Comments on: Little bit more on the Bechdel-Wallace test

By: cbjames

cbjames — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:45:04 +0000

I’m sitting her wracking my brain trying to think of a scene in The Wire with two women talking but not about men. I can only come up with the Lesbian detective and her partner, who really wasn’t in the series that much.

There were plenty of women in the series, but I can’t think of them interacting. Just the detective and the D.A. characters once in a while. Why not have two women reporters in the newspaper section? Surely there could have been two women in the middle school section. Why focus on four boys that year and not four girls?

Does this make it less brilliant? You know, I think it does. It’s still brilliant, but can it claim to present a thorough picture of urban America, which many say it does, when it doesn’t feature enough women to regularly show them talking to eachother?

It reminds me of people who say J.R.R. Tolkien created a world when he wrote his Middle Earth books. I always say, sure, a world with almost no women in it, but still, a world.

By: pixelfish

pixelfish — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:51:00 +0000

One of my favs, Lawrence of Arabia, doesn’t pass it either, I don’t think. I think there’s like a female nurse from a mission in one scene near the end, and I think that’s about it for female screen presence in that movie.

By: Ted Lemon

Ted Lemon — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 06:26:25 +0000

Not to make light of the actual topic, which I think is quite telling, but every time you bring this up I think of the Voight-Kampff test. I’m not sure what that means…

By: Desdemona

Desdemona — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:59:53 +0000

The Princess Bride doesn’t pass and it’s the best movie on the planet. Ever. (Actually no. But it is one of my favorites)

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 17:46:40 +0000

The point is not about individual books or films, it’s about the bigger picture, which is that we live in a world where very few movies pass.

Thank you! I’ve been blogging and discussing this with a lot of people lately, and that sums up exactly what I’ve been trying to say. I’m not concerned with individual shows failing; I’m angry and saddened that so many individual shows (movies, etc) fail that pop culture oddly devoid of influential or interesting women.

That so many YA novels pass is a huge part of why I read YA as an adult.

By: Serafina Zane

Serafina Zane — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 16:31:14 +0000

That’s the thing about it—some stories just don’t have a lot of female characters. But the fact that as it is, these are the only stories getting told means that other ones should get told first. If there wasn’t such a majority, it could be judged on a “that’s part of the story” basis. But, alas, there is a huge majority.