|
Post by ayslyn on Jul 28, 2015 10:28:23 GMT -8
Perhaps I came across it from someone other than the original author. The only way that I've seen the test used is to point out that the failing of the test is a BAD THING.
|
|
|
Post by Stu Venable on Jul 28, 2015 12:56:07 GMT -8
All my games pass that test. Women PCs and NPCs talk about cooking, making me a sandwich, Tupperware(tm), vacuuming.
:-D
|
|
|
Post by lowkeyoh on Jul 28, 2015 13:00:29 GMT -8
But passing or failing the Bechdel test doesn't grant any insight into quality. It isn't a useful test for determining the quality of a movie. Run Lola Run, Gravity, Edge of Tomorrow all fail the test despite having interesting, strong female leads. Every Transformers movie does pass, as does Jurassic World and Sucker Punch. That's not to imply that these movies don't contain shitty depictions of gender stereotypes and lazy writing.
The test breaks down when you have a small cast. Gravity, Moon, District 9, Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassas, etc all fail simply because there are few characters. Other genres, such as high action aren't really suited for the test. John Wick, the Transporter, Bourne Trilogy, etc all fail because they are movies about a person kicking ass. There aren't a lot of named characters, those characters who have names aren't usually women, and if they are there don't talk to each other. And that's not a bad thing.
The point of the Bechdel test is that it's so fucking easy to pass, and yet movies still consistently fail. You just need two women in your movie and have them talk about literally anything other than a man. The original X-Men, despite having three women on the team and another woman as an antagonist who sneaks into the school, doesn't pass. X-Men Days of Future Past doesn't pass. Avengers 2 passes if you squint really hard and use the utmost of technicalities.
But Ted 2 didn't pass. Neither did Pixels, Terminator Genisys, or Ant-Man. Neither did half the movies last year. And the bar is so unbelievably low.
What the test does a good job of demonstrating is that a LOT of movies throw in a single female character and just say 'good enough' Movies like Hackers exemplify this. Just look at Avatar. We're an egalitarian spacefaring race. Women and Men serve side by side in the military due to suits and vehicles equalizing everyone. Men and women serve side by side in the human control center. We're also witness to a large number of Natives and we learn about their culture. But nope, no two women talk to each other in this entire movie.
Like I said, the bar is SO low. In fact let's flip it. Name any of the movies that DON'T have Two Named Male Characters who talk to each other about something other than Women. I've thought on it for a bit and came up blank.
|
|
fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
Currently Running: Fate, Coriolis, Nights Black Agents
Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
|
Post by fredrix on Jul 28, 2015 14:19:24 GMT -8
All my games fail the Bechdel test - and that's because one gaming group is mainly old friends from an all boys school - and we hardly ever play women. And the other group has a couple of girls in it, but they love to fight, not talk - in fact neither girl is playing in my current NBA campaign, thy are off being Barbarians of Lemuria. I do hope that eventually I'll get to run Nightwitches someday, when we should bet to pay back some Bechdel Karma.
|
|
|
Post by Kainguru on Jul 29, 2015 3:12:11 GMT -8
But passing or failing the Bechdel test doesn't grant any insight into quality. It isn't a useful test for determining the quality of a movie. Run Lola Run, Gravity, Edge of Tomorrow all fail the test despite having interesting, strong female leads. Every Transformers movie does pass, as does Jurassic World and Sucker Punch. That's not to imply that these movies don't contain shitty depictions of gender stereotypes and lazy writing. The test breaks down when you have a small cast. Gravity, Moon, District 9, Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassas, etc all fail simply because there are few characters. Other genres, such as high action aren't really suited for the test. John Wick, the Transporter, Bourne Trilogy, etc all fail because they are movies about a person kicking ass. There aren't a lot of named characters, those characters who have names aren't usually women, and if they are there don't talk to each other. And that's not a bad thing. The point of the Bechdel test is that it's so fucking easy to pass, and yet movies still consistently fail. You just need two women in your movie and have them talk about literally anything other than a man. The original X-Men, despite having three women on the team and another woman as an antagonist who sneaks into the school, doesn't pass. X-Men Days of Future Past doesn't pass. Avengers 2 passes if you squint really hard and use the utmost of technicalities. But Ted 2 didn't pass. Neither did Pixels, Terminator Genisys, or Ant-Man. Neither did half the movies last year. And the bar is so unbelievably low. What the test does a good job of demonstrating is that a LOT of movies throw in a single female character and just say 'good enough' Movies like Hackers exemplify this. Just look at Avatar. We're an egalitarian spacefaring race. Women and Men serve side by side in the military due to suits and vehicles equalizing everyone. Men and women serve side by side in the human control center. We're also witness to a large number of Natives and we learn about their culture. But nope, no two women talk to each other in this entire movie. Like I said, the bar is SO low. In