Tag Archives: Bechdel Test

Women’s Genre Fiction Fails the Bechdel Test

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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.

Voices from the Archive: Melinda Beasi on the Bechdel Test and Nana

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Erica Friedman did a post way back when on the Bechdel test. It prompted a fun comment thread, including a lengthy discussion by Melinda Beasi, which is reproduced below.

I’m glad you brought this topic back here after the conversation on Twitter. I think, in retrospect, why I reacted negatively to Mo’s personal taste being included as a criteria for the test, is that suddenly a test that I personally looked to as a guide for helping me find works I might enjoy (lists of manga, books, movies, etc. that fulfilled the letter of the test were popular when I was a regular on LJ) had essentially shut me out. Because while I always prefer stories containing strong female friendships and a significant female presence–the kind likely to emerge from following the letter of the test–by adding in Mo’s taste, nearly all the work I liked best was eliminated or at least deeply in question. So where was my list now? If the women I most identified with and most enjoyed reading about suddenly weren’t interesting enough for Mo, I felt thrown out along with them. It was as though after all the youthful years I spent being viewed by my peers as “not feminine enough” to be an acceptable girl were being followed up on with years in which I would be viewed as too girly to be an interesting woman.

Obviously, that’s an extreme (and inappropriate) reaction. Why should I care what Mo thinks of my books? I know why I like them and, whether she would read them or not, I gain strength and insight from the women within their pages. And it may be that I was simply mistaken to interpret the test as a guide for finding stories about women that might interest women. Perhaps it really is just intended to identify stories of interest just to women like Mo. So maybe what I’m really looking for is a different list. I, too, am interested in books where female characters are engaged with each other on issues other than the men in their lives. I think, though, that because the reality of my life differs so much from Mo’s, I’m looking for something a little different in my fiction.

I actually don’t think you’re wrong at all when you suggest that women are still socialized to be needy and that our fantasies are influenced by the expectations set up for us. This is our reality. This is my reality. So when I’m looking for characters I can identify with in manga, I’m going to find that in women who struggle with exactly those things.

For instance, one of the characters I identify with most is Nana Komatsu (aka “Hachi”) in Ai Yazawa’s NANA. While I’ve got a career drive that better resembles her friend Nana Osaki’s, like Hachi, I can measure my past in increments of ex-boyfriends. I’ve struggled, as she does, with being hung up on men, with needing to feel loved (even when it’s false), with needing to keep my real thoughts and feelings secret for fear of losing that love, and so on. I’ve come further than she has (*maybe*, that’s probably more appropriately discussed over beer) but while she’s a woman Mo might find tiresome, she’s one *I need to read about*. She’s relevant to my life. Not the life I maybe wish I had, but my actual life. What I love about NANA is that while Hachi struggles with these things, what the real story is about is how, ultimately, the relationship that Hachi and Nana have with each other is more real and more satisfying than their tumultuous relationships with men. Do they talk to each other about the men in their lives? Certainly. They also talk about their careers, their personal hopes and fears, each other, and everything else under the sun. These women reflect myself back to me, but they also provide a blueprint for female friendship in which I can find hope and inspiration. I can’t undo the person I am or the broken things in my own past. I can’t erase the way I was socialized or what that made me. So for me, seeing that addressed on paper is important. It’s what makes something more than fantasy for me as a reader. And because so many women still struggle with these things daily, I think these stories are important as stories for women, if not perhaps as stories for women like Mo. In my world, these women are heroic.

All that said (and perhaps to get around to your actual point), Blindmouse’s recent Top 12 Fictional Female Friendships inspired me to try to put together my own list focusing exclusively on manga. But when I sat down to write it, I had trouble coming up with more than five. Though I could think of many, many strong, inspiring, heroic women in manga, I could think of just a handful who actually appeared together in the same story. Perhaps that should not have surprised me, but it really did.

Overthinking Things 11/07/10

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It is the future.

