Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test
While writing Female characters exist to promote male leads for network profits, I realized something I had never quite put together in so many words. It’s important enough to deserve its own article (thanks, Bellatrys!), so here it is: my screenwriting professors taught me not to write scripts that passed the Bechdel/Mo Movie Measure/”Dykes To Watch Out For” test, and I can tell you why, and this needs to be known.
The “Dykes to Watch Out For” test, formerly coined as the “Mo Movie Measure” test and Bechdel Test, was named for the comic strip it came from, penned by Alison Bechdel - but Bechdel credits a friend named Liz Wallace, so maybe it really should be called the Liz Wallace Test…? Anyway, the test is much simpler than the name. To pass it your movie must have the following:
1) there are at least two named female characters, who
2) talk to each other about
3) something other than a man.
So simple, and yet as you go through all your favorite movies (and most of your favorite TV shows, though there’s a little more variety in TV), you find very few movies pass this test.
It’s not a coincidence. It’s not that there aren’t enough women behind the camera (there aren’t, but that’s not the reason). Here’s what we’re up against (and for those who have requested a single post that summarizes my experiences in film for linking reference, now you’ve got it).
When I started taking film classes at UCLA, I was quickly informed I had what it took to go all the way in film. I was a damn good writer, but more importantly (yeah, you didn’t think good writing was a main prerequisite in this industry, did you?) I understood the process of rewriting to cope with budget (and other) limitations. I didn’t hesitate to rip out my most beloved scenes when necessary. I also did a lot of research and taught myself how to write well-paced action/adventure films that would be remarkably cheap to film - that was pure gold.
There was just one little problem.
I had to understand that the audience only wanted white, straight, male leads. I was assured that as long as I made the white, straight men in my scripts prominent, I could still offer groundbreaking characters of other descriptions (fascinating, significant women, men of color, etc.) - as long as they didn’t distract the audience from the white men they really paid their money to see.
I was stunned. I’d just moved from a state that still held Ku Klux Klan rallies only to find an even more insidious form of bigotry in California - running an industry that shaped our entire culture. But they kept telling me lots of filmmakers wanted to see the same changes I did, and if I did what it took to get into the industry and accrue some power, then I could start pushing the envelope and maybe, just maybe, change would finally happen. So I gave their advice a shot.
Only to learn there was still something wrong with my writing, something unanticipated by my professors. My scripts had multiple women with names. Talking to each other. About something other than men. That, they explained nervously, was not okay. I asked why. Well, it would be more accurate to say I politely demanded a thorough, logical explanation that made sense for a change (I’d found the “audience won’t watch women!” argument pretty questionable, with its ever-shifting reasons and parameters).
At first I got several tentative murmurings about how it distracted from the flow or point of the story. I went through this with more than one professor, more than one industry professional. Finally, I got one blessedly telling explanation: “The audience doesn’t want to listen to a bunch of women talking about whatever it is women talk about.”
“Not even if it advances the story?” I asked. That’s rule number one in screenwriting, though you’d never know it from watching most movies: every moment in a script should reveal another chunk of the story and keep it moving.
He just looked embarrassed and said, “I mean, that’s not how I see it, that’s how they see it.”
Right. A bunch of self-back-slapping professed liberals wouldn’t want you to think they routinely dismiss women in between writing checks to Greenpeace. Gosh, no - it was they. The audience. Those unsophisticated jackasses we effectively worked for when we made films. They were making us do this awful thing. They, the man behind the screen. They, the six-foot-tall invisible rabbit. We knew they existed because there were spreadsheets with numbers, and no matter how the numbers computed, they never added up to, “Oh, hey, look - men and boys are totally watching Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley like it’s no big deal they’re chicks instead of guys.” They always somehow added up to “Oh, hey, look - those effects/that Arnold’s so awesome, men and boys saw this movie despite some chick in a lead role.”
According to Hollywood, if two women came on screen and started talking, the target male audience’s brain would glaze over and assume the women were talking about nail polish or shoes or something that didn’t pertain to the story. Only if they heard the name of a man in the story would they tune back in. By having women talk to each other about something other than men, I was “losing the audience.”
Was I?
There certainly are still men in this world who tune out women when we talk, but - as I and other students pointed out - this was getting less common with every generation, and weren’t we supposed to be targeting the youngest generation? These young men had grown up with women imparting news on national TV (even I can remember when that was rare), prescribing them medicine, representing people around them in court, doling out mortgages and loans. Those boys wouldn’t understand those early ’80s movies where women were denied promotions because “the clients want to deal with men” or “who would take a woman doctor/lawyer/cop seriously”? A lot of these kids would need it explained to them why Cagney & Lacey was revolutionary, because many of their moms had worked in fields once dominated by men.
We had a whole generation too young to remember why we needed second wave feminism, for cryin’ out loud, and here we were adhering to rules from the 1950s. I called bullshit, and left film for good, opting to fight the system from without. There was no way Hollywood really believed what it was saying about boys who’d grown up with Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor as action heroes, and so there was no way to change the system from within. I concluded Hollywood was was dominated by perpetual pre-adolescent boys making the movies they wanted to see, and using the “target audience” - a construct based on partial truths and twisted math - to perpetuate their own desires. Having never grown up, they still saw women the way Peter Pan saw Wendy: a fascinating Other to be captured, treasured and stuffed into a gilded cage. Where we didn’t talk. To each other. About anything other than men.
Follow-up post: Why discriminate if it doesn’t profit?
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113 comments
He just looked embarrassed and said, “I mean, that’s not how I see it, that’s how they see it.”
And, alas, the phrase “concern troll” hadn’t been coined yet.
(W00T for post!)
