Through the Carnival of Feminists, I found this post by Natasha about how children’s movies fail the Bechdel Movie Measure more than even most adult movies. The measure, for those who don’t know, is described by Natasha:
It must have three characteristics:
1. There must be two or more women in it
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something other than a man.
It’s incredibly rare for movies to have this feature, but as Natasha demonstrates, all the Pixar movies fail miserably except for The Incredibles. Even though half the intended audience for children’s movies is female—and far from having an adult life that does seem at times to center around men—they’re not going to see female characters to relate to onscreen the vast majority of the time.
The invisibility of women and girls in children’s entertainment has a new twist on it, according to this article by a beekeeper about the new DreamWorks film Bee Movie. As is standard with children’s movies, all functions that aren’t being in love with and/or mothering a male character are performed by male characters, but the twist in this case is that it’s the exact opposite in real life, where female bees do most of the non-sexual work.
In Hollywood’s version, there are more than three times the number of male roles than female ones, but a cartoon of my own hive would have thousands of leading ladies and only a handful of male extras.
The nurses that tend the young and the workers that forage for pollen; the guards that keep predators like skunks away and the undertaker bees that unceremoniously haul out the dead: they’re all female. And whereas the movie’s protagonist is repeatedly told he must choose just one job and stick with it, my honeybees rotate through all of the available duties…..
That’s because non-animated drones don’t collect pollen, or make beeswax, or even have stingers. If Mr. Seinfeld wanted realism (and an R rating), his male bees would be sex workers who do little more than mate with the queen — after which their genitals snap off. Worse: when winter comes, worker bees shove the freeloading males out into the cold. If drones are required in the spring, the queen will simply make more of them.
Regendering an entire species to make sure that male primacy is preserved? The common wisdom is that boys won’t be interested in watching or reading about female characters, due apparently to some inborn understanding that women are just boring, horrible, and inferior, but I’m not buying that. If boys were brought up to believe that women were equal to men, they’d be as open to movies and books with female leads as girls are to movies and books with male leads. I remember when I was a kid, boys would often hide it if they played Barbies, for fear of getting bitched out by their parents. While there are a lot of liberal parents out there who wouldn’t do that, I imagine there are still huge numbers of parents that won’t allow their boys to get invested in female characters because they fear that it’s feminizing and not teaching the boys the “right” lessons about their place in the world relative to women’s. Blaming the boys themselves is a way of shifting responsibility off the parents, and allowing parents to indulge their sexist phobias without having to face up to their own issues.
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I’m reminded of Donna Haraway’s Teddy Bear Patriarchy, a journal article about the early days of the American Museum of Natural History. Gorillas were shot, stuffed, shipped to New York and arranged in the museum in twee patriarchal family groupings, Daddy Silverback in the middle, with no regard for the reality of how gorillas might actually live and socialise in the wild. (There’s a lot more to the article than that, but that’s the bit this reminded me of.)
Plus, A Bug’s Life and Antz are also about female animals that have been rendered as male.
It does almost seem to be a given that an animated movie with animal characters intended for kids will change animals that should be female into males.
For example the main character in the movie “Barnyard” features a cow that clearly has an udder but is male. I’m sure there are other examples (such as many animated male kangaroos having pouches) but I can’t seem to think of them right now..
That’s both educational and very sad. And when you do have a female lead in an animated film, she’s almost always a princess.
That picture is awesome.
It’s annoying that humans project gender onto other species just because they reproduce sexually, even if the dynamics between sexes in that species are completely different from humans’. I wouldn’t say this is a case of regendering insects; it’s simply gendering them.
I have for years been thoroughly disgusted with the misogyny and male centered mythology manufactured as wholesome children’s entertainment. The worst offender of course is Disney, which despite feminists protest for it to stop its blatant patriarchy worship, refuses. Which of course shows that yes, the Hollywood is stacked full of men out to cement in young minds the idea that women are worthy only as wives, lovers and mothers.
I once read somewhere that American movies are made for a white male thirteen year old audience. Not once have I found enough evidence to refute that assertion.
I never bought my girls Disney crapola toys or other goods nor did I encourage them to dress up as princesses, fairies or witches for Halloween.
The most liberating aspect of raising my children to see all humans as fully human, which I didn’t expect, is that my children, grown now, can see me as both their mother and a full-fledged independent, human being as opposed to some rigid ideal of ‘mother’.
Thank god.
been disgusted with the
Two. TWO! That’s the standard, and they’re all failing?
Considering the amount of research animators usually put into kids’ movies, what disturbs me is that a group of people had to make a conscious choice to completely reverse everything science knows about the gender of bees.
One only wishes there were a culture jammer in the bunch.
In before someone mentions that the Ratatouille rats were clearly all female-bodied due to their lack of gigantic rat testes.
I like that Bechdel Movie Measure. I’m trying to think of the Incredibles, though. There’s that big conversation between Helen and Edna, but that’s really about Mr. Incredible — where is he, is he cheating on her, etc. (Although the cheating aspect isn’t made explicit, it’s 100% there.) It’s kind of a conversation about costumes, but that’s not the subtext. Do the family conversations between Helen and Violet count? I guess so.
I also like that Elastigirl doesn’t need rescuing, as far as I can remember. Every movie has “strong female leads” who always end up being the damsel in distress. Like Indiana Jones’s girlfriend in Raiders of the Lost Ark — she’s tough, she can shoot, but he still always ends up rescuing her.
Dude, the Sound of Freaking Music barely passes the Bechdel Movie Measure and it’s got an entire convent of nuns in it. Maria and Mother Superior sing about Mr. von Trapp. Maria and whatsherface, the oldest girl, sing about Rolf the Junior Nazi. The only passing parts are “How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria?” and the part where the nuns steal the spark plugs from the Nazis’ cars.
*goes to analyze her entire movie shelf*
This has history. I’m reminded of Teddy Bear Patriarchy, a bit of history of museology by Donna Haraway; in the name of science, special white boys go find gorillas, shoot them, have them stuffed and shipped back to New York, where they (the gorillas, not the special white boys) get arranged in glass cases in artificial family groupings, Daddy Silverback central. At that point (early 20th century) nothing was really known about how gorillas socialised in the wild - so it wasn’t even anthropomorphic patriarchy presented as fiction, it was anthropomorphic patriarchy represented as science, which everyone involved knew it wasn’t.
Pixar have done it before too, in A Bug’s Life.
And yeah, my brain is now hurting from all the films I love that fail and fail hard.
This has history. I’m reminded of Teddy Bear Patriarchy, a bit of history of museology by Donna Haraway; in the name of science, special white boys go find gorillas, shoot them, have them stuffed and shipped back to New York, where they (the gorillas, not the special white boys) get arranged in glass cases in artificial family groupings, Daddy Silverback central. At that point (early 20th century) nothing was really known about how gorillas socialised in the wild - so it wasn’t even anthropomorphic patriarchy presented as fiction, it was anthropomorphic patriarchy represented as science, which everyone involved knew it wasn’t.
Pixar have done it before too, in A Bug’s Life.
And yeah, my brain is now hurting from all the films I love that fail and fail hard.
This has history. I’m reminded of Teddy Bear Patriarchy, a bit of history of museology by Donna Haraway; in the name of science, special white boys go find gorillas, shoot them, have them stuffed and shipped back to New York, where they (the gorillas, not the special white boys) get arranged in glass cases in artificial family groupings, Daddy Silverback central. At that point (early 20th century) nothing was really known about how gorillas socialised in the wild - so it wasn’t even anthropomorphic patriarchy presented as fiction, it was anthropomorphic patriarchy represented as science, which everyone involved knew it wasn’t.
Pixar have done it before too, in A Bug’s Life.
And yeah, my brain is now hurting from all the films I love that fail and fail hard.
Every movie has “strong female leads” who always end up being the damsel in distress.
Yeah like in those Alien movies where Ripley is always being saved by… never mind. Sheesh, how insecure can you get. This reminds me of guys complaining that all the dads on sitcoms are doofusses. Get a life, people. Read a damned book once in a while.
Death Proof is the only major Hollywood movie I can think of that comes close to failing the Anti-Bechdel-Movie-Measure, where you simply reverse genders, and that’s because Quentin Tarantino and Kurt Russel discuss Russel’s stunt career. But that’s iffy, since it’s done for the benefit of the women around them. In fact, Tarantino’s filmography is a text book case of a filmmaker getting more woman-casting-friendly:
1) Reservoir Dogs fails the BMM miserably, I don’t think there’s a non-incidental woman character in the film. In fact, other than the waitress in the beginning and the elderly woman who shoots Tim Roth, I don’t think there’s any women on screen at all.
2) Pulp Fiction also fails, but gets closer, since Uma Thurman’s character is awesome.
3) Jackie Brown, I’m going to say fails, since I don’t remember any conversations between women that aren’t about Sam Jackson’s character, but with a woman lead.
4) Kill Bill Vol I and Vol II passes with flying colors.
5) and Deathproof as above, nearly fails Anti-BMM.
Yeah like in those Alien movies where Ripley is always being saved by… never mind.
Alien’s actually one of the very few action-oriented movies that meets the Bechdel movie measure–they talk about the alien. The point isn’t that [i]no[/i] movies feature strong heroines, it’s that very few do, especially in proportion. Same deal with doofus dads on sitcoms.
Right on with this post. I wondered if I was the only person who was bothered by the whole gender reversal thing in the “Bee Movie.” it’s so irritating when there actually are matriarchal animals and we switch them around to our preconceived notions.
I agree that there are few movies with strong female leads. I hate it when the heroine is always being rescued. There’s a nickname for that “TSTL” which stands for “too stupid to live.”
Not to mention the fact that the Alien series is clearly not directed kids like the movies under discussion are.
That said, adult movies fail miserably often as well, with characters like Ripley and Sarah Conner as the exception.
I also had no idea that loving movies meant that I cannot also love books. How have I managed to do both all this time!?
Barnyard was pretty ridiculous as well. The male lead character was a cow….he had udders.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2alaKxvH8E
The generic he strikes again. Since the sex of bees matters to pretty much none of them except for the queen that the drones (OK, there are some exceptions there), obviously they all have to be cast as male…
Jackie Brown, I’m going to say fails, since I don’t remember any conversations between women that aren’t about Sam Jackson’s character, but with a woman lead.
Jackie Brown is the only progressively feminist movie I think Tarantino ever made; I mean he switched the gender (and race) of the character from the book because he specifically wanted Pam Grier for the role. That decision made the entire movie about a woman fighting for herself without the issue of a man being her conflict… and in the end, she doesn’t lament not getting the guy one bit. He says no, and she says “okay then” and gets on with her life.
And for cripe’s sake, Kill Bill passes? I love those movies, but the entire film- hence the title- is a four-hour conversation about her former lover.
There’s also the conversations between Helen/Elastigirl and Violet- mom/daughter- and Helen with Kari, the babysitter.
Also analyzing our DVDs (mostly kids):
1. Lilo and Stitch series. Lilo is definitely a lead character and interacts with her big sister Noni and her nemesis Myrtle.
2. Eloise series. Eloise with Nanny, Prunella, and her female friends. The cartoons are okay, but nothing works like that cute kid with Julie Andrews as Nanny.
