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The very first time I learned about the Bechdel test was way back in 1998, when I was deeply entrenched in the Labyrinth fanfic community. I was chatting via IM with a beta reader, who told me, with a sigh, that my latest fic did not pass said test. She explained patiently that because my story

• Didn’t have at least two female characters
• who had names
• and interacted with each other
• and who did so without the exchange having anything to do with a male character

it was not feminist and I should start over.

I was perplexed. At the time, I was seventeen, I’d never heard of feminism outside of debates about Hilary Clinton’s scandalous involvement in her husband’s presidency or Connie Chung co-anchoring the CBS news. How could a fanfiction be feminist or not feminist? I had a long way to go.

That was the first time I looked up “Bechdel test” to see what it really was. What I learned shocked me. One woman, writing a comic strip, used a character’s preference in films to point out the egregious oversight of female characters with three-dimensional real-world concerns in pop culture. It was a pithy, but entirely accurate, punch line about how Hollywood represents women on screen. And that was all.

I don’t mean to minimize the contribution of Alison Bechdel to feminism. Because this comic strip, “The Rule” really is a watershed moment in feminism and pop culture. It points out something that is right in front of our faces all of the time, but we usually can’t see it because our cultural conditioning makes us literally blind to it. But the Bechdel test, as it came to be known, somehow became the ultimate test of whether or not fiction was fit for feminist consumption, and there is no gray area. If it doesn’t pass, it’s “not feminist.” If it does, it’s “feminist.”

I got thinking about this last night as I was flipping through my DVDs and I came across The Silence of The Lambs. Now, I’m never going to accuse Thomas Harris of being a feminist visionary. If your only experience of his work is the television show Hannibal, just realize that most of the female characters on that show were dudes in the books. But Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling was one of my very first feminist role models. I remember watching that movie on VHS as a freshman in high school and thinking, “My god, this is a scary movie and the woman isn’t dying? And nobody is rescuing her?” And guess what? It doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, despite being one of the very few movies you’re ever going to find that has a female protagonist who isn’t “trying to have it all.” Clarice is just a female protagonist doing her job, without romance or some looming reproductive clock.

Just don’t read Hannibal, because what in the actual fuck, Harris?

Along with The Silence of The Lambs, Labyrinth ultimately fails the test, as well. Although the entire narrative is about a young girl putting aside her dreams of being a damsel in distress in order to be the hero of her own story, it doesn’t pass the test I see my peers using to determine whether or not a piece of media is “feminist.”

Anyway, this got me thinking about what books and movies do pass the Bechdel test and yet are still packed with horrible, anti-female stereotypes and messages.  Like Sex and The City. One episode that stands out strongly in my mind is the one in which fashion-obsessed Carrie may lose her apartment because she’s spent all of her money on designer shoes, and her financial troubles cause a rift between herself and her friend Charlotte, who has alimony and a tony penthouse from the rich man she married. If we’re playing by the rules of “if it passes the Bechdel test, it’s feminist,” then there you have it.

You know what else passes the Bechdel test? Every. Single. 50 Shades of Grey book. All of them.

It’s not that the Bechdel test isn’t a useful shorthand for addressing gender inequality in media; it absolutely is. But what the Bechdel test does not do, no matter how one tries to justify it, is determine whether a piece of media is “feminist” or not. Yet that’s how it’s being used, over and over. This is a symptom of a feminist dialogue that routinely projects a very narrow view of what feminism “is,” a dialogue that is leaving all but the whitest, straightest, cisgender women out of the conversation. There is no room for argument or discussion, either something is feminist or it isn’t.

Alison Bechdel made an amazing point, that the role of women in fiction is to be focused on male characters. And that’s absolutely true.  But that’s all that comic is, an observation. It’s not a diagnostic tool for how to write your book or screenplay or how we should consume novels and television. If your work doesn’t include female characters talking about something other than dudes, examine why that is. If the answer is, “Because her love interest is the most important thing in her life!” then congratulations, jamming a conversation between her and her mother about how amazing her new car is just ain’t gonna fix the problem. And if the answer is “it legitimately doesn’t fit into the story I’m telling,” and your work doesn’t otherwise contain harmful anti-woman messages, your feminist card doesn’t get revoked.

