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[wombat]

I think that's exactly right that that's what it's good for. That's what it was for in the first place.  As Wikipedia says "originally conceived for evaluating films" and they don't mean, like, Citizen Kane or whatever.

By the way, the Wikipedia entry also reveals that, relevant to our interests here, the concept comes from something a character said in a comic strip, in case anyone didn't know.

[wombat]

Also from Wikipedia

Nina Power... wrote  that it remained to be determined how often real life passes the Bechdel test

LOL. I don't know who that person is but my real life passes that test, like, basically constantly.

[pmcd9]

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.

But you misunderstand. She asks because she thinks most bands with chicks suck. I don't know about the white part, maybe she's racist.

Also, I've heard of this Bechamel sauce, but was never sure what it meant. Glad we are having this discussion.

[colmore]

It would be really weird if next year in 85% of the movies and TV shows, the characters that make important decisions and had real conflict were all female, and the men in the story existed to establish backstory and set scenes or be wet blankets, except for a couple of primary male characters who pretty much just acted like women.  We'd probably find that odd.  Some might complain about the Feminazis.

The Bechtel test isn't even for individual works of art.  If an individual show, movie, or comic fails it, it isn't a big deal.  It's a big deal that SO MANY shows, movies, and comics fail it.

Onstad writes what he knows, and he knows drinking beers and smoking weed with his bros.  When he tries to write beyond that it gets awkward.  Can you imagine how terribly he'd fail if he tried to do a plotline where the primary characters were Molly and Pat?  Of course, when you're just talking about an individual artist, there's nothing really wrong with that.

And Dykes to Watch Out For was a fantastic strip.  I wish the archives were still online.

[littlefallsmets]

I did love that strip!

I do like saying that the Bechamel Test is if two characters talk about the French mother sauces, though.

[theinevitable]

hi Colmore here are some cans.

I wrote a big long response that was maybe a little overwrought and my computer luckily deleted it.

I think it's a bummer that including meaningful female characters is such a burden in the year 2013. "do you treat half the human population as walking sex/emotion props" is not the most ridiculous standard to judge a story by.

[colmore]

Yeah, that reply was edited down from about 1000 words.  It had gotten INTENSE.

[colmore]

Also,

A joke:

"Two women walk into a bar, order drinks, and talk about the Bechdel Test."

[modified to correctly spell the subject I raised in the discussion.  duh]

[dejavroom]

It would be really weird if next year in 85% of the movies and TV shows, the characters that make important decisions and had real conflict were all female, and the men in the story existed to establish backstory and set scenes or be wet blankets, except for a couple of primary male characters who pretty much just acted like women.  We'd probably find that odd.  Some might complain about the Feminazis.

A scenario such as you describe would never happen "from one year to the next". That's crazy talk. It's the talk of someone not used to following premises to their logical conclusions, or facts to their possible causative factors (and who doesn't see why this should be important in the first place). It's the talk of someone whose imagination isn't trained to obey the necessary constrains of logic. Such a scenario as you describe would be the possible if human societies had followed some sort of matriarcal organization throughout history, and this would reflect the prominent role that women would have then -- as a result of an organic, long-in-the-making process, just as the prominence of men was due to organic conditions -- among which "might is right" certainly was a definitive factor, just like the 9-months of pregnancy in which women become more fragile and in need of care. You can't blame them: it was a simpler time back then, people had fewer illusions about the world. In ancient Greece, gender roles were closely related to biological realities: "Men protect the polis, women populate the polis". I'm mentioning this as one example pulled from at least 200.000 years of steady development following -- with few deviations -- a determined pattern. I'm not justifying the use of force and coertion of the weakest by the strongest, but I'm expounding to you that there is an organic reason for such a state of affairs, which is as deterministic and mechanicist (also, sometimes brutal and unjust, never forget) as the way in which water flows down an estuary. Back then people didn't have self-reflexion, at least not as much or as sophisticated as we have now. Your "argument" means nothing, because arguments must be at least minimally tethered in reality.

Onstad writes what he knows, and he knows drinking beers and smoking weed with his bros.  When he tries to write beyond that it gets awkward.