3. Wizard of Oz. Dorothy with the Witches, both good and bad, as well as Auntie Em.
4. Rugrats. DeeDee, Betty, Charlotte, Angelica, Lil, Susie, later Keiko and Kimmi all interact. Wild Thornberries has the mom, Debbie and Eliza constantly talking and relating, and I liked Angelica Pickles going up against Debbie Thornberry.
5. Princess Diaries- love them both. But then again, I have yet to not like anything with Julie Andrews!
I went back through the Pixars and damned if you’re not right. Sure, there’s Boo, Celia and Roz in Monsters, Inc- but they don’t interact at all. Finding Nemo has Dory, Coral, Pearl, Peach and Deb/Flo- but same thing. Toy Story I/II has BeauPeep, Jesse, and Andy’s mom- but again, nada.
Shrek does a bit better, but not until the 3rd installation. #1 had just Fiona, #2 had Fiona talking to either her fairy godmother or her mother the Queen about Shrek. At least in #3 we saw Fiona have GFs, who were vaguely alluded to in #2.
And I also found dozens and dozens that fail miserably unless, as Ultra points out, the main character is a princess and her problems all revolve around finding her prince. Pretty damned sad.
I think Gaiman’s Mirrormask fits the Bechdel test. The main girl and her mother get into a screaming fight about the girl running her own life, and later the main girl as the dark princess gets into the same argument with the dark queen. I know I’ve seen more movies that pass the test, but at this very moment it’s the only one I can think of.
Speaking of regendering: Barnyard. The cows, complete with utters, are all voiced by men. A whooooole lot of people need to be sent back to biology class!
J sub D - um - pay attention, dear. A ton of otherwise good books have the exact same failing. Lord of the Rings? Arwen, Galadriel and Eowyn - who never have a conversation in the entire series - vs. how many male characters?
And lest you say that’s because LotR is decades old, my most recent fantasy read (and tons and tons in between) have the same problem. Great book, awesome characters. Included two wonderful female characters. Both of them died gruesome deaths solely for the purpose of driving the behavior of the male characters. Oh - and they never even met, let alone had a conversation that didn’t center around men. Heck, most of their conversations with men centered around men.
It’s not the individual stories. It’s the sheer preponderance. Finding quality fiction with female characters whose existences aren’t purely centered around the men is a hard slog.
As an entomologist, I’m personally offended by this crap movie.
BTW, the movies about ants would have the same flaws, since both ants and bees are eusocial Hymenoptera.
Okay, August, perhaps Kill Bill doesn’t pass with “flying colors”, but it passes. As but one example:
Re children’s movies that pass the Bechdel Movie Measure, try Miyazaki’s films. My Neighbor Totoro passes easily as do Naussica, Spirited Away, and Princess Mononoke. Of course, it’s a pretty easy standard to meet. The only film I can think of that fails the anti-BMM is Triplets of Belleville, which has very little dialogue one way or another.
Alien’s actually one of the very few action-oriented movies that meets the Bechdel movie measure–they talk about the alien.
It’s kind of the definitive movie that passes the Bechdel MM, given that it is the movie being discussed by the characters in the cartoon in which Bechdel invents the measure as the last movie the character who holds the measure as a standard has been able to see. It’s a little sad that 20 years later people are still pointing to it and saying “See, see, Hollywood does to do strong female leads.” Can’t you come up with something a little more contemporary?
Well, hmmm, Mean Girls qualifies, and so does Heathers. But does it count if the situation is two females talking about how horrible all the other females in the movie are?
The problem is that so few movies pass the Bechdel Movie Measure and it’s a pretty weak measure. Maybe the more illustrative to consider how many movies fail the Bechdel Movie Measure, and how few movies fail the anti-Bechdel Movie Measure (genders reversed, so two men in the movie who have a conversation about something other than women in the movie). Like I said, Deathproof comes closest as far as I can think of. Anything else?
Very often you have to look to films with a show-business theme to find this. I’m thinking Gypsy, Funny Girl, Nashville, Coal Miner’s Daughter, even Valley of the Dolls. But I’m stunned to realize I am wracking my brain to think of more modern examples of this that I’ve actually seen and can’t think of any, other than maybe Gypsy 83 and Chicago. And hardly anyone has seen Gypsy 83.
Oh, and of course Dreamgirls, doh, how could I forget?
Re: half the audience for kids movie being female…I’d like my boys also to see female characters doing things besides obsessing about males or housekeeping. Their mother certainly does more than that…
Silkwood, North Country. Thelma and Louise, of course.
Geez.
…as in, “Geez. That’s all I could come up with!”
Just been looking through my DVD collection. Movies/TV shows that qualify:
Absolutely Fabulous
Battlestar Galactica
Pleasantville (Even though the mother and daughter start off talking about men, they end up talking about masturbation).
Fried Green Tomatoes
Shirley Valentine
Of these, only two (Ab Fab and FGT) are actually ABOUT relationships between women, and of those two only Fried Green Tomatoes is about POSITIVE relationships between women.
And what I’ve listed here only makes up about 5% of my DVD collection (at a guess).
J sub D–your mom said to wash the Cheeto crumbs off your hands and come up for dinner.
Which reminds me. Every time a movie with a female lead comes out it’s the fucking apocalypse as far as the reviewers are concerned. All “what about the menz, they’re being made obsolete”. Pffft.
Also from Kill Bill (Vol1):
The Bride talks to Vernita Green’s daughter about witnessing her mother’s death. Lame, but there.
To me the real positive thing about Kill Bill was the strength and persistence of the female lead, who ultimately depends only on herself to make it through the path she has chosen.
I watched Death Proof for the first time last weekend, and have really mixed feeling about it. The first 2/3’s are okay but betrayed by some truly senseless and misogynist deaths (trying not to spoil it for any who’ve not seen it). The last third pulls back into “I am woman, hear me roar” territory and it ends well (violently, but well) …
I don’t know which is worse - that I never knew about this rule before now, or that I never noticed this trend myself before now.
In the regendering realm, I still can’t get over the cows in that recent movie, was it Barnyard? The one with the male lead cow who had UDDERS.
Silent Hill. The original script, I’ve heard, had no male characters in it. The studio refused to greenlight it until some were added in. While I didn’t think those scenes were completely awful, they were pretty clunky. Mostly I liked them because they set up the end scene nicely.
I saw the trailer for this movie back in July and said,
“I have now reached the point where I have to be physically restrained from screaming at movies in which animals that are usually female are depicted as male. I gathered nothing else from the trailer, as the froth got in the way.”
Note that at the same showing (for HP & The Order of the Phoenix), I saw a trailer for The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep. “My 11-y.o. reports that the book is pretty good, though it was about a boy and a girl and the movie is just about a boy. Here comes that frothing again …”
Surprisingly enough, “Stargate: Atlantis” often passes Bechdel’s Test. It’s dazzling, I tell you.
But Beppie, so much of FGT is about the heroines’ relationships with Buddy, Frank, or Ed. Or even Ninny’s late son.
What I like about that movie is not that it manages to avoid male-based interaction between women, but that it takes Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s formula for patriarchal bonding, “Two men engaging in a transaction of honor over the dead or discredited or disempowered body of a woman,” and pretty much reverses it, over and over.
The original Stargate SG-1 passed Bechdel’s Test, too, I think. I can’t recall Sam and Dr. Frasier ever talking about a guy. Aliens, yes, men, no. Except for Pete, and he was a giant mistake.
Josh, I agree, there are significant relationships with men portrayed in Fried Green Tomatoes– but the movie centres around two relationships between women– Idgy and Ruth, and Evelyn and Ninny. Their relationships with men are satellite-features of the film. And while they do talk about men, it’s not the ONLY thing they talk about.
If boys were brought up to believe that women were equal to men, they’d be as open to movies and books with female leads as girls are to movies and books with male leads.
Absolutely. My *son* likes movies and books with girl protagonists just as much as he does ones with boys. I even bought him the Daring Book for Girls yesterday–at his request, because he already has the Dangerous Book for Boys.
He also pointed out that the Girls book is only “Daring” and the Boys book is “Dangerous, and isn’t that sexist, Mama?”
Obviously a few people are threatened by the Bechdel Movie Measure (and from the looks of it all the right ones are threatened).
It’s important to note that if a movie fails the Bechdel Movie Measure, that in no way implies it’s a terrible movie or an unimportant movie or not culturally significant or important. The dum-dum near the top obviously looked at it and immediately thought “OH!!!! SO NOW EVERY MOVIE HAS TO BE ALL ABOUT WOMEN RIGHT!!!!???”
…no…
It’s a measure that shows us that for every movie that passes the test there are probably a couple thousand that fail, and that says something important about us.
So don’t get your boxers in a knot, gents, The Godfather is still great….we’re just saying we should be cognizant of the fact that there aren’t more Godmothers.
I actually went to see Bee Movie (I have a kid, and movie fare for kids is pretty lame right now); aside from the gender confusion, the movie itself just flat-out sucks. Almost worse than Shrek 3.
(Barnyard destroyed any vestigial respect I had for Bob Odenkirk. And that was a lot, given how good he was on Mr. Show. But BULLS DON’T HAVE UDDERS. Unless he was making a much deeper film about gender norms than I thought.)
Incidentally, one film that does look like it has potential is The Golden Compass — I have heard good things about the book, I’m a sucker for hero myths, and this is a hero quest with a female lead. At least it’s something on the horizon with a smidgen of potential.
If boys were brought up to believe that women were equal to men, they’d be as open to movies and books with female leads as girls are to movies and books with male leads.
My two favorite books growing up were A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle, and The Changeling by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. The former features a marvelously flawed female lead (and passes both the Bechtel and anti-Bechtel tests with flying colors) and the latter was a coming-of-age story about two girls who didn’t fit in. Nobody ever told me that I shouldn’t read such books or I’d be feminized, and so I simply did, over and over, because I loved the characters of Meg and Martha and Ivy so. Somehow, I managed to reach adulthood male, and happily without concern for what my heroes are supposed to look like.
Ok it just occurred to me that those wingnut movie review sites really only consider a movie acceptable for children if the movie:
1. Has at least two christians.
2. Who talk to each other.
3. About a man…named Jesus.
Not even The Incredibles passes that test!!! In fact….the only movie in my entire collection that even comes CLOSE is Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
Wow….I’m SO goin to hell…..
The Golden Compass will be GREAT if all the AMAZING anti-religion sentiment from the books remains.
Such an incredible series and Lyra rules….
I was pretty stunned myself at how awful the Pixar movies were for the Bechdel test. Until I thought about each individually I had no idea they were that bad. As Rjak points out, though, the fact that a movie fails the BMM doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie. I love Finding Nemo, I watch it every time I’m stuck at home with the flu. I do, however, wish that for every Finding Nemo there could be a similar funny, smart, kids movie with a female lead.
On the issue of whether or not boys will be interested in watching shows with girl leads: human children watch shows with animal, toy, or vegetable leads. If a kid can identify with a talking tomato, how much easier should it be for a boy to identify with a female character?