You know, this is what was wrong with Catwoman. (Both of them.) I’ve had a couple Nothing New discussions about the problems with esp. the latter one, going thru the various versions of the script that are available online as well as the one that actually saw the screen, and while I think all our criticisms were valid, one HUGE problem underlying it all is that while the story is supposed to be about Catwoman, it’s actually a story about how this random chick responds to the men in her lives and the things they want and do, only she dresses up like a cat and kindasorta does catty things…
I also think that’s why I have this feeling that there is a limited, but real, “protofeminist” angle to opera that somebody needs to tackle at thesis-length - it isn’t just that so many of the old operas are named after the heroine, but that these heroines are the protagonists, even when they’re the victims of patriarchal oppression. They still get to make the choices that matter (even if they’re lesser-evil ones), and the story is still all about them, with the men being catalysts, but not characters in the same way. There’s Tosca, but there’s also Aida, Madame Butterfly, La Boheme, Lucia di Lammermoor, Carmen, among the most famous, and while they all iirc fail the Mo Measure, several of them do have relationships between women that are very important, both friendships and rivalries as well as more than one strong female character - there’s Cio-Cio San and Suzuki, Mimi & Musetta, Aida & Amneris, Carmen & Micaela, even if (since they’re almost all romances) they do talk about the men.
And there’s usually a strange nonjudgmental tone at least on some levels, as to the sexual activity and autonomy of these characters - it isn’t ever quite as simple as madonna/whore, even when it superficially looks like that. (If I was writing that thesis, there would be something in it about Victorian pop culture confronting,if briefly, its own mores and saying ‘wow, this is effed up’ and having a Catharsis before going back to the same old grind - kind of like all the Magical Girls and Powerful Heroines in anime, maybe…)
I haven’t done any analysis, which I should, but I would be surprised if line for line, they don’t get as much screen time as any male chara as well as some of the best lines in musical theatre EVAR. (I just ran across Dryden’s libretto for a fantasy-history-romance-exotic-Other mashup, the Indian Emperor (less-well-known sequel to the smash hit The Indian Queen ) because I was looking up a quote and stumbled across this rockin’ line, spoken by an Aztec princess to the guy who’s playing the Guy of Guisborne role - “My mother’s daughter knows not how to fear” which sent me looking up the whole thing.
Guess what, it comes from the climax of one of the many romance/political conflicts in the script, featuring Alibech, who we earlier have repeatedly seen has the highest stateswomanly motivations, even though she doesn’t have much power, and has told her two suitors, rival brother-princes, that she’ll marry the one who liberates them from the invaders, always puts duty over personal wish and then angsts about it in lots of soliloquy and ethical discourse, like thus:
So now she’s in a hostage situation where jerk brother has her and the sensitive, dutiful brother who she really loves, in his power and is of course gloating away, telling her that he’s The Man and now she’s got to be his, how he’s lied/cheated/stolen his way to the top: but Spunky Heroine doesn’t swoon at his manliness and stop hating him, she sneers:
…so of course Odmar says “but I did it for YOU!!! and don’t make me hurt you, you ungrateful wench!”
So, get this, Odmar threatens to kill his brother to motivate the heroine!!1! [sigh] Who later gets hold of a sword and starts fighting alongside her True Love!!! Not to mention the repeated matriarchal theme, appropriate because Alibech and her sister are the daughters of the Queen in the original story –they don’t make ‘em like they used to, that’s for sure.
Also, if you haven’t seen the webcomic “The Wandering Ones,” you might enjoy it - it breaks just about every Rule you’ve described and then some…
(Main protagonist : female, mostly Native American. Main characters, male and female, nearly all not white - except for the Neo-Nazi leadership, natch! Women sitting around discussing strategy, politics, philosophies of survival, check. Women having rivalries that aren’t over a guy - Jedi master/apprentice style conflicts, all female charas–no, really! There are things that make me twitchy, but it’s so far beyond the mainstream it isn’t even funny.)
Your “Wendy” link points to some kind of editing function that requires a username and password to access.
Is the third rule violated if the two characters are talking about a male, but in a non-romantic sense? (like, say a buddy-cop movie where the two female cops are trying to catch a male criminal) Because men in movies spend very little time talking about women, but at least some of that is because in lots of movies the only women around are “the girlfriend/crush object/whatever”
harlemjd, I can only speak for myself, but I go back and forth on that, because I can see it both ways. On the one hand, two female charas talking about a man in an entirely non-romantic light are being written as if they were just people, getting the sort of scene that male charas as you note, always get! So, on that hand, I want to say that, say, two French Resistance heroines discussing the best way to take out Major Strasser would not violate the Bechdel Test requirement.
But then my contrary self argues with that - but the fact that they are always talking about a dude in that third active role, just points up the need for it! You can (usually) make excuses for it, in a historical, but how come in all these contemporary and worst of all) futuristic tales, we still get such a shortage of female charas that the notion that enough of them could be in active roles and positions of power or key influence that two women could be having a, what I’ll call generally for want of a better word, political discussion (or strategic if you will) about a third is so unlikely to happen? (Mars Needs Women! ahem.)
So I incline to give a qualified “pass” to such scenarios, because they do give us something important, but we need to remember what we’re not getting at the same time, which is what the asterisk there helps to do.
(I seriously couldn’t get over how much it meant to cynical ol’ me, reading The Wandering Ones that I linked there, and having - avoiding spoilers - one woman having a ranting, yelling match with another, both of them important in their post-apocalyptic government, over professional ethics and human experimentation and overstepping of boundaries in wartime; or three young apprentices of the same elder shaman - all four of them female - having intense quasi-sibling rivalries for her attention AND this having to be hammered out between them, the living and the dead, with the men being relegated to the margins of the fray in both scenarios. Or when [sorry, redacted upon rereading - too much of a spoiler] … It was so totally backwards from the norm, and I keep waiting for it to go back to some Status Quo of helpless Chicks and unflappable He-Men, but it doesn’t. Which is not to say that there aren’t heroic dudes, too, or romances - but they mean more, as a result, imo.)
Your professors must’ve been really surprised to see the critical and box office success of Juno, then, eh? Not only does it pass the Mo Movie Measure–I think it fails the reverse. Hopefully that’ll start something new.
…ARGH! I had just tracked down a bunch of different blog posts illustrating why this media narrative is bad because of how it works out to affect “real life” judgments and treatment of women, and Wordpress blocked it b/c of 5 links, and then when I clicked the “go back and edit your post link” everything was gone!
I used to think I hated Typepad more than #$@#$%% Wordpress, but now I’m really not sure…
I expect that Juno will be regarded as a fluke, just like all those other successful movies with female leads. If any data appears to contradict a position, some reason will be found for why that data “doesn’t count.”
