McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Bechdel test observations
knnn:
--- Quote from: Quantus on July 05, 2012, 02:06:21 PM ---I read a book that was a medieval society, but dominated by the magically superior women, instead of physically dominant Men. So the women engaged in politics, while the men spent their days embroidering pillows. I cant say for certain whether any two men had any conversations that were not about a woman.
--- End quote ---
A good example of that might be Cherryh's "Pride of Chanur" series. I am actually pretty sure that it wouldn't pass an "anti-Betchdel" test (or maybe barely). To be fair, there are 7 different species in the book and most of them cannot communicate with each other. Also, only about half of the races have clear genders, so that kinda limits things.
Quantus:
--- Quote from: knnn on July 05, 2012, 02:54:24 PM --- only about half of the races have clear genders, so that kinda limits things.
--- End quote ---
Haha! Ya, I could see how that would complicate things
hank the ancient:
At the risk of being chewed out here, does it really matter if a single author can't bass the Bechdel test? I would think it more of an issue that the entertainment industry as a whole can't. For instance, I like a cheesy popcorn book series called the destroyer series (the movie Remo Williams is based off this). Clearly it is meant to be campy male fantasy, and this is okay. That's the idea. If however, every book or movie followed the formula of the destroyer series books, then we would have a problem.
So at what point do we start yelling at authors for not intentionally setting out to make their books pass the bechdel test?
At what point do we ask they change their own works to be politically correct in other ways? and at what point will going out of the way to satisfy these requirements actually start to interrupt the story? Worst case scenario, I can see these scenes sticking out like a bad product placement. Hell, why not just make the female-female conversation a feminine hygeine commercial and do both?
I'm not trying to play devil's advocate here, I just want to make the point that if too many people have to throw in their two cents on the creative process we get a story by committee without a cohesive focus. Which is bound to suck. I'd rather read the Dresden Files than a political statement.
OZ:
I only want to touch on this because to do any more could rapidly create a TT but for a large percentage of fiction created in the last half of the twentieth century, it would be possible to guess which overlapping time period it was created in by who the token character was. I always hated this. I think the idea of the Bechdel test is that if you put solid, well rounded (no pun intended) female characters into your story, the dialogue should take care of itself. Of course, as many of us have already mentioned, that would depend on the story being told.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: hank the ancient on July 05, 2012, 04:18:44 PM ---At the risk of being chewed out here, does it really matter if a single author can't bass the Bechdel test? I would think it more of an issue that the entertainment industry as a whole can't.
--- End quote ---
How would one address the entertainment industry as a whole not passing other than encouraging individual authors to pass, though ?
--- Quote ---So at what point do we start yelling at authors for not intentionally setting out to make their books pass the bechdel test?
--- End quote ---
Yelling's a loaded word. But noting it; at the point when we are writing reviews or criticism, or talking about books to our friends, seems good enough to me. (And note, I started this thread out of concern for my own work doing well by this standard, not with the intent of yelling at anyone else.)
--- Quote ---At what point do we ask they change their own works to be politically correct in other ways? and at what point will going out of the way to satisfy these requirements actually start to interrupt the story?
--- End quote ---
"Politically correct" is vague enough a term that I'm not seeing any useful way to engage with it; if reflecting whatever the underlying set of values you wish to reflect interrupts the story, be that a set of values that supports women being depicted as people who talk about things other than men or any other position you want to address, then that's not a problem with the values or the desire to reflect them, it's a problem with not writing the story well enough.
--- Quote ---Worst case scenario, I can see these scenes sticking out like a bad product placement.
--- End quote ---
I think I have faith in the ability of any random writer to do better than that. (Also, it would occur to me that a book in which a scene with two women talking to each other about something other than a man drastically sticks out from a background in which that never happens has problems enough on those grounds, or at least, needs some other reason for being that way; being set in a fourteenth-century Catholic monastery, for example.)
--- Quote ---I just want to make the point that if too many people have to throw in their two cents on the creative process we get a story by committee without a cohesive focus.
--- End quote ---
I think again you are envisioning this at a different scale from me.
By analogy; suppose I wanted to write a book set on Mars. What you're talking about sounds to me like you think I am saying "oh, you've decided you want to write a book set on Mars. You must immediately go out and read Edgar Rice Burroughs and HG Wells and Ray Bradbury and Kim Stanley Robinson so you don't do those things that have already been done." Which would indeed do odd and probably ungood things to creative focus.
Whereas what I am actually trying to say is "Ideally, if you decide to write a book set on Mars, you'll already have read Burroughs and Wells and Bradbury etc, probably many times and probably years ago. You'll have a good feeling for their place in the history of the genre, you'll be conscious of the sort of influence they have, and they may or may not influence you but you won't have to paste them on or jam them into your story, they'll be integral to how it develops in the first place because of being part of the context you come from."
--- Quote ---I'd rather read the Dresden Files than a political statement.
--- End quote ---
Oh, I think the DF has some pretty clear political perspectives in it - being pro-free will, for example. Well threaded in and integral to the story, but still political perspectives.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version