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[sensate]

It's like it's 2002 all over again.


Strip Link

[pmcd9]

It's like it's 2002 all over again.

No we put the Strip Link in the first post even back then.

[AugustWest]

Reading the Robb Report semi-tumescent. 

It's like the male version of Town and Country.

[Carlos del Vaca]

YAAAAAAAAAY T!

[ianmalcolm2]

can't help but wonder if this is just some kinda reflection of Onstad's upward-lookin romantic prospects. Like I took enough classes in book-learnin that I know conflating art with artist is a sin, but—as someone here so eloquently put it—T is pretty much just Onstad in a stuffed bear suit.

Also, ima venture that "punk rock motherfucker" is probably one of the least quotable bits of what was, sadly, a fairly unquotable strip. It feels like the dialogue in these recent things is sometimes so obtuse it's verging on self-parody. Like, Ray isn't someone whose words I should have to reread twice to understand. Ray is a man of direct verbiage.

But ima stop being a cock

[colmore]

Good to see the return of another female character defined 100% by her relationship to one of the males.  I love this strip, but it fails the Bechtel test miserably.

And hey everyone.  It's like old times.  Old times where I am not very good or consistent at online forums.

[AugustWest]

And hey everyone.  It's like old times.  Old times where I am not very good or consistent at online forums.

You just post any old way you want and the Good Lord God will provide.

[AugustWest]

Good to see the return of another female character defined 100% by her relationship to one of the males.  I love this strip, but it fails the Bechtel test miserably.

Very true.  However, in defense of Onstad, he did create Ultra-Peanut, the greatest female character in the history of anything anywhere.

[dejavroom]

And in defense of interesting people everywhere, the Bechdel test is a dunderhead parameter with which to judge a work of art anyway.

[theinevitable]

I don't know that I completely agree. "Does this work meet the barest minimum of treating women like individuals instead of plot-advancing sex objects" is a pretty good parameter for something made in 2013. The lady herself has said that she is not thrilled about the popularization of her flippant remark as a Test that things have to pass, but it's still a legitimate thing to consider.

Ugh now I feel like my roommate's girlfriend who has to ask, every time she hears a band, if they are all white males.

[ianmalcolm2]

I think the Bechdel test is, at least, a good line of defence against people who think real life should be more like Mad Men.

[dejavroom]

The Bechdel test is concerned with only a specific subset within the many parameters with which a piece of fiction can be appraised, so it can't help but being limited by its own narrownness in its ability to tell us whether a piece of fiction is good or not. The Bechdel test can only tell you that a piece of fiction passed the Bechdel test or not. It will not tell you anything about all other aspects that we have learned to use to judge a work of art (harmony, unity, rhythm, psychological maturity etc). Since it's possible that a work of fiction can fail the Bechdel test (because, for instance, the author committed the unspeakable sin of making *its protagonist male*) and still be good fiction, it seems to be fairly useless as a general appraisal tool for me.

What I mean is there are richer approaches. What I mean is, yeah, don't be like the lady who asks if all the band members are white males.

Also, before everybody starts telling me to check my cis privilege or whatever is the parlance of the times, I must point out that the question of the test's utility is disputed within the very academic environment where it thrives. The encyclopaedic knowledge pipes in:

"The Bechdel test only indicates whether women are present in a work of fiction to a certain degree. A work can pass the test and still contain sexist content, and a work with prominent female characters can fail the test.[2] A work may fail the test for reasons unrelated to gender bias, such as because its setting works against the inclusion of women (e.g., Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, set in a medieval monastery).[3] For these reasons, the Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin criticized the test as prizing "box-ticking and stat-hoarding over analysis and appreciation", and suggested that the underlying problem of the lack of well-drawn female characters in film ought to be a topic of discourse, rather than films failing or passing the Bechdel test.[26]"

[wombat]

I feel like this test is only ever mentioned in the context of crap Hollywood movies and TV shows anyway, not "works of art."

I think it's fine if Onstad sticks to writing the characters he is good at. I have never felt that what was wrong with the strip was that it didn't have enough characters of my gender.

[dejavroom]

(But mostly I'm just incensed at the utter devastation that sociopolitical-oriented thinking has inflicted upon independent, personal, critical reading capabilities, where the diversity and complexity of relations within a theoretical space is replaced by myopic "box-checking and stat-hoarding", to use the article's words).

[dejavroom]

I feel like this test is only ever mentioned in the context of crap Hollywood movies and TV shows anyway, not "works of art."

I think it's fine if Onstad sticks to writing the characters he is good at. I have never felt that what was wrong with the strip was that it didn't have enough characters of my gender.

I find myself agreeink with you here, in both points.

So in a way the Bechdel test even makes some sort of perverted sense, like a crude, but necessary tool with which to ward off the worst offenders? "This is pop crap, so there's a chance that it was written by people who may not be the most mature specimens, so perhaps I need a shortcut to see if this is worth my time" (I should have caught that when the woman in the last panel in Bechdel's strip says that the last film she was able to see was "ALIEN". A good film and all that, but hardly your Tarkovsky or Godard-grade flick).