Women’s Genre Fiction Fails the Bechdel Test

Posted on January 14, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

This first ran on Salon…and then Salon deleted it. Not sure why; I suspect a glitch. I tried to notify the editors, but they didn’t do anything…so what the hey, I figured I’d reprint it here, since they don’t seem to want it.
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Lately critics have piled on the chick flick “The Other Woman” for one specific reason: it doesn’t pass the Bechdel test— Alison Bechdel’s famous heuristic which asks whether a film has (a) two women who (b) talk to each other about (c) something other than a man. As Linda Holmes says in a particularly scathing review at NPR, “ “The Other Woman” is 109 minutes long, and at no time do any of these women—including Carly (Cameron Diaz) and her secretary (Nicki Minaj), who only know each other from work — pause for a discussion, even for a moment, of anything other than a series of dudes…” Vulture put a clever new spin on this argument by collecting all the lines Kate Upton says in the movie, which included: “I can’t believe he’d lie to me, I really thought we were soul mates” and “We could kick him in the balls!”

Having a film featuring three female protagonists who do nothing but talk about men is, the Bechdel Test suggests, unfeminist. Let it be known, though, that “The Other Woman” does technically pass the Bechdel Test: Kate (Leslie Mann) has a very brief conversation with Amber (Kate Upton) about how good Amber smells. Still, the films female friendships are all based on the women’s relationship with a single, caddish guy. Those applying the Bechdel Test say that this is a failure. But if a movie for women, with female stars, about female friendships and the evils of male infidelity can’t pass the test, maybe the problem isn’t with the film, but with Bechdel’s rubric.

The truth is that female genre fiction (whether movies or TV or books)— designed for and consumed mostly by women—not infrequently has difficulty passing the Bechdel Test, precisely because female genre fiction is often really interested in men. The Twilight films don’t do well. Neither do many romance novels, as romance novelists like Jillian Burns and Jenny Trout have acknowledged.

Tessa Dare’s 2012 Regency romance “A Week to Be Wicked,” for example, features as its heroine Minerva, a determined geologist who becomes a noted scientist in the teeth of contemporary mores while also showing an unexpected flair for passion and screwball comedy. There’s no doubt that the book is self-consciously feminist — the scientific community’s exclusion of female scientists is a major plot point, and one of the things that Minerva loves about the hero, Colin, is that he isn’t threatened by her accomplishments. But despite such support for female empowerment, “A Week to Be Wicked” doesn’t really pass the Bechdel Test. When Minerva talks to her beloved sister or to her mother, it’s about Colin. There are a few ensemble scenes in which Colin and Minerva fool a carriage full of women into thinking that they’re royalty on their way to a kingdom on the border of Spain and Italy — so that might technically count, if you were determined to make it. There’s probably another moment or two as well; books find the tests easier to pass just because they’re longer than films. But as with “The Other Woman” — or really even more than with “The Other Woman” — the story in “A Week To Be Wicked” is about the relationship between the female lead and the male lead. And that means that the female lead is generally either talking to the guy or talking about him. There’s not a ton of space for extraneous Bechdel-appeasing conversations.

A genre novel that fails the test even more spectacularly is Alex Beecroft’s “False Colors.” There are hardly any women in Beecroft’s romance novel at all. It’s M/M — a gay historical novel set mostly aboard ship with the British Navy. Despite the failure to pass the test, M/M novels in general are hardly anti-female. Beecroft is a woman, her readership (as with most M/M) is probably predominantly women, and the female characters we do see are treated with sympathy and surprising depth given how little screen-time they get. I particularly liked the fortiesh widow, Lavinia Deane, who flirts with one of the heroes and figures out (with no bitterness) why he won’t flirt back before he fully understands it himself (“Say you won’t try to be some sort of saint in the wilderness,” she says with earthy kindness, channeling the wishes of both author and readers. “I’d hate to think of you withering away untasted.”)

But such bright cameos can’t change the fact that, as far as the Bechdel Test goes, the novel fails big-time. I don’t think there’s a scene in which two women talk to each other, much less talk to each other about something other than men. As M/M writer Becky Black says about her own books and the Bechdel Test, “I personally usually structure the story so every scene will be from the Point of View of one or the other of the heroes. All of this means there isn’t much space for the female characters to have a chance!”

