The Bechdel Test

[saellys]

Oh, and one more thing. Steerpike already requested that we all avoid ad hominems, but I'm going to make one more humble request for respect: the "emotions running high and make things vague and muddled" thing comes up in discussions like this a lot, especially directed at women who happen to care a lot about the issue. Since you can't actually see me, unless I say otherwise, please do me the favor of assuming I am as calm and rational as you are. Thanks.

You, in this case, not hypothetical, but rather plural and general toward everyone participating in this thread.

 

[Jabrosky]

While I have not seen the series (I really should!) I cannot comment on the backround of this character. However, I can reply to your statement. From what you are saying, anybody who does not fit into a set group is not that particular group. In this case, black women.

Now Jabrosky, I like you. Mainly brcause you have a vision for your masterpiece and damned to hell if you're going to change that. You have a lot of respect in my book because of that. However...
It is not up to you to decide who is what when it comes to ethnicity or colour. I will accept that you have your view on your own world. I have no say in that at all, as it should be. However. This woman, Angel Coulby, IS black, as she sees herself. By all means, she is not the African you (you meaning the wider audience) would associate with being black. However, does that not emphasize the point some are making in this thread? The fact that you are taking personal rule sets and implying that fashion to your works?!

I understand where you're coming from, and technically what we call "black" is an imprecise, socially constructed taxon anyway. However, I perceive a certain danger in classifying biracial people as fully black in the same sense as most African people. If we do that, I'm worried that people might cite biracial individuals as their ideal "black people" while omitting darker-skinned African people. If we call Barack Obama black, for instance, we can brag about how post-racial and progressive our country is by electing a black man to President without, you know, electing an actual black man. The one-drop rule can be a double-edged sword.

That said, going too far the other direction also causes problems. I have observed genuinely dark-skinned Africans being thrown out of the "black" taxon simply because they had narrower noses than the "true Negro" stereotype (Africans who have impressive precolonial architecture lying around are particularly vulnerable to this trope). I would be lying if I said I had an easy answer to this whole predicament.

 

[saellys]

Jabrosky, I like how seriously you take the distinctions in relative skin color and the potential problems they cause. (The "fair and lovely" cosmetic enhancement movement among Indian women is a really distressing example of this.) I feel like the safest move for people like us who don't fall under any such category is to go with the terms a particular person uses to identify themselves, whenever possible. Unfortunately, a couple pages of Google results hasn't turned up an interview where Coulby self-identifies. When I can't find that sort of thing, I tend to go with "person of color" by default as it seems to be generally accepted.

 

[Jabrosky]

To further complicate the issue, even without varying degrees of Eurasian admixture, African populations have always varied in skin tone. It isn't always the case that an African with very dark brown skin has less European or Asian ancestry than one who's more of a caramel, coppery, or mahogany color. However, this might be running into a topic that I don't think anyone here wants to return to.

 

[Zero Angel]

Unless you're a geneticist or a Nazi-like individual, I don't think we need to classify everything to such a high degree. Mixing it up (when the story can sustain it) is nothing to shy away from, and being overly accurate in the description of a modern-day race in a fantasy would probably be considered racism by a fair amount of people, or at least off-putting and breaking the setting.

i.e. How do you talk about an Asian when there is no Asia?

 

[saellys]

So, in the interest of getting more or less back on track, something occurred to me this evening. I'm assuming (and if I'm wrong, by all means correct me) that those of you in this thread who have been most vocally opposed to the application of the Bechdel Test and any potential subsequent action regarding your writing are white men (excluding Mindfire). In this case, being white men is apropos of one thing only: there has never been a point in your life when you, the white man, could not turn to the media and see yourself portrayed positively.

You have always been the hero of a given story. If the other varieties of human beings were present in the story at all, it was as sidekicks at best. From there the scale slides down the list I mentioned earlier: victims, prizes, the first to die, the butts of jokes.