Acid rain has become too toxic for humans to bear. The city of New Tokyo is too crowded, humanity piles on top of humanity in crowded layers of existence. Billboards float through the air and drive by on streets. The police are a corporate entity, run for the benefit of the zaibatsu who own them. And humans are being hunted by creatures from another dimension known as Lucifer Hawks.

Silent Mobius follows a special squad within the police hierarchy, the Attacked Mystification Police, AMP. The women of AMP all have skills that no police exam can test. Shinto priestess Nami, artificial intelligence expert Lebia, esper Yuki, cyborg Kiddy, sorceress Katusmi, led by the incredibly powerful Rally Cheyenne, combine forces to protect humans from the Lucifer Hawk – and rectify the mistake that allowed them access to our world in the first place. “Our world,” I say, even though this dystopian, Philip K. Dickian vision of the future has not quite yet come to pass. This is classic speculative/science fiction.

What makes Silent Mobius work is that the people in this series are people. They are, despite the unrealistic setting and even unrealer powers displayed, people we might know. The humanity of the characters – the utter normality of their behavior in extraordinary circumstances – is what makes this series so exceptional.

Created by Asamiya Kia, Silent Mobius was serialized from 1991-2003 in Comic Dragon. The manga was collected in 12 volumes, had a 26-episode TV anime series, two movies, several volumes of “gaiden” or supplementary stories, and a number of Drama CDs. Silent Mobius was a spectacular example of a series that successfully crossed readerships and genres in Japan – and in America. The English manga, first put out by Viz is currently being re-released by Udon Press.

Artistically, Silent Mobius combines dystopian future scifi with an aesthetic that has largely passed from the world of manga – characters that look like the adults they are. The Lucifer Hawks are rendered as complicated shapes that don’t *quite* make sense – there’s a quality they have of making them hard to “see” that fits their extra-dimensionality.

Continue reading →

Overthinking Things 10/3/10

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Me, Mo and Alison

The Bechdel Test. A thought exercise that consists of a series of three criteria applied to media.

Does the media have:

1) More than one woman

Do they:

2) talk to each other

3) about something other than a man

It’s pretty well-documented that Hollywood movies fail miserably at even these three very basic criteria.

However, (and possibly surprisingly,) a great deal of Japanese manga does *not* fail the Bechdel Test. A shockingly large amount of manga, both by and for women and by and for men, fulfills and surpasses these criteria. And it dawned on me that this would make a great topic here at Hooded Utilitarian. So, I threw it out on Twitter that I would be writing about manga series that met the criteria and what suggestions did people have?

Almost immediately, my Twitter feed filled up with…really, bad suggestions. Stories of magical elementary school girls, stories of gender-bent political bedroom politics, stories in which the hyper-competent, super cool, yet totally sexy lead female was, with the exception of a few “bad girls,” the only female in the series. (To be fair, I received good suggestions, too, but the bad ones were more interesting in a lot of ways.)

I found myself having to explain the concept of the Bechdel test over and over. I was accused of adding criteria when I explained that it really had to be something that someone like myself might read.

And, ultimately, someone I respect greatly suggested two truly excellent series (by which I mean that I consider them both well-written,well-drawn by masters of the craft; that I loved one and anticipate very much liking the other when I read it) that, in my opinion utterly failed to meet the spirit of the test. Why? Because *I am Mo.* I am an adult woman with an preference for stories about adult women which are not exclusively focused on their relationship with men. (Or women. I discounted almost all ot the Yuri I read, because the conversations are focused on romantic relationships with women.) There were some heated words on the topic on Twitter. And eventually, I decided to ask the source – Alison Bechdel herself.

Here was the meat of my email:

I have a question that really, only you can answer. I write about Japanese comics and I’d like to do a post that highlights some titles that pass the “Bechdel Test.” Japanese comics do this better than any other media I’ve ever seen. There are many female leads, many non-guy conversations between women. Even in romances. In conversation with other folks about this, two suggestions were made that I turned down. I have been challenged about them, but I believe that while they both meet the criteria literally, they fail at meeting the spirit of the test. And so, I’m asking you what you think.