M/M romance, and associated genres like yaoi manga and slash fiction underline the limits of the Bechdel Test. It’s true that a book like “False Colors” doesn’t have many female characters — but that’s because the author fully expects the audience to identify, and fantasize, across genders. In “False Colors,” both leads play the role of damsel in distress, and both play the role of heroic rescuer. The Bechdel Test assumes that men are men and women are women. But questioning that assumption can be a feminist project in itself.

The point here is simply that — as many of the romance authors I’ve linked say — the Bechdel Test has some limits. Alison Bechdel has said she doesn’t use it as a “filter” for herself , as her character Mo did. The test can be a useful way to think about how gender works in films or books, but alone it can’t tell you whether something is good or bad, or feminist or unfeminist.

It’s also, though, worth thinking about the way that the Bechdel Test fits a bit too neatly into cultural and feminist prejudices against genre fiction. Mo is a lesbian, so it makes some sense that she wouldn’t be interested in the kind of stories where women are focused on heterosexual romance (even though there certainly are lesbians who enjoy het romance.) But should that really be turned into a general rule suggesting that women’s interest in heterosexual relationships is somehow unfeminist, or a sign of aesthetic failure?

From Nathaniel Hawthorne’s sneer at “that damned mob of scribbling women” to Lisa Jervis’ assertion that chick lit is responsible for the “evacuation of feminist politics,” men and certain strands of feminism have long been united in seeing female genre fictions as weak, foolish, corrupt, and even corrupting. Using the Bechdel Test as a way to chastise women for enjoying the wrong, insufficiently highbrow, unfeminist thing — whether that be The Other Woman, or “Twilight,” or romance novels — seems like it fits into that unfortunate tradition of gendered scorn. The Bechdel Test remains a useful lens for looking at art. But it’s important to remember that Bechdel’s Rule is, itself, a cultural and aesthetic product. If Bechdel’s comic can be used to test romance, or chick flicks, then romance, or chick flicks, can be used to test Bechdel as well.

Questions for a Mid-Level Slogger

Posted on January 13, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

Yesterday on twitter I offered to answer folks’ questions about freelance writing as an occupation. A handful of people took me up on it, so here are the questions and my best shot at answers.
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What is a reasonable annual earnings expectation for a freelance writer? Full time.

Really variable, I think is the answer here. I’ve been very lucky to make a decent living at it which is actually quite a bit more than I made at my full time writing job. That’s by dint of (a) being able to write very quickly, (b) working more or less all the time, and (c) doing a good deal of work for hire writing for educational publishers, business publishers, and the like. I’m also in my mid-40s and have been writing professionally for about 20 years now; that has a big effect on what kind of work for hire gigs you’re likely to be considered for.

I started out doing freelancing part time for several years, working at a full time job during the day, until I’d lined up enough clients that I felt like I could make a go of it. I’d definitely recommend that. Also, it’s a lot, lot, lot easier if you’re married to someone who’s got a full time job, both for health insurance (less of a problem with Obamacare, but still) and because *someone* needs to be making a steady paycheck if you don’t want to go completely crazy. With freelancing, some people will make less, some more, but the precarity is a constant. It’s really hard to know if people will or won’t have work for you. My main client, for whom I was editing like 20 books a year, just decided to have me write 0 books this year. I found something else…but that’s the sort of thing that really plays havoc with your blood pressure.
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How do you develop relationships with editors?

Relationships with editors are often about networking, like most things. I’m always looking for new venue, and trying to reach out to people who might have editorial contacts. It feels pushy, and I always feel nervous about it…but it’s part of the job.

I’ve had editors reach out to me a couple of times too, which is really nice. And I’ve cold contacted a couple of editors…which usually doesn’t work, but every so often. And then I’ve also had editors who I thought I was doing well with stop talking to me. Part of the reason you need to constantly be trying to find new places is that the old places stop working with you, for one reason or another. Someone goes out of business, some editor moves on and the new person isn’t into you. I counted up the number of places I’d written for at one point and it was over 50 I think.

How many of your pitches actually get accepted?

