Passing Bechdel

[owlmoose]

I posted earlier today about the Women of Dragon Age Challenge. Over on Tumblr, there's been a little bit of a discussion about the choice of the Bechdel Test as a criteria for submissions. I have some thoughts -- of course I have thoughts; any discussion of the Bechdel Test is like catnip to me -- but I didn't want to hijack the post advertising the challenge, so I've come over here to talk about it instead.

One of the things I love about this particular challenge is that it explicitly references Bechdel and requests that every story pass. I have said before, and continue to believe, that the Bechdel Test is not primarily about evaluating the quality or female-friendliness of any one particular work but about looking at larger patterns in media. But still, I do think it can be a really great tool to apply to our own writing, because it makes us really think about our choices. Which characters do we write about? What do they talk about? And why?

To use a Dragon Age example, let's say I decided to write a story about Aveline and Brennan, discussing a man they arrested and the crime he committed. Is that a conversation about a man, or is it a conversation about work? I would tend to say that it's the latter, which would allow it to be considered it a Bechdel pass, even if the criminal is the only thing they talk about. But let me take a step back and ask another question: does the criminal have to be a man? Is there some reason intrinsic to the story I'm telling? Or did I make him a man because we tend to think of male as the default? Did I pick a minor male NPC because he fit into the story better than any other NPC available, or was he just an easy choice? Could I have made the character a woman, or chosen a female NPC, without any fundamental change to the story? And if the answer is yes, then why not do it?

I'm not saying every story can or should pass the strictest version of the Bechdel Test, especially not short stories, and especially not in fanfic where we are limited by the characters presented to us in canon. But I appreciate that we can use this challenge, and others like it, as an opportunity to look at our work a little more critically.

Comments

[sarasa_cat]

Personally, I like this test.

I had to avert my eyes a bit while skimming the tumblr discussion because of DA2 examples but I have long felt that Bechdel is a bit too much of a sound bite. Yet, to be fair, it was originally a response to hollywood films and the vast majority of them fail Bechdel due to the horrid sexism in the movie industry. (Here's one list of Bechdel fails.)

Regarding what you say above, when I saw the women of DA challenge, the first thing I thought of writing is a mage female warden + Morrigan friendship to give more character development to Morrigan's DA:O arc. Such as story has so much potential for good discussion about religion and magic. Yet, while running through the kinds of conversations I could imagine Morrigan and a female mage warden having, I easily -- and naturally -- imagined Morrigan illustrating some of her points with examples that just happen to involve men. While that's a momentary fail of the Bechdel test, I still want to write it anyway but have the warden & Morrigan lampshade it:

Warden: "We are not here to talk about relationships that I have or have not had with other men."
Morrigan: "Nor am I. I merely mentioned it to illustrate how much power the Chantry has held over your life and the lives of others. Surely this bothers you?"

[owlmoose]

In thinking a little more about the exact wording of Bechdel, and how it's usually applied, I think some of the folks in that discussion were taking an overly strict view of the test. In order for a movie or other creative work to pass, the two women don't have to never talk about men at all. They just have to have at least one conversation at some point that doesn't focus on a man. So I actually don't think the example you give above is a fail -- depending on what comes next, it could certainly be a pass. And I like the lampshade idea!

I've seen that checklist before, and it's great. I always appreciate attempts to expand or reformulate Bechdel -- I agree that it's a bit simplistic, but to my mind, that's kind of the point. Something that seems so simple, and so basic, and yet so few works of modern media pass it.

[sarasa_cat]

I should have worded what I said more carefully: I don't believe that my story idea actually fails Bechdel but that it has a big fat trap in the middle that pedants love to point to as a Fail. Thus, the lampshade ;)

The problem I have always had with the Bechdel test is that once it is applied to something other than a 120 minute screenplay that is being sold to a hollywood studio (a haven of rampant sexism that belittles female directors and absolutely refuses to admit that female cinematographers exist), Bechdel becomes more of a jail cell than a useful "base line pass" yardstick. Furthermore, a work can pass Bechdel but still be horridly misogynistic.

[owlmoose]

Agreed on all points, particularly the last one. It's not really a mark of quality or feminist credibility either way. I think the mods of the dragonagewomen challenge are pretty aware of this, fortunately.

I have seen some interesting discussions about ways to extend Bechdel to other media that make more sense for them, particularly the idea of making it a "spectrum" rather than a single-pronged test.