The first is Emma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_(manga)) – a story about a Victorian maid who falls in love (mutually) with a man from the upper classes. It’s a pretty realistic story. The women certainly do talk about things other than guys, because the main character is a servant and she has a lot to do, and tradesmen and other servants to deal with. There are other women – her mistresses, for instance. She discusses her love interest with almost none of them. However, the story is ostensibly a love story and while the conversation is not about guys, would Mo sit through that?

The second is Ooku, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooku) which is a story about Japan’s Edo period, in which many of the men have died and women take on men’s roles to keep the country going. The gender roles are flipped – the Shogun’s harem is now all men – but the women still maintain the facade of it being male rule.Both of these series are written by women.I know this is asking a lot, but I would really appreciate a note letting me know whether you think these pass or fail the Bechdel Test. I greatly appreciate your time.

Here is Alison’s answer:

I think I’m with you. I like your distinction between the letter and the spirit of the rule. Although whether Mo would sit through these stories is not, technically, a criterion of the test, I think she would not. Sit through them, I mean.

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So, the question for me became not “what manga passes the Bechdel Test?” but “why is it so hard for people to understand what might pass the Bechdel Test?” Arrogant as this sounds, I have no problem at all coming up with titles that meet both the letter and the spirit of the test.

Is it that readers have *such* low expectations of female characters that them merely existing is enough? Is there some inherent difficulty in identifying a series that includes women in non-relationship conversations? Or are are female high school students in hopeless romances with the wrong guy, or sexy women wielding guns the only things being translated into English? It’s true that many of the popular action series for the younger crowd have the traditional one girl who is the potential love interest one day, when they all grow up and the lead male character isn’t focused on winning so much. But One Piece, a series that is arguably the most popular manga in the world right now (and is *still* under appreciated by most critics,) is targeted to that same age group, and passes the Test with flying colors.

Writer/reviewer Sean Gaffney says, “The Bechdel Test makes sure your characters aren’t dull. Who wants to hear women just talking about the same thing? It leads to well-rounded characters and better stories, and makes you THINK more. It also makes you want to step up your men.”

Melinda Beasi talked at length in her article here on HU about the way that women distance themselves from “girly” things, but it’s clear from the revenue generated by the Twilight franchise, that the fantasy of being the princess who needs rescuing and wants to be possessed by a man who is compelled by animal need, runs deep in many girls and women. I see much the same kind of thing in the Yuri/lesbian lit world, the only difference being that the “Prince” is female.

The default in western entertainment is that the female is the love interest, there for the man so, in the absence of the man, audiences will naturally assume the female has to be his replacement – that is, she must be the Hero (e.g., Salt, Aeon Flux, La Femme Nikita). Where there are multiple women, they will often  either be a team of replacement men, doing “manly” things (Set it Off, Resident Evil) or not doing anything and talking about the men they need to do those things (Waiting to Exhale ). Of these, only Waiting to Exhale does not pass the Test. The others have women in heroic roles…and therefore pass.

There are many manga that pass the Bechdel Test. Next month, I will review one of those that are available in English- a series that I think best exemplifies what the Bechdel Test stands for.

The Bechdel Test is a starting point, not a place to end. It’s a thought exercise the point of which, I have been reminded, is to make one think.

If I were to posit that women are still socialized to be needy, or that female fantasies of being swept off their feet are precisely because so many women are the ones to shoulder more responsibility to keep everything together in difficult times, I’m sure I’d be challenged to “prove” it, or chatised for either buying into it, or being sarcastic about it (or all three at once. ^_^)

So, I’ll ask you, the incredibly intelligent readers of Hooded Utilitarian – why do you think it’s so *hard* to conceive of entertainment in which a woman has a conversation with another woman, about something other than a man?