I try not to think about this one too much. I bet probably 70% of my pitches get rejected. However, I think 80% of my pitches eventually get published somewhere. That means I only rarely place a piece at the first venue I send it too. Most things by me you see in print were turned down by somebody at some point.

dHow does a freelancer compensate for the stigma of not being permanent?

This is not a stigma I’ve really come across that much? Most places that are interested in working with freelancers are interested in working with freelancers. People seeking freelancers aren’t going to turn you down because you have freelance experience.

It might(?) be different if after working for a freelancer for five years I went to try to get a permanent job somewhere. It’s true nobody’s come to me offering me a staff position…but on the other hand, I haven’t applied for any staff positions. Not sure what would happen if I did. Freelancing’s working okay at the moment though.
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What are the best ways to establish contacts with alt news publications? How sustainable is it to start off as a freelancer?

I think I answered these above….
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It seems like it would be hard to cold call people for research/quotes on pieces if you’re not affiliated with a media outlet. True?

I think it depends. You can definitely get bigger names if you’re writing for a bigger publication. But on the other hand many people are interested/excited about getting their ideas out there. It can help to have mutual acquaintances who can make introductions, too.

But the general rule is it never hurts to ask. If you’re writing a piece for a blog and there’s someone you want to talk to, write them an email/dm/whatever. If they’re too busy they won’t get back to you; but if you don’t ask, you’ll never know if they would have been interested.
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Do you permanently sign away the rights to your work? How common are “buyout” clauses?

It really depends on the publisher. A lot of the times yes, though there are exceptions (Slate’s relatively good about letting some rights revert, for example.)

I don’t even know what buyout clauses are!

For me, for the most part, this just is not that big a concern. I work on the expectation of one time sales. Every so often something is picked up by someone who pays me for it again, and that’s nice; every so often something is picked up by someone and I don’t get paid for it, which is a little irritating. But realistically, I’m not writing things where the copyright is going to be a moneymaker decades down the road or anything. You sign the contract and you shrug and you write the next piece.

Why Simple Is So Complicated (Analyzing Comics 101: Abstraction)

Posted on January 12, 2016 by Chris Gavaler

I’m teaching “Superhero Comics” this semester, and so I’m once again pulling out Scott McCloud’s abstraction scale:

It begins with a photograph of a face and ends with a face comprised only of an oval, two dots, and a straight line. McCloud calls that last face a “cartoon” and the middle face the standard for “adventure comics,” ie superheroes. All of the faces to the right of the photograph further “abstract [it] through cartooning” which involves “eliminating details” by “focusing on specific details.” Computer programs can do the same kind of stripping down:

But some “simplification” isn’t so simple. Look at the different between this photograph and its cartoon version.

McCloud’s scale actually combines two kinds simplification. Each step to the right of his spectrum appears simpler because: 1) the image contains fewer lines, and 2) the lines are in themselves less varied. A line becomes smoother by averaging its peaks and lows into a median curve, and so the second kind of simplification is a form of exaggeration. Since exaggeration can extend beyond averaging McCloud’s spectrum actually requires two kinds of abstraction. Each face is altered both in density and in contour quality. Density describes the number of lines; contour quality describes the magnification and compression of line shapes. Abstraction in density reduces the number of lines; abstraction in contour quality warps the line shapes. The less density reduction and the less contour warpage, the more realistic an image appears.

I like McCloud’s five-point scale though, so I’ll offer two of my own.

The Density Scale:

Opacity: The amount of detail is the same or similar to the amount available in photography.

Semi-Translucency: The amount of detail falls below photorealism, while the image still suggests photorealistic subject matter.

Translucency: While reduced well beyond the range of photography, the amount of detail evokes photorealistic subject matter as its source material. This is the standard level of density in superhero comics art.

Semi-Transparency: The sparsity of detail is a dominating quality of the image, and subject matter can evoke only distantly photographic source material. Semi-Transparency is more common in caricature and cartooning.

Transparency: The minimum amount of detail required for an image to be understood as representing real-world subject matter.

The Contour Scale:

Duplication: Line shapes are unaltered for an overall photographic effect. Though naturalistic, reality-duplicating line shapes exceed the norms of superhero art by reproducing too much information.

