Bechdel’s Law
Charlie Stross has been talking about Bechdel’s Law. Alison Bechdel is the author of the excellent graphic novel Fun Home. Which you should read because it is funny and true and heartbreaking and honest and really good.
Bechdel’s Law
Alison Bechdel, cartoonist and author of Dykes to Watch Out For, has an interesting observation on movies — a little test she applies to them. It’s a very short checklist, viz:
1. Does it have at least two women in it,
2. Who [at some point] talk to each other,
3. About something besides a man.
I bring this up as a point of interest, because of what it says about the blind spots of popular entertainment. Most Hollywood movies fail this test; if you extend #3 only slightly, to read “About something besides men or marriage or babies”, you can strike out about 50% of the small proportion of mass-entertainment movies that do otherwise seem to pass the test.
The reason Bechdel’s test is important is because it’s a diagnostic indicator for the objectification of women. It’s designed to identify the kind of film where, if two women talk to each other at all, the only subject of conversation is men (or babies). What it tells us is that our current movie and (to a lesser extent) our TV culture is pathologically misogynistic — be it in in the adoption of conservative Kinder, Kuche, Kirche values or the more extreme violence of women in refrigerators.
Charlie has been applying this to fiction and particularly his own work. To his dismay he has found himself wanting.
It’s interesting to apply Bechdel’s test to written fiction, although under some circumstances it breaks down; if the book you’re analysing is a first-person narrative from a man’s point of view, then it’s relatively unlikely to pass: similarly if it’s a depiction of skull-duggery in a mediaeval monastery (thank you, Umberto Eco). But it’s a chastening warning when you apply it to your own fiction and find out that large chunks of it fail the test. I looked at my own novels: I’ve habitally made an effort to include strong female characters who are not just there to serve as a trophy or handmaiden for the Hero Protagonist, and even so, a couple of my books fail. Looking at my recent reading in the SF genre in general, the picture isn’t good; while written SF comes off a lot better than Hollywood overall, with the exception of fiction set in all-male environments, passing the Bechdel test should be the norm, not an unusual occurrence.
What an interesting thought experiment. The last couple of films I watched certainly fail – In Bruges, The Dark Night, Be Kind Rewind, There Will Be Blood. It’s hard to think of one that passes, off the top of my head. If the writers or directors of the films were women, would it have made a difference? They were all enjoyable and well made and I would recommend them, but it’s the idea of the cultural blind spot I find interesting. Do women notice these things, does it impact on your enjoyment? As a man as soon as the explosions start and Batman appears that blindspot clamps down on my limbic system like a vice. More splosion! More Batman!
Would the inclusion of two female characters have substantially changed the films listed above? Probably yes, in the case of at least two.
I’ve been reading a lot of non-fiction recently, but applying the law to the last ten fiction books I read:
The Tain – No
Twilight, Stephanie Meyer – No
Accelerando, Charlie Stross – Yes
Soon I will be Invincible, Austin Grossman – Yes
The Dragon Waiting, John M. Ford – Yes
Foundation, Isaac Asimov – Nope
The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch – Yes
Day of The Triffids, John Wyndham – No
A Drink Before The War, Dennis Lehane – Yes
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, R.L.S. – No
Half and half, with several of the above on the ‘Yes’ side containing only one instance of female characters conversing. Only one of the above is written by a woman, would the list be different if it was 90% female authors? I suspect it would.
Currently myself and a friend are furiously editing and rewriting some of our fiction pieces and handing each other chunks for reading, comments and general sanity checking. It’s great fun and harrowing all at the same time.
Mine does not pass the test, hers does.
Can anyone recommend a book or movie that passes the Bechdel Test?
July 29th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Strangely, a TV programme that does pass: NCIS.
July 29th, 2008 at 10:50 am
FUN HOME was really good.
This is interesting especially in light of a conversation I had with some writing peeps the other night, about how even female YA writers fall into that trope — a YA novel can be about a.) girls b.) conversing c.) about boys or their failure to fit into the popular group so that boys will notice them.
It’s limiting and very boring.
Asimov… well, he’s a product of his times, and so I forgive him his female characters. And Stephanie Meyer… well, let’s not get started on that. But it’s a bit disconcerting to think that yes, SFF really fails this one a lot of the time, and it’s one of my favorite genres. Hmmmm…
I’m going to have to think about your question. I’m not watching a lot of movies at present, nor reading a lot of adult books, but I’ll get back to this…
July 29th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Stories without female characters, that’s one thing. Some stories have no important female characters in them simply because things sometimes happen without women getting involved. There’s nothing wrong with that.
