levels of bechdel

[kaigou]

If you haven't heard of the Bechdel Test (where have you been), here are the requirements for a movie, television show, book, play, etc to get a passing grade.

1. It has to have at least two women in it.
   
2. Who talk to each other.
   
3. About something besides a man.

Given the plethora of dramas, movies, anime, and manga/manhwa I've watched or read in the past six months, I'm starting to think this just isn't enough. For instance, a lot of the k-dramas pass the Bechdel Test... on total technicalities. Women discuss: what they'll wear out that night; what make-up they use or their nightly moisturizing routine; doing housework; what kind of food to make or how to make it; how their current diet-fad works and whether it's working. It's a lot of women-are-talking ... about things that are stereotypically "okay" for women to discuss: all the things that, in one way or another, are part and parcel of the requirements society pushes onto women for being women.

Shorter version: there's a lot of Bechdel-Test-passing in which #3 is satisfied by conversations that, basically, revolve around the trappings of femininity. The resulting message is that if women aren't focused on men, then they're focused on what could make them attractive to men.

Thus, I suggest we need multiple levels of Bechdel. If the above three requirements are the Basic Bechdel, the following is the additional requirement that's sometimes added into the Bechdel Test and called the Mo Movie Measure.

1. It has to have at least two women in it.
   
2. Who are both Named Characters.
   
3. Who talk to each other.
   
4. About something besides a man.

In other words, an unnamed female cop talking to an unnamed female criminal about jail time, in the background as the hero walks past, does not qualify. Hell, it doesn't even qualify if it's in the foreground. Unless we're talking about Sergio Leone, unnamed characters are like Red Shirts: expendable, unimportant to the overall plot, and generally insignificant.

In general, it seems like the Mo Movie Measure is probably how most people do interpret the Bechdel Test (that it must be between two named characters). Despite that, being explicit is probably the best way to side-step anyone attempting to argue Basic Bechdel passing on a single conversation, frex, between a female customer and a female postal clerk. That's not a pass, if you ask me; that's a mockery.

The Advanced Mo Movie Measure would have these additional changes:

1. It has to have at least three women in it.
   
2. Who are both Named Characters.
   
3. Who are not related to each other.
   
4. Who talk to each other in pairs or in trio.
   
5. About something besides a man.

Per #3: I've seen a lot of dramas recently that would fail if you said the women must be something other than mother/daughter, grandmother/daughter, sisters, or aunt/niece, or even mother-in-law/daughter-in-law. Women talking to other women in the same family continues the women-as-domestic voices. If the goal is to demand stories in which women operate in the public sphere, then maybe we need to be explicit about demanding non-family discussions.

This is not to say that a woman talking to her mother about, say, financial planning would be bad. It could be a great scene. It should just not be the only scene that qualifies, across the entire story. Don't these women know anyone outside their own relations, or their husband's relations?

I think of the Mo Movie Measure (whether basic or advanced) is more focused on who the women are, and how many of them there are. We could probably consider the Mo Movie Measure to really be more like a two-part Intermediate Bechdel, in a way.

Problem is, that's just not enough, after the number of dramas I've seen that would even satisfy this much, rather easily. These dramas are often called women-centric, and they do have multiple named female character roles... but the discussions between remain topics like "what it means to be a mother" or "what makes a girl good" or "how to have fashion sense". It's not quite nail polish color, but it's close. For me, that's a fail.

In contrast, most Hollywood movies may pass the Basic Bechdel but fail the Advanced Mo Movie Measure because the movie only has two named female characters in the first place. Trying to push the edges of the definition, methinks, is the best (maybe only) way to make it obvious just how pathetically minimal the Basic Bechdel really is -- and how "naming the characters" may look good on the surface but could be just another Hollywood sop, if you really think about it. Because again, letter, but not spirit, baby.

Therefore, I think it's time we have an Advanced Bechdel.