His Dark Materials is such a great series. Two little kids go on a quest to kill God, what could be better? Unfortunately, I hear that Nicole Kidman made them tone down the anti-Catholic sentiment of the story before she’d agree to be in the movie. Which ironically proves Philip Pullman’s point about how people who practice patriarchal/authoritative religions are killjoys who love to control other people.
I’m not sure if people would consider Stardust to be a movie for kids, but it passes the test.
I’ve talked a bit about the test with other people, and they usually need me to clarify that I’m not saying that movies that pass are somehow Great Cinema Achievements. In my collection, I think the only thing that passes is Beaches, and no one is going to argue it’s a deep and significant movie.
I want more than this because it’s not hard. I can so easily find movies that have more than one man that have a conversation that isn’t about women. Even in movies that are “chick flicks”, like Sliding Doors, the two sets of male buddies manage at least a few sentences about things that aren’t teh_wimmin, but there isn’t even that between the main female friendship.
I thought of one right away…
Ginger Snaps. All three of them. Love the first two. And it’s definitly for teens. Also for teens…But I’m a Cheerleader!. Amelie and Ghost World are more mature but still pretty child like.
I would add a challenge.
4) That conversation is a digression from the focus of the movie.
Mulan almost passes
I don’t know if it’s been said here, as I’m going through the thread pretty quickly but:
it’s worth noting that failing the test doesn’t make a movie BAD, or even anti-feminist. A much better use of the measure is establishing progress. If you can say “20 percent of the movies released this season passed” that’s a marked accomplishment. “I just saw an action movie that passed” is an amazing thing.
The thing that springs to mind is Grave of the Fireflies, produced by Studio Ghibli. Miyazaki was executive producer, and you couldn’t find a more feminist-friendly director in showbiz (the only movie of his I can think of that actually fails the movie measure is Castle of Cogliostro, and it uses pre-established characters in a pre-established setting, and is akin to faulting the director of Harry Potter for not including more non-English characters)
But GotF fails, despite the poignant story, deep characters, MOST of whom are female. If the genders of the two main characters were switched (an older sister caring for her younger brother) the movie would pass with flying colors. But because the main character (it’s based on a semi-autobiographical novel) is male, and the conversations are almost universally with only 2 people on camera at any given time, it ends up failing.
That said, there are an awful lot of movies that fail that have no excuse but sexism for failing.
Also, I think Amanda missed one of the critera.
First point is there must be two NAMED female characters.
It’s a tough test to clear, which is why failure isn’t a mark of auto-shame, and success is a mark of a movie that is to be watched and celebrated.
Everything I’ve heard about The Golden Compass indicates that God has been cut completely out of the story. The Magisterium is now supposed to stand for a generic totalitarian ruling body, not a church.
The Golden Compass is excellent, but my beef with it is that Lyra becomes a secondary character once Will enters the scene. Instead of continuing to be a strong, independent character, all her autonomous actions are punished (plot-wise) and the “turning point” for her character in the Subtle Knife is when she learns that she has to prioritize Will’s quest and not her own.
I once read somewhere that American movies are made for a white male thirteen year old audience.
Our entire western culture is made by and for the adolescent male audience. AKA “It’s all about the cock”.
As many commenters have pointed out, there are some good movies with female leads. It’s getting better, but we’re still fighting for it.
When I was a kid, there were just so few books with girls as the main character, that didn’t need to be rescued all the time. Even though I’m a scientist, I didn’t read much science fiction as a girl because there were so few with good female characters. Take Lord of the Rings for example - in the movies they really beefed up Arwen’s part because she was almost non-existent in the book. After Madeleine L’Engle died, I read that A Wrinkle in Time was one of the first children’s books with a girl lead character. I guess that would explain why I loved that book so much as a girl.
For kid’s movies - I think there was a really good one that came out 10+ yrs. ago called “The Little Princess” about a girl at a girl’s school. It was quite good, IIRC.
“His Gourd!”
“No, His Shoe!”
Always look on the bright side of Life…
Thank goodness for Chicken Run.
Somebody mentioned Shrek the Third as being vaguely OK because it had girlfriends in it but the film itself revolves around the husband of a princess who doesn’t want to become king when in fact as the husband of a princess this would not be an issue because she would be the successor to the throne (cf Elizabeth II).
The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media is an excellent source of research on this depressing trend.
It wasn’t that good a movie, but I believe “Home on the Range” (Disney?) does pass the test. For TV shows I watch or have watched, I think the original “CSI” does as well, or used to.
Tapetum, even in the generally-excellent Lois McMaster Bujold stuff, how often do two female characters actually have a conversation? Admittedly, in her main series one would be restricted to the first few, Cordelia-centered ones for that. And I just reread Tad William’s “Memory, Sorrow and Thorn” trilogy, and found to my utter disgust just how few actual female characters there are, and how many fewer than that who aren’t The Daughter, The Wife and so forth and so on. It’s not the technical point of whether the trilogy passes the test, but that I cannot, even having reread it, be sure that it does that is outrageous, for I can easily bring a hundred conversations between men to mind from that trilogy.
I believe Robin Hobb’s second (Liveship Traders) trilogy would pass (the other two being handicapped for this purpose by having a male viewpoint character), though how well it passes is dependent on a technical point on which I will not elaborate here.
Well, Buffy the vampire slayer is a notable exception. There are many, many, many scenes between the various female characters that are about issues in their lives that don’t reference males at all.
Actually, I love lois mcmaster bujold and I think that its important to remember that one of the things bujold is dealing with are issues of *parenting*, especially in the first book. The conversations between the main female character and the main male character are focused on the issue of caring for the mentally wounded soldier she takes on as her charge. I like the bechdel analytic tool but its not the only tool we have for recognizing great films or great writing on women’s issues. Because women’s issues can also be issues of power and sex and love around male (and female) lovers and children. Until you eliminate those social issues from women’s lives I’ll take a serious consideration of those issues over no consideration any day.
I loved all the vorkosigan books and I recommend A civil contract for its exploration of women’s self limiting behavior and male exploitation of vulnerability.
aimai
The atrocious Bechdel performance of Pixar is all the more frustrating when they turn out movies like Ratatouille, which aside from the near complete lack of female characters (and a bizarre vignette of an argument between a man and woman early in the film), is an excellent childrens’ movie, at least when compared to a lot of the crap that’s been released lately. I don’t even like kids all that much, but they deserve better than Vin Diesel in The Pacifier. Ratatouille is the anti-Pacifier, except for having even fewer female characters. It’s enough to make you pull your hair out.
There’s a movie coming out this holiday season which I’m boycotting for this reason - and I have a number of young relatives I have been known to take to movies over the holidays, but if we go we’re going to see something else, or do something else if there’s no good kids’ movie, because it was written with a Heroine in the lead role, and the movie makers have instead elevated her comic-relief brother to the role of Hero, and made her the comic-girlie relief.
Because obviously little girls couldn’t rescue baby sea monsters and raise them and want to ride through the waves on their backs, oh, no! Quests aren’t for girls, and neither is autonomy: as Happy Feet taught us, our role is to wait chastely pining at home (”seven years” as the folksongs say) while the boyfriend who has lied to us to protect us for our own good runs away to sea and saves the world…
Another movie that regenders animals is Madagascar. Lemur societies are overwhelmingly matriarchal (and quite abusive of the males in many cases) whereas in the movie all the lemur species are ruled by a male king (voiced by Sasha Baron-Cohen).
Ah! I guess this might be just because everyone’s older than I am, but I can’t believe you can mention books (particularly for the younger sort) with female leads and not mention Tamora Pierce’s series.
But yes, the lack of women in movies is really irritating. I’m not into rom-coms at all, much rather see an action movie… but finding ones with women that aren’t just T&A is awful.
I am now terrified that a movie will be made of any of Terry Pratchett’s books, after realizing just how often women talk to women in those books, and not about men. There are entire Pratchett books of, essentially, women talking to women.
If I dig deep in my memory, I can come up with Happily Ever After, which is a Snow White sequel. Snow and a group of seven female dwarfs (called dwarfelles, of course) take on an evil wizard so they can rescue the prince. That passes the Bechtel test. Of course, the main humor is how incompetent the dwarfelles are, and the conversation goes “How do we save the Prince?” rather than just “what about the Prince, but it’s a start.”
I don’t know if Disney’s recent adaption of A Wrinkle in Time would pass. Aunt Beast has been eliminated, and the Happy Medium is, of course, sexless. And Meg has been transformed from a rather shy but good hearted nerd with glasses to a spectacleless, tough talking gangsta type who looks like she’d rather hold up a gas station than do a science experiment.
Oddly enough, there’s a pair Disney Channel movies, Twitches and Twitches Too, which pass the test here - and not only are the leads two girls, but they’re black girls. They are princesses, though, so it kind of drops the ball there, and the second one introduces love interests so that the girls get some romantic interaction, but most of the films consist of them trying to uncover/conquer the bad guy. I didn’t mind my daughter watching them at all.
“There are entire Pratchett books of, essentially, women talking to women.”
I’m sure nothing of importance will be lost when those characters are regendered as men talking to men…
[/snark]
Does anyone here watch any cartoons? If you are interested, check out the one called Avatar. It’s about 50/50 male-female cast and the women all rock. The first season may not pass the test, but they do address sexism directly and a past life of the main character is a woman.
Come to think of it, the Happy Medium in the movie is pretty obviously a guy in robes. I guess we should count our blessings that Meg wasn’t made into a boy.
“Meg has been transformed from a rather shy but good hearted nerd with glasses to a spectacleless, tough talking gangsta type who looks like she’d rather hold up a gas station than do a science experiment.”
are u fuckin kidding me?? wow, theres no way thats gonna fly w/ anyone who grew up w/ the book [which would probably be the people most likely to see the movie]
As Rjak points out, though, the fact that a movie fails the BMM doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie.
It’s worth pointing out that in no way, shape, or form did I say this. But the paucity of films that acknowledge that women have lives of their own and are not actually human-shaped accessories for real people, who are all male, is shocking. I don’t buy many DVDs, but my boyfriend’s got a lot. From mine: I think Fast Times at Ridgemont High might pass, and if you don’t actually see Wendy and Lisa writing together, it’s implied that they do in Purple Rain. From Marc’s collection: Go, Best In Show, Being John Malcovich, and Happiness come to mind; there might be a few more, but I can’t recall scenes. It’s worth nothing that in that list, two and possibly three of the movies only pass because the characters are lesbians.
The Hollywood version also probably conveniently leaves out the fact that most American bees are genetically modified to be larger than normal and they’ve wiped out the other native species. They also probably left out the fact that most bee farmers use antibiotics and mite killer, which like other agricultural overuse of antibiotics, may contribute to the creation of the super bug. Ahh!
Well, Buffy the vampire slayer is a notable exception. There are many, many, many scenes between the various female characters that are about issues in their lives that don’t reference males at all.
I don’t know if TV shows really count that much. TV has a huge advantage over movies, which is time. Within a series, you have time to flesh out each character, the ability to add more characters, and plenty of time to develop those relationships that movie makers treat as secondary. Even shows with really repulsive gender stereotypes pass—think Friends.