Generalization: Line shapes are magnified and/or compressed to medians for an overall flattening effect that conforms to naturalistic expectations. Generalization is the standard level of abstraction for objects in superhero art.

Idealization: Some line shapes are magnified and/or compressed to medians while others are magnified and/or compressed beyond their medians for an overall idealizing effect that challenges but does not break naturalism. Idealization is the standard level of abstraction for superhero characters.

Intensification: Line shapes are magnified and/or compressed beyond their medians for an overall exaggerating effect that exceeds naturalistic expectations. If the intensification is explained diegetically, the line shapes are understood to be literal representations of fantastical subject matter within a naturalistic context. If the intensification is not explained diegetically, then the line shapes are understood as stylistic qualities of the image but not literal qualities of the subject matter. Explained or Diegetic Intensification is common for fantastical subject matter in superhero art; unexplained or Non-diegetic Intensification occurs selectively.

Hyperbole: Line shapes are magnified and/or compressed well beyond medians for an overall cartooning effect that rejects naturalism entirely. Hyperbole is uncommon in superhero art because the stylistic qualities of the image dominate and so prevent a literal understanding of the subject matter. Hyperboles in a naturalistic context are understood metaphorically.

The two scales can also be combined into a Density-Contour Grid:

1-5	2-5	3-5	4-5	5-5
1-4	2-4	3-4	4-4	5-4
1-3	2-3	3-3	4-3	5-3
1-2	2-2	3-2	4-2	5-2
1-1	2-1	3-1	4-1	5-1

Both scales take photorealism as the norm that defines variations.

McCloud’s photographed face is the most realistic because it combines Opacity and Duplication, 1-1 on the grid, demonstrating the highest levels of density and unaltered contour. It’s opposite is not McCloud’s fifth, “cartoon” face, which combines Transparency with Idealization, 5-3; its level of density reduction is the highest and so the least realistic possible, but its contour warpage is moderate and so comparatively realistic. Replace the oval with a circle to form a traditional smiley face, the contour quality would rise to Hyperbole, 5-5, the most abstract and so the least realistic position on the grid.

Cartooning covers a range of grid points, but most cartoons fall between 4-4 and 5-5, both high density reduction and high contour warpage. Charles Schulz’s circle-headed and minimally detailed Charlie Brown is a 5-5.

The characters of Archie Comics are some of the most “realistic” of traditional cartoons at 4-4.

McCloud’s middle, “adventure comics” face combines Translucency and Idealization, 3-3, the center point of the grid and the defining norm of superhero comic art.

Like all grid points, 3-3 allows for a variety of stylistic variation between artists, within a single artist’s work, and even within a single image, but it does provide a starting point for visual analysis by defining areas of basic similarity.

Utilitarian Review 1/9/15

Posted on January 9, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

News

So I’m thinking it may be time for another roundtable? Anyone have any topics they’d like to have us talk about?

On HU

Featured Archive Post: Michael Kupperman on his miserable experience at the New York times.

The 25 best albums of the year.

Me on not being able to sew in Project Runway.

Chris Gavaler on the different kinds of panel-to-panel transitions in comics.

Robert Stanley Martin with on sale dates for comics from July and August 1951.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Quartz I wrote about Rahm Emanuel’s big fat Taser lie.

At the Guardian I wrote about why academics studying romance is worthwhile.

At Random Nerds I wrote about Star Trek and how legacy series stifle diversity (or sometimes don’t.)

At the Establishment I wrote about:

—misogyny (or the lack thereof) in Hateful Eight.

—using genre to exclude women at Angouleme.

At Splice Today I wrote about:

—George Lucas’ brave battle against capitalism.

—the digital hippie music of Elfmilk and Eartheater.

Other Links

Comics and Cola did a roundup of important comics moments from the last year, chosen by David Brothers, Kim O’Connor, and a bunch of other folks.

The Intercept on Saudi Arabia’s media stooges.

Paola and B.J. May with some suggestions for reforming twitter.