Ballatrys, re: Catwoman, it’s not unusual for a movie about a woman to reek of the male gaze as its male creators focus on how she deals with men. Re: the opera - I would suggest the Golden Age of Hollywood managed a few heroines like the ones you’re talking about. Or female protagonists. Women were still fascinating back then. It’s only post WWII that we became boring and useless except as eye candy. Re: WordPress, that’s not it’s fault. I was getting SLAMMED with spams that were just enormous lists of links a while back and found a way to block them. I had the filter set to 5, which was far more links than normally get posted - I just raised it to 10. Sorry about that.
JSW, thanks - fixed it.
Harlemjd, what Bellatrys said. I usually go by context, too - i.e., I’ll give more leeway to a military drama devoid of civilians, in which you don’t expect to find many women and everyone else they know is male.
Genevieve, I’m afraid I agree with Patrick. Juno will be rationalized away. The problem is, they really honestly believe it’s a fact that people don’t want to see women. So when they sit down with demographic numbers and start interpreting, their approach is to rule out the obvious impossibility that people wanted to see a woman, and then look for some other reason the film did well. If pressed, they’ll “realize” the other films that were out at the same time simply failed to compete with it properly.
BetaCandy–
I know, you’re probably right. There are times when being an optimist really isn’t good for me.
We (women) are 50% of the population. What’s so bad about asking to be treated like human beings?
BC, I see, I understand about the spam problem - I just was frustrated because the page said “click to go back and edit your post” but there wasn’t anything left to edit! And at that point I had to leave to catch the bus, so I won’t be able to relocate all my bookmarks until I get home tonight.
Also, everyone might be interested in Peter Bradshaw’s review flyting of Wanted - not entirely drinksafe, no (”bin juice” refers to the nasty liquid buildup at the bottom of your trashcan, btw)
Some choice grafs:
I realize this is a) Old Europe and b) The Guardian, and he is being privilegeblind to the truly wretched way that Hollywood does indeed handle race, but it is nice to see a male ally who at least partially Gets It and calls bs on the proceedings.
BetaCandy: Excellent post, I’m glad you decided to write it.
bellatrys said:
There’s a word for that?? I always just thought of it as, “punishment for taking out the trash in a timely manner”! o.o;
I had a longish thing about internalized narratives shaping our perceptions of reality from the start in the post that got eaten, but I can’t reconstruct it all to my satisfaction, so I’m just going to post the relevant links.
The Ivory Ceiling (Women don’t have anything important to say in non-fiction media, too)
From the Hair Pulling Files
Women are too emotional for politics.
“Well, some women may be offended by this, but here’s another dose of reality…” women are inward-directed and selfish parasites (and thus shouldn’t be allowed to vote), not altruistic self-supporting rationalists b/c those virtues only come with a penis.
“the gendered aspect of violence only becomes visible when women kill” — because the default human is still, as in Aristotle’s day, always male.
WaPo claims to want retain female readership, but insults women - is it merely coincidence that of the few female voices in the mainstream media, most of them can be counted on (q.v. Maureen Dowd, Kathleen Parker) to spend most of their time validating the gender-essentialist status quo?
The ones who tell the stories rule the world.
There’s a word for that??
tekanji, you’d be AMAZED what there are words for!!! Not just Briticisms, either! Somewhere around here I have a dictionary of nothing but, and that doesn’t even get into *technical* vocabularies…
Aw man, I feel cheated…here I was expecting an actual REASON why screenwriters/the film industry acted like total cocks. All I got was “because they’re total cocks”. Hell, I already knew that.
*removes tongue from cheek*
I really am curious why an industry that’s supposed to be so focused on consumers (the audience) and the almighty dollar is making such stupid decisions, though. This is not in any way contesting your point (i.e. “they wouldn’t do that, it’s stupid!”)…I believe you implicitly. But what I still don’t get is the WHY.
I can understand (though not condone) many reasons for sexism (plus racism, other isms, etc)…most of which boil down to ignorance and self-centeredness. But I know they’re not ignorant (discounting wilfull ignorance, of which they probably have a truckload), and while I think they’re definitely self-centered, greed is another form of self-centeredness, and I’m not seeing that one making as bold a showing as I’d expect. Does the film industry want so much to be “right” that they are willing to shoot themselves in the foot financially? Repeatedly? ‘Cause man, that just don’t make no kinda sense.
Good article, though…let me know when you can write the followup, “How To Make the Film Industry Think Rationally”.
I think “asking” is part of the problem. I think it needs to be demanded.
Exactly. I could go far in film, they assured me, if only I’d learn the game. It wasn’t like they were asking me to kill anybody, was it?
I kinda thought it was.
Spartakos, you don’t ask much, do you?
I thought I came as close to explaining it as I could without resorting to tons of speculation on what’s in people’s heads. With the Peter Pan thing, I mean.
As for the economics, I don’t think they can see the profits they MIGHT have made, so as long as everyone agrees the Emperor’s wearing new clothes, it’s as good as reality to them. OTOH, if they were greedy enough, you’re right: they wouldn’t ignore evidence that doing things differently might bring even more profit.
But… and this is just my belief… I think ego is at the base of sexism, racism, etc. Even greed - it’s the ego that wants to have more than enough. The ego wants to feel special and unique, and to do that you either have to distinguish yourself above others or you have to tear others down. By inventing excuses to exclude huge chunks of humanity (genders, races, etc.) from the “race” your ego’s in, you make it that much easier for your ego to believe “I’m #1!” That’s what I think in a nutshell. And the solution, IMO, is to accept that you are NOT special but neither is anyone else, and it’s all good - that you still deserve love even if you’re not special.
Does the film industry want so much to be “right” that they are willing to shoot themselves in the foot financially? Repeatedly? ‘Cause man, that just don’t make no kinda sense.
Check out the history of the Civil Rights movement. Does it make sense to drive away paying customers? Or to close down your own schools & swimming pools and other places of entertainment, rather than have to share? But over and over, century after century, people have preferred to discriminate, by race or religion or gender, even when it costs them - the privilege ego-boost is just somehow that much worth it.