I just finished The Amber Spyglass last night. I really did enjoy the series, but the observation about Will and Lyra in the last half of the series is pretty spot on (until the very end–I thought Pullman kind of redeemed himself there).
One children’s book that is very good is The Princess Knight. I have no idea who the author is, but it’s for the just starting to read set. I got it for the oldest from the library a while back and he loved it. It’s all about a princess who learns to fight, ride, etc. in secret, and is much better at it than her brothers. Then her father decides to marry her off to the winner of a tournament. So she enters the tournament herself in disguise, wins, tells off her dad, and goes away for a year. When she gets back, she decides to marry the head gardener (who used to guard the path when she was practicing) and lives happily ever after, on her own terms.
Ledasmom, sadly, your fears had come to pass. There IS a Pratchet Christmas film around (more of a miniseries, actually). And of course, the only survivor is the character they can’t regender…Death’s Grandaughter.
Oh, I agree if we leave it to movies. Though I want to give a shout out to a recent children’s movie that was way, way, better than I thought it would be “the last mimzy.” And another personal favorite: The secret of Roan Inish.
Its just unbelievable to me how difficult it is to find good things to watch with your girl children–especially once you’ve broken the code of racism, sexism and classism that underlies a lot of movies and then they can just look at the characters and predict the action from that. Its sad, really. I agree with everyone else about rattatouille. All the rats are, apparently, male and male dominated and *even* the woman chef isn’t actually a good chef and needs to follow rules to cook.
aimai
And oh yes, TV shows and books don’t count. A game of children’s movies are so much more of a challenge!
The Bechdel rule is interesting. It sets the bar very, very low, and yet very few films clear it.
I’ll offer the following that pass quite niceley: one from mainstream Hollywood “Don’t tell Mom the babysitter’s dead”, and one from Canada “The Company of strangers” which from memory only has one man in it in a small walk on part.
Karpad–the original version of the BMM did not require the characters have names. I have noticed however that many movies that do just manage to pass the BMM do fail if you require the characters have names.
And I object to “It’s a tough test to clear”–it’s not tough; it ought to be insanely easy, which is why it’s almost impossible for a movie to fail the anti-BMM. It’s just a test movies rarely pass, which is depressing beyond words.
For the record, Bring It On almost fails the anti-BMM, but there’s a conversation between the male cheerleaders and the male football players about whether the cheerleaders are gay.
My husband and I discuss the BMM a lot–it’s one of the first things we talk about after seeing a movie. And when he sees one I haven’t (he watches a lot of movies…) that passes, he always makes a point of mentioning it.
Superman Returns was an interesting movie because it technically passes–Lois asks a question of the official-person on the plane, who is in fact a woman (but who I think never has a name) very early on. It almost feels to me like someone knew about the BMM and wanted to make sure to get such a scene out of the way…and then there isn’t a single other conversation that would count.
TV shows–well, those for adults–are a lot more likely to pass. Well, duh, because there’s a lot more runtime, but I think any individual episode of a lot of shows is more likely to pass than a movie. I’m not totally sure why…shows are more likely to be about the relationships between people, and about groups of people, while movies tend to be focused on one central character Doing Something Important, which apparently leads to women not talking to each other.
I haven’t thought too much about tv shows for kids. I do know that Joss Whedon has talked about how, when he was trying to create an animated version of Buffy, he was pressured to make the main character male, or at least to make a male character with equal power. Which, you know, kind of missing the whole point of the “one girl in all the world” thing. But yeah, the whole “boys won’t watch it if it’s about a girl” excuse was used. So ridiculous.
A few years ago in a class on language and gender I did a paper on the main characters in children’s books…which tended to be male, but especially when the main character is an animal or some nonhuman object. There are a couple exceptions (did you know The Little Engine That Could was female?) but it was pretty damn depressingly consistent.
Re: A Bug’s Life
Annoying as it is that the film recasts worker ants as males, it actually does pass the BMM: Princess Atta and her mother the Queen talk about governing the colony. (The Queen is not given a personal name, but she is an important character.)
Of course, reviewing my film library, I find that the BMM isn’t much of a predictor of feminism-friendly content. Disney’s Sleeping Beauty passes, but Mulan does not.
Buttered Popcorn, I second your recommendation of Avatar: The Last Airbender as a kickass show for kids. Especially starting in the second season, the cast is chock-full of strong female characters who talk to each other about things like: martial arts, their own pasts, their relationships with each other, and how to defeat their enemies. The creators (a couple of guys!) have explicitly said that they love writing strong, interesting female characters, “even though some people keep telling us not to.” Apparently, “some people” are afraid of alienating the male audience. But guess what? It’s not happening–the boys watching love the girls in the show. Apparently, boys are also sick of the terribly one-sided portrayal of girls in most kids’ entertainment. The entire industry is poised for a revolution if we can get more people brave enough to try it.
It’s not happening–the boys watching love the girls in the show.
Hell, my 30-yr-old roommate plans on buying the boxset, and will probably buy another for his nephew when the kid is old enough to watch TV. Ain’t no one alienating no one with a diverse bunch of well-written characters, whoever is telling the creators that need to be slapped with a rolled up newspaper while being scolded for their ignorance.
Joss Whedon seems to pass the BMM in general. Another great example is Firefly/Serenity. Inara and Kayley have a great relationship, as do Kayley and River. Zoe seems to not have as much interaction with the other female members of the crew, but that’s because she’s usually out on the missions with Mal. Also, the only time people actually talk about romance is the non-relationship between Kayley and Simon.
I also think the way they dealt with Zoe at the end of Serenity was really good; she didn’t become a weepy non-functional widow, but still continued to kick ass.
Not to mention the fact that the Alien series is clearly not directed kids like the movies under discussion are.
Charlotte’s Web. I brought up Alien in response to the Indiana Jones comment. Should have made that clear, I guess. If you don’t like the flick, don’t go see it. 90% of movies are crap. Of course 90% of everything is crap.
Folks, make the movies, write the books, produce the TV shows then. Complaining that what YOU like doesn’t sell is infantile.
“Folks, make the movies, write the books, produce the TV shows then. Complaining that what YOU like doesn’t sell is infantile.”
Yeah! And if you don’t like “Global Warming”, why don’t YOU cool the earth down? If you think there should be “World Peace”, quit-chur-bitchin and stop those wars. And if you don’t think there should be starving kids, feed ‘em, dammit…
MikeEss
Huh? What global warming, poverty, and stopping wars has to do with the movie and literature markets comletely escapes me. Please expound on this connection for me.
Firefly on the whole, passses. Serenity, the movie, and the movie alone, does not, unless you count the group sessions. I think the only time that there are two or more women alone together is the recording of Kaylee and Inara, where the conversation is about why Inara is leaving the ship. Which would fit, except that Inara’s leaving because of Captain Tightpants.
In my DVD collection, I found Dogma, Lantern Hill, Sleeping Beauty, and possibly Noises Off!. And I’ve got two bookshelves full of movies. (There’s also TV on DVD up there, but I’m not looking at those for this.)
Oh, and I bet J sub D doesn’t like fanfic, media criticism, meta-analysis, or the “Women in Refrigerators” website either. G-d forbid that a non-academic ever look at culture with an analytical eye.
I think “The Descent” passes the BMM; I know one of the major conflicts is the whole unexplored/unspoken triangle between Sarah, Juno, and Sarah’s husband (not to mention the end of the movie), but it’s an all-woman group of adventurous cave-divers. Can’t say I’ve ever seen that before.
J sub D, I see what you’re trying to say - the whole ‘be the change you wish to see’ thing - but analysing popular culture is a good place to start. You can’t go ahead and start making change if you can’t identify what is wrong in the first place.
The Railway Children also passes. It’s sad that that this and A Little Princess are based on books written over a hundred years ago.
And so does The Babysitter’s Club, and that’s contemporary, though it gets annoyingly preachy sometimes.
Elektrodot,
No, I’m fucking not. Maybe “gansta” is too strong a word, but the Disney Meg is no shy, quiet bespectacled nerd, like the book. As Katie Stewart plays her, she’s a tough, sarcastic tomboy like the kind Jody Foster used to play. (Foster had the talent to pull that type off while still retaining sympathy, but Stewart, alas, doesn’t.)
It’s like the Disney folks decided “Real girls, especially nerdy girls, don’t like going out on adventures; they like tea sets and dolls. And nerdy girls certainly don’t get the cute boy at the end, like Meg does in the book. So let’s make this Meg as much like a tough boy as possible.”
What’s even worse, the new, tough Meg is a wimp. The nerdy Meg confronted a bunch of bullies who were all bigger than her, while the movie’s Meg confronts a bunch of eight year olds who are all smaller than her. And one pushes her over. (Oh, please) Then Calvin comes to bail her out. She doesn’t look brave, she looks ridiculous. And I’m not the only one who thought so either.
BTW, I made a mistake. Aunt Beast is in there, but she’s only in one scene, so she wasn’t butchered as much as the rest.
Well, unfortunately, Jeff, Pullman introduces a boy in book two, and once he has his male lead, he kinda forgets about Lyra. In fact, for most of book 3, Lyra is in a coma.
I liked the books, but the disappearance of sassy, daring, important to the story Lyra kinda ruined it for me.
I am so sick to death of that stupid meme from the 80s that “girls will watch shows about boys but boys won’t watch shows about girls”. It was bullshit then, and it’s bullshit now, but since it’s old bullshit, it has the flavor of “fact”. Wizard of Oz anyone? On TV annually, all kids want to watch it, main character is a little girl.
J sub D, noticing the paucity of fair gender roles in movies in’t an insult. What’s insulting is that to make movies, some assholes are always involved that regender characters and lighten them–see Ged from “The Earthsea Trilogy”. Boy was dark copper colored in the book, but played by Irish-white Shawn Ashmore in the movie.
The whole “marketability” aspect is killing good movies. Just like judging candidates on their “electability” is bullshit. Go out there and send a strong message, and let people decide for themselves –then there might be some quality. But as long as the industry is so concerned with making money, assholes who can’t write, act, or direct, will claim idiotic shit like “boys won’t watch girls’ cartoons” and continue the crap.
I mean really, J sub D, do you think there aren’t many stories about women out there? That women’s lives really are all about the menz? B/c from the preponderance of movies, both good and bad, it appears that women are rather useless. Warner Bros. is even going to stop making any movies with female leads.
And how is that decision even possible? Aren’t women human?
“J sub D, I see what you’re trying to say - the whole ‘be the change you wish to see’ thing - but analysing popular culture is a good place to start. You can’t go ahead and start making change if you can’t identify what is wrong in the first place.”
True, but I would add (which was what I was trying to get across above to J sub D) that analysis is probably ALL you can do.
No matter how much I want to make a progressive movie, write a best-selling progressive book, or produce a really progressive TV show, it ain’t gonna happen. (To be fair, most of us will never get to make shitty versions of those things either.) Unless you inherited vast wealth and can pay to doing those things from your own funds, you will never be offered a chance to do those things.
