[This post is by Kip Manley, and cross-posted from his blog Long Story; Short Pier with his kind permission.]
The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women.
FOOM! FOOM! FOOM! With explosions of escaping gas, the lids on the freezers pop open. —Slowly, groggily, six nude men sit up.
Having pretty women as the main characters was a real cliché of horror movies and I wanted to stay away from that. So I made up the character of Ripley, whom I didn’t know was going to be a woman at the time… I sent the people of the studios some notations and what I thought should happen and when we were about to make the movie the producer of the film jumped on it. He just liked the idea and told me we should make that Ripley character a woman. I thought that the captain would have been an old woman and the Ripley character a young man, that would have been interesting. But he said, “No, let’s make the hero a woman.”
—Dan O’Bannon, Cult People
[Veronica Cartwright] originally read for the role of Ripley, and was not informed that she had instead been cast as Lambert until she arrived in London for wardrobe. She disliked the character’s emotional weakness, but nevertheless accepted the role: “They convinced me that I was the audience’s fears; I was a reflection of what the audience is feeling.”
—Wikipedia, “Alien (film)#Casting”
FANTASTIC FILMS
Have you had any second thoughts about doing science fiction pictures in a row – first, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and now Alien?
CARTWRIGHT
Oh yeah. They were both screaming and running and crying films. But they were both very different.
FF
Are you worried being type-cast in the sort of role?
CARTWRIGHT
Well, I have to be very careful in picking my roles. I would like to do something comic next. I’m tired of crying. You know what I mean.
—Fantastic Films interview with Veronica Cartwright
What’s the Mo Movie Measure, you ask? It’s an idea from Alison Bechdel’s brilliant comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For. The character “Mo” explains that she only watches movies in which:
- there are at least two named female characters, who
- talk to each other about
- something other than a man.
It’s appalling how few movies can pass the Mo Movie Measure.
Julie from Portland, OR, kindly emailed us to let us know that lefty blogs like Pandagon have been discussing the Mo Movie Measure a film-going concept that originated in an early DTWOF strip, circa 1985. We were excited to hear that someone still remembers this 20-year-old chestnut. But alas, the principle is misnamed. It appears in “The Rule,” a strip found on page 22 of the original DTWOF collection. Mo actually doesn’t appear in DTWOF until two years later. Her first strip can be found half-way through More DTWOF. Alison would also like to add that she can’t claim credit for the actual “rule.” She stole it from a friend, Liz Wallace, whose name is on the marquee in the comic strip.
—Cathy, not Alison, despite what the author tag says
By the way, when I coined the phrase “Mo Movie Measure,” I screwed up—the character in Dykes To Watch Out For who says it, isn’t Mo!
She bears a strong resemblance to Ginger, but it isn’t a definitive resemblance. The strip is from before DTWOF developed an ongoing cast of characters, so it is hard to tell if Bechdel intended Ginger to have been that character from that strip when Ginger started appeared in the strip. The character in “The Rule” seems physically bulkier than I recall Ginger being, but that could be a shift in drawing style.
Also, the bit about the two female characters having to have names—which I thought had been in the original comic strip—was apparently added by me. Oops again.
That’s how these cultural ideas develop—it’s just a giant game of “telephone.”
The Mo Movie Measure—what to call it now?
/bech•del test/ n.
- It has to have at least two women in it
- Who talk to each other
- About something besides a man
A variant of the test, in which the two women must additionally be named characters, is also called the Mo Movie Measure.
—Wikipedia, “Dykes to Watch Out For#Bechdel_test”
If any studio executives are reading this, let me give some examples: Names are things like “Annie Hall” and “Erin Brockovich” and “Scarlett O’Hara.” Things that are not names include, to cite some credits from this year’s movies, “Female Junkie,” “Mr. Anderson’s Secretary,” and “Topless Party Girl.”
The wonderful and tragic thing about the Bechdel Test is not, as you’ve doubtless already guessed, that so few Hollywood films manage to pass, but that the standard it creates is so pathetically minimal—the equivalent of those first 200 points we’re all told we got on the SATs just for filling out our names. Yet as the test has proved time and again, when it comes to the depiction of women in studio movies, no matter how low you set the bar, dozens of films will still trip over it and then insist with aggrieved self-righteousness that the bar never should have been there in the first place and that surely you’re not talking about quotas.
Well, yes, you big, dumb, expensive “based on a graphic novel” doofus of a major motion picture: I am talking about quotas. A quota of two whole women and one whole conversation that doesn’t include the line “I saw him first!”
—Mark Harris, “I Am Woman. Hear Me… Please!”
I was struck by the simplicity of this test and by its patent validity as a measure of gender bias. As I thought about it some more, it occurred to me how few of the classic works of literature that I teach to my high school freshmen would pass this test: The Odyssey? Nope. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass? Nope. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Nope. Romeo and Juliet. Nope.
What’s wrong with me?