Most recently, computer retailers have tried to retrain their sexist male staff - that is, the upper level management is aware that they lose female customers like crazy because over the years we have gotten extremely fed up with being ignored, and/or talked down to like idiot children, when we have gone cash in hand to buy some well-researched piece of hardware or software, and it’s gotten increasingly easy for us to just buy it online, no hassle, no condescension, no being ignored while the male clerk geek giggles with the other male clerk geek about that bitchin’ new game or video card, as we tap our feet and look at our watch in vain trying to get SOMEONE to unlock the case and get us that WD umpteen-gig hard drive down… Yes, Compusa has closed its brick-and-mortar doors, but the memories remain.
Recently a woman’s similar bad experience at an Apple store and her subsequent letter to the management was written up in one of the online Mac journals. I know that there is a bit of a cult of “oooh, Mac users are sooo much more liberal/progressive than M$atan worshippers” in Left Blogistan, but you’d never guess it from reading the comments thread that followed there - poster after poster insisting that she must have been badly treated because she was stoooopid and the salesman just instinctively sensed that, and treated the bitch the way she deserved (assuming she wasn’t just lying about the whole thing, that is!) It was pretty much Feminist B1ng0 versions 1 & 2, the Mac Geek version.
(At least CNET mods have jumped hard on that sort of thing the one or two times I’ve encountered it in a thread there - “You don’t know what’s wrong with your computer because UR A WOMN, LUSER!- and so did other male commenters.)
Why would computer retailers blow off hundreds or even thousands of dollars in potential sales? Sales that they hardly even had to work for (Do you have X? Yes/No. How much is it? Here, take my money! - and maybe answer an “Is it compatible with Y and Z?” for a real challenge…) but nevertheless they do, and have done, to the point that the industry has tried to come up with “initiatives” to succeed in sensitivity training to regain and attract customers. (q.v. that WaPo mess…)
A few years ago there was an article I heard on local NPR, about why movie trailer narration is mostly male - they don’t actually have any studied evidence that men won’t go see a movie that’s trailer is narrated by a female voice artist, and in fact the very few that there have been, indicate the opposite. But the very old guys in suits, with their gravel voices sounding like your grandpa after a few martinis, all said that well, they didn’t dare gamble with that kind of money, and they just KNEW that men didn’t want to hear a woman telling them something, because, hey, WE’RE men (and yes we can speak for all guys, implicitly) and WE don’t like to hear women talking at us! - but women don’t mind being told what to see by a guy and anyway their boyfriends/husbands will make the decisions about which movie they see anyway so…
Pride and habit are very, very strong forces. And “profit” has to be measured in social as well as fiscal terms to understand humanity: someone who spends a fortune to become the best at something is one example, but so is someone who spends a fortune to be the envy of their neighbors, and likewise someone who turns down a fortune because it means compromising their principles - even if those principles are rather nasty ones, and perhaps even ones they don’t fully realize they have.
Oh, wow, BetaCandy, hivemind!
*arg* This is why I now have to go 9 miles out of my way to buy anything computer related. Because despite having a Best Buy less than a mile from my house I refuse to give them any money, ever, after both receiving myself and hearing about the crappy treatment they’ve given my mother over the years. I’ll go buy stuff from the lovely people who immediately notice when I walk in and ask if I know what I need and then either help or get out of my way, and went out of their way to save me about $300 the first time I was ever in there, thanks.
Seriously, what is with that? I’ve worked retail, and in a sector where male customers were spotted about as often as unicorns we realized that they had money too, and were aware that lousy service is the fastest way to make it to the top of the ‘expendable employee’ list. Yes, sometimes people have no clue what they need, but there is a way to ask questions to get the information to help them without all but calling them an idiot. (Can you tell this is a sore spot? I lost patience completely sometime after it became clear that they could not understand the concept that “not possessing a Y chromosome” does not also mean “lacks the ability to understand the magical WiFi thingy”.)
I lost patience completely sometime after it became clear that they could not understand the concept that “not possessing a Y chromosome” does not also mean “lacks the ability to understand the magical WiFi thingy”.
Oooh yah. Worse is when you actually know more about the product/what it’s used for than they do, and they’re too ignorant + arrogant to even realize this, so they go on insisting that what you want is not really that but something simpler that doesn’t do what you need it to do. I walked out of (the now late) Computrend w/o buying a printer when the printer department salesman insisted that I didn’t need a CMYK Postscript printer, b/c he didn’t actually know what ’separations’ were or why proofing them was important.
Yes, this is all very tacit approval of the “men don’t want to listen to women” BS. It’s actually pretty astonishing, if not surprising in the least, how many different ways this message is imprinted on us time and again. It’s everywhere. Instead of men trying to understand better the way women communicate, they simply tune out. Everyone tells them it’s the natural order of things.
Wait, it’s not just me that gets ignored when I walk into the Big Box Stores to buy a computer? I thought it was lousy sales staff.
I think a lot of it is fear of success. If we make a movie that actually satisfies this INCREDIBLY OMG DIFFICULT criteria and it succeeds… what’s that saying about the past 20 years of movies?
What I hate about trying to discuss this stuff is that folks then assume I’m saying that movies that don’t satisfy this suck. Since I own many a movie that doesn’t I obviously don’t think that.
[...] i didn’t even realize i was being insensitive, but once i was called out on it, and once i thought about it, it was pretty clear. while ms. [...]
Yes, this is all very tacit approval of the “men don’t want to listen to women” BS. It’s actually pretty astonishing, if not surprising in the least, how many different ways this message is imprinted on us time and again. It’s everywhere. Instead of men trying to understand better the way women communicate, they simply tune out. Everyone tells them it’s the natural order of things
And it all goes back to the Bechdel test: there’s a vicious cycle of pop culture telling us that women never talk about anything interesting, so men don’t listen to them, and then go write movies/TV shows where women never say anything interesting. If writers and producers started creating more TV shows, movies or comics were the women characters actually had interesting conversations, then you’d probably have men starting to find those conversations more interesting (and in real life too) because pop culture would finally be acknowledging that, hey, sometimes women say stuff that’s worth listening to!
Quite often, in fact. I cannot TELL you the number of times I’ve made suggestions or contributed information in formal and informal settings only to be completely ignored…and then five seconds or minutes later some dude (whom I suspect actually did hear me the first 25 times I said it) suggests what I’ve suggested, and is met with a resounding “Good job, ol’ chap!” from everyone else.
It angers me to the point of shaking. When I stand up and state I said the very same thing not too long ago, I still get the obligatory pat-her-on-the-head-tell-her-she’s-pretty routine.
