--------------------------------
I've started watching feministfrequency's (Anita Sarkeesian) series Tropes Vs. Women, and one of her recent ones was on the topic of the Smurfette Principle. The claim is that most shows are a group of men with one woman in the group. She brings up a list of shows for which this is true. OK, fair enough, there are a lot of shows that feature a group of men with one female. And the female exists solely to further the story which is centered around males. She says this is similar to the Token Minority.
I see her point, but the thing is, people watch TV shows and movies to be entertained. Not just that, but what kind of budget has room to fill all these stupid political agendas? Plus, there are some cases where women (or other minorities) just don't belong.
One of her examples is The Big Bang Theory, where she calls Penny the Smurfette of the bunch. A lot of the story and humour in the show is based around the fact that a) Penny is an attractive female, and b) Penny is not a geek. So the other main characters interact with her in an awkward way. I guess her motivation for interacting with them is that she doesn't have any other good friends, and they are endearing to her. So, if you were to add another female character (characters who appear infrequently like Leslie Winkle, or characters you never see, like Howard's mum don't count as they're not part of the "main" cast), she would either have to be part of the nerd herd, or one of Penny's friends. If she was part of the geeks, then they'd probably all be close to her, and thus not feel so awkward around females (she'd have to be attractive, because this is TV), removing a lot of the humour of the show. If she was one of Penny's friends, then she'd be competing for interest from the guys, and it'd just be a duplication of content, and not really worth paying an extra permanent cast member for that. Note: I stopped watching BBT a long time ago, and I hear there is another permanent female member of the cast, but this applied when I last watched!
I hate this stupid "requirement" that movies and TV shows satisfy minorities. I usually make jokes about the "Token Asian", but I don't think in all honesty, if directors tried to satisfy everyone, you'd end up with "I Am Legend" featuring Will Smith, and two gay non-Caucasian males, two lesbians, two hetero females, two Asians, two Hispanics, two black people... etc. What kind of movie would that be?!
feministfrequency mentions the Bechdel Test, where you look for whether there are two women with names, who talk to each other, about things other than men. For some reason, this is some sort of bench line for whether a movie is "progressive". I recently watched Julie & Julia, and while it is praised for passing the Bechdel Test, not too many people seem up in arms that it has two male characters that pretty much do nothing. The reasoning being that there are so many great male characters in movies that it doesn't matter that a couple could be replaced by talking sock puppets and have no impact on the plot. I kinda feel like Julia's husband's only role in that movie was to trap Julia in France. Oh, he got her to try new things, but similar to Julie's mother's role in the movie, I think Julia's pen pal could have done the same thing.
I just wish people could enjoy movies for being movies, and not have to analyse every little tiny detail. I know a lot of people were really upset at the racebending in the Avatar: the Last Airbender movie, and the announced Ghost in the Shell movie, but honestly, if they managed to make a great movie with a cast that did not resemble the source material at all, I'd be OK with that. Though from what I've heard, they completely butchered A:TLA, and I've been told never to watch it, even if I'm curious, but I do kinda want to watch it just for the Yue penis hair. Actually the TV Tropes memes page for the movie makes it sound hilarious, I really want to watch it now.
Anyway, I do understand that people are trying to bring more equality into the movie industry, but I wish they didn't have to resort to arbitrary tests. I really like Joss Whedon's approach. He was asked why he keeps making TV shows with strong women characters, and he responded that he was inspired by his mother, who was strong; his father and stepfather, who realised that admiring strong women did not make them weak; he believes the stories give people (regardless of gender) strength; because they're hot (jokingly); and then he gets mad that people are asking this question.
I read that when making The Legend of Korra, some of the producers were concerned that the main character was a girl. However, in test screenings with kids, the kids didn't care about her gender, they just thought she was really cool. (Please no LoK spoilers in the comments, I only just started watching it - it has taken me this long to get it on DVD.)
The world in general has a long way to go before we can achieve equality, but I look forward to the day when a movie can be judged by how entertaining it is and not be criticised for not having a Bengal tiger, two three-legged stools, and someone cooking gluten-free pasta.