Time Trek

Posted on January 7, 2016 by Neil Shyminsky

Writing for The Establishment, The Hooded Utilitarian’s own Noah Berlatsky recently penned a devastating critique of one of the special snowflakes of science fiction: Star Trek’s “The City on the Edge of Forever” (1967). Even if you’re not a trekkie, or didn’t watch The Original Series (TOS), you’re familiar with the trope that the plot relies on. Berlatsky tersely characterize the episode as “an elaborate exercise in justifying violence and would-you-kill-baby-Hitler ethics.” That is, in order to save the present, someone who did something evil must die in the past. To the extent that Trek offers a twist on that trope, it’s that the person who must die, Edith Keeler, is actually good.

That amplifies the emotional stakes, sure, though at the cost of the plot and drama, since we know this story can only have one possible ending. And that ambivalence – in Kirk, in the audience – does nothing to undermine the self-evident logic of the trope: the ends of time-travel will justify even the most otherwise unconscionable means.

It doesn’t have to be this way, of course. The “kill baby Hitler” trope, also known here on the interwebs as the “Set Right What Once Went Wrong” trope (SRWOWW), is ubiquitous among science fiction serials. (So much so that the 80s saw both a TV series and film franchise about this exact plot-device: Quantum Leap and Back to the Future, respectively.) So, too, are variations on it, most of which fall into one of the following categories – exercises in hubris where the results actually make things worse, fixed time loop universes where change is either impossible or semi-fixed, ironic iterations where the would-be assassins actually cause the event they’re trying to stop,and scenarios where the effects of any changes remain unknown or unknowable. To touch just the tip of the iceberg.

What allows Kirk and Spock to act with moral certainty, despite the seeming immorality of the individual act itself, is a feature that’s unique to science fiction and time-travel stories more generally: perfect knowledge of the past and its relationship to the future, of cause and effect.

[I write “unique” because this is not the same as the claim that we have access to perfect foresight and knowledge of what will happen in the future. Even when the Bush administration claimed to know that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that he would use against his enemies – which he didn’t and thus wouldn’t, as it turned out – they could never be absolutely certain. And this is why the trope is particularly insidious and the distinction between the fictional and the real is particularly important: when we invoke the logic of SRWOWW – we know this thing will happen and so we must do this other thing to prevent it – in real life, we erase that difference. We start to believe that we, like Spock, have access to perfect knowledge and awareness of the future. Spoiler: we don’t.]

This perfect knowledge? It’s artistically and politically irresponsible. It also saps the story of a great deal of tension. It’s just pain lazy. But it should be remarkably easy to fix.

Imagine if, rather than perfect knowledge of 1) the event that would change history, and 2) its effects in the future, Kirk and Spock only knew one of these things? Or perhaps neither? If Kirk and Spock know that Keeler should – from their perspective, anyway – have died but can’t know whether the world will be better or worse for it, their decision becomes considerably harder. In fact, it problematizes the kneejerk use of the modal “should”. Even if she died in their past, why does it follow that must die in this one? And could the world, in fact, be a better place for her presence?

Likewise, if they know that the future has changed in some significant way but can only guess at the cause of that change, their mission becomes a detective story that possibly reaches no concrete conclusions, only descending into a far more ambiguous morality tale if and when they figure it out. If and when they think they’ve figured it out, that is. Knowing that they can’t be certain, how confident must they be in order to justify the murder of an innocent person? And for that matter, must she die?

This got me thinking: given the love for this episode, we might assume that Star Trek would follow its formula and logic in the future. But did they? And if they didn’t, did they manage to improve on it? What follows are some reflections on what I deem to be the most creative and thoughtful exercises in time-travel logic and ethics from each of The Next Generation (TNG), Deep Space Nine (DS9), and Voyager (VOY). And the first post-TOS time-travel story, for what will be some obvious reasons.

TNG – Yesterday’s Enterprise (3×15)

The Next Generation’s first time-travel episode, originally pitched with “The City on the Edge of Forever” in mind as its inspiration, is probably the series’ – if not all of post-TOS Trek’s – most infamous and best-loved time-travel story. It’s been cited by Roberto Orci as an inspiration for the rebooted Star Trek and repeatedly voted one of, if not the best, episodes of TNG. People like it, is what I’m saying.