That's pretty common in every genre, but in fantasy the saturation is near-total. People who aren't white men and who love reading fantasy do so in spite of a dearth of positive representations of themselves.

This is a problem you, the white male fantasy reader and writer, have never experienced. People who aren't you are made to feel unwelcome by the way they're portrayed in a genre they want to enjoy. When they ask writers of that genre to make small adjustments that would contribute to fixing that, they're made to feel even more unwelcome and told that it's their responsibility to actively fix, and not yours.

Do you see how that comes off? The problem of representation was not caused by the people who are under- or misrepresented, so why should they shoulder the job of solving it themselves? I don't think anyone here has tried to deny that there is something broken in the genre that you and they and we all love. We can all fix it together, a little at a time.

 

[Ankari]

Well, in my case, I'm Arabic. I'm always the villain. But then, you could say my reaction isn't based on a hero-bubble, but on my barbaric upbringing.

 

[saellys]

Then by all means, disregard my entire post!

 

[Ankari]

Then by all means, disregard my entire post!

LOL. You're not bad, Sallys.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I can sympathize with most everything you said, the way the argument above is presented. Everything except the assumptions about people's racial make up or living experiences & the idea that each of us is somehow individually responsible for how the media portrays minorities.

This issue is extremely important to you but other people won't have the same fire for change that you have. We need to accept this. I'm sure there are issues that concern me that, for you, would be a low priority.

 

[Jamber]

Coming in late, and relating to things said earlier rather than more recently, I quite like what Meaghan Morris (an Australian critic) said about 'political correctness': that despite its clunkiness, its artificiality, its stuck-on feeling, as policy it produces more diversely readable (i.e. richer) texts.

Of course, we don't all want to make richer texts out of our novels. Then again perhaps sometimes we don't mean to alienate certain kinds of readers, and we might alienate them unconsciously -- that's when the Bechdel test seems useful, as a sort of 'Hey, writer, did you know you seem to be saying this?'. Still, I can't help feeling the test is much better aimed at screenwriters/directors/producers than at novel writers. In novels there's no question but that it's a single mind at work, with a single mind's limitations and/or perception. By contrast, in film there are many layers of 'authorship' and I suspect it's a lot more justifiable to critique films according to culture-wide implications for that reason.

Incidentally, there was a thread somewhere in Brainstorming -- ah, here it is: http://mythicscribes.com/forums/brainstorming-planning/5719-fun-idea.html -- that set out to invent a character. Was it my imagination, or did it seem to presume a 'character' would naturally be male? It seemed to do this from my point of view, and I moved on, but I have to say it was no big deal -- I could easily have started a thread presuming 'main character' to mean 'female'. I attributed no blame to BW Foster for any presumption of malehood, but went my separate way as a female writer/reader to do other things.

Saellys, I have to say, I've loved your nous and your bravery even if I haven't agreed with every particle of what you've said. I don't feel the Bechdel or any other test matters in regard to novel writing, but I do like the goals you espouse.

cheers

Jennie

 

[Chime85]

So, in the interest of getting more or less back on track, something occurred to me this evening. I'm assuming (and if I'm wrong, by all means correct me) that those of you in this thread who have been most vocally opposed to the application of the Bechdel Test and any potential subsequent action regarding your writing are white men (excluding Mindfire). In this case, being white men is apropos of one thing only: there has never been a point in your life when you, the white man, could not turn to the media and see yourself portrayed positively.

You have always been the hero of a given story. If the other varieties of human beings were present in the story at all, it was as sidekicks at best. From there the scale slides down the list I mentioned earlier: victims, prizes, the first to die, the butts of jokes.

That's pretty common in every genre, but in fantasy the saturation is near-total. People who aren't white men and who love reading fantasy do so in spite of a dearth of positive representations of themselves.