Bullshit. Use the Bechdel test all you want, just don't try to imply that Onstad doesn't know how to write female characters. I have strip after strip after strip to prove it. The women aren't central to the strips because the protagonists are male. So what? Get over it, and learn to tell the difference:

a) Polly was more than Cornelius' (Cornelius!) match in wit; b) Ray's mom is adorable and relentless (she destroyed Pat's assholery without even noticing it); c) Molly gets a lot of flak for being... well, a well-grounded adult, in contrast to Roastbeef, who most of the time needs a lamp to breathe. But she is the balanced one in the relationship, and she is the voice of reason. That is not so funny? Too bad -- it happens that she's not one of the protagonists d) Even Molly's mom in Wales proved to be Eaorwerth(sp?) match when they argued, and she stated her opinion of men in not altogether kind terms (It doesn't matter if Eaorwerth reacted like an asshole and called her an "harpy". She was right and he was wrong. Fuck anyone who says I'm supposed to identify with a dunderhead character just because he's the same sex as me). Women in Achewood get amazing dialogue (Molly's quip about men being able to eat from solidified farts if they formed a film on linoleum stayed with me). Women according to Achewood: "The lady is the mountain behind the tiny flaming fis.hing cabin of the man". Can you read that metaphor? What do you think it implies (not in terms of how interesting female characters are in the strip, but in what might be the author's opinion of them -- which can't help but colour how he's gonna portray them)?

But no. All the oppressed womyn see is "props to the male cast", doesn't matter if they're written with as much care as they are in Achewood.

This is what saddens me and worries me, because it has to do with the individual's capacity for interpretation and appreciation of art. There's a reason Achewood became such a cult classic: people could tell that Onstad Paid Attention. That includes the capacity for treating each character, even the most peripheral, with the same love and care as the main ones. Art is supposed to be an organic, integrated whole, something that comes out as a result of an individual's life experiences. It is not driven by conscious choices alone -- the subconscious gives it its ballast (like an iceberg of which the biggest chunk is invisible unerwater) . So to come at a highly-sophisticated, intricate, long-in-the-making work and demand that it be not only funny and truthful to the artist's life experience, but also that it should meet some politically motivated requirement that's so tangential to the matter at hand as to be inconsequential -- the meeting of which might as well be impossible (considering the already mentioned process by which an organic work of art answers to itself first and foremost) -- bespeaks a level of arrogance only seen in children, the demented or someone whose critical capabilities were mangled beyond repair by sociopolitical wish-fulfillment. This is the germinal state of the same type of "thinking" responsible for the persecution of artists such as Tarkovsky (the Party used to say that his movies were "bourgeoise reveries" because they underrepresented the proletariat's strugglebalrbalgbagh), and that is why I don't brook it: because it can hurt a good artist's prospects, based in parameters which bespeak a lack of understanding of the most basic aspects of what Art is and what it exists for. It's philistinism disguised as "good intentions". I heard of a place that's paved with "good intentions". It's a nice enough place to visit, I guess, but you wouldn't want to live there.

But you can't see this, because it doesn't jive with the empowerment agenda. It's all about oppression, right? In the end I suppose this is all fair in the sense that everyone of us will get from a work of art what we are willing to put into it in the first place. Some people bring more; some people bring oh so much less.

[wombat]

A scenario such as you describe would never happen "from one year to the next".

Deja I think you miss the intent of colmore's comment, which is that it's a thought experiment.

And I still think you're getting upset about something that no reasonable person would do, which is to apply this test to actual art as opposed to popular crap. With Achewood being clearly in the category of actual art.

[dejavroom]

Onstad writes what he knows, and he knows drinking beers and smoking weed with his bros.  When he tries to write beyond that it gets awkward.

This is my beef right here.

[AugustWest]

Would that my writing was so awkward.

[wombat]

Personally I do feel that the female characters in Achewood are mostly props and not as interesting as the guys. It does make Molly less interesting that she has to be the grownup and the guys get to have all the interesting problems, and that does seem stereotypical to me. But I don't care. The strip does what it does brilliantly, and I don't expect it to do everything.

[pmcd9]

What test does it pass (or maybe fail, I'm getting confused) if it has two male characters talking about a woman?

[jay-ell]

I like the way Onstad writes women. The strip is a boy's club, sure. But female characters, when included, help drive the story and are not at the mercy of anyone or anything. They have agency. And they serve as foils to the aimless flailing of the male protagonists. It works.

Why are the ladies of the board the ones who are the most cool with this?

Also, while a lot of my conversations pass the Bechdel test, many do not. Do you know why? Two reasons: 1) Most of my friends are men, so I don't have conversations with women very often, and 2) I am a woman who likes men, and I like to discuss their finer qualities with my best lady friend. What kind of world would we live in if people got upset every time two straight men talked about a girl on screen?