I just wish people could enjoy movies for being movies, and not have to analyse every little tiny detail. I know a lot of people were really upset at the racebending in the Avatar: the Last Airbender movie, and the announced Ghost in the Shell movie, but honestly, if they managed to make a great movie with a cast that did not resemble the source material at all, I'd be OK with that. Though from what I've heard, they completely butchered A:TLA, and I've been told never to watch it, even if I'm curious, but I do kinda want to watch it just for the Yue penis hair. Actually the TV Tropes memes page for the movie makes it sound hilarious, I really want to watch it now.
Anyway, I do understand that people are trying to bring more equality into the movie industry, but I wish they didn't have to resort to arbitrary tests. I really like Joss Whedon's approach. He was asked why he keeps making TV shows with strong women characters, and he responded that he was inspired by his mother, who was strong; his father and stepfather, who realised that admiring strong women did not make them weak; he believes the stories give people (regardless of gender) strength; because they're hot (jokingly); and then he gets mad that people are asking this question.
I read that when making The Legend of Korra, some of the producers were concerned that the main character was a girl. However, in test screenings with kids, the kids didn't care about her gender, they just thought she was really cool. (Please no LoK spoilers in the comments, I only just started watching it - it has taken me this long to get it on DVD.)
The world in general has a long way to go before we can achieve equality, but I look forward to the day when a movie can be judged by how entertaining it is and not be criticised for not having a Bengal tiger, two three-legged stools, and someone cooking gluten-free pasta.
1 comment:
I think both the smurfette principle and the bechdel test are pointless from an individual film/show/game perspective but interesting in the aggregate.
I'm a woman. I've historically mostly had male close friends and it's only in recent years that I've had strong friendships with other women. But even when I didn't have any close female friends I still had fellow geeky female acquaintances (like you! hi!) and I still had a sister and a mother and female co-students and coworkers and bosses and teachers... to tell a story that included me which didn't show me interacting with ANY other women except to talk about men would be... bizarre and contrived.
I don't think anyone seriously claims that the bechdel test is actually a measure of progressiveness when applied to a single film or single television episode. In order to pass all it needs is a single instance of two women discussing something that isn't a man. It's basically nothing. But like I said, in a story that contained me - or someone like me - that would be weird and contrived. It would have to be cropped very closely in order to avoid the numerous conversations I have with other women about things that aren't men. Say the story wasn't *about* me but just about my husband or my brother or my male boss... my participation in this story has to be pretty greatly reduced in order to avoid having me have any regular conversations with women.
But obviously not all stories are about me or include me! That would be ridiculous!
BUT the fact that something like a full 40% of films fail this test - they are so closely cropped on the male experience that they do not show any women interacting with each other (except talking about men). In contrast it is difficult to find any films which fail the reverse version of this test (even almost all stories for and about women contain named male characters talking to each other about things that aren't women). There are examples of films that fail the reverse bechdel and I don't think that makes them bad or wrong films or stories (just like a film failing the bechdel test doesn't say anything about its quality) but the aggregate I think indicates something disappointing about the stories that we, as a society, think are important and choose to tell to each other. And that's why I think the bechdel test is important and interesting.
It's a similar thing with the smurfette principle - check out the sheer number of listings on the tv tropes smurfette page. Something like 70% of characters on TV and film are male (and even higher when you only focus on "main" characters). Again the ratio of men and women doesn't, in itself, say anything about the quality of a film. Particularly when there is a very small cast it doesn't mean very much at all. But what does it say about our society that *in general* stories about men are treated as so much more important and interesting than stories about women?
When they do studies recording conversations amongst mixed groups men complain about women "dominating" the conversation if women are speaking more than about 30% of the time. Is that related to the ratio of men:women we've become used to seeing on tv and movies? I don't know. But I think it's interesting to think about.
I don't think we need to demand that all movies contain an equal proportion of all kinds of people. Not many stories are big enough to contain that large a cast! BUT isn't it reasonable to expect that in a world which contains lots of different types of people we should see lots of types of stories about and for lots of types of people? And isn't it annoying and stupid in a world where 70% of people we see in films are men and 40% of movies focus SO CLOSELY on stories about men that women aren't seen having any interactions that don't involve men at all that a bunch of people are complaining that the new ghostbusters movie has an all lady cast?
Post a Comment