Expressing our disappointment with what is offered by others is probably the best we (as powerless individuals) can do…
The thing you need to be worried about is colony collapse disorder. It isn’t domesticated bees that have wiped out native species, it’s that colony collapse disorder has left almost no wild honey bee colonies intact. Human activity has also caused other types of bees, like a type of western bumble bee, to lose much of their range. And I’m uncertain why you find acaricides to be so offensive.
You actually don’t see what he’s saying? Wow, that’s pretty bad. Let me have a go, then:
MikeEss’s point is that saying “If you see a problem, then YOU fix it!” is about the dumbest possible answer when the problem in question is a tremendous, worldwide or society-wide problem. One person can make a significant contribution, but probably not get the whole thing changed — in this case just as much as in the case of global warming or world hunger.
In addition, I’d point out that “doesn’t sell” is pretty much the opposite of what the last few comments have been saying. That is, boys and men actually do still like movies with strong female characters playing the lead role, as well as movies that pass the BMM. It’s just a mindset in the movie production industry that keeps such things from being made available, not any actual market pressure.
Oh, I love many, many movies that don’t pass the BMM. I freaking love Indiana Jones.
It’s just kind of irritating and sad that movies with actual, interesting women characters in them are so rare. I don’t see why stating that is “infantile.”
J sub D is starting to bore me. Bunnies?
MikeEss
No matter how much I want to make a progressive movie, write a best-selling progressive book, or produce a really progressive TV show, it ain’t gonna happen.
What. Fucking. Bullshit.
You are a smart person. If you want to do these things, then you will make it happen, somehow. That you do not make it happen only indicates that you have other priorities.
Please don’t pretend that you can’t effect change because nobody “offered you the chance.” That’s just rationalizing nonsense.
petey: how, though?
you can’t make a major (or even a minor) studio greenlight a film. you can make one yourself, sure, but you can’t make a distributor pick it up. you can’t make a network air your series. you can’t make a publisher accept a book.
i draw comics. i have friends who draw comics. i know someone in the middle of an awesome series: lots of action, lots of wit, great style. he’s been turned down by Diamond twice now. the reason, according to the rejection letters? he needs to work on “anatomy”. by “anatomy” they mean “female characters whose breasts are smaller than their heads”.
to an extent, you do need to be “offered the chance” before you can make change in the entertainment world — or in the world in general. has this artist stopped drawing? no. are people ever likely to get to read his series and enjoy it? no.
I’m good, if not great, at my job.
And while I love theater, dance, music and film, extra-curricular groups in college have taught me that:
a) I will never dance well enough to do it professionally
b) same with writing
c) or directing (stage or screen)
d) I’m tone deaf enough that something has to be really out, or a lot of somethings a little out before I pick up on it.
e) I might, if this was truly my passion, be able to get good enough at managing/assisting to be involved in the business.
Does any of this mean that I can’t appreciate good writing, dance, music, or film when I see it? No. Does it mean that I can’t want something other than what is commonly offered? No.
I can’t make it myself. I literally don’t have the skill, but I am very good at what I do, and maybe someday I’ll have enough money to commission what I want in some field - be it a painting, dance performance, or movie.
Of course, I could also use the money help fight global warming. It’s a question of priorities. If I can convince people to make more movies that treat women as people just by talking bout it, that seems the easiest (and cheapest) way to go about it.
“Please don’t pretend that you can’t effect change because nobody “offered you the chance.” That’s just rationalizing nonsense.”
Amanda offered the ability to comment on Pandagon and I took it. I try hard to either be thoughtful or funny, and I fight the urge to flame (a battle I often lose) so I won’t be taken as just a troll.
As a result, there are a few thousand people who can read (if they choose) my small scribblings. That is a huge improvement over merely being able to converse and rant with the relative handful people with whom I work or socialize.
If I get offered a book deal (unlikely), a TV writing gig (way more unlikely), or a chance to write/direct a movie (incredibly unlikely), I will most likely accept the offer and see what I can do with it. I assume most of the regulars here would do the same.
But, as the line from the movie goes:
“People in Hell would like a glass of ice water. That don’t mean they get it…”
kidlacan, the asshattery that is Diamond is astonishing, isn’t it? I’ve seen a similarly astonishing rejection letter, myself. (Not sexist exactly, but definitely falling under “you didn’t make a book just exactly like all the other books we carry” category.)
Petey & J sub D, even I did go out there and manage to make a movie full of strong female characters in charge and talking to each other about stuff, it wouldn’t actually solve the problem.
The problem is that we live in a society where screenwriters don’t notice that they’ve written a screenplay that leaves out half the human population. (Or don’t care, though I’d imagine, from what I’ve seen, that largely people really don’t notice it until it’s pointed out.) The problem is producers who pull out the “boys won’t watch stuff about girls” crap to justify CHANGING stories already made into a more sexist version of themselves, let alone preventing stories about girls being created.
And the best thing I know to be doing about that problem is to be speaking up about it (like, say, on the internet. Which I hear a lot of people read), so that other people are aware of it, and talking about it as well, and so that maybe writers do start to think about the gender balances in thier stories, and just maybe producers will eventually get it into their thick skulls that stories about girls are, you know, a good thing. For everybody.
No matter how much I want to make a progressive movie, write a best-selling progressive book, or produce a really progressive TV show, it ain’t gonna happen. (To be fair, most of us will never get to make shitty versions of those things either.) Unless you inherited vast wealth and can pay to doing those things from your own funds, you will never be offered a chance to do those things.
Do you really believe that? Best selling authors, playwrights, movie and TV producers are overwhelmingly the recipients of vast wealth? Woody Allen was born rich? Stephan King? Robert Heinlein? Erica Jong? Michael Moore? Steven SSpielburg?
I’m just saying that the only place that you are going to change a disparity in popular culture is in the marketplace. Discussing shortcomings in popular culture doesn’t hurt, but it’s not gonna get professional wrestling off the boob tube, is it?
Here’s the problem–first off, part of what we’re ‘complaining’ about is treating half the human population as human beings–that’s a moral issue that has nothing to do with wealth creation. It is a stunning strike on our society that even good movies are made without real women characters nearly all the time. That a silly simple low-bar test should be so damned hard to pass in these supposedly enlightened times.
Secondly–it IS a problem that those that make movies, books, and computer games don’t make what I want. It’s not that they don’t sell, it’s that NO ONE IS EVEN TRYING TO SELL THEM!
That’s opportunity! That’s money just waiting to be spent. That’s money that’s staying in my pocket, not b/c I don’t want to go see a movie, but b/c I don’t want to see these movies. The older I get, the more discriminating I get–>as a teen I put up with a lot of bad movies. Now, even though I have more disposable income, the studios aren’t getting it every week b/c the movies simply aren’t worth it to me. Yeah, I enjoy a good superhero/mutant flick, but not every week.
I am kinda grateful that most computer games are fighting games, b/c if they made creative mystery/puzzler/platformers, I’d never get anything else done. As it is, there are only a couple of titles a year that aren’t full of blood and guts and violence that I and my husband feel like playing.
And this is a problem. Even though there is money to be made by providing non-gory and non-misogynist fare, it’s not being made. Producers aren’t even aware that they are ignoring a market b/c they are so obsessed with the patriarchy.
You’d think in a country obsessed with capitalism, someone would fill the void. There’s a need, fill it.
My money’s here. I’m willing to spend it. Why won’t anyone take it?
B/c there are D-girls and guys and other assholes who keep pushing that damn “boys will be boys and hate girls” meme as a given unchangeable truth and strip originality and women out of most projects. It’s patriarchy overpowering capitalism, which is a pretty amazing thing.
In moderation? If so, sorry for the double post.
Here’s the problem–first off, part of what we’re ‘complaining’ about is treating half the human population as human beings–that’s a moral issue that has nothing to do with wealth creation. It is a stunning strike on our society that even good movies are made without real women characters nearly all the time. That a silly simple low-bar test should be so damned hard to pass in these supposedly enlightened times.
Secondly–it IS a problem that those that make movies, books, and computer games don’t make what I want. It’s not that they don’t sell, it’s that NO ONE IS EVEN TRYING TO SELL THEM!
That’s opportunity! That’s money just waiting to be spent. That’s money that’s staying in my pocket, not b/c I don’t want to go see a movie, but b/c I don’t want to see these movies. The older I get, the more discriminating I get–>as a teen I put up with a lot of bad movies. Now, even though I have more disposable income, the studios aren’t getting it every week b/c the movies simply aren’t worth it to me. Yeah, I enjoy a good superhero/mutant flick, but not every week.
I am kinda grateful that most computer games are fighting games, b/c if they made creative mystery/puzzler/platformers, I’d never get anything else done. As it is, there are only a couple of titles a year that aren’t full of blood and guts and violence that I and my husband feel like playing.
And this is a problem. Even though there is money to be made by providing non-gory and non-misogynist fare, it’s not being made. Producers aren’t even aware that they are ignoring a market b/c they are so obsessed with the patriarchy.
You’d think in a country obsessed with capitalism, someone would fill the void. There’s a need, fill it.
My money’s here. I’m willing to spend it. Why won’t anyone take it?
B/c there are D-girls and guys and other assholes who keep pushing that damn “boys will be boys and hate girls” meme as a given unchangeable truth and strip originality and women out of most projects. It’s patriarchy overpowering capitalism, which is a pretty amazing thing.
This is far from the topic of children’s movies, but Pedro Almodóvar’s film Volver might pass the anti-BMM test. While watching it I kept wondering, why does this movie seem so different? And then I realized it was because I couldn’t remember ever seeing a movie before in which all of the lead characters were female, and the handful of male characters in the movie were mostly incidental (or dead).
J sub D: there’s some culture-bucking in the list you provide above, but not that much. king and spielberg, bless them, are not exactly pioneers of gender equality. neither is allen. neither is heinlein. i haven’t read any jong.
look at the general reaction moore gets: he does get media attention, but most of it’s negative. that notoriety is what fuels his career, not the willingness of studios to embrace his cause. he gets airtime basically by being loathed.
of those you list, only spielberg makes movies. i don’t recall any standout female roles in any of them. even if he wished to make one, and tried to, he couldn’t do it with warner brothers. we’re in a media environment where major studios are deciding openly not to make films with female leads. how are we supposed to transform culture, exactly?
hanna: yeah, it’s pretty ridiculous. this person had previously received a rejection of the “but it is not EXACTLY LIKE ALL OUR OTHER COMICS” letter. this one actually was boob-specific, though. they suggested he try “drawing from life”. apparently, they mean a different form of life entirely, because that’s what he thought he was doing. diamond appears to be under the impression that the pages of, say, witchblade look exactly like what you might find in your average anatomy textbook.
Discussing shortcomings in popular culture doesn’t hurt, but it’s not gonna get professional wrestling off the boob tube, is it?
No, but it makes us feel better and irritates you, so it’s more than worth the effort.
Spielberg tends to marginalize female characters–the daughter in Hook is totally irrelevant, b/c the movie Steven wants to make is one about fathers and sons, Karen Allen’s part dumped in Indiana Jones, Geary ditching his family for the aliens in Close Encounters is a *good* thing, etc.
I have a comment hiding in moderation, but how fucked up is our society when a major movie studio can afford and even think it’s a good idea to write off half the human population? It’s patriarchy trumping capitalism.
