in, I think) and some of the meathead commentary I've ready is any indication, the show has a sizable percent of the audience that actually wishes it was the early 60s just so they could behave like that. I'm all about the clothes, personally. The closest thing I can compare it to is the people who wanted Sopranos to end with Tony getting whacked or a big gang war.

Thirded on the love for Gilmore Girls. One of my favorite shows of the past ten years.

And Francis, you were so wise to avoid that last season.

Okay, quick derail, but if you guys are so familiar with the gilmore girls, you surely must be familiar with one of my favorite musicians.

Follow Them to the Edge of the Desert?

You have crushed me, sir. Crushed.

I am speaking of ye olde Town Troubadour.

For what it's worth Rath, I always found GG irritating as hell because it suffered more from what I would call 'Try-Hard Sorkin Syndrom' that is, the writers voice is so prevalent that every character in the show talks with the same one leaving very little room for any kind of character variety. It just starts to feel like the writer monologuing. [/derail]

Fair enough. I really liked the show, but I can see how it wouldn't be for everybody.

Mad Men is to TV what Fight Club is to movies?

Well, there are lots of examples of "you missed the point" when it comes to TV shows in their audience, Mad Men is just the most current one.

Definitely a derail, but for those so inclined, I found this post on Don Draper fairly interesting.

Again, I think it bears mention that this is something that is not just a "feminist" issue but also one that racial minorities deal with as well.

Oh, absolutely. My choice to use the phrase "code-switching" came about because I was thinking about some conversations I've had with a fellow teacher concerning the linguistic flexibility that students of color need to possess to do well in school. I think it's a different dynamic, though, in ways I'm too lazy to parse right now.

This was a great article, and worth reading by everyone. It lays out the case for Don Draper as a bad human being and the problems with his character better than most things I've read.

I have to admire the creators and actors, though, for not couching the fact that they think Don Draper is a bad person. Even Jon Hamm has said in interviews that he doesn't think Draper's a good guy, and Weiner does a brilliant job of throwing in moments and reasons that make you remember just who this protagonist is. (The crotch grab, the 'you people' remark to Sal, the L.A. two parter are the first ones that spring to mind.)

Oh man, so much happened in this thread while I was watching movies, I'm kind of totally out of the discussion.

Quickly I'll say I have a very male-centric collection of films, but I watch a lot of 'chick-flicks' for review, and I'd like to think I judge them well based on their merits as films rather than chick flicks. However, an entire season of Gilmore Girls almost killed me. I hated it. And I wrote a regretful review that mentioned my gender as a reason, when it was the dialog patterns and plotlines that really bothered me in retrospect.

I think Rath nailed it on the head in that 'Women's Pictures' do make shittons of money.

Just as there's a new slasher film every week, so is there a 'romcom'. We bemoan the 'Failure to Launches', the 'Fool's Gold', the entire list of their ilk, but they keep being made. Just as when there was the 'woman's weepies' in the past, so there are now. As well read and varied as most of us tend to be, we are still a minority in regards to population of movie goers.

In regard to the Bechdel Test, well, I think it's an interesting concept, and an educational one regarding anything that isn't Caucasian and male. It's pretty slim pickings in our cinematic environment. But what if we looked at other film industries in other countries?


Edited because of redundancies.

I missed some great stuff here. The one day I don't take my laptop to work...

I think some people are missing the purpose of this test, though. It isn't about separating feminist films from sexist films, it's simply a test for female presence. The material can be as sexist or feminist as the day is long, regardless of the level of female presence. It's simply asking how many films have female characters that aren't simply there for the men, but justify their own existence in the film's universe.

And I'll join Rath in tooting my own horn, and say that both of the screenplays I've written pass the test. But the first one's getting gutted, so we'll see how that turns out.

Because men AND women go see those movies. I think there's a certain amount of "complicity" (the "code-switching" you refer to) on the part of women in this double standard - you'll all go see the "guy" stuff with us, while there will be many groups of girlfriends seeing the Sex and the City sequel without us. It's this silent, culturally agreed upon pact. Women are flexible and will go see just about anything we want.

Sidebar: I think Eternal Sunshine fails the shit out of that test, by the way, and its "romantic objectification" of its female character is at least as troublesome as Sex and the City passing the test.

Really? It's been a while since I've seen it, but I remember feeling that the film was deliberately trying to subvert that kind of romantic objectification of female characters.

Well, it's been a while since I've seen it as well. I might be making that part up, but it definitely fails the test.

In Eternal Sunshine most of what you see of Clementine is filtered through Joel's memories, and given that it's a movie about relationships it's not surprising there would be some 'romantic objectification' going on there. But the movie goes out of its way to present Clemantine as an individual with her own life going on beyond Joel's perceptions and her romantic function in the story, so I'm not sure what's troublesome about it.

Plus Clementine actually straight out tells Joel that men have a tendency to objectify her, I think as a "cool, hip" woman or something like that. Also, Sex and the City is a pretty bad movie to be bring up in the context of guys not going to movies featuring woman heroines. It's just terrible. It'll be like if I tried to convince a girlfriend to see XXX:State of the Union. All she would have to do is shake her head and I would kind of see her point.

Maybe a movie like An Education would be much more flagrant example. Not seeing that if your girl wanted to doesn't smell right.

Haha Jake, this is sorta peripheral to your point but reading your post made me realize: there is such a thing as a male-oriented romantic movie, too - Woody Allen being the king of that genre, but also off the top of my head, you could add High Fidelity, maybe Groundhog's Day, some of Wes Anderson's stuff maybe (though that crosses over too far into the midlife crisis genre, perhaps.)