ARGH.
sbg, that happened to me. This week. On a feminist blog. ARGGGGG.
Zingerella and I talked a bit about having an experiment where we’d each take on a male persona and follow each other around the blogosphere for a bit, posting the same ideas but one using male name and the other using female and see what happened.
I just don’t want to do it because I want to believe there are spaces where that doesn’t happen.
I tried to talk at work the other week about how we’re used to “male” voices being in authority and how that affects things and… well, that went no where. *sigh* “It’s just that women’s voices are so grating!”
We’ve been cultured to think women’s voices are annoying. As evidence that this is heavy programming and not nature, I present a quick run-down of the last few presidents’ voices:
Bush: horrible, soft, gravelly, grating voice, poor diction.
Clinton: sounds like he’s recovering from laryngitis. I always want to clear my throat when I hear him talk.
Other Bush: wimpy little nasal voice
Reagan: sounded like somebody punched him in the throat. How did he ever work as an actor?
Carter: too soft (that’s a Southern thing) yet the best of the bunch.
So they’re fit to run the world, but Hillary Clinton’s voice was intolerable? Reagan was fit to act, but we can’t scrape up one woman narrator we can risk a trailer on? What about all the women narrating documentaries and unsolved crime type shows? Their voices are not only wonderful, they’re far less depressing than the downbeat, funereal male voices on similar programs. Why do male narrators on shows like Cold Case always sound like undertakers, whereas the women merely sound serious and respectful of the content? And why aren’t we all complaining and refusing to vote for men and just basically hating on the menz because their voices are annoying?
Because we’re been taught we must make exceptions for men. For women, we look for excuses to dismiss, and voices are just one. (Another example would be: don’t overlook the potential of an ugly man, you shallow fool, he might have something else to offer! But an ugly woman? I dunno - she could be a doorstop, maybe?)
BTW, one of the best voices around today is Tamara Tunie, who narrated the hell out of Eve’s Bayou and plays the medical examiner on L&O:SVU.
I’m sure exectives will tell us that The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring would have been even more successful if Cate Blanchett hadn’t been narrating the first eight minutes. They’ll even have number that “prove” it.
[...] a question that comes up every time I tell my story about how I slowly realized that Hollywood didn’t want movies/shows for, by or about women to profit. To sum up that story, what tipped me off was that whenever film students pointed out how [...]
[...] the best thing in the face of pretty damning evidence). But, thankfully, BetaCandy has recently blogged about her experiences learning to be a screenwriter, which has given rise to a discussion about how a non-profitable system perpetuates itself among [...]
They had Sam & Janet interacton SG-1 and talk about things other then the men in there lives, but then look at how they killed Janet and had Sam react to that death. It was almost if not worse then ever having them interact in the first place.
Plus, that was just a little interaction for a tv series.
You know, Amy, I was wanting to say something about SG-1, but wasn’t sure where to start (it often came so close to being great on gender issues, then it would turn around and destroy all that). You put this very well.
And yet… for the most part, Sam and Janet usually either talked about the men they worked with or Cassie. Men or kids. I guess it was that or shoes? *sigh*
I think the actresses really sold it as something that passed the Bechdel test (hey, if all your co-workers are male, you can’t even talk about your groundbreaking feminist career without effectively talking “about men”), but if you just look at the words on paper, it kind of didn’t. And then, as you say, the way it all ended just threw all that down the garbage disposal and flipped the switch.
Sam had a beautiful speech at the memorial for Janet, listing the people who are alive because of her. But then it was also Teal’c’s idea - which I don’t mind per se, as it was a very Teal’c thing to come up with - what I mind is that it wasn’t accompanied by an idea of Sam’s own.
I think the most Bechdel-friendly scene was from the episode Frozen, where much of the action was Sam, Janet, and a female scientist of the week discussing the implications of a woman frozen in the ice. Jonas intruded, but I can’t think of another episode that gave as much to female characters, or had as many of them; which is a pretty sorry bar.
(Frozen was my favourite episode from the Jonas-season; partly due to that, but also to my weakness for strories set in Antarctica).
If we’re gonna make headway in this area, i think it is going to start in Sci-Fi/Fantasy.
In a rather unrelated thought:
Most of the examples any of us can think of come from television because by the third or fourth season of a TV show, there are likely to be at least two female characters who are at least as fleshed-out as a typical male character ten minutes into a movie (and are therefore capable of non-stereotypical discourse)
[...] I wish I could just unabashedly love. (I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry, anyone?) Turns out film schools teach writers not to pass it. [...]
[...] Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test [...]
[...] 22, 2008 by msandrist Here at Echidne of the Snakes, and here at The Hathor Project. Much fascinating reading abounds. You may not see me again for a week, maybe [...]
[...] it’s a particularly appropriate week for me to stumble upon this post at The Hathor Legacy. I had to understand that the audience only wanted white, straight, male [...]
[...] read The Hathor Legacy regularly (because I didn’t) would find Betacandy’s posts on Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test and Why discriminate if it doesn’t profit? as interesting as I did. (The posts are from early [...]
William Goldman described the phrase “non-recurring phenomenon” in his book The Big Picture, a collection of essays discussing movies with studio execs during the 90s; any film that had success while challenging the prevalent assumptions was described as a “non-recurring phenomenon” by the studio execs to explain why they wouldn’t repeat what had been successful.
The primary example was The First Wives Club; Bette Midler, Diane Keaton, and Goldie Hawn pulled in almost $20 million the opening weekend, and finished over $100 million domestic. There’s obviously an audience for films with older (by Hollywood standards), female leads, why aren’t the studios making more of them Goldman asked? Because that film was a “non-recurring phenomenon” was the answer.
Goldman’s explanation was that the studio execs, the moguls and big shots who decide what movies get made, are terrified that people will find out that they really don’t know anything at all; they can always explain away a failure, but a movie that succeeds when common wisdom says it shouldn’t truly threatens them. So they perpetuate the common wisdom by not making those films in the first place, not because they’re afraid that the films will fail, but because they’re afraid that they’ll succeed.