Women have money. People are willing to see good movies that star women (look back at the movies during the ’40s when the men weren’t available–plenty of strong woman roles and actresses). But Warner’s thinks so little of women that they won’t cast any as a lead–>in the name of making money.
There’s money to be made–but no one is producing the product to fill it, and, in fact, they are all fighting to make the same stupid shows to appeal to the same stupid audience.
It’s like that old joke about the guy looking for his lost wallet under a lamppost. “Did you lose it over here?” “No I lost it over in the alley, but the light’s so much better over here”
That money’s out there, but no one’s looking for it. In a country that prides itself on being so extremely capitalistic and entrepreneurial, it’s just odd that the BMM is so often violated.
Doesn’t somebody want my money?
sub D: there’s some culture-bucking in the list you provide above, but not that much. king and spielberg, bless them, are not exactly pioneers of gender equality. neither is allen. neither is heinlein. i haven’t read any jong.
In context, I was rebutting the disingenous argument that inherited wealth is a prerquisite for success in popular culture. It is not. I did not meanto imply that these were feminist leading producers of media, though I did imply that they were successful in the media culture today.
There are many “feminist” writers in the market for literature today. That they are not as successful as many would like, is a decision made by close to 1 billion english language readers from around the world. We are all aware that a successful movie or book inspires couintless imitators. Generally, if it doesn’t sell, it is forgotten. Such is life in the real world.
It is better to light one candle than curse the darkness. - Ancient Chinese proverb.
J sub D: your ‘rebuttal’ didn’t have anything to do with what MikeEss actually said, as far as i could tell. his point was not that the talents behind blockbusters and bestsellers got their works into the world though their wealth, but that in order to fund an entertainment project that involved nontraditional plotlines and characters one would need wealth — because you’d need to foot the bill for it yourself. if it proved successful, you’d be making your investment back, but you’d still need the capital.
writers and moviemakers depend upon those who have money to be their backers for the production of their projects. authors need publishers, unless they’re rich enough to print and distribute their own books. directors need studios, unless they’re rich enough to produce and distribute their own projects. the whole point here is that publishers and studios are unwilling to back projects with strong or nontraditional female characters.
the problem is not that these projects lack an audience. the problem is that the people who have the money don’t want to produce them. we’re not talking about the “real world”. we’re talking about Hollywood.
Anyone saying “you go make the movies and get them into the theatres instead of complaining that the PTB are making bad ones,” unless you have several million bucks to donate to underwrite (for comparison purposes, one million will about cover making a decent television commercial, forget about an action movie with SFX, and we’re not even talking about getting it into theatres - how many Sundance movies ever get to the big screen nationwide?) then your advice is about as useless as “go make your own country with your own government instead of criticizing Bush!”
Legally Blonde I and II
Miss Congeniality I and II
I’m sure there are more. But no, not Disney, the source of all that is reactionary and loathsome.
Superman Returns was an interesting movie because it technically passes–Lois asks a question of the official-person on the plane, who is in fact a woman (but who I think never has a name) very early on. It almost feels to me like someone knew about the BMM and wanted to make sure to get such a scene out of the way…and then there isn’t a single other conversation that would count.
I was considering the idea of a movie with at least one genuine BMM scene which deliberately subverted this - at least five minutes of genuine conversation which ended with one of the participants confessing a strange overwhelming desire to gratuitously mention the lead male for some reason… THAT would be amusing.
MikeEss’s point is that saying “If you see a problem, then YOU fix it!” is about the dumbest possible answer when the problem in question is a tremendous, worldwide or society-wide problem. One person can make a significant contribution, but probably not get the whole thing changed — in this case just as much as in the case of global warming or world hunger.
It is a dumb answer, but the situation isn’t quite as bad as that. Global warming or world hunger have to deal with cold, hard facts - but adequate representation of women in movies is entirely a cultural artifact. There’s more room in there for examples or subversion to change the zeitgeist.
Of course, Hollywood movie making is set up to be absurdly conservative in many ways.
Hmm - never seen it, but did “Bend It Like Beckham” make the measure? Came from nowhere, very successful, teh two major characters were female.
kidlakan, This is a verbatim quote from MikeEes. “Unless you inherited vast wealth and can pay to doing those things from your own funds, you will never be offered a chance to do those things.”
Seems pretty damned clear to me.
if that’s the reading you’re getting from that quote, i really don’t think i can help you. that quote is saying precisely what i’ve been saying. “those things” = “make movies with strong female leads that get marketed the same way male-centric movies do”.
hollywood doesn’t want to put up money for movies with female leads. if hollywood won’t put up the money, the movies won’t get made unless someone else has the money to spare. what part are you having trouble with?
If you don’t like the discussion, don’t participate in it. Nobody’s making you.
Good catch, Robbie Taylor- my daughter loves Twitches. Also the Halloweentown series, which fits- 3 generations of witches interacting and the males/ warlocks are either minor roles or the evil arch villian types. Avatar is must-TiVo here; she loves it and is getting her little sister into it- but this same kid also draws her own cartoons and is a huge Pokemon/ TMNT / Spiderman/ The Tick/ X-Men/ Fantastic 4 fan as well.
Well, Miyazaki films would be an exception anyway, since it’s doubtful that Miyazaki Hayao would be beholden to western movie conventions.
No mater what else you can say about anime, it’s very clear that producers see nothing wrong with having (OMG) female fanbases, and have no problem with female main characters and/or large female casts (at least in Shoujo).
hollywood doesn’t want to put up money for movies with female leads. if hollywood won’t put up the money, the movies won’t get made unless someone else has the money to spare. what part are you having trouble with?
kidlican, is you’re memory that bad? Do you recall the recent release of a fully funded Jodie Foster vehicle entitled The Brave One? It bombed, but it was made and promoted. In fact, Ms Foster has led in a number of moves. The line “Nope can’t be made. It’s never allowed”, holds no water?
Now the line “When made, they are often unprofitable”, does. The question is why.
Gotta go. If it makes money, there will be alot of it.
Anime- yes, I forgot! Hamtaro. The female characters (Laura, Kona, their mothers, Bijou, Sandy, Penelope, Pashmina and Auntie Viv) are a 50/50 of silly girliness and talking about guys or not, depending on episode.
Oh for the love of Pete- Powerpuff Girls! 3 little girls- whoopass superheroes saving the day. Many of the villians are female- Princess, Sedusa, etc- but their adult role models include their kindergarten teacher and the Mayor’s secretary Miss Sara Bellum.
Back to Disney- Minnie and Daisy in more recent movies and cartoons pass the test, as their relationships bounce back and forth from BFFs to rivals and not just focusing on Mickey and Donald.
You’d think in a country obsessed with capitalism, someone would fill the void. There’s a need, fill it.
Exactly. Every once in a while a movie popular with women will become a hit and producers will shake their heads and cluck. They may try to make pale imitations, but they don’t get what made them popular, then those pale imitations flop and they shrug and go back to their adolescent action formula. Maybe not the highest quality, but My Big Fat Greek Wedding springs to mind as an example of the surprise female hit. Or Bend It Like Beckham.
Despite the lack of female characters in the film version of LOTR, it was abnormally popular with females. In fact IIRC female viewers were more likely to be repeat viewers. I don’t think it was all Orlando Bloom fans, but the portrayal of friendship was something women and girls could relate to.
Re: the talk of Ripley from Alien. Remember, the part was written for a male. The other woman character played by Penny Cartwright was more typical of Hollywood stereotype (crying and shrieking all the time).
i suppose he’s scampered off, but The Brave One had Warner Bros. as a backer. its tanking was, in part, behind Warner’s decision NOT TO HAVE ANY MORE MOVIES WITH FEMALE LEADS.
it suffered from the same constraints typically placed on hollywood fare. not everything is out of that mold, but a lot of movies are. that one was, too.
“Do you really believe that? Best selling authors, playwrights, movie and TV producers are overwhelmingly the recipients of vast wealth? Woody Allen was born rich? Stephan King? Robert Heinlein? Erica Jong? Michael Moore? Steven SSpielburg?”
The current population of the US is about 300,000,000 people. The odds are one in 50,000,000 of being like one of the six people you named. And I have only one ticket in that lottery.
What you are arguing is the equivalent of saying “you can start in the mail room at Big Corporation, and through hard work and perseverance climb your way to the top!” Sure, the laws of physics do not preclude that possibility, so technically the statement is true.
OTOH, in a realistic sense it almost never happens - which is where the majority of us live.
Having a lot of money is not necessarily a precursor to success, but it helps. A lot. Having money gives you a much larger public “footprint” than you would have otherwise.
A gas-station attendant and Warren Buffet may have the exact same opinions about a bunch of stuff. When Warren Buffet shares his opinion - IT WILL BE HEARD. When the gas-station attendant speaks it’s possible that nobody will hear.
I don’t give up - I’ve voted in every election since 1980 and only a handful of the candidates I’ve voted for have won. I share my thoughts and feelings on a lot of subjects here and intend to keep doing so. This is about as close to the Big Time as I’m likely to get. I may start a blog of my own, but…
Amanda’s much higher up the food chain, Atrios & Kos are higher still, but blogs in general are pimples on the butt of public awareness. We live in an era when Rush Limbaugh has more influence than the whole Democratic Party. Disney (via ABC) can re-write recent American history at will. The Fox network is a virtual fact-free zone. Video games earn their makers more money than all of Hollywood.
How can you really expect people who have full-time jobs, mortgages, and children to put through college, to be able to compete with that?…
Well, J sub D, I’m working on it.
Unfortunately my medium of choice, science fiction prose, already has a lot of stories with strong female characters. Fortunately it is one you don’t need to have money, connections, or an extensive apprenticeship in a really, really sexist system to do well in.
I hereby promise you all that should I publish a bestselling novel and it inspires someone to make a movie, I will never, ever sell the movie rights without an ironclad paragraph in the contract stating that none of my characters may be changed from female to male, my female main characters must remain the main characters, my nerds must remain nerds, my albino secret agent has to remain an albino and really ought to be played by an albino actress if one can be found, and no non-white character may be changed to white, and my will will state that as long as my estate holds copyright to my works my estate will be bound by this same rule.
Of course, the odds of me landing a big movie contract is really low precisely *because* I write about women, women who are nerds, albinos who are good guys and physically fit secret agents (and women), groups of seven kids on secret missions where the leader is female and so is the computer expert, and so forth. I would expect that if anyone wanted to make a movie of one of my books it’d be one with a male main character. (Notice, that of the entire genre of Paranormal Romance/Mystery, which is absolutely *dominated* by female leads, it was the *one* that has a male lead, the Dresden Files, that got on Sci-Fi.)
I have the troubling impression that some people here think Mulan has feminist content? That movie is blatantly evil, and has as much feminist content as Dick Cheney’s dick. I would say no wonder it fails the BMM test except that…
… I have a suspicion that the BMM test is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a movie or book to have feminist content. As far as I can remember, none of the first three books of the Earthsea Quartet would pass, and neither would The Left Hand of Darkness. There are, by definition, no women in that book, yet it is a feminist classic (as far as I am aware - perhaps I live too much in the 70s).