In the extras to Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Scorsese mentions that in the classic Hollywood era there was a genre of "women's pictures" (also sometimes refered to as, ahem, "weepies"), whose model he tried to follow for that film. It was a pretty big genre back then, you know, all those movies starring Bette Davis and later on Jane Wyman and stuff, but you seldom hear these discussed in the same genre terms used to analyze the classic westerns, gangster movies or even musicals. Douglas Sirk is a big name of course, but he's mostly named by people who want to throw Brecht in there, and often within a context of "look what great work this man did with these silly stupid stories"*. Then there's movies like All About Eve and the awesome Letter From An Unknown Woman, which are seen as classics but no one ever brings up genre when it comes to them - they're just seen as great dramas. Actually I think this still happens today - a chick flick that manages to cross over becomes a Drama.

* Which of course is also how people used to defend Sergio Leone, and Argento, and any genre dude who got the High Art laurels

EDIT: Crosspost! Sorry WW, didn't see that you had already mentioned this genre.

I think this leads us into the age-old glamourization debate; the show sort of encourages you to wish you had lived in that time in the same way that, say, Goodfellas makes you wish you were a badass mobster. Everything's gorgeous, everyone is beautiful and office life consists of an endless stream of boozing, epic lunches, listening to Bob Newhart records and general shenanigans. So it's not like Mad Men is some stark neo realist drama that frat boys are misinterpreting completley; there is a certain amount of wish fulfillment inherent to the show, even though it is very good at showing the destructiveness and inhumanity that lurks behind that fantasy.

The real question, Phil, is whether the original Paul Schrader screenplay for Rolling Thunder passes the test.

Somehow I doubt anything he's ever written, including grocery lists, would pass.

Well that's fish in a barrel. But if the point was that I should watch Eternal Sunshine again before running my mouth about it, point taken.

To paraphrase (badly), there's no such thing as an anti-war movie. Doesn't matter how bleak and how out-spoken a film might be about warfare, the very act of transferring it to the screen glamorizes it. Add fantastic tailoring and liquor? Come on.

Less midlife crisis movies, more White People With Problems movies than anything. American Beauty is a midlife crisis movie (that is also a WPWP movie. Think about that.).

I was more commenting on the fact that while I've gotten a lot of positive feedback about how I write women, I really had to think about my own work (of the five screenplays I've written, three pass, and only one of the two scripts I've written as an adult currently passes) to see if the test applies.

I'm sure you all read it, but Andre's recent B.O. article talks about a lot of the things we've brought up in this thread, too.

Odds and ends from the thread:

- Gilmore Girls is all sorts of greatness...but mostly for Rory. Lauren Graham is great as Lorelei, but repeated viewings of the series (thanks to two daughters who love the show) reveals that she's incredibly selfish and self-centered. The character remains entertaining, but I find her annoying most of the time, as opposed to Rory, who actually cares at least as much about other people as herself.

- The Secret Garden was one of my favorite books growing up. I had it read to me, and loved it.

- When I taught 6th grade, Anne of Green Gables was one of the books my class was required to read. Great book.

~~~~~~~

I agree with the idea that the test itself is flawed and not great applied exhaustively, but points to a very real and deeply institutional problem in films and the culture.

I also think, frankly, some of the blame has to go to moviegoers. When so many crappy rom-coms and "chick flicks" make money (27 DRESSES, I'm looking at you), all that tells Hollywood is to keep turning out dreck that stereotypes, simplifies, and keeps gender in easily-consumed and quantified categories.

For every Lovely & Amazing we get, we get ten (or more) The Ugly Truths. We have seen the enemy, and it is us.

27 Dresses isn't all that terrible. James Marsden is really good in it, but yeah, the message of that movie is not good.

Re: Eternal Sunshine. Yeah it's definitely a subversion. The point of the film, in the end, is very much about tearing down the idealized or demonized version of a person and seeing them as just that: a person. Very few "romantic" movies get to that conclusion.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Knocked Up, and 40 year Old Virgin are the holy trifecta of this in the current generation.

Besides Knocked Up (which pretty much has no choice but to be a male-centric film), I still hold the theory that if you made those exact same movies, and swapped genders for every character/sexual reference, you'd have an eye-rolling box office failure on your hands on both counts.

Clearly you never met my ex.

Yeah, just to clarify I wasn't throwing those two around as Bechdel Test examples, but rather "romantic movies", which I basically thought were somehow below me until I watched these (sort of along the lines of what Zooey said, except I dismissed them outright rather than doing any research whatsoever), then I just kinda rolled with it.

Actually, I won't. I refuse to go see violent action movies with DaveB. I did it once (Sin City) and I was miserable the whole time. Generally speaking, I don't watch many war movies, either. I spent a lot of time worrying about this wrinkle in my taste, thinking it meant there was something wrong with or suspect about me. I finally came to the understanding that not liking cinematic violence doesn't make my taste questionable and that a lot of mainstream film doesn't have much to say to me. It's no big deal.

But, yes, women are definitely complicit in this and there is a culturally agreed-upon pact. That's exactly the issue, to my mind. I don't think it's a bad thing at all that women are comfortable watching films that tell mens' stories; I think it's a bad thing that men are, by and large, obviously uncomfortable watching films that tell womens' stories. I think it's a bad thing that this disparity has shaped the industry in a way that it's near impossible to back away from it now without some massive, conscious changes that probably just aren't going to happen.

Please note, as I don't want to make anyone defensive here - the good men of CHUD are bad, bad examples for this conversation - you love movies and are far more omnivorous than the average bear. And I'm glad to hear some of you have love for what are considered stereotypically female books. Btw, there's a great Canadian tv adaptation of Anne of Green Gables, if anyone is interested.