fact let's flip it. Name any of the movies that DON'T have Two Named Male Characters who talk to each other about something other than Women. I've thought on it for a bit and came up blank. ^THIS It's all very similar to Morgan Freemans observation of how to defeat Racism: "stop talking about it". If we want equality and equity of the genders, stop using gender as a consideration or tool for forming a judgement. Looking at films, for example, I'd bet that 90% of male narratives are poorly written, derogatory, shallow shite of no value or merit. What gives a narrative merit is more than just the words and the subject, it's dependent on context and insight and valid observation and sincerity and humour or seriousness. What it doesn't depend on is the gender of the person who delivers it and this has been proven numerous times in many recent Shakesperian productions where the lead role has been assigned to a woman - MacBeth bring the most recent one to memory. Aaron
|
|
|
Post by Stu Venable on Jul 29, 2015 9:02:50 GMT -8
In all seriousness, I get what the test is trying to do, and in some circumstances, I could see its use. It's trying to establish that there is more than one significant female character (thereby no tokenism) and that their conversation is about something other than how dreamy the leading man is (the female characters have relevance to the story apart from being sexual McGuffins).
But there are so many ways for munchkin filmmakers to "technically" pass the test, that it really doesn't serve as a useful barre to measure for reasonable depiction of women.
If the test existed, but they didn't tell anyone about it, it might have maintained its use.
|
|
D.T. Pints
Instigator
JACKERCON 2018: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY June 22-July 1st
Posts: 2,857
Currently Playing: D&D 5e, Pathfinder, DUNGEONWORLD, Star Wars Edge of the Empire
Currently Running: DUNGEONWORLD, PATHFINDER
|
Post by D.T. Pints on Jul 29, 2015 23:50:42 GMT -8
Again the creator came up with this to just get a discussion going about how are major form of cultural expression (film) depicts gender. Even though some films may pass the "test" it still begs to answer WHY? What form did this "passing" take. Again to bring it all back to RPGs if there are women in your gaming group do they feel that characters are being slighted because of their gender ? WHY ? Same goes for race...Morgan Freeman's an amazing man but I still harken back to my days in college with an all black (save me) gaming group and my friends asking "Where's someone that looks like me ? Besides the fucking orcs!?!" Thanks J.R.T...
If these discussions seem pointless to you then do not have them. But I for one like to see my hobby GROW and that will take an increased level of inclusivity and awareness of the vast diversity that exists within our species. How many actual plays have you heard where a woman GMs ? How many Happy Jacks actual plays have you heard where a woman GMs ?
WHY ?
|
|
|
Post by ayslyn on Jul 30, 2015 2:53:42 GMT -8
If you're asking Why, then I'm all for it. That, to me, is a perfectly valid discussion. But, like I have mentioned, every other time I've seen the Bechdel test brought it, it's in the context of "If you don't pass, you are a BAD person." Which is patently ridiculous.
|
|
|
Post by Kainguru on Jul 30, 2015 5:00:50 GMT -8
To harken back to Morgan Freeman his point was to stop bias stop making it obvious - LoTR, as an example, was set in certain mythical continent and there were other cultures to Far East and the South but they didn't feature in the happenings of that story. The 2 unarmed istarii who came from the west with Saruman, Radigast and Gandalf could answer that question because that's were they went - we never got that tale thus they remain unnamed and that story untold. It'd be bit like insisting they have a Caucasian in a story of ancient Africa. Sinbad is basically Arabic and all the tales of the 1001 Arabian Nights - it was Disney that made those characters look more European. BUT, getting back to Morgan Freeman, his point is stop making it an issue for discussion and start just considering people as individuals not as belonging to one group or another - there are just as many incompetent arseholes from any one of those groups as any other and sometimes, because we don't want to be seen as sexist or racist, we often don't apply an equitable judgment. A good example, recently, is in 2000AD - a woman scripted a Dredd story for the first time and that was what they were pushing: 'a woman penning Dredd - wow'. Whether the writer was a woman or not should have been irrelevant all that should have been important was that this new writer had written a Dredd story and is it any good. The gender, in truely non-sexist world, should never have been the issue. The story itself was reasonable, for a new Dredd writer - certainly not the equal of John Wagner but not as bad as some first time efforts from the 2000AD stable. Should she pen Dredd again? Yes, but not because she is she but because her story was halfway decent and a good cut above the average. Aaron
|
|
|
Post by kaitoujuliet on Aug 3, 2015 7:02:03 GMT -8
we never got that tale thus they remain unnamed Er, Alatar and Pallando. To answer the OP, for whatever anecdotal evidence is worth, my group's games usually do pass the test. We're about 50% female players, plus most of us switch around PC gender on a regular basis. And in a typical adventure, there's plenty for the female PCs to talk about that isn't about men--like, for example, "How are you going to deal with going back home now that your skin has turned completely blue?"