Similarly, if Friends passes (and it must do over 7 seasons - but has anyone checked?) then the BMM test is hardly a guarantee of much.
Also I recall reading an analysis of Alien (by Susan Faludi maybe) in which it failed feminist criteria because it is largely about two women trying to kill each other over a child. Or some such. The Aliens are all female, after all - interesting that female bees are regendered to male but a bad-guy monster isn’t.
None of this changes the fact, of course, that Disney have a hired Mysoginator, whose job is to check that the animators and writers have completely ruined every potentially strong female character. Treasure Planet is the definitive example - they rewrite the Captain as a sassy female, then injure her early on so that (contrary to the book) she is completely dependent on the boy. eeeewwwww.
Someone above asked whether Bend it like Beckham passes the Bechdel-Wallace test. It does, because the two female leads have a fully rounded friendship based on their shared love of soccer and ambitions for a professional career in the game, and they talk about this quite a lot.
Their friendship is complicated by both fancying the same bloke, and fancying the bloke is a major plot point, but they don’t talk about that all that much.
Does Dick Cheney’s dick have an animated Harvey Fierstein in drag asking, ‘Does this make me look fat?’
If not, Mulan has more feminist content. Perhaps the satirical and subtle escaped you.
I have the troubling impression that some people here think Mulan has feminist content?
Mulan kicks ass and takes names, and even manages to achieve what the men in the movie can’t (killing Shan Yu). I’ve always regarded it as Disney’s closest reach to a feminist film. What’s so non-feminist about it?
As far as I can remember, none of the first three books of the Earthsea Quartet would pass
The first three of the cycle (not a quartet, it’s got five books + a book of short stories) are not feminist (well, you could sort of make an argument for Tombs of Atuan, but it’s not until Tehanu and The Other Wind that you really see the dominating feminist themes). And Tombs of Atuan does pass, since it has Tenar, Kossil and Thor, the three priestesses, who all talk extensively about things other than men. Aside from the eunuchs, there are no men in the entire book other than Ged.
Is Dick Cheney’s dick a girl who joins the army in disguise to save her dad? And when outed as a girl is rejeted by her peers, but instead of going her own way tries desperately to win back the friendship of the boys who hate her? And in order to do this has to live up to a much higher standard than said boys, who are a bunch of incompetents, by saving all their lives and the life of the emperor? And at the end wears girls clothes again?
Mulan made it pretty clear that girls have no role in a boys world, and will only be accepted therein if they are 10 times better than the boys AND willing to suck up to them every step of the way AND accept being treated differently.
These types of movies are nasty, nasty wolf-in-sheeps-clothing movies, like the Breakfast club which is oh-so-touchy-feely and concerned for the feelings of its sensitive audience, until the huge betrayal at the end. Having a sassy girl lead, or a rebellious nerd, or whatever, may be enjoyable to watch in the middle, but when they put a stake through the character’s heart at the end it doesn’t make the movie for me.
I suck at commenting, I give up on quoting.
“Mulan made it pretty clear that girls have no role in a boys world, and will only be accepted therein if they are 10 times better than the boys AND willing to suck up to them every step of the way AND accept being treated differently.”
And now my comment:
…Isn’t that exactly how the real world works?
And did the tone of the movie make it clear that the guys who ditched her were huge assholes for doing so?
Dauphine: I read an essay by Ms leGuin (I think in that book “catching the air”, or whatever it was called) that was a direct response to the acclaim the first 3 books received as feminist works. I think it received a lot of attention from 70s feminists. Something about the cosmology, I think. I forgot about the priestesses in Atuan, so I agree book 2 definitely passes the test, but book 1 and book 3 almost certainly don’t (unless I am forgetting some small point somewhere - maybe in book 1 when Ged is in the castle in the snow?) But this is my point - that bechdel test does not need to be passed for a book to contain feminist content (and see “The Left Hand of Darkness” for more support of that thesis, if you are unhappy with the claim that the Quintet’s early books are in and of themselves feminist works).
Megan: that is how the real world works, and my interpretation of Mulan was that it reinforced, rather than criticised, that situation, the same way that the Breakfast Club reinforced schoolyard heirarchies by pretending to critique them but restoring them at the end. I read the guys who ditched her as huge arseholes in the same sense that the doofus males in sitcoms are doofuses - in the sense of showing that even a doofus male is better than a competent female, through constantly restoring the status quo despite its shocking injustice.
There’s a reason I like Maya the Bee more then most Disney stuff, even tough it’s so old (+30 years)
Late in the thread, I know, but for those who keep holding up Alien as a fantastic example of writing strong female characters, it’s worth noting that the script was written for an all-male cast. When they pitched the movie, the writers indicated that if the studio wanted, any of the characters could easily be regendered to female, expecting that maybe one or two of the minor characters would be swapped.
Doesn’t take away from all the other aspects that made it a great movie, or the vision of whoever decided to have Ripley be a woman - and whoever subsequently didn’t rewrite the character to make her more stereotypical, nor the impact she had on the genre.
But it is telling that the character held up as the most visionary non-stereotypical female character was written as a man.
Hmmm. I’ll stick to movies since those that pass the test are more thin on the ground than TV shows (shout out for Buffy!) These are just off the top off my head (or from looking at my DVD shelf):
Kamikaze Girls
- a Japanese teen female bonding tale. It’s hard to describe really. There’s girl gangs, pachinko, fake designer gear and great music. I’m also pretty sure that some snippets of the main two protagonists conversations would fall into the ‘random and not advancing the plot’ that was suggested as an addition to the measure.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Resident Evil 2- I’m pretty sure the female characters talk about zombies/survival to each other.
Sister Act
There are LOADS of lesbian films that qualify.
Actually I’m finding it difficult to think of any more without resorting to TV shows. I suppose there’s a vicious circle phenomenon. It can’t help that even advertising toys for kids is so binary. Starts them off compartmentalising in their heads when they’re young, and they’ll carry on doing it.
Apologies if this posts twice:
Hmmm. I’ll stick to movies since those that pass the test are more thin on the ground than TV shows (shout out for Buffy!) These are just off the top off my head (or from looking at my DVD shelf):
Kamikaze Girls
- a Japanese teen female bonding tale. It’s hard to describe really. There’s girl gangs, pachinko, fake designer gear and great music. I’m also pretty sure that some snippets of the main two protagonists conversations would fall into the ‘random and not advancing the plot’ that was suggested as an addition to the measure.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Resident Evil 2- I’m pretty sure the female characters talk about zombies/survival to each other.
Sister Act
There are LOADS of lesbian films that qualify.
Actually I’m finding it difficult to think of any more without resorting to TV shows. I suppose there’s a vicious circle phenomenon. As far as the ‘boys won’t watch girls’ meme, it can’t help that even advertising toys for kids is so binary. Starts them off compartmentalising in their heads when they’re young, and they’ll carry on doing it.
When our daughter (almost
saw a preview for Bee Movie, she declaired that she didn’t want to see it because: that isn’t how bees actually are. The girls do the work she said not the boys.
We watch Miyazaki movies, they have girls doing real things!
Wow, how’d I do that?
She’s almost 8.
Ooh, ooh, I thought of one: the movie “Wit,” with Emma Thompson. It wasn’t a blockbuster, but it did have many scenes between Emma and her nurse, talking about stuff.
Hazel says:
The Railway Children also passes. It’s sad that that this and A Little Princess are based on books written over a hundred years ago.
E. Nesbit, though, has a lot of sex-role stereotyping. If I remember, FH Burnett is generally better. Little Princess is all young girls and some men, while Secret Garden is a mix, but with Mother Nature’s Son Dicken as the one who teaches nurturing in the absence of the missing maternal figure. But you’re right that both pass the Bechdel test.
So, too, for L. Frank Baum’s books, which are great for sex-role reversals. I read somewhere Baum’s mother was a well-known suffragette, which makes total sense, and is encouraging, too.
flashheart:
Except that Mulan didn’t set out to win back her guy friends at any cost; she set out to warn the army that Shan Yu survived the avalanche. She was a soldier and she behaved as an honorable soldier would: by swallowing her humiliation and doing the right thing by her country. And although she went home at the end of the film, by no means did she return to her prior life–the sequel opens with her teaching martial arts to the young girls of her village.
Funny, isn’t it? Simply having a woman play a part is all it takes to “change” it gender-wise.
Sort of how if a man is critical, he’s a tough boss, but if a woman says the same thing, she’s just a bitch.
Back to TV, the best and strongest woman characters on Star Trek are the ones who are being possessed by male characters. The respect with which the other men treat the female characters once they realize that it’s actually a MAN trapped in there is stunning, and never once replicated with a “real” woman in even the newest incarnations of the series.
Really, folks, just write the parts for men, then cast half of them female. Most of the time, that will give you a much truer vision–probably b/c male characters are written as “human” and women are written as “property”, “object to be rescued”, “sexy but ultimately stupid villain” or some other *type*.
Blue Drop (anime, main target audience: boys/young adults) actually fails the anti-BMM (so far, 6 episodes in): While it has more than 2 male characters (principal, chaufeur and some delinquents, etc.), the only time they ever talk to each other (chaufeur and the principal, the delinquints to each other) they’re talking about the heroine. It being set in an all-girls school and featuring lesbian aliens does help, I guess.
Actually, most yuri anime come close (Kannazuki no Miko passes because of Tsubasa - the rest of the dialogue pretty much relates to one of the two heroines; Marimite might fail it - haven’t seen it in ages. Murder Princess either comes close or fails it. Not that any of the mentioned are intended for children) to failing the anti-BMM (even when intended for a male auidence), while I can’t think of any anime failing the real test from the top of my head - and they`re much more likely to feature a strong heroine (Shakugan no Shana is probably the best example of this - while Yuji is definitely brave etc., for pretty much the entire first season he is limited to providing backup in one way or another to Shana - and the contrast between Magery and her helpers is even greater) or even a guy-in-distress.
OTOH, there is Bentou
“Considering the amount of research animators usually put into kids’ movies, what disturbs me is that a group of people had to make a conscious choice to completely reverse everything science knows about the gender of bees.”
in defense of animators, they’re research is almost 100% done on how things look/move. the choice of what characters end up Male/femmale is up to the writers and the director and the animators have very little (usualy no) say at all in cases like these.
DeadMan
Caren, I’m in agreement. I thought Lethal Weapon III worked so well because Rene Russo’s character written the same as Mel Gibson’s. I’ve actually thought way too much about writing an etire script as if all the characters were human, and then more-or-less randomly casting half the roles with female actors, as well as using real world population statistics to cast other roles. Wouldn’t it be cool to see a movie, just once, where the proportions of races, ethnicities, languages, disabilities, etc. reflected their actual proportions?
lou: Despite the lack of female characters in the film version of LOTR, it was abnormally popular with females.
I do not know where I heard it (or read it), but one comment on LoTR that made me giggle was, “They enhanced Arwen’s role to make the movie more appealing to women? There’s nine good-looking guys getting sweaty and dirty, proclaiming their true love and wearing pretty clothes, there are horses and magical jewelry — the one reason to enhance a female character is to give the men something to gawk at, too!”
I think the Bechdel test is a very good one.