—Frank Kovarik, “Navigating the waters of our biased culture”
Female characters are traditionally peripheral to male ones. That’s why we don’t want to hear them chatting about anything other than the male characters: because in making them peripheral, the writer has assured the women can’t possibly contribute to the story unless they’re telling us something about the men who drive the plot. That is the problem the test is highlighting. And that’s why shoehorning an awkward scene in which two named female characters discuss the price of tea in South Africa while the male characters are off saving the world will only hang a lantern on how powerfully you’ve sidelined your female characters for no reason other than sexism, conscious or otherwise.
—Jennifer Kesler, “The Bechdel Test: it’s not about passing.“
Funny (well, to me, anecdote). I have a female friend who lives in NYC who I wanted to buy a christmas present. Another friend of mine was visiting NYC over christmas to visit her family. I asked her to give my first friend the present, partly because I thought they’d get on. When my friend got back from NYC, she told me “Wow, thanks for introducing us, your friend and I got on really well?” I asked her “What did you talk about?”. She told me “You, mostly”. My first thought was ‘Wow, they just failed the Bechdel Test!’.
Hm.
My personal rule about movies or TV shows is that I refuse to watch one where the main character is a female of child-bearing age who uses the word “relationship”. So a movie with two women who talk about, say, the bank robbery they’re about to pull off will violate neither my rule nor the one in the thread. Alien also fits the bill nicely (although in fact I’ve never seen it).
Bound is just about the Platonic ideal of the movie you describe, RonF.
This leads me to ask a question. When those of you so qualified sit in on a group that is 100% female and that is a social gathering, how much of the time do they spend talking primarily about relationships? As opposed to, say, politics, art, music, sports, etc.? I’ll wager that they do so a lot more than an equivalent group of men. Not that this justifies a stereotype that depicts women always talking about relationships (and solely relationships with men, to boot). But I’d be curious to see numbers on that.
I’d say it depends on where each person is in a relationship at the time. I mean, if nobody in the group is currently going out with anyone, and hasn’t been in a while, then there’s not much to talk about. If all the people in relationships have been in those relationships for a while, there’s again not usually much to talk about. (“So, Dave and I ate dinner last night.” “Yeah, Paul and I ate dinner, too.”) Established relationships generally don’t have much drama, and drama is what makes it worth talking about. Relationship talk usually only happens if someone is at the beginning of a relationship (in which case there’s a lot of “He said/did this! What does it mean?!” stuff) or if someone is in the midst of breaking up with a partner, in which case there might be some “It’s OK to be sad” or some “He was a bastard anyway, you don’t need him!” depending on what the person seems to need. But if everybody involved is in a fairly stable place, relationship-wise, there’s not much to talk about there.
(This is my group of friends and my experience only, of course. YMMV.)
Few weeks back I was in a all-female mountain biking camp. It was great fun – all the attendees were pretty much strong, athletic and fearless ladies.
Yet, when we sat down to chat, we discovered few interesting things:
1. Even though we were all from the same geographical area and could ride together pretty often, most of the time each of us were riding with a group of guys which included her significant others and his friends.
2. Each of us had the perpetual feeling of being slow. Even the fastest lady in the camp, the one who could effortlessly hop over obstacles considered herself slow and unskilled compared to her usual riding group.
3. Husbands were talked about a lot. Which bikes they ride, which trails they like, how fast they are. Much much more so when the usual groups of male mountain bikers ever mention wives.
RonF: I think it’s a Hollywood stereotype. You know, even when women are alone they talk about us nonstop, amiriteguys?
When I’m with a group of women who are lawyers, we talk shop a lot. When I’m with women who aren’t lawyers we talk about pretty much the same stuff I talk about in mixed groups. “Relationships” don’t come up much unless somebody had a change of status (got engaged, got divorced, started dating a new person) and then we talk about that – but, again, that happens in mixed groups too.
Ron, what do you mean by “relationships?” Most of the women’s social groups in my experience spend a fair amount of time talking about non-romantic relationships. Sometimes the conversation sounds like a support group for adult daughters of difficult mothers. In many situations, a conversation about work will really be about relationships in the workplace. And of course there are relationships with children (especially important for parents, but even Aunt Adrian is somewhat interested), friends, neighbors, and so on.
At work yesterday when I was working with other women we talked about – comparative bum size, the sewing of zips into clothing, coursework, the fact they were giving away Mountain Dew outside, our other jobs, how much we liked certain items of clothing other people were wearing, computer games, winning competitions and competitive nature, how the construction of someone’s bathroom was going, when someone else should get a new kitchen, the location of various people’s recently bought or about to be sold houses, recent volcanoes, the failure of the rapture to occur.
Some of these seem stereotypically female, but in actual fact the men at work comment on clothing almost as much as the women, and if you had several men who studied fashion they would naturally talk about sewing techniques (i.e. the conversation is knowledge-based, not gender-based, although women might be more likely to have that knowledge). Comparative butt size is probably seldom seen in men-only conversations!
When we talk about men recently it has been – because someone had broken up with their partner, because someone else was insecure coming up to their marriage due to the other person breaking up, because we talk about co-workers a lot and some of them are male, and annoying or funny things male partners have said/done. I think people talk about their husbands a fair amount for the same reason they talk about their children – they’re around them a lot so they provide a lot of story material. You can only talk about what you know and experience, and if those things are husband, children, work, and you don’t have time for much else then your conversation will be primarily about those things.