|
|
|
Post by Kainguru on Aug 3, 2015 7:11:46 GMT -8
we never got that tale thus they remain unnamed Er, Alatar and Pallando. Lol, quite true I was thinking more of the movie The Hobbit in that scene where both both Radigast and Gandalf claim to have forgotten their names (given they'd created so many scenes for Radigast I was half hoping for a proper wizards reunion scene, even if only in flashback, until that handwave moment) Plus I was thinking about LoTR . . . he never really explicitly references colour/ethnicity. I mean some elves are often described as 'pale' etc but that's a variation in shade rather than an actual colour. It's LoTR's spin offs in the popular media that inform most of assumptions about how LoTR looks; and they've frequently never been very honest to the source material eg: look hard at JRR's, albeit tiny and rough, sketches of elves in The Hobbit and compare them to most depictions of his elves of the last 50 years, JRR's appear to wearing hoods of the sort normally associated with Santa's workshop Elves. Then you have Idris Elba in 'Thor', when he's standing at the 'gate' watching the different worlds - that scene could easily have been transposed to movie adaptation of The Silmarillion. I'm also reminded of The Wizard of Earthsea - in the book Ged is BLACK, it's repeated several times how dark his skin/complexion is. However on the cover of my old beaten up omnibus edition he's pictured as being 2 degrees left of an albino. I'm not going to even mention that awful movie adaptation Aaron
|
|
tomes
Supporter
Hello madness
Posts: 1,438
Currently Running: Dungeon World, hippie games, Fallout Shelter RPG hack
|
Post by tomes on Aug 12, 2015 14:49:28 GMT -8
And so...
|
|
maxinstuff
Supporter
Posts: 1,939
Preferred Game Systems: DCC RPG, Shadowrun 5e, Savage Worlds, GURPS 4e, HERO 6e, Mongoose Traveller
Favorite Species of Monkey: Proboscis
|
Post by maxinstuff on Aug 13, 2015 23:10:07 GMT -8
All my games do. I make a special point of it.
Every single female character is a strong, independent, self actualising, three dimensional character with hopes and dreams and goals. These strong female characters all talk to each other about many topics, including world politics, socio-economic issues, plans for potential business ventures, finances, an many, many other things too numerous to list.
The best thing about this is that it all happens entirely offscreen and doesn't interfere with the flow of play.
|
|
D.T. Pints
Instigator
JACKERCON 2018: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY June 22-July 1st
Posts: 2,857
Currently Playing: D&D 5e, Pathfinder, DUNGEONWORLD, Star Wars Edge of the Empire
Currently Running: DUNGEONWORLD, PATHFINDER
|
Post by D.T. Pints on Aug 14, 2015 16:58:16 GMT -8
He's back LADIES & gents...
|
|
|
Post by ayslyn on Aug 14, 2015 17:13:45 GMT -8
All my games do. I make a special point of it. Every single female character is a strong, independent, self actualising, three dimensional character with hopes and dreams and goals. These strong female characters all talk to each other about many topics, including world politics, socio-economic issues, plans for potential business ventures, finances, an many, many other things too numerous to list. The best thing about this is that it all happens entirely offscreen and doesn't interfere with the flow of play. And this is just as bad, in it's own way. There are some truly vacuous people out there. "Bimbos" both male and female. Not having them is just as unrealistic as having too many. I make characters that make sense to their role in the story. If the story calls for a strong female character, then I add a strong female character. If it calls for a vacuous, shallow as a pool at low tide, prettyboy, then that's what gets added. The only test anyone should be concerned with is does this character add to the story.
|
|