Jack, that’s a damn good point to bring up. Yeah, I think that mentality is also really common in TV too because not only do you need your bosses and other colleagues to think you know something: you have to convince advertisers. Constantly. If you can’t explain why something did well, they go to someone who can (even if that person’s full of it, so long as he sounds convincing).
I think too that sometimes networks and studios sabotage projects that buck the system too much - bad marketing, moving shows around too much. I don’t think anyone doubts that Fox deliberately derails shows that are too avant garde after a few seasons (or sooner!).
Oh, this is beautiful and makes the point so well.
I didn’t know Bechdel credited Liz Wallace for the test! For years I heard people refer to it as the Dykes to Watch Out for test and as far as I know, I started naming it “Bechdel test” a few years back because it was shorter and I like the idea of naming ideas after women who come up with them.
But the thing I wanted to say is that the other day I was talking with Charlie Jane from io9 about SF heroes and heroic characteristics. We could not think of many mainstream SF heroes who were female. Strong female characters, sure. Fantasy heroes, yes. Not just characters who behave bravely - but ones who are The Hero character larger than life. (Our other caveat was “and don’t have “she-” or “-woman” in their name.)
Sad that this is true, but even sadder that despite thinking about SF all the time I didn’t realize there was still such a gap.
Just wanted to chime in (a lot of the things I wanted to say were said by others, and better than I could) that I would pay for the whole movie if I could to see Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley team up, ’cause that would be the most awesome action movie ever (a little boy that still loves explosions, so long as a strong lead character is either causing or dodging them
).
The frustrating thing, William, is that the media gatekeepers are saying that you (and guys like you) don’t exist either, which is just as insulting in its own way as saying stuff like Women only care about the Diamonds! and Clean Floors! and Shoes! and other shallow nonsense. It’s like they have these cliches in their heads of What A Man Is and What A Woman Is, and no amount of factual evidence can overwrite that.
[...] Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test. (Hat tip to Echidne of the Snakes.) [...]
This is eerily similar to the counter-arguments people make when I go on the various Lego forums and declare that Legoland Needs Women! “The audience is mostly males and won’t buy sets with female characters”, they say, never mind that on the auction sites, the most expensive mini-figures are the various “Princesses” (which is another peeve, why can’t they be proles?).
Then why is it that the Lego Batman set I’m most excited about is the one with Harley Quinn, her enormous mallet, and oh yeah a couple vehicles or something?
[...] Jack commented on Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test something I think deserves more discussion: William Goldman described the phrase “non-recurring [...]
[...] given no reason to think they really talk about anything but Michael. This show does not pass the Bechdel test with flying colors, and yet [...]
brilliant post, here’s hopin that financiers in hollywood run across your blog as well
I think the most disappointing moment I’ve had in my cinematic experiences was watching “Death Proof” for the first time in theatre (I was excited about it for months) with my girlfriend. I was awestruck by the witty dialogue penned by Tarantino amongst the group of female roles, especially since Tarantino is quite famous for writing fantastic dialogue for women - and they talked about subjects OTHER than guys (and even when talking about guys, it wasn’t petty). And at the end of the movie, my girlfriend complained about the conversation amongst the women! Here’s what she said - “my girlfriends and I don’t talk like that. girls mostly just talk about other girls and their boyfriends/guys.” I was dumbfounded. And my girlfriend is NOT an airhead by any stretch of the imagination.
Eric, I’m sure that really is her experience… or at least her perception of her experience.
There are safe topics for each gender when getting to know one another. For men, it’s sports, beer, etc., for women it’s the men and children in their lives, or appearance stuff. These are the topics most people start out on, and then they get to know each other better and feel safe talking about more profound and random stuff. Well… women do. Some men swear to me men NEVER get beyond the sports and beer talk, but that’s so sad I hope it’s not true for most men.
Anyway, if your girlfriend hasn’t gotten too close to women over the years, it’s possible she doesn’t realize there is a point where you get past those topics to other stuff.
I’ve met some women who seemed to only talk about men and whatnot for a very long time, but after a while of me talking about everything under the sun, they always prove to have thoughts on other subjects. I think some of them don’t feel safe defying gender expectations until they know a person well. It’s like they’re afraid people will perceive them as something other than the “nice, normal person” niche they’ve fit into through careful work. (Remember, we’re a society that values conformity rather than being exceptional, so there’s a cultural advantage in fitting into stereotypes.)
Very interesting, but not so surprising. Your analysis seems dead on! I’m glad you had what it took to walk away.
Strangely enough, the military put a great deal of money into a study concerning response and attention to voice. They wanted their fighter pilots and such to have the quickest response possible at times of emergency. The results showed that the men not only responded faster to a female voice but also retained the information longer and more accurately. So that is why fighter planes speak in a female voice. Tell me again how men won’t listen to girls talk.
There is a principal I call “the law of opposits.” basically most peoples justifications are the exact opposit of the truth. Hollywood has a vested intrest in “dumbing down” its audience. Discriminating pigs wont eat whatever is thrown at them, to get them to do that you must DENY them better food. This is hollywwods primary motive, aclimating peopler to lifless art effectivly nutralizes them emotionally. A society is only as good as its myths…they are what guide a nations future. our future is aparently cheap ignorant and lifeless. Movies are PROPAGANDA, ours make evoking impotence into a fine art, like a herd of steer we may be MALE dominated, but only males who lacks testicales compleatly are allowed. Hollywood is the throne of cowardice, it is the shepard that follows the sheep because it dosen’t have the guts to lead. Its disgusting
Chick flicks can be quite profitable. Just don’t expect men to want to see them.
[...] Verschil tussen belastingvoorstellen Obama en McCain. Hoe de NRA de anti-gun groepen infiltreerde. Waarom vrouwen in films niet met elkaar praten over iets anders dan mannen. Bush cs proberen de aanval van [...]
This is a fabulous post and fantastic discussion. Hat tip to my husband, a statistically non-existent man, for sending it to me. For those of you who haven’t already, you might want to check out an oldish article by Thomas Cripps called “The Myth of the Southern Box Office,” which basically details how Hollywood execs pulled analogous bullshit on black men and women for decades by claiming that though they themselves *really really wanted* to stop casting black men and women as grinning, eye-rolling, shuffling idiots, if they did so, then they would offend and lose the patronage of southern moviegoers.