This is a problem you, the white male fantasy reader and writer, have never experienced. People who aren't you are made to feel unwelcome by the way they're portrayed in a genre they want to enjoy. When they ask writers of that genre to make small adjustments that would contribute to fixing that, they're made to feel even more unwelcome and told that it's their responsibility to actively fix, and not yours.

Do you see how that comes off? The problem of representation was not caused by the people who are under- or misrepresented, so why should they shoulder the job of solving it themselves? I don't think anyone here has tried to deny that there is something broken in the genre that you and they and we all love. We can all fix it together, a little at a time.

Oddly enough, the main characters in my works are female. The most prevalent criticism from most the male readers is that it apparently alienates the male audience. As you can imagine, most the female readers do not point this out. I have found it interesting that a piece of work can be accused of alienating one set of audience, simply on the basis of the who's who in the writing.

 

[saellys]

I can sympathize with most everything you said, the way the argument above is presented. Everything except the assumptions about people's racial make up or living experiences & the idea that each of us is somehow individually responsible for how the media portrays minorities.

This issue is extremely important to you but other people won't have the same fire for change that you have. We need to accept this. I'm sure there are issues that concern me that, for you, would be a low priority.

I hope you can pardon the assumptions about race and living experiences I made in order to frame a rhetorical "you". I wanted a bit more impact to that post than "one subset of humanity has always been portrayed positively in media".

I'm not saying we're all responsible for how the media has handled minorities up to this point, any more than othered people are responsible for how media has excluded them throughout history. I'm saying we all have some measure of individual responsibility to contribute toward making the situation better. See the difference?

If you and others who don't share my "fire for change" and "priorities" use that as a reason to abdicate all responsibility for what their work perpetuates, how will anything ever change on a broad scale? Please don't answer with "This isn't an issue for me"--I really want to know how you envision that happening. If you've never thought about it because it's not an issue for you, take a minute to consider it for the sake of discussion. Who exactly is going to be changing things and how will those changes gain enough momentum to make the fantasy genre a welcoming place for all kinds of people?

Still, I can't help feeling the test is much better aimed at screenwriters/directors/producers than at novel writers. In novels there's no question but that it's a single mind at work, with a single mind's limitations and/or perception. By contrast, in film there are many layers of 'authorship' and I suspect it's a lot more justifiable to critique films according to culture-wide implications for that reason.

That's a very interesting distinction. The cultural impact of films, and therefore the power of what they perpetuate and normalize, is arguably much greater than novels, but I don't see that as a reason to limit analysis and critique, even those as simplified as the Bechdel Test, to films. A single mind can come up with some pretty messed up stuff on its own, and a single mind can also change a lot faster than a team of people who created a story with problematic elements in it. A single mind can pledge to do better next time, and not foist the blame onto someone else so they don't have to change anything.

Oddly enough, the main characters in my works are female. The most prevalent criticism from most the male readers is that it apparently alienates the male audience. As you can imagine, most the female readers do not point this out. I have found it interesting that a piece of work can be accused of alienating one set of audience, simply on the basis of the who's who in the writing.

I can understand alienation. I can't understand men complaining about feeling alienated by a story with female protagonists, and simultaneously expecting everyone else to shut up and enjoy a story where they're not represented at all.

 

[Mindfire]

Also, Angel Coulby is not a beautiful girl? Dude, your standards must be astronomically high.

I thought she was kinda hot...

 

[Mindfire]

I can understand alienation. I can't understand men complaining about feeling alienated by a story with female protagonists, and simultaneously expecting everyone else to shut up and enjoy a story where they're not represented at all.

I can totally understand it. It's a very simple empathy problem. They haven't made the mental connection between how they feel alienated by a story with a female protagonist and how female readers feel when most books have male protagonists. Growing up, I liked Kim Possible (for the action, of course), but it annoyed me that all the guys on the show were either evil or complete doofuses. Or both. Except for Wade and the Twins. They were cool. But it never occurred to me to make a connection between that and the lack of POC heroes, or the female/minority representation issue in general. My brain is full of boxes, and those particular boxes had been shelved separately from each other.