I really enjoyed the content of this post, by the way :)
and this is why the recent movie Easy A bothers me.
i adore this movie; it’s whole POINT is to challege society’s stereotypes [like “if a girl/woman has sex once with a guy, with whom she is not in a “serious relationship”, she is now a TOTAL SLUT” – “you know who the sluts are, based on what they wear” – “the only thing that matters about a girl/woman is her statues; is she or is she not a slut? none of her other attributes matter; not her wit nor her intelligence nor her talents nor her humor nor her ethics nor her works; none if this is so important, not all of this taken TOGETHER is so important, as her “status” of “slut” or “not slut”” – and all of these stereotypes are but smaller parts of a larger stereotype, that women are just for sex…]
and so the movie bothers me – because no matter HOW WELL it skewers the stereotypes… i don’t think it passes The Test.
maybe a little – there’s the kitchen scene where Emma Stone’s character is talking with her parents [one of whom is female] about the fact that she called another girl a name; there are various conversations about sex with her mother [but these always devolve, sort of, into conversations about men?] and specifically the conversation, on the hood of a car, where her mother says “i used to have a bad rep – mostly because i had sex with a LOT of people. mostly guys!”
i don’t know if that conversation counts.
there’s the conversation with the school shrink – does it count? when the shrink is just ASSUMING Stone’s character is slut she appears to be, won’t listen to anything otherwise, and forces her to take condoms “because you definitely need them”?
none of her conversations with FEMALE classmates count – and, of course, those with male classmates CANnot count.
i don’t know – i want to love the movie unconditionally for it’s challenging of stereotypes – but does it pass the test?
am i alone in wondering this?
I’d argue that Easy A does pass the test, in at least a couple of the scenes you mentioned. (I liked it too, btw.)
it may just be that i’m being a bit over-rigorious [i can’t spell! please excuse] in thinking that if a conversation *includes* talk about “men”, then the entire convo fails the test.
and i’m happy to know that others think it DOES pass the test – i’m considering writing a paper on it for a class [haven’t decided, not taking the class yet anyway] based on the fact that it is anti-stereotype… i liked how it kicked so many assumptions in the teeth [also: “My appologies to Mark Twain!” hee!]
you know what movie did strangely pass the test? Thor. there’s at LEAST two side-conversations between Natalie Portman’s character, and her “assistant” [who is also a woman] that have NOTHING to do with men or romance at ALL. i was rather impressed with that, from a comic book movie!
I knew I was going to enjoy Thor when it passed the Bechdel test in the second line of the movie (a scientist and her assistant/driver discuss science). Indeed, though male characters outnumber female characters and take up more screentime, all the female characters have something to do, talk to each other and are dressed appropriately for their activities. Would I like a more female-centric film? Of course! But for female representation in a male-centric film, this was pretty good.
I do pub trivia two nights a week, with a group that’s usually all-female (boyfriends/fiancees/useful male offspring come along occasionally). We really don’t talk about our relationships at all, beyond “Yeah, (blank)’s doing fine” or “No, (otherblank)’s still got that crappy schedule”. Mostly we talk about politics, movies we’ve seen, gardening, our pets, etc.
lilac;
i spent the first several minutes of seeing Sif [the character] wondering what was “wrong” with her –
and then i realized – she was WEARING ARMOR. ok, fully dressed with pieces of armor – but still! the few times i’ve seen her depicted in comics, she was… less dressed.
after that, i was INCREDIBLY excited every time she showed up on screen.
also – Rene Russo wielding a sword [she was playing Frigg, Odin’s wife – who may not have been primarily a warrior but *DID* know how to use a sword – a fact often left out of the comic books] granted, not as well as she SHOULD have, but still!
That No Country reenactment was creepy. But notice one of the first comments on YouTube about it:
“There’s an odd sexuality coming out of Anton’s character in this version, it almost makes him more threatening. ”
An odd sexuality? Because Anton is a woman in this version. I saw nothing of any sexual nature in her performance. She is merely conventionally attractive but plays the villain straight (and quite horrifyingly, I might add).
(I won’t even get into the fact that BEING attractive does NOT equal projecting a sexuality. One is passive, the other active, and yet with women the two are always mixed. Which is why a woman gets blamed for dressing a certain way or by being attractive if she is raped or harrassed.)
THAT is what women are up against in the movies: they are equated to sex or sexuality, regardless of their role. As Jennifer Kessler said, women are often there to move the male main character’s plots along but they are also there to provide sex and titillation to the assumed straight male audience. In other words, women are only there for sex, or to worry over and prop up the men.
That is why Anton Chigurh could never be a woman in the mainstream’s eye. They either wouldn’t take her seriously, or they would try to find hidden sexuality in her performance to justify her existence. It’s also why so many female villains are “vamped” up and made explicitly sexual. A purely evil, non-sexual villain woman is inconceivable to many.
For more like that, I recommend the Girls on Film website, where you’ll find similar reenactments of Fight Club, NuTrek, and The Town (so far). —The idea’s one hell of a simple demonstration of, well, a hell of a lot, actually.