1. It has to have at least two women in it.
   
2. Who are both Named Characters.
   
3. Who are not related to each other.
   
4. Who talk to each other.
   
5. About something besides a man or male-centric role.*
   
6. And focus on the women's personal goals, experiences, or opinions independent of male influence.
   
   1. career ambition or goals
      
   2. education ambition or goals
      
   3. work-related or school-related tasks or projects
      
   4. a non-traditionally-feminine topic or issue
      
   5. or just something that isn't gender-limited/defined
      

* If two women in the palace are discussing political machinations by the King, and they're both focused on what the King is doing and what the King plans... that passes the Basic Bechdel, but fails the Advanced Bechdel, because ultimately the women remain focused on a man. Yes, it's the "position of the King" or "the position of the CEO", but if the story otherwise posits that this position is masculine by default, it's still a conversation about a man. You might argue it's a generic man (in that the women would be discussing the role regardless of who fills it) but we're still at the letter and not the spirit, because the role is default male. Fail.

Note: this is not to say that such conversations shouldn't take place. Often, they're crucial to plot-development. It's when these are the only conversations women share in a drama, there comes a point where you have to realize it's passing the Basic Bechdel on a technicality right up there with "the conversation wasn't about a man per se, but about being pretty (for a man)".

I'm not sure how better to express #6. The idea is to take it beyond simply "not being about a man", and into the realm of "without repeating or being strongly influenced by a man". In other words, if two women are discussing financial investment and one woman's points are simply repeating what her boyfriend said... fail. She must be expressing her own perspective or opinion or conclusions, not parroting. In other words, a conversation where the women own their own perspectives.

It's possible. Plenty of men take in information, and can repeat it without feeling the need to Appeal to Authority, but when it's women discussing a traditionally non-feminine topic (car repair, bank loans, local politics, business development, police corruption, whatever), one of them will eventually do the Appeal to (Some Guy's) Authority. Because, y'know, he must be an authority. He's got dangly parts, after all.

Thus, the story might appear to satisfy #1 through #6, but fails on the substance of the sub-clauses for #6.

ETA: I added a final sub-clause, but wasn't sure how to express it, since (obviously) work and education aren't the sole extent of any person's life, regardless of gender. Basically, if two women are discussing their favorite hockey team, pass. If two women are discussing how to avoid holiday traffic, pass. If two women are discussing something that would stereotypically be considered objects of "feminine/womanly" interest -- like dieting, or doing one's hair, or how to apply makeup -- then, for me, fail. Because women just don't sit around all day and obsess about how to appear attractive to men, at least, not the women I want to spend my time knowing.

If you're wondering why these levels, it's partly because it's a lot easier to apply peer pressure when you can also sound like you're passing a judgment on the work -- which, in a way, the Bechdel Test does. To snark, "Yeah, it passed the Basic Bechdel, but it totally failed to achieve the Advanced," I think, implies that passing the Basic Bechdel isn't all that impressive. And the thing is: it's not, not really.

Instead of using the Bechdel Test as a positive, using the Basic Bechdel would be damning with faint praise. That fits for me, seeing how its barest minimum is pretty faint, comparatively. "Well, it had two female characters, who did talk about their work. For about thirty-seven seconds. In a movie that's a total of ninety-seven minutes. That's about .06% passing, but technically, it's passing!" Being able to proclaim that a movie passes the Advanced -- even the Expert -- would, in turn, be saying something more than simply, "the movie satisfied the barest minimum to remind the audience that half the world's population is female."

Which brings us to the Expert Bechdel. It's the Advanced Bechdel with some additional simple criteria, revolving around the differences between the women speaking (outside of familial relationships).

1. It has to have at least two unrelated women in it.
   
2. Who are both Named Characters.
   
3. Who are not related to each other.
   
4. Who talk to each other.
   
5. About something besides a man or male-centric role.*
   
6. And focus on the women's personal goals, experiences, or opinions independent of male influence.
   
   1. career ambition or goals
      
   2. education ambition or goals
      
   3. work-related or school-related tasks or projects
      
   4. any other non-traditionally-feminine topics or issues
      
7. Where the women differ in at least two of the following:
   
   1. culture
      
   2. race
      
   3. native language
      
   4. generation (age)
8. with bonus points for differing in:
   
   1. sexuality
      
   2. religion
      
   3. class
      

Just to make this clear, I don't mean minor differences. A five-year age gap is pretty much a nothing once you're through your mid-twenties, compared to an early-twenties college student having coffee with an unrelated woman who's sixty. An Episcopalian and a Lutheran are only marginally differing per beliefs, compared to a Taoist and a Jew. Two white middle-class women -- one urban, one rural -- will have some differences, but outside personal experience/personality, it's still not nearly as much as if the two women were a white working-class student who's a first-generation immigrant from Poland across the table from an upper-class Black woman from Chicago who's a generation older.