I think the most interesting thing highlighted by Bechdel’s Law is the popular perception of the inverse, and how this perception reveals itself in literature/media: do things happen without men getting involved?
It’s interesting. What a writer has to take away from this is not that all stories have to have a 50:50 ratio of male to female characters, or that all female characters have to be impressively deep thinkers, but just that when writing women, you must be aware of any assumptions you make based on gender.
You can choose to write a woman as a tedious, shallow-minded dolt. You have the same freedom when writing men. You can even choose not to compensate for that with added dimensions of character, just to let her be what she is, if that fits the story. But it has to be a choice and not a default state. How the fact of that choice might reveal itself in a text, I don’t know.
I would hate for this Bechdel’s Law to become a sort of prescription for all writing, even subconsciously. “Oh look at this strong female character over here! I’ve given her six pages of dialogue with no male gender-specific pronouns whatsoever! I swear I’m one of the good guys!”
July 29th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
“I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability.”
Ah, Melvin.
July 29th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
For a show that’s all about misogynistic men of the 1960s, Mad Men actually does a good job creating three-dimensional female characters that do in fact talk about other things besides their men. Although the things they do talk about (office politics, Kennedy, etc.) tend to be about Men, not just the Man in their life. But overall it’s an interesting take on Bechdel’s Law.
July 29th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Chris, Cop Drama’s and procedurals have a better than average chance of passing. Unfortunately, given the subject matter, they tend to have a high ratio of women in refrigerators syndrome. I went through a period of watching lots of CSI Las Vegas until finally the whole series started to creep me out a little. All those lingering autopsy sequences of dead women. However it did have some great female leads in Marg Helgenberger and Jorja Fox.
I remember as a kid hating Cagney and Lacey because they spent too much time talking and not enough time chasing baddies and crashing through cardboard boxes. I don’t think was the intended audience though.
Brian, I’ve heard good things about Mad Men, I’ll check it out. In my opinion the greatest female characters to appear on TV in the last ten years are the glorious women of Deadwood. Trixie, the Widow Garret, Calamity Jane, Joanie Stubbs, and Jewel. My God, what women! I’d give my eye teeth to write female characters half as good as those.
Tadmack, Asimov’s female characters are dire. It’s truly an undiscovered country for him. As if he’s never spoken to a woman in his entire life, only read about them in books or seen pictures in Time magazine. With Foundation it felt like Asimov had neither the desire nor the interest in writing a female character, but in fairness I have not read his later work.
Neil, I agree with you, the perception of the inverse do things happen without men getting involved? is another worthwhile thought experiment. As to Bechdel’s Law becoming a prescription for writing, perhaps ‘law’ is too strong a connotation, rule of thumb may be more appropriate. It would certainly be a beneficial exercise to apply it to my own work on occasion to push me out of my comfort zone.
July 30th, 2008 at 11:26 am
I think that I’ve read everything Asimov wrote (at least, of his fiction – I wasn’t into his other stuff), and he never got a decent female character in there, unless she was simply a man with breasts and a bit weak. He … just didn’t get it, like so many of the 50’s and 60’s writers.
They’re making it into a movie, FYI. Think they’ll take enough liberties with it to turn it into something that passes the test?
August 1st, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Over on Acephalous there was a similar complaint about the movie Iron Man, which everyone else seemed to adore. (Haven’t seen it…)
Fun Home is excellent. I was going to try to recommend you more books, but then I realized a good proportion of my books are in boxes waiting to be shifted to another room. I think in Ghost World (Daniel Clowes) they talk about something besides guys.
The movie Juno has female characters in it (plus it’s really damn funny) but because it’s about teen pregnancy, I guess you can’t get away from the fact that there was a man involved. But it’s a great movie.
August 7th, 2008 at 12:27 am
I tagged you for a meme. I’m very, very sorry.
September 6th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Do women notice these things, does it impact on your enjoyment?
Yes. It doesn’t stop me from loving Action movies (The Dark Knight ruled!)
but I usually am disappointed by the female character (usually there’s only one) or disappointed that there aren’t more female characters.
Even movies written by women often don’t pass the test. When Harry Met Sally is one of my all time favorites. Meg Ryan and Carrie Fisher only ever talk about men. But I usually justify that because Billy Crystal and Bruno Kirby (RIP) only talk about women.
Kill Bill kicked ass though and brought out the most tender feelings for me (I know, weird isn’t it?) because it combined two things I love: great female characters and action. Thank you, Tarantino.
I also heard D.E.B.S. is fairly good.
That’s my two cents.