However, expecting animal societies, especially ones with significantly different gender ratios or roles, to accurately reflect the species rather misses the point. To paraphrase somebody wiser than I, animals are just good to think with.
Also, if those aspects of bee life mentioned by the beekeeper were incorporated, I suspect there would be people complaining that the movie shows a female dominated culture to be brutal and violent towards men. I guarantee there would be feminists claiming that it represents some twisted macho nightmare of women in power. That’s because any movie that anthropomorphizes animals to that extent is not about bees, it’s about people.
This of course does not invalidate the BMM in any way, and it is frightening how few films there are that pass. One thing, though. I think adding this challenge:
“4) That conversation is a digression from the focus of the movie.”
Would probably disqualify most male conversation in films as well, and would also be contrary to one of the core tenets taught in screenwriting class: that every aspect of the film should forward the action (it is also one of the first to be successfully violated).
I think the Bechdel test is a very good one.
However, expecting animal societies, especially ones with significantly different gender ratios or roles, to accurately reflect the species rather misses the point. To paraphrase somebody wiser than I, animals are just good to think with.
Also, if those aspects of bee life mentioned by the beekeeper were incorporated, I suspect there would be people complaining that the movie shows a female dominated culture to be brutal and violent towards men. I guarantee there would be feminists claiming that it represents some twisted macho nightmare of women in power. That’s because any movie that anthropomorphizes animals to that extent is not about bees, it’s about people.
This of course does not invalidate the BMM in any way, and it is frightening how few films there are that pass. One thing, though. I think adding this challenge:
“4) That conversation is a digression from the focus of the movie.”
Would probably disqualify most male conversation in films as well, and would also be contrary to one of the core tenets taught in screenwriting class: that every aspect of the film should forward the action (it is also one of the first to be successfully violated).
Barnyard destroyed any vestigial respect I had for Bob Odenkirk. And that was a lot, given how good he was on Mr. Show.
I can go ahead and redeem Odenkirk in your eyes then - he had nothing to do with Barnyard. That was Steve Oedekerk, a different person entirely, and one whose list of film credits is one great big ball of suck.
Science fiction was breaking gender and race barriers long before Ursula LeGuin. From very early on, it was wide-open to women - though at first they generally had to hide behind initials (C.L. Moore), ambiguous names (Leigh Brackett, Andre Norton), or outright male pseudonyms (Lewis Padgett, which was C.L. Moore (again) writing in collaboration with husband Henry Kuttner).
As far as I know, C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry was the first out-and-out sword-slinging heroine in the fantasy genre (Robert E. Howard’s Red Sonja was a much later rewrite, by other authors, of a relatively modern character). It’s true that the first two stories centered on a disastrous relationship with a male antagonist, but the stories didn’t end there and the character always was strong enough to stand on her own two feet.
Andre Norton started poking holes in the barriers almost as soon as she started writing science fiction - she began as a “young adult” historical fiction writer, and even then her stories generally had strong, if secondary, female characters. Before the blinkered “whitebread male” oriented readers of the early 1950’s quite realized what had happened, she had slipped by them stories with strong black characters and strong Native American characters as well - and made them like it. When she started writing strong female leads as well, no one was surprised.
It must be admitted that Le Guin was not the first writer to question the very nature of gender - Theodore Sturgeon beat her to it by about nine years, with “Venus Plus X” in 1960. But she was the first one to think through all the possible ramifications and construct a complete society in which “gender” was fluid and usually optional (The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969).
It goes without saying that most of these provocative stories have *never* been adapted to the big OR small screen!
two great (non-american) movies that pass the test and feature strong-willed competent girls as the leads:
Whale Rider (NZ)
Rabbit-Proof Fence (Oz)
I don’t know that they are kids movies per se, but definitely great movies for pre-teens and up.
Is Dick Cheney’s dick a girl who joins the army in disguise to save her dad?
I nominate this as the most surreal question I’ve read all month.
Tsui Hark’s 1986 film PEKING OPERA BLUES passes with flying colors. And flying actresses (both literally and in the story itself), but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. Three women with different goals (an aspiring actress, a revolutionary, and a woman focused entirely on material wealth) find themselves thrown together by fate and must struggle to survive in the midst of political chaos in early 20th century China. Funny, action-packed, and generally great all around, aside from some genuinely lousy subtitles.
Re Barnyard and udders: The cartoon show “Rocko’s Modern Life” had a “male cow” character with udders named Heffer.
J sub D:
You’re getting stupidly close to “why aren’t you ladies out there solving real problems like world hunger?”
You seem to believe that the only way to influence culture is to produce it independently.
Another way is to react verbally to that culture part. Another way is to wait for what you want and buy it, and not buy what you don’t want.
All are valid responses.
By the way, can you name 20 more failed films with strong female protagonists in the past year? Because I bet we could easily name 20 failed films from this year with strong male protagonists in them. That doesn’t prove that movies with strong male protagonists suck.
I can’t believe that nobody has yet acknowledged that the movie “Barnyard” was as worthless as “tits on a bull”…
My son has more respect for Nancy Drew than the Hardy Boys.
TeaHag: don’t let him see the Nancy Drew movie that came out this year. It was terrible.
Not a kids movie, but another movie that passes is Cowboy Bebop, because of a few conversation between Ed and Faye (Ed is a girl, incidentally). And while technically they are kind of talking about a man in the conversations, he’s a bounty they’re after, not a romance, so I’m going to say it counts.
This is one of the first observations I had that led me to realize there’s a nasty pro-male system at work in our culture.
Film/television characters are definitely one of the most obvious things to point to as evidence of an operative patriarchy.
As noted, that wasn’t Bob. Nevertheless, “Let’s Go to Prison” should suffice.
He and David have been out of ideas for years now.. its sad.
I just watched the German movie “Downfall”, and it passed the Bechdel test. If a movie that focuses on Hitler and the German military can still spends some quality time with the few female characters, why can’t more movies do that?
Karalora, that is not how I remember Mulan’s response to her outing.
Has anyone else noticed how easily Japanese anime - so regularly derided in the west as uber-misogynistic - passes this test?
PhoenicianRomans - don’t you think the question has a kind of surreal suitability to it though?
My God, people, don’t you know that two women talking together constitute an anti-male conspiracy?
A man’s greatest terror is seeing two women who know him have a tete-a-tete–how does he know they’re not discussing him? Shrivel me two balls!
Just last week I got from my library “The world of Henry Orient,” a movie about forty years old, but one of my favorite movies about girls. Henry Orient, a dissolute pianist, is most definitely the object of two young adolescent girls who run around the city tailing him and making up fantasies. But most of the life of these girls is jumping around the city, talking to each other about their parents and schoolfriends as well as about their fantasies, and generally indulging in that great world that sparks when girls of imagination meet.
Death Proof is the only major Hollywood movie I can think of that comes close to failing the Anti-Bechdel-Movie-Measure, where you simply reverse genders, and that’s because Quentin Tarantino and Kurt Russel discuss Russel’s stunt career.
As hard as it is to buy that a romantic comedy from a major American studio could fail the ABMM, I believe The Truth About Cats And Dogs actually pulls this off. IIRC, the only two male characters who talk to each other during the entire course of the movie are Peter Gallagher and Jamie Foxx, and all of their conversations are about Peter Gallagher’s dating life.
Also: looking at my DVD library, I see I have a movie that fails the BMM and very nearly fails the ABMM as well: Swimming To Cambodia. If you ignore the clips from The Killing Fields, it wouid manage the trick of failing both.
A man’s greatest terror is seeing two women who know him have a tete-a-tete
Almost, but not quite.
A man’s greatest terror is seeing two women who know him have a tete-a-tete - with hand gestures.
Actually, “Alien” is the canonical example of a movie which passes Bechdel’s test. The original comic strip:
http://alisonbechdel.blogspot.com/2005/08/rule.html
:-)
flashheart:
anti-mysogynist -> uber-mysogynist
Maybe I shouldn’t write after getting only 2 hours of sleep and no coffee, heh
Douglas, I agree. But I see and hear these sorts of comments all the time. My most charitable explanation is that in the early days of western access to anime, it was all that really dark and nasty misogynist stuff (like Legend of the Overfiend). But I bet even some of that passes this test (some of those movies have quite a few female characters in them - they just happen to all be evil vagina dentata).
Actually, now that I think about it, pretty much any straight porn movie which includes a girl-on-girl scene (interrupted or not) is going to pass this test. So as I said before, it’s hardly a sufficient condition for feminist content.
Chicken Run had an all-female cast of chickens in an egg farm/prisoners in a concentration camp, and it was awesome
Um…you know what other movie passes the Bechdel test? Bring It On.
I’m so conflicted about that movie.
I think “Soapdish,” “9 to 5,” and “Fame” all pass.
Are comedies more likely to pass than other types of movies?
Actually, now that I think about it, pretty much any straight porn movie which includes a girl-on-girl scene (interrupted or not) is going to pass this test. So as I said before, it’s hardly a sufficient condition for feminist content.
Clearly I haven’t seen enough porn. Which ones have you seen where the girl-on-girls discuss something besides men?
Chicken Run had an all-female cast of chickens in an egg farm/prisoners in a concentration camp, and it was awesome
Surely NO MEN or BOYS went to see that movie, since everybody knows that males will refuse to see anything unless the gender ratio is at least 5:1 in favor of males.
Or is the no-females rule simply a justification for men to continue to absolutely dominate entertainment-industry decision making?
Ooh, ooh, I thought of one: the movie “Wit,” with Emma Thompson. It wasn’t a blockbuster, but it did have many scenes between Emma and her nurse, talking about stuff.
That was based on the play, and the play almost didn’t get produced - according to author Margaret Edson, she sent the play out to every production company in the US and all but one rejected it. It then went on to win a Pulitzer Prize.
The theatre world is almost as bad as the movies in the male:female ratio.
Talking bees….Who thought that was a good idea?! Especially with Seinfeld?! Hollywood is producing more and more junk unfortunately…
Barbarella.
Also the fact that bees need humans to consume honey in order to exist is also bull crap. It was just a ploy to have kids/adult not feel guilty and instead have a good feeling that they are doing the bees a favor by consuming honey.
Someone was mentioning TV series that make the Bechdel cut earlier. One that would pass with flying colors would be Six Feet Under. Lots of rich, well-written female characters that interact realistically. But I’m looking in my DVD/VHS collection, and there’s not a lot of movies that make it, if I were to guess offhand.
Wow, look at all the “only” exceptions.
If my son wanted to play with girl dolls, he could. But the real problem is not that the dolls are female, but that almost every toy centered around a female character is insufferably dull to a boy.
I know it seems harsh to say, but it seems the real problem is that what attracts (most)girls is social issues, and not so much in (most)young boys.
Have you tried Ghost Master yet? I hesitate to mention it since it is highly addictive, but it’s a puzzle/strategy game, sort of “Ghostbusters” meets “Mission: Impossible” crossed with “The Sims”. Best of all, there’s an equal number of boy spooks and girl spooks, and some that can’t be defined. True, there is one ghost who scares victims by ripping his own head off, but hey, if you wanna scare folks, you gotta spill some blood sometimes.