So: if the conversation is between a Brazilian-born Catholic and a lesbian Jew from Minnesota, and they're discussing concrete details of investing in a joint business venture, total pass on the Expert Bechdel. And if they're joined by another woman who's a middle-class African-American woman who's thirty years their senior and is an expert on the economics of transnational resource management, and none of them are related to each other, the Advanced Mo Movie Measure is also satisfied and I'd pay good freaking money to get to see that movie.

Especially if they then put down the ledgers and head out to kick some Bad Guy ass.

ETA: as usual, see comments for further discussion.

Comments

[dharma_slut]

This is two excellently thinky posts in a row. I'm sure I have something to say but my mind keeps on trickling away into inchoate irritation or something because it's a long winter of discontent.

[kaigou]

Actually, I'm just procrastinating on dealing with the cabinetry over the fridge. Really!

[hokuton_punch]

Okay, I don't really have time to write a proper comment because I kept dithering about whether I wanted to comment at all, but I'm going to come back later with something substantial about how I don't disagree on some points, but there are things that bother me and I'd like to discuss them when I have the time to express myself halfway decently. SO I WILL BE BACK.

[kaigou]

You know you are ALWAYS welcome to comment! It's always a work-in-progress over here, anyway... and mostly, I'm just trying to come up with some framework to express better where/what I like about certain shows, and why other shows... well, yes, those other shows would pass the Bechdel but it feels, hrm, wrong to praise those shows for that because they're only sort of passing. I mean, just last night, watching a long scene between two women, ostensibly discussing one woman's personal ambitions for her career -- but her justification for her career-approach was basically, "my boyfriend thinks I should do X, so I guess I should do X," and the other woman talking about X with her. Or the show where women's discussions amounted to (in what was really a hysterical scene all the same) complaining about younger women and why men like them -- which really, if you boil it down, was a conversation about "what men like" but framed through a lens of "what we don't like about other women". Technically, it passed the Bechdel on the face of it, b/c the women verbalized only "what we dislike about younger women" but the implication throughout the scene (and the impetus for the discussion, really) was "why do guys like that (and not like us)?"

On top of that, it wasn't really noticeable until I started watching Taiwanese and Japanese dramas, just how... cookie-cutter so many women are, in Korean dramas (outside of age difference). Japanese dramas will have unnamed characters who aren't perfect size-2s, but Taiwanese dramas give those characters names and roles. Imagine that, women of various shapes and sizes, talking about something other than men! The realization that I'd been watching uncritically (beyond the basic, "are they talking about men?") annoyed me about myself, and made me realize I needed a tougher standard for myself.

Granted, the top-most level of Bechdel probably wouldn't be achieved in any but a really multi-cultural society, but still... it seems important to me, because if you look at men's ages and appearances, there's a huge diversity. Women, though, are uniformly and unrealistically attractive (pretty to gorgeous), skinny, and white (or near-white). Being able to say, "this drama didn't just have X and Y, but passed on this level, too," would be a way for me to note which ones go beyond the basics, as it were. I mean, sure, it's great if we've got named, unrelated female characters talking about something other than men, but isn't the message still pretty damaging if all those named, unrelated female characters are also rail-thin, model-attractive, perfect-shaped, size 2s? What is this, you only get intelligent conversations if you're conventionally pretty? So dramas that go beyond that, I wanted a way to check 'em off in my head while I watch.

[hokuton_punch]

... whoops, you responded! And now I think most of the stuff I was going to whine about doesn't really apply. XD

Hmm, dismissing the no-longer-applicable stuff - the main thing that bothered me was dismissing conversations between related women at the upper stages of the test. I talk with my mother a lot about non-domestic things - work, what I'm studying, grad school - and I really don't think conversations like that should be discounted out of hand in a drama/movie/what-have-you just because the characters are related. Obviously if those kinds of conversations aren't getting into scripts, that's a legit fail, but otherwise I really think they should be counted. (Plus, I'd watch the shit out of shows and movies with asskicking sisters/mother-daughter teams/other family combinations.)