Edward Campbell’s book The Celluloid South extends and amplifies the argument, talking about how Hollywood basically created a whole genre of “Southerns” (comparable to “Westerns”), movies which advanced the ideals of white supremacy, and of the pre-emancipation south as an agrarian eden where everyone was happy and understood their place.
It’s amazing that now the excuse is not about just one region of the country, but a even more nebulous and more effective general “they.”
Oy. Anyway, thanks for the great post: I’m putting it up on my Facebook page.
Oh, wait a minute. So every film with a major leading female character is a “chick flick,” to you Frankie?
No wonder I can’t stand this sexist bullshit in Hollywood.
Now, I must ask - does this failed Bechdel test apply largely to live action, human characters? Or is it just female characters in general? For example, what about the medium of animation? (Of course traditionally, the story in animated films is developed visually via storyboards, and not a script - but let’s just set that aside for now!) Are the Bechdel test requirements avoided even if your two female characters are cartoon bunnies, or somesuch? ;-P
On a related note, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a Bechdel equivalent for film settings. Why is it that about 70% of mainstream U.S. films take place in New York City, when the vast majority of the audience is only familiar with the abstract idea of the place? Is isn’t as though the audience “knows” the city, more than they are familiar with its imagery through constant exposure, as 95% of them have never set foot there. Meh. Just more U.S. Powers-That-Be furthering the effort to maintain a myopic view of the world, I suppose.
Absolutely not limited to live action, human characters. C.L. Hanson wrote a post about recent-ish animated films and this test about a year ago. See it here.
Tacking this on:
USA Network’s In Plain Sight does not only revolve around a lead female, but also features two other women. All have had conversations not related to men. It’s not without faults, but overall the show does a decent job of lending complexity to most of their characters, male or female. (I love Marshall, and I love that he’s very clearly the supporting character…)
AMC’s Mad Men also has a decent line-up of women who manage to talk about things other than men. It’s a bit more problematic, given that it’s set in 1960 (and in NYC, hee).
Miriam P, that’s really fascinating. That essay doesn’t seem to be available on line, but if I can find it in a book I’d like to read it and maybe report on it here. Thanks!
DEAF FEMINIST PUNK!!!, of course it is. Hollywood thinks “mainstream” can apply to one narrow segment of the populace, and you can designate half of humanity as a “niche.” Frankie has learned this like we all did, but unlike some of us he still hasn’t thought it over analytically.
Lindsay, anime tends to do better on the Bechdel test than live action. But mainstream animation - as in Disney, Pixar, etc. - tends to do worse than live action movies. As for animation’s use of human substitutes - talking rabbits, robots, whatever - it’s extremely rare they have two female characters in the first place, a la The Smurfs. This sends a clear, disturbing message that men are useful for many roles, but women are only useful when caretaking or baby-related functions are required.
How broad is the “not related to men” requirement?
I started to play the game of seeing what novels pass the Bechdel test, and I ran into one that is feminist in message and has strong female characters, but places them in a Dark Age society. It posed some interesting questions. Does it or does it not count when you have a female overlord, who inherits her demesne because the laws deem it better for a woman to rule than for the demesne to leave the clan, sitting and discussing with her two serving women and closest confidantes how to deal with her rebellious vassals? The vassals, after all, are all men, but on the other hand, the women in question are essentially talking about the first woman’s job.
Amanda, we discussed some hypotheticals earlier in the thread, and not everyone agrees exactly, but as I see it… maybe, maybe not. For me, it depends on other factors. If there was a lot of logical opportunity to have women talking to each other and I feel the author just didn’t exploit that opportunity, I give it a fail. If I don’t see that the author left opportunities on the table, and find there’s at least a tiny nod to women being fully human creatures even when men aren’t around to observe it, I might be inclined to give it a pass.
Also, the passing or failing of the Bechdel test is not the sole measure of a film’s feminist value, so even when a movie fails it, it might still be valuable from a feminist perspective. For example, I like Fight Club because as *I* read the story, it breaks down the myth that the cult of masculinity is where a man finds his identity and value. Doesn’t say a damn thing about women or our journey, but the obsession with manhood (and lack of corresponding value put on “womanhood”) is definitely part of why we need feminism, so I think the movie has value even though it only features one woman and therefore fails Bechdel. (Also, I acknowledge some people get almost an opposite read on Fight Club - that it celebrates the cult of masculinity. I disagree: the deeper “Jack” gets into his “manhood”, the closer he gets to realizing it’s a construct - Tyler - that’s doing him a lot of harm and no good. He has to destroy the construct to become himself again. Hmm, I just realized I never stated this flat out in my articles on Fight Club - looks like I should write another, LOL.)
Also, I wouldn’t want anyone to fall into the trap of assuming that just because a movie does pass the test means it’s either a feminist movie or a great movie. Beaches passes the test. I’m not going to stand up and say it’s either great cinema for the ages or a great feminist story (again with the breakdown of women’s friendships over men *sigh*), but I still own it and watch it.
As someone living and working in the entertainment industry, this is all quite depressing and not remotely surprising.
I am, however, going to make a point watch “Death Proof” soon, and that exchange in the comment thread reminded me of an older woman who used to be in my knitting group who commented one day that all we women talked about was men… After being in our group for months and months where we talked about career, the entertainment industry, the health industry, politics, and a million other things, and yes, sometimes, men. I seriously could not abide that woman after that.
That’s the hardest, I think. To work in this industry where we have so far to go, and then have some woman in a meeting make some comment about how women get all crazy when they have their period. (True Hollywood story)
But it is true! And it’s great fodder to set up a man’s confused expression or long suffering sigh as they watch a woman turn into some unrecognizable thing right in front of them.
Because a truly female experience is somehow still about the menz.
/end sarcasm and tangent
I had a friend who studied writing and his professor told him that main characters needed to be straight white males. If they were female, black, gay, etc, then the work needed to be an “issue piece.” Having a gay main character in a work that wasn’t about homosexuality was just too distracting.
Lizriz, I’m not surprised by your true story. To get anywhere in the business as a woman, you have to demonstrate that you’re one of the boys by showing you harbor the same sexist notions about women that they do. And while a guy who’s not sexist can just hold his tongue and keep doing his best to write non-sexist material around all the assholes, a woman who holds her tongue is immediately pegged as “offended” and therefore incapable of handling the “realities” of the world and her job.