“Yesterday’s Enterprise” has a pretty simple premise, but one that’s surprisingly hard to explain. The previous iteration of the Enterprise, from 22 years in the past, ends up in the present when it passes through a rift in space-time. As a result, the present immediately changes – the Federation is at war with the Klingons, and they’re losing. Only Guinan knows that something has changed, and even though she can’t explain why, she must convince Picard to send the Enterprise of the past to their deaths in the past.

Our first example of SRWOWW in TNG, and it provides a small twist on the model provided by “Edge of Forever.” Do we know of both the specific event that will “fix” the timeline and the effect that it’ll produce? We do, yes, because we’ve been watching the show for 3 years and we know this isn’t right. That much is pretty straightforward.

But the characters? They don’t. Sure, Guinan has some awareness that something is wrong, and that skirts uncomfortably close to a reading of the regular timeline as a timeline of destiny. But Guinan can’t explain why and the decision becomes simply a calculated risk. Maybe the Enterprise C can make a bigger difference in the past than the present. Maybe the C will survive the battle in the past. Maybe it’s even worth sacrificing the Enterprise D, given the way the war with the Klingons is going. Maybe.

I’m stretching, though. We know what Picard needs to do, and we know what’ll happen if he does it. That’s a sort of dramatic irony, I suppose, but not as different from “Edge of Forever” as it first seemed.

TNG – Tapestry (6×15)

There were plenty of episodes with time-travellers, time-loops, and temporal anomalies between “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and “Tapestry”, but none where the crew was forced into any serious ethical dilemmas. “Tapestry” begins with Picard’s ostensible death, the captain having been shot in the chest and, as a result, his artificial heart exploded. Q gives Picard the chance to re-live and change the past, thus avoiding the bar-fight that damages his fight and saving his life in the present.

Things don’t work out the way Picard hopes, though. It turns out that the fight was a defining moment of his life – the loose thread that unravels the tapestry of the episode’s title – and so the pacifist Picard leads a totally undistinguished life. Dejected and disgusted with himself, Picard tells Q that he would prefer to die as the man he was, rather than live out his life as a timid and unremarkable astrophysicist.

Like “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, “Tapestry” offers a small twist on the SRWOWW model – Picard knows what must be done, but he doesn’t know what it will change. That the alternative life is unbearably dull is a surprise, but Picard doesn’t hesitate to reverse his decision. As it turns out, of course, he didn’t actually die.

It’s an easy choice, from a story-telling and audience perspective, for Picard to restore the universe as we know it. We know this to be the correct timeline, the real one. The one where Picard doesn’t fight? Simply put, it’s wrong. And given how Picard stipulated to Q that nothing could change except for his own life, it doesn’t just feel wrong – it feels artificial.

But should it have been an easy decision? The resolution leaves me with an uneasy feeling. Picard decides that living an average life is, essentially, not worth living. He chooses death and a short but exceptional life over, well, something more like our own lives. Is being unexceptional really so bad? It would seem so, yes.

DS9 – Visionary (3×17)

This isn’t DS9’s first time-travel story – that title belongs to “Past Tense” (3×11/12), a social justice story where the time-travel element is set-dressing, rather than central to the conceit. But “Visionary” is probably Star Trek’s most fascinating and thoughtful time-travel episode, though the actual time-travel that’s involved is rather modest by comparison to the other stories in this list.

Radiation poisoning keeps sending Chief O’Brien several hours into the future. While at first just peculiar, this turns out to be very fortuitous, since it allows him to prevent both his own death and the destruction of the station. The plot is an elaborate detective story, with the crew of DS9 trying to figure out why O’Brien is shifting in time and how to stop it (and then restart it) even as they use his knowledge of the future to change it. In an added wrinkle, their actions to change the past also shifts the goalposts, as O’Brien’s time jumps reveal an altered but no less problematic future.

In a unique twist on SRWOWW, given that every other iteration to this point saw reality restored to what it once was, the iteration of O’Brien that we’ve been following this whole time dies from radiation poisoning in his final jump to the future. Knowing that he won’t survive the return trip to the past, this O’Brien sends his alternate-future-self – who is likely to otherwise die in a Romulan attack on the station – back to prevent his own timeline from being formed. In doing so, he’ll both replace and erase the “original” O’Brien, who remains in the about-to-be-erased future. It’s a mouthful to explain, but trust me: this is mad, disconcerting, and moving stuff.