I'm also a little iffy about dismissing conversations about makeup and nail-painting or whatever, because yeah, they're conventional topics (and I have no interest in them whatsoever), but they aren't necessarily male-oriented - femme lesbians, for example. And one of my BFFs has gotten into painting her nails because she likes the aesthetics of it, not because her boyfriend cares or whatever. It's just - it's kind of a grey area and it's hard to tell the motivation without really knowing the character, so I don't know, I'd be wary of just automatically failing that kind of conversation even if it's a kind that I find uninteresting. (I'd also be bored stiff by your economics example, so obv. my opinion should not be feminist law. XD)

I think that was most of what I was thinking about. I mean, I could go on about some general problems I have with rigid application of the Bechdel test, but that's more about it being applied as FEMINIST CHECKLIST FOR EVERYTHING rather than as a reader/viewer's personal standards, and I don't have any problems with people using it (and any variations) as a personal standard, so not very relevant to your post.

[kaigou]

It's not really a matter of dismissing conversations -- it's a matter of asking, are these the only conversations that we see (between women)? The idea, after all, is to look for a variety of conversational topics. The same way that in any given movie/drama, sure, we'll have guys talking about their wives, or their girlfriends, or just how to appeal to women, or what might attract women... but they also talk about plenty of other things that have nothing to do with getting laid, not getting laid, appealing or not appealing to any given sex/gender.

Obviously it's always going to be contextual -- I mean, if you have two women who are co-managers of a beauty shop and they spend a conversation talking about which nail polish brand to carry, then contextually one could say, "this is part of their business/work." But if it's two women talking about which nail polish colors are best (with a subtext of "that their boyfriends prefer") then... not so much with the good. But if in the next scene, it's the same two women discussing, oh, I don't know, solving a crime or the upcoming project at work or organizing a protest, then the previous scene was probably doing a different work (giving them feminine sides) and it's not the only way we're supposed to see them.

Actually, as a mini-rec, Dalja's Spring was like that. You'd get one scene where two women are talking about boyfriends, husbands, and the having and getting of... and the next scene is two women discussing the upcoming project and very much work-stuff that has nothing to do with men in re getting or having. Maybe one scene might fail, but overall, the series was positively top-notch on any Bechdel level.

Incidentally, that show also had a number of conversations between related women -- Dalja and her mother, Dalja and her grandmother, Dalja and her boyfriend's mother (quasi mother-in-law). Those were all great scenes and valuable in the storyline, but they weren't the only scenes between women. Men can have friendships with people that aren't family, but not women? When all you see is women talking with mothers/sisters/etc, it starts to feel like the message is, "women's only confidantes are other women in the same family." Don't women have other friends, of their own age, to talk to? You'd think not, from some of the family dramas. At best, a woman is likely to get One Best Friend, and that's it.

(I might even go farther, at least in terms of romantic comedies, and come up with a guideline by which the women have cross-sex friendships with men who do not have a secret crush and/or eventually become romantic interests... but are genuinely good friends, just of the opposite sex, and for which there's no romantic tension. Not as older/higher mentors (the most common version, where the lack of sexual is because he's already married or old enough to be her grandfather) but as social equals. By that standard, Dalja's Spring passes, My Girlfriend is a Gumiho ... hrm, maaaaaaybe. Most rom-coms would actually fail, so it's another guide that makes Dalja's Spring stand out even more.)

As for topics: it's obviously really hard to specify topics. It's more like, how to make it explicit that these things should be noticed -- the topic, that is, instead of just stopping with "two women, not talking about a [specific] man, that's good enough!" That's a really, really low standard, when you think about it... and "two women who aren't talking about a man but still talking about how to attract a man" isn't much better. And I find that when I stop and think about the actual content of some shows (that appear to pass the Bechdel with flying colors), the subtext of many of the womens' conversations still amount to "focused on a man, or what men say, or what men tell me I should want/do", and is that really any better?