Terry, exactly. If it’s a story about a Whitey, it’s a story about being Whitey. If it’s a story about any other variety of human being, it’s a story about the hardship of not being Whitey. Interesting how it all comes back to Whitey, isn’t it? He must be at the center of all things, including the things that supposedly aren’t meant for his enjoyment.
a woman who holds her tongue is immediately pegged as “offended”
THAT is how I got labeled as the Radical Feminist when I didn’t say ANYTHING about sex or gender roles! Well, except to call down some homophobic “jokes” made about an out gay coworker. (”But he doesn’t mind! He laughs along at them!” was the objection to my tart asides.)
The mere fact of not joining in with the Hipster Liberals at the SCLM outfit I used to work at, in their constant put-downs of (other) women, the jokes about how nasty (yet oh-so-desirable) whores and strippers were, all that “edgy” “ironic ” crap - I was TRYING to avoid trouble because I couldn’t afford not to pay the rent, to miss a single paycheck, because unlike them I didn’t have a wife with a full time job and good benefits or a mom in whose basement I could live, but might as well be hanged for a sheep - my attempts to keep my head down and be Nice and Sweet and professional by ignoring the sexism directed at me were taken (correctly, but still) as proof of my radicalism and hostility.
So, like I said - might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb…
Excellent post. Thank you for sharing!
Not only is this whole sexist thing offensive to women, I think it should also be considered offensive by men.
I mean, do ALL men just want to watch men fighting other men? If we really did, we would ALL watch WWF. That’s such a stereotype.
So it is a case of stereotypes reinforcing stereotypes. Like so many other cultural things, it is really hard to change.
I think we need to create a culture of change and acceptance, so as to make up for our natural tendency not to change.
I wonder, if one would write a story, but only assign genders to the characters afterward and randomly… I think there will be some people saying that I am not respecting the differences between the genders. Are they right or wrong?
I reread this after hunting it up to link somewhere, and this bit got me to pondering.
Is it possible the all-knowing “they” is also looking at it from both sides, as they perceive it? As in men don’t want to watch women talk about something not revolving around the menfolk, but also that women in the audience only want to see “romance” stuff, even if it’s an action flick.
Could either be taken as “they” really think women only want to see romance, or better yet, expect women should want to see romance, because they’re worthless to the story (and in their personal lives) without it.
Possibly a bit of both, depending on who you ask. I know I’ve seen some shippers (and slashers too) that could find Tru Luv chemistry between a character they like and a piece of paper, based on favorite character getting a papercut.
That’s absolutely one of the assumptions at work here. The reason they toss bits of romance into action movies is to appeal to the girlfriends and wives they presume will tag along disinterestedly with their menfolk. If they want more female viewers, they often rely on romance to get the job done. If a mainstream movie does well with women (say, Titanic), they tend to assume it’s the romance, not the SFX or the story or the gutsy female lead who didn’t just stand around waiting to be rescued.
I think there’s some of that going on, too. It sounds terribly misogynistic the way you put it (and it is, ultimately), but I believe it’s an insidious side effect of the idea that white men are the default and every other sort of human only needs to appear when you need a character to do/experience something a white man can’t.
And yeah, there are women who are obsessed with seeing romance in everything. But far more common in my experience is the viewer - male or female - who assumes two characters of the opposite sex who appear on screen simultaneously must have sexual tension. This isn’t because they want to see it - it’s because they’ve learned to expect it, since TV/film never strays far from that formula.
Jaco, I’ve been reading a fascinating blog series which is about the contextual history of the X-Men comics, and apparently something like that happened several times when Claremont was writing - he was it seems famous for saying “but why can’t this character be a woman?” in brainstorming sessions when the default Bechedel-Test-failure mode was to have every character/plot role be male unless you needed a “chick” to be the love-interest for one of the heroes. Which obviously made for a more interesting storyline as well as providing a more diverse and well-rounded cast, but that wasn’t the norm 30 years ago - nor is it today, alas.
On a personal level, in one of my original fic projects that I’m working on, I’ve changed a couple characters’ gender (and orientation too) from the original outline because I realized that they were very much in Traditional patterns and a) this was boring, b) a good opportunity to demonstrate my ideals, and c) an even better opportunity to stretch my writerly skills, by breaking the molds. What does it do to the story dynamic - and reader expectations - when a “typically male” aggressive career leadership role is played by a heterosexual woman (can’t be written off as “butch”), or a “typically female” nurturing role or “in distress” role is played by a straight guy…or when one of your square-jawed, swashbuckling, debonair hero characters is a gay working-class dude?
[SNARKLOCK ON] But gee, Jennifer, what else is there for two characters of the opposite sex to have in common, except sexual tension? Everybody knows it’s impossible for men to look at women as anything but sex objects, and women to look at men as anything but potential husbands! [SNARKLOCK OFF]
[SNARKLOCK OFF]
[SNARKLOCK OFF]
…Snark key is still stuck on….
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this lately, since my 29th birthday prompted me to get off my ass and start working on the screenwriting that I abandoned when I went on dialysis a year ago.
The problem the industry has with the Bechdel test seems to be a consequence of good screenwriting intersecting with bad social ideas. In a conventional film (specifically, one with a single lead, not an ensemble) you do want everything to reflect on your lead, and having a conversation that neither features nor is about your lead draws the screenplay away from that. It’s bad screenwriting.
The part where the test becomes important and enlightening, of course, is when it comes to the sex of your lead. After all, with a female lead, you have ample opportunity to pass the test, but little to pass the test in reverse. So all those films with female leads shoul be fine, right, putting things about equal. Right?
What’s that, Hollywood? “People” don’t want to see films with female leads? “They” only want to see films with straight white men as the leads? Hmm… now we have a problem.
In short: Everything must be about the lead: sound screenwriting. The lead must always be a (straight white) man: sexist bullshit.
As I said, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this regarding my own writing. The screenplay that I’m currently working on is fundamentally about a young man’s relationship with his father, so trying to pass the test would probably work to the detriment of the story. But I’ve got another screenplay in mind focusing on a group of teenage girls, and there’s barely a speaking male part to be found in it. In both cases the sex of the leads determines its Bechdel/reverse Bechdel status before I’ve even written anything.