In the final act, after Doctor Bashir alone has realized that the wrong O’Brien came back, this “new” O’Brien confesses that he feels like he’s living another man’s life. Bashir disagrees, arguing that he’s the same man but with just a few extra memories. It’s a subtly unsettling resolution. But why should it be? Bashir’s technically right, but doesn’t O’Brien’s point simply feel somehow more valid? It’s ultimately a very small detail, but it’s one that lingers.

VOY – Relativity (5×24)

The Voyager crew dabbled in time-travel almost immediately, considering a trip 20 years into the past in the entirely unconvincing “Eye of the Needle” (1×07). It didn’t get much better from there, unfortunately, though it would get much, much more confusing.

Relativity is a mess, both with respect to plot and time-travel logic. It seems to be using DS9’s “Visionary” as a model – Seven is being moved in and out of the timestream in order to save Voyager from a sort of time-bomb of unknown origin. These same travels are gradually killing her, somehow, but this is really the least confusing detail in the story. The surprise reveal of the villain, a future version of the same 29th Century timeship captain, Braxton, that sends Seven on this mission in the first place, is more baffling than it is alarming.

The episode does do something brand new, by adding the bizarre new concept to “reintegration” to the Star Trek universe. Rather than wiping a timeline completely so that, for instance, Braxton or Seven don’t simply forget certain events but have literally never lived them, we’re told that these versions who have now never existed and exist only outside the timestream will be reintegrated with their current selves. They’ll be combined with the person who properly belongs to the new/restored timeline. This other version of the character, once blissfully unaware, will be combined with and/or remember what the out-of-timeline character has done. Why? How? Huh? It’s an unnecessary and silly detail, and it also cheapens earlier episodes like “Visionary”, which discomfort our assumptions of belonging to a place and time, and even our own sense of uniqueness, without completing obliterating them.

“Relativity” is also a bit too self-conscious and precious. The villainous future future captain is making his second appearance on VOY, which also happens to be the second episode where he’s gone mad and declares Janeway his mortal enemy. There are also numerous, half-joking references to Janeway and the ship’s repeated travels through time and changes to the timestream. Time-travel, like encounters with the Borg, is getting awfully familiar and gimmicky at this point in VOY’s tenure, and the creators know it.

By the time the finale of VOY, “Endgame” (7×25), rolled around, time-travel in this series had become both ubiquitous and virtually meaningless. The finale appeared to follow no coherent set of time-travel rules, and knowledge of the future was seemingly employed entirely as a vehicle to tie-up every loose end and make Voyager’s win over a previously unbeatable enemy seem somehow possible. Fittingly, I suppose, in VOY’s finale a future Admiral Janeway traveled back in that episode to kill her own Baby Hitler – the Borg Queen. No questions or ethical dilemmas, here. And not even the over-rated gravitas of “Edge of Forever”. If Star Trek did learn anything from that episode, they also soon forgot it.

What It Really Takes to Get from Here to There (Analyzing Comics 101: Closure)

Posted on January 6, 2016 by Chris Gavaler

Reading a comic book is easy–even when there are no words to be read. You just look at a picture, and then at the next picture, and so on. But why do any of them make sense side-by-side? What is your brain doing as it leaps from image to image?

In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud defines the Gestalt psychology principle of “closure” as the “phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole” (though it more specifically indicates a viewer filling in visual gaps between disconnected parts) and applies it to comics gutters: “Nothing is seen between panels, but experience tells you something must be there!” He goes on to explain: “Comics panels fracture both time and space, offering a jagged, staccato rhythm of unconnected moments. But closure allows us to connect these moments and mentally construct a continuous, unified reality.”

McCloud focuses his analysis on gutters and therefore types of transitions possible between panels (though closure is independent of panels and gutters, since insets and interpenetrating images work the same ways). He comes up with six types:

They work reasonably well, but his focus on panel transition has always struck me as slightly off. When I use it in class, students often don’t come to a clear consensus when analyzing any particular panel sequence. Moment-to-moment and action-and-action, for instance, are often ambiguous, sometimes combining identical leaps in time. And since actions do occur in McCloud’s moment-to-moment examples (a women blinks!), it’s not exactly clear what constitutes an “action.” Aspect-to-aspect can also be indistinguishable from subject-to-subject, both of which may or may not involve a movement in time, and so may or may not also be moment-to-moment or even action-to-action. And scene-to-scene might be a location leap and so also a kind of aspect-to-aspect at the big picture level, or a scene-to-scene can be in the same location but at a different time–so then how much time has to pass for an old scene to become a new scene?