Frex, as much as I love My Girlfriend is a Gumiho, I'd say it only barely passes any upper-levels of Bechdel. An awful lot of the girl-to-girl conversations are either about a guy (whether it's Dae-woong or the director) or about appealing to a guy, or repeating what another guy said (like the way in which the Gumiho Hunter has major impact on Miho, such that I recall several times Miho argues points that are almost exact repetitions of the GH's lectures). So... it's like it passes, but at the same time, it still falls short.

I guess it's mostly that I'm tired of such a minimal standard being considered acceptable. It just seems like it's time to say that "at least one conversation between two women about something other than a guy" is just plain not enough.

[hokuton_punch]

Okay, I think that's all pretty fair! If I spent more time judging stuff by Bechdel passes, variety's definitely what I'd look for, and I think I'd find it weird if a lead female character with a good relationship with her family either didn't talk with her female relatives about non-guy-related stuff or didn't have non-family friends to talk to. (And if I have much time for watching stuff this term, I might look Dalja's Spring up; I'm not much of a rom-com watcher usually, but I did adore My Girlfriend is a Gumiho and have gotten several other people to try it solely on the basis of my squee, so I bet I'd enjoy it too.)

[kaigou]

Let's put it this way: MGiaG was sweet and fantastical. Dalja's Spring is sweet, kick-ass, and has a strong streak of feminism, even if that means the story contains a constant tension between Dalja's (and her friends') needs as independent women, and Korean pressures to be Married Women (along with some arguments to that end that, frankly, even my grandmother would've refused to tolerate). But once I realized that the story is fair and realistic (not in terms of Korea per se since that I can't judge, but definitely in terms of "what women juggle and go through in terms of pressures") about the push-pull of things like madonna/whore kinds of pressures, and being a career woman vs being a proper girlfriend, and whether 'marriage' really does complete you or if you can be complete without it, and so on... Dalja's Spring tackles all those questions, along with others I've never seen in any other kdrama so far. Plus it totally turns some kdrama conventions on their heads, which was awesome.

I really need to do a longer rec about it, because it's honestly now one of my favorite television shows. It's definitely in the top five, of the three-digit however many I've seen in my lifetime. It just hits all the right spots for me, I suppose.

ETA: Dalja's Spring is often classed as "romantic comedy" but it'd be more accurate to call it "a coming-of-maturity story, that has comedic parts and a romance sub-plot". By coming-of-maturity, I mean: a woman at the age of 33, finally reaching a point in her life and her career where she must stop and ask herself where she is, what she's doing, where she's going, and take assessment. Sort of like an early midlife crisis, maybe, but without the going-crazy aspect we usually embed in "midlife crisis" stereotype. Plus, the romance is there, but the majority of the story's attention is really paid to Dalja and her friendships (even if romance ends up developing out of friendship, the real romance started as a friendship) -- and friendships, I should note, of both sexes, another plus.

[soukup]

*hugs you* My heart is warmed. Thank you.

[kaigou]

Heh, thank you back atcha. Mostly it's just me trying to come up (as noted in comment above) a short-hand for when I'm watching, some kind of criteria for saying, "pass, fail, fail, pass," or whatever. Especially with the overwhelming numbers of East Asian dramas I've been watching, which do have (especially for Korean dramas) a higher-than-US percentage of female characters in many of the stories. Korean dramas, especially, are strongly women-centric... yet they still manage to leave me with the sense of, "I guess this is passing, but wait, is it, really?"

Like the drama Legend which has a higher than usual number of strong female characters from a range of socio-economic classes, all of whom do practice agency at some point... but a lot (if not all) of their discussions (with each other) revolve around the King, the Ministers, and current politics. You could argue the show passes because they're technically discussing the position of the King, not the King-as-a-person, but... if the King and Ministers are all, always, male automatically, isn't this the same as discussing the men who have power over you? Isn't this really just more "talking about men", and any talk of self is through the lens of that talk-about-men, as in, "what that man wants for me"...

And, like always, that got me thinking, and when I get to thinking, I usually get in trouble. Or just start making it. Heh.