One thing I should probably have made more clear in the post is that in general, I agree that Bechdel and other simple representation tests (like the Frank Miller Test) are more useful for looking at an aggregate than they are as ways to analyze a single work. If any one story I write doesn't pass, I'm normally not too fussed about it. But if I were to consider my entire body of writing and determine that most of my stories didn't pass? That might be a matter of greater concern.

[sarasa_cat]

Haha! The Frank Miller Test. *headdesk*

When I look at the body of my work and the body of other people's work, what I care about most is that I/they:

1. Give women meaningful, fleshed out plot lines (or subplot lines) that are involve the female character dealing with some internal/external conflict that is meaningful to that character.

2. Make sure that female characters in major roles are not purely in service of advancing a male character's plot line and if the female character is acting as a contagonist or guardian for a male character (aka, is potentially serving only as plot vehicle for the male character), that female character deserves her own personal subplot (with internal/external conflict) unless there is a really damn good reason for not giving her one.

[owlmoose]

Of course, and that's the bar I tend to strive for/look for as well. But this is the advanced class. What if you're talking to someone who hasn't even thought about 101? Unfortunately, there are way too many people out there, in fandom and otherwise, who are in that position.

[sarasa_cat]

True, especially if simple rules act as a gateway to developing a more nuanced understanding.

[zen_monk]

I think that your example would count as passing the Bechdel test since I do think the focus is work-related and not necessarily man-related, or even gender-related unless there was some remark about how unusual it is that there's a female criminal running around (as if there weren't any of them around Kirkwall). Then again in hindsight, if I were to think of a female criminal NPC, there really weren't many petty ones around; just the ones who seem to be in a position of control and influence, like Athenril and that crazy Elf lady with the fatal gas and Grace, so ehhhhh.

My impression of what the Bechdel Test is used for is to avoid having the film/art/dialogue be solely male-oriented and to provide dimension to female characters. However, I would still think that even if the dialogue isn't about men specifically, it would still run under the danger of being shallow.

[owlmoose]

Sure. The test isn't perfect, and it's missing a lot of nuances. Still, I find it an interesting way to at least open the conversation.

[zen_monk]

When I was thinking about this, I was mostly focused on rule 3 which involves dialogue other than men, so I hadn't considered 1 and 2 in particular depth of thought and so I think I can now see where your dragon age example's line of thought might come from.

I wonder if it's a requirement for there to have a male character to be more than mentioned in the story for the Bechdel test to work, or if any at all. It would be conceivable to have an all-female villain gang in Kirkwall running amok in the darkness of Lowtown with all kinds of reasons to have formed, the most easiest being enthralled under a demon, as well as having Aveline leading an all female guard because they just happened to be on hand. However, when one thinks of a petty criminal, the shorthand version is usually male because that's what we usually see in any media that has a crime to report. Do we see a male criminal being more realistic because it's more acceptable to our views of what we think of criminals, even when in the universe of Dragon Age a female criminal can be just as realistic and possible as a male one? Is it even more unrealistic to have an all female guard unit assembled even under possible circumstances leading to it? Would this make an almost too easy a pass for the Bechdel test?

I also wonder if it's an automatic fail of the test if the conversation started about a man, but would lead to a different tangent that wouldn't even be about the man at all. Like, if two ladies talked about how cute a guy is, it might lead to dating preferences and then somehow they're talking about food and movies and then cats. And then deep voices. And then when they're swooning over how sexy that guy's accent is, they might then talk about how awesome France is and then Louvre.

And that's my conversation line for the day. So how about that Louvre? 8) Can people BE any more fooled by Dan Brown?

[owlmoose]

What "about a man" means is certainly up for interpretation. But I would say that a conversation that covers men but many other topics is well as part of what a Bechdel pass is about: looking for women to define themselves in ways other than their relationships to men.

However, when one thinks of a petty criminal, the shorthand version is usually male because that's what we usually see in any media that has a crime to report.

Yeah, the media definitely helps shape what we see as the default, which I think influences us all -- professional writers, game developers, fanfic writers... -- when we tend to make random NPCs/OCs male. And that's really what I'm questioning, more than what topics characters talk about. Why are most of the random petty criminals in DA male? Why do we not see a single female dwarf in DA2, when women are criminals and shopkeepers and fighers and nobles about equally with men in Orzammar? These are the assumptions I'm asking us to question.

[pseudo_tsuga]

Bechdel: Not Actually a Test is my favorite post on the subject because it restores more nuance to the conversation.