These are annoying questions, but they really do come up when you try to breakdown a panel sequence with a roomful of students. So instead of categorizing transitions, my colleague Nathaniel Goldberg and I categorized types of closure while drafting our essay “Caped Communicators: Conversational Depiction and Superhero Comics.” Instead one all-purpose “perceiving the whole” process, we see four very different kinds of closure, each of which can occur by itself or in combinations.

Spatial: Subject matter drawn in separate images is depicted as existing in physical relationship to each other, typically as a result of panel framing. (What McCloud identifies as aspect-to-aspect, subject-to-subject, and some scene-to-scene transitions require spatial closure.)

Temporal: Undrawn events are depicted to take place outside of events drawn in separate images, typically as a result of panel transitions and so occurring as if in gutters. (What McCloud identifies as moment-to-moment, action-to-action, and some subject-to-subject and scene-to-scene transitions require temporal closure.)

Causal: Drawn action is understood to have been caused by an element absent from a current image but drawn in a preceding image. (None of McCloud’s transitions, not even action-to-action, accounts for this type of closure.)

Associative: A metaphorical relationship is depicted between two images in which one image is understood to represent some idea about the other image. (Though McCloud does not identify this type of closure, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden in Drawing Words Writing Pictures add “symbolic” to McCloud’s list of transition types. Such symbolic transitions require associative closure.)

It always helps to look at specific examples, so consider this three-panel sequence at the top of page 28 in Watchmen #8:

In the first image, artist Dave Gibbons draws the shadow of a statuette cast over the face of a frightened man lying on the floor. The second image shows the statuette in the fist of an attacker. Taken together, spatial closure is required to understand that the two images occur within a few feet of each other, each image drawn from one of the two men’s points of view. The second image also requires temporal closure because the statuette is behind the attacker’s head at an angle that would not cast the shadow seen on the victim’s face in the first image. Gibbons therefore also depicts a movement forward in time during which the attacker has cocked his arm back to strike.

The third image depicts a jack-o-lantern crashing to the floor with some falling books. It uses all four forms of closure. The pumpkin exists in the same space as the two now undrawn men (spatial closure). The pumpkin is crushed at a moment immediately following the second image (temporal closure). The falling books have been knocked down by the now undrawn attacker of the previous image (causal). And, because it resembles a human head and breaks open at the moment a reader anticipates the statuette striking the man’s head, Gibbons implies that the man’s head has been similarly damaged (associative).

A close reading of the sequence also reveals some confusion. Regarding causal closure, it is unclear how the attacker overturned the books at this moment since the act of swinging the statuette at the victim on the ground does not clearly involve his intentionally or unintentionally knocking over the bookcase in the same gesture. Instead, Gibbons may have attempted to suggest that the attacker struck his victim and then afterwards overturned the bookcase—an ambiguous two-step action otherwise absent.

I’m guessing Gibbons was fulfilling a directive in Alan Moore’s famously meticulously detailed script, producing this unintended gap in its execution. To address panel transitions that cause only confusion, McCloud includes “non-sequitur” as a type of transition that “offers no logical relationship between panels whatsoever!” So then a non-sequitur produces no closure at all–and so isn’t really type of closure, but is the absence of closure. Which is why we don’t include it as our fifth category.

So our closure types are deeply indebted to McCloud, but I think they also improve on his. I’ll be testing these out in my classroom soon, so hopefully my students will agree. More on that later.

Not Being Able to Sew on Project Runway

Posted on January 5, 2016 by Noah Berlatsky

Well, here’s something different. I finally figured out how to use storify, and I’m interested in archiving my babbling about project runway…so what the hey, thought I’d put it here in case anyone’s interested. This is one of my recent project runway rants. Enjoy! (or not.)

The Hooded Utilitarian

a pundit in every panopticon

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