Also, the part about having a responsibility to improve the situation, that statement is easy to object to, as we've seen. I think you'll get more traction by arguing that writers have a responsibility to themselves to make the best story possible. And I don't think anyone here will disagree that "not racist" is a good benchmark for that.

 

[saellys]

And since I've said multiple times in this thread that writing not-racist, not-sexist, not-homophobic stories is the way to improve the situation, I guess no one will have any objections to that! Right? *looks down; sees that we're on page 20* Oh, wait...

 

[Mindfire]

And since I've said multiple times in this thread that writing not-racist, not-sexist, not-homophobic stories is the way to improve the situation, I guess no one will have any objections to that! Right? *looks down; sees that we're on page 20* Oh, wait...

There's a slight difference between what you're saying and what I'm saying. You are (from an outsider perspective) foisting upon them a responsibility to other people that they don't really want the pressure of bearing, even if it's something they were going to do anyway. When you put it that way, it comes off as a burdensome intrusion, a demand that they "take up the standard" and all the other objections you've gotten. By contrast, my way of phrasing it makes it not a responsibility to others that the writer has to bear, but merely another facet of the responsibility to themselves and their creations which they've already accepted and should fulfill to the best of their ability since they consider themselves writers.

See, when you say "you have a responsibility to these people", the response is, "Leave me alone, I don't want to be drafted." But when you say, "you can produce better writing than this" or "your characterization is lacking, but here's a way to improve it", you're more likely to get engagement.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I hope you can pardon the assumptions about race and living experiences I made in order to frame a rhetorical "you". I wanted a bit more impact to that post than "one subset of humanity has always been portrayed positively in media".

I'm not saying we're all responsible for how the media has handled minorities up to this point, any more than othered people are responsible for how media has excluded them throughout history. I'm saying we all have some measure of individual responsibility to contribute toward making the situation better. See the difference?

If you and others who don't share my "fire for change" and "priorities" use that as a reason to abdicate all responsibility for what their work perpetuates, how will anything ever change on a broad scale? Please don't answer with "This isn't an issue for me"--I really want to know how you envision that happening. If you've never thought about it because it's not an issue for you, take a minute to consider it for the sake of discussion. Who exactly is going to be changing things and how will those changes gain enough momentum to make the fantasy genre a welcoming place for all kinds of people?

I understood why you made the assumptions in the 1st read through. It would be far fetched at this point, considering what we know of your views, to claim any form of sexist bigotry. Don't concern yourself with that further. It illustrates the problem well. Although I do find it interesting that 2 of the 5 primary opposing arguments in this thread came from PoC writers.

My feeling on any type of social change is that it takes time. Unfortunately, it is unrealistic to expect action from those unaffected by the problem. Social attitudes changing seems to require champions from within the downtrodden that can bridge the divides between the people they champion and those they seek to alter in mindset. I'm no historian of civil rights. This is only my impression.

See, when you say "you have a responsibility to these people", the response is, "Leave me alone, I don't want to be drafted." But when you say, "you can produce better writing than this" or "your characterization is lacking, but here's a way to improve it", you're more likely to get engagement.

I agree with Mindfire completely on this point.

 

[Steerpike]

It is interesting to me how early in life some of the things we've discussed here form in the human mind. A children's book editor once told me to change the sex of my main character from female to male, the reasoning being that little girls will read stories about boys, but little boys will not read stories about girls. I didn't make the change, but after she said that I did some looking around and found the same advice in many places.

 

[Mindfire]

It is interesting to me how early in life some of the things we've discussed here form in the human mind. A children's book editor once told me to change the sex of my main character from female to male, the reasoning being that little girls will read stories about boys, but little boys will not read stories about girls. I didn't make the change, but after she said that I did some looking around and found the same advice in many places.

Having been a little boy once myself, I can say there is some truth to at least half of that statement.