The Bechdel Test
Saturday, 30 May 2009 12:02![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lea_hazelHere's something on the Bechdel test and I did opine (edit: the test). I think one of the problems with the Bechdel test is that it was formulated for movies and doesn't fit very well for an ongoing format, like TV series, or for formats with a lot more characters than a film, like novels. In a movie you only have about two hours to introduce people and so being named and having a conversation is a big deal. In books and TV series, I hold depth of relationship between female characters to a rather higher standard.
Spoilers for Veronica Mars, Lost, Heroes, BSG.
Friendships between women, female mentors and mother-daughter relationships will very rarely be explored in a TV series that isn't a "chick series". This is one of the reasons I love them so much, because a show like Gilmore Girls or even The Golden Girls from my childhood will give me something that No fantasy, science fiction or action series ever has, with the exception of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Oh, yes. Yes, and Veronica Mars eventually shaped up, giving me two great, ongoing female friendships (three, if you count Veronica, Mac and Parker as each having one with both of the others) in the third season, after spending two seasons showing Veronica surrounded by male antagonists, friends, love interests and mentors. Then it was canceled.
Lost gives me nothing. Kate, Sun, Claire, Juliet, Rose, none of them have long-term friendships and the only ongoing relationship is the romantic rivalry between Kate and Juliet, now a double rivalry. Danielle Rousseau meets her long-lost daughter Alex, and before they have time to form a bond, they both die. We get one second of a shared look. Every time after that, Alex is mentioned as Ben Linus's daughter, and it's like Danielle never existed.
Heroes doesn't bear mentioning, except that the few times Claire was shown playing opposite her adoptive mother Sandra and her birth mother Meredith were great. If they wanted to, they could build a really complex set of interactions there. Elle almost had an interesting unfriendship with Claire, but then they killed her and wasted that potential.
BSG was too busy emphasizing other relationships. There were isolated episodes, but nothing ongoing. Starbuck chooses Roslin's prophecy over loyalty to Adama, two-three episodes. Starbuck's rivalry and ultimate acceptance of Kat, two-three episodes, then Kat dies. Six and Three have a three way relationship with Baltar, but are not shown so much as touching fingertips, let alone interacting romantically, or even as friends. Athena mentions thinking of Starbuck as a big sister -- all of once in the entire series.
I could do a whole blather on comics, but I don't feel like it. The best interaction between women I'm getting right now is in Big Love, which I just started catching up on with my brother, and fell almost instantaneously in love with. Why does a show about three women being married to the same man give me better friendships between women than a show about twenty people stuck with each other on a goddamn desert island?
In conclusion, MOAR WOMEN PLEASE. Also, MOAR fic fleshing out the flagging relationships where the potential was never followed through on.
Spoilers for Veronica Mars, Lost, Heroes, BSG.
Friendships between women, female mentors and mother-daughter relationships will very rarely be explored in a TV series that isn't a "chick series". This is one of the reasons I love them so much, because a show like Gilmore Girls or even The Golden Girls from my childhood will give me something that No fantasy, science fiction or action series ever has, with the exception of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Oh, yes. Yes, and Veronica Mars eventually shaped up, giving me two great, ongoing female friendships (three, if you count Veronica, Mac and Parker as each having one with both of the others) in the third season, after spending two seasons showing Veronica surrounded by male antagonists, friends, love interests and mentors. Then it was canceled.
Lost gives me nothing. Kate, Sun, Claire, Juliet, Rose, none of them have long-term friendships and the only ongoing relationship is the romantic rivalry between Kate and Juliet, now a double rivalry. Danielle Rousseau meets her long-lost daughter Alex, and before they have time to form a bond, they both die. We get one second of a shared look. Every time after that, Alex is mentioned as Ben Linus's daughter, and it's like Danielle never existed.
Heroes doesn't bear mentioning, except that the few times Claire was shown playing opposite her adoptive mother Sandra and her birth mother Meredith were great. If they wanted to, they could build a really complex set of interactions there. Elle almost had an interesting unfriendship with Claire, but then they killed her and wasted that potential.
BSG was too busy emphasizing other relationships. There were isolated episodes, but nothing ongoing. Starbuck chooses Roslin's prophecy over loyalty to Adama, two-three episodes. Starbuck's rivalry and ultimate acceptance of Kat, two-three episodes, then Kat dies. Six and Three have a three way relationship with Baltar, but are not shown so much as touching fingertips, let alone interacting romantically, or even as friends. Athena mentions thinking of Starbuck as a big sister -- all of once in the entire series.
I could do a whole blather on comics, but I don't feel like it. The best interaction between women I'm getting right now is in Big Love, which I just started catching up on with my brother, and fell almost instantaneously in love with. Why does a show about three women being married to the same man give me better friendships between women than a show about twenty people stuck with each other on a goddamn desert island?
In conclusion, MOAR WOMEN PLEASE. Also, MOAR fic fleshing out the flagging relationships where the potential was never followed through on.
