![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Passing Bechdel
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.
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.
no subject
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?
no subject
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.