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 from an industry pro: “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?
Eric Ledger, what I was hinting at is that the ACLU is aware of more obviously criminal gender issues within the film industry, such as sexual harassment, but they’ve not been very helpful on any of it. What you’re talking about is not only more difficult to fight because it’s harder to define with evidence that would fly in court, but it also challenges freedom of speech. I mean, that’s what the industry would fight back with, and this is an extremely pro-freedom of speech country. I believe the courts would agree with the argument that no one has to watch these movies, and that would be the end of that.
The change HAS to come from culture, because the law is inadequate to deal with nebulous issues like “creating an atmosphere of [whatever]”. We’ve seen this consistently through the Civil Rights movement. For example, Affirmative Action was a noble attempt to force some kind of diversity on some employers, but the law couldn’t address the subtle ways in which employers “punished” the minorities they hired, or created an atmosphere where they felt unsafe. It takes cultural shifts to fix stuff like that.
BetaCandy,
I see.
So, how *do* you expect to influence the industry to change its ways? Any ideas, besides boycotting just about all movies that get made?
Eric Ledger, why don’t you read the About page, maybe explore the site a little? We don’t advocate boycotts; we raise awareness by discussing these issues and striking a chord with people who are unhappy with the situation but haven’t quite put it into words. Eventually, you reach a tipping point with any cultural meme, and people start making new demands on industry, and industry either capitulates or gets replaced by something that meets the demands.
And this is why I watch anime and manga, just one of the reasons albeit. There are more female badasses there. Am I doing my own small unmentioned boycott by never watching hollywood films?
Greatly enjoyed reading this all down the page. As an Old Lady Radical Feminist I have rarely found a discusion I have enjoyed s much.
I learned a lot – which cutting my 65th birthday is not something that happens so often any more un;less I actively research and piece things together. Delicious to relax and absorb.
I used to love films. Used to go to cinema 2 – 3 times a week unless in a bad budget period. Thought I was pretty easy going – love whodunnits, westerns, romance, thrillers, spies, SF&F, adventure, family – just not horror basically. It was never hard to find amusement.
But in recent years I’ve been giving up on film because it’s too much hard work to find something pleasant to watch. Then when I find a possible, it’s about 50/50 risk that it wasn’t worth it when we actually go.
Which is all about feminism, and other boring boring stereotypes. I learned to tune out a lot or else it is too uncomfortable to be there. But at what point is it not worth it if I’m having to tune out on more than half the content? More than 2/3?
So now I see a film maybe once a month – that’s a BIG reduction. Getting fewer still.
I’ve wondered about whether the suits are stupid in turning away money. A lot of money. Because what I see is how going to the cinema used to be something people of all ages did. Now, it’s mainly for very young people (under 40s). Or families take kids in specific periods like half term bouts of kid stuff.
So I am part of a big bleed of audiences from cinema. This has a loop effect. The audience votes with our feet and the variety of audience contracts to a mainly youngish group who are ALSO reasonably comfortable with the stereotypes. Not critical, not very alive.
So then the suits can say there now, we’re making the films They want. But they’ve driven away all the rest!
I loved (?) the awful tidbit that content is “fill” that a film or programme can’t be too interesting or it will drag attention away from a) ads and b) the star.
Oh goddess …
I think the most interesting issue on this page for me is why the suits turn away money?
So I liked very much the analysis how they use rubbish justifications about a successful film which has good bechdel or breaks stereotypes – saying it’s just an exception – except there are enough ‘exceptions’ to shriek they are not.
So the core of it is that the suits don’t have a hard industry analysis of what makes money, let alone what makes good art. It’s just raw prejudice. As in, the suits can’t cope with anything outside the stereotypes, so they PROJECT their OWN discomfort on The Audience.
This in some worlds of discussion is called a paradigm. In that theory it can only change (Paradigm shift) when the elite that dominates … dies off. A new generation. Because the elite suits literally cannot change – they cannot see differently, they are trapped inside their worldview. No matter how much it’s explained, demonstrated, they will still wriggle out with rubbish justifiactions and it’s them got the power. So they die and can sometimes be replaced with people who see the world is not flat.
However I think there is a bigger problem, a meta-problem. It’s not just the meeja, the films and TV. If it were just meeja a new generation in it would bring in new possibilities.
But the meeja is part of something much bigger, a colossal corporate politics.
This is about a social elite which wants and needs to protect its position as the 1% on top by dumbing down everyone else. Which includes a lot from the education system training stupidity and lack of confidence, to running wars so there can be fear generated to control everyone, and promoting booze and drugs to blind people, and providing bad food so brains don’t work as well as they could.
So the films and TV are one component of the Big Sheep University to train a population to meekly blame themselves (or a scapegoat group) for unemployment, overwork, injustice etc. Who will wreck their lives with debt to buy all the rubbish including an expensive car and new replacements before things wear out – fashion is important.
So the meeja problem is part of a much bigger one. Between 1999 and 2006 I despaired and thought we’d had it because there was nothing but blindness – consumerism – individualism – pornification.
Now? I feel hope because people are fighting back.
The forces of manipulation are colossal, more and more is uncovered all the time about the big dirty deals at the top. But it is being uncovered, and campaigns are having an effect. Love the net!
I am old. I wait to see with held breath if the next few years will lead into riots massacres and wins – freedoms have always been won in blood. Or will it all be suppressed so stiflingly that there is nothing left but sheep life, dolly women and hunk men in a plastic world.
I think we really are teetering on the edge and images in the meeja are part of a massive cultural (and economic) war.
Oh and I’m working on mediaeval Welsh stories – the oldest stories in Britain (Mabinogion) – which were also used as propaganda, but quite positively except no lower class people. They do fail Bechdel sadly but yet some amazing strong women.
I rarely enjoy or agree with feminist slanted articles but this is absolutely bang on. Thank you for your inside view.
I hope this imbalance changes soon (and that you are now a successful novelist/writer et.c.!)
So at UCLA, they teach how to make money in film, not how to write as an art because if they are telling what to write, such as that you can’t have two women in a script talking about something other than a man, then they are essentially pushing the status quo at the expense of art. Sad. Sounds like a bad film school. That said, I took one screenwriting class at UCLA a long time ago and I was never given that advice. Then again, it wasn’t film school, just a class.
whoever was teaching that course should be fired. disgusting.
what an archaic way of thinking–but it won’t stop be from writing female and minority leads. Their stories are just more interesting than basic white man Joe.