And keep in mind, the comic strip itself is tongue-in-cheek. The movie the main character cites as playing along by her rule is Alien, and then only because two female characters talk about a monster. The entire point of the comic is that even when the woman gets what she wants, a movie where two female characters talk about something other than a man, it’s still not a representation of real women. It’s totally macho and made to fulfill male fantasy.

If you like a piece of media, and it passes the Bechdel test, there’s nothing wrong with pointing that out. And there’s nothing wrong with pointing out how a piece of fiction could have passed the Bechdel test with some tweaking. But we have to stop using Bechdel’s observation as a benchmark for what constitutes “feminist” fiction. Fiction, like feminism, is not “one size fits all experiences,” and it’s impossible to judge a nuanced medium through a black-and-white test and achieve anything resembling accuracy.

In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will have a powerful craving for Hostess fruit pies. She will also recap every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer with an eye to the following themes:

1. Sex is the real villain of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe.
2. Giles is totally in love with Buffy.
3. Joyce is a fucking terrible parent.
4. Willow’s magic is utterly useless (this one won’t be an issue until season 2, when she gets a chance to become a witch)
5. Xander is a textbook Nice Guy.
6. The show isn’t as feminist as people claim.
7. All the monsters look like wieners.
8. If ambivalence to possible danger were an Olympic sport, Team Sunnydale would take the gold.
9. Angel is a dick.
10. Harmony is the strongest female character on the show.
11. Team sports are portrayed in an extremely negative light.
12. Some of this shit is racist as fuck.
13. Science and technology are not to be trusted.
14. Mental illness is stigmatized.
15. Only Willow can use a computer.
16. Buffy’s strength is flexible at the plot’s convenience.
17. Cheap laughs and desperate grabs at plot plausibility are made through Xenophobia.
18. Oz is the Anti-Xander

Have I missed any that were added in past recaps? Let me know in the comments.

WARNING: Some people have mentioned they’re watching along with me, and that’s awesome, but I’ve seen the entire series already and I’ll probably mention things that happen in later seasons. So… you know, take that under consideration, if you’re a person who can’t enjoy something if you know future details about it. 

If you don’t want to go to a Halloween party this year because it just seems like too much damn work, or you don’t like people, or you just haven’t been invited to a Halloween party, this is the event for you. Join your fellow citizens of Troutnation on twitter to watch the Tim Burton classic, Beetlejuice.

Start your copy of the movie at 9:00PM EST (sorry, I know you all come from different time zones, but mama’s gotta sleep) on October 25th, and tweet about it using the hashtag #UtterlyAlone (thanks to @ShariSlade for the suggestion!). This will be a great chance to meet some new twitter friends and also, um, watch Beetlejuice, because OBVIOUSLY. It’s only the greatest movie of all time.

Apparently, someone explained to Charlie Hunnam exactly what he agreed to, and when the icy fingers of reality speared through his brain, he left the project with nothing but a cloud of dust and a body-shaped hole in the wall.

Since this will almost certainly delay the movie’s release (filming was set to begin in November), I hereby decree that October 11 be recognized as a Troutnation national holiday. St. Hunnam’s Day, known in medieval times as “Hunnamsmas,” shall be commemorated each year with a dinner of anything a controlling psychopath didn’t force you to eat, and a village wide spanking contest.

So, weigh in, all ye citizens of Troutland. Is this a bad move on Hunnam’s part? Do you believe that “scheduling” issues took him away from the project? Who should they cast now? And does anyone know Ian Somerhalder’s whereabouts?

Hey everybody out there in Troutnation! It’s World Mental Health Day! This would be a great time for one of my candid posts about mental illness, but I’m having a rough week coping. I’m just kicking back and trying to maintain, but I didn’t want to let the day go by without contributing somehow. So, I made a really grainy, awful looking webcam video about a neat invention I picked up at the pharmacy today. I think it can be helpful to people whose mental illness makes it difficult to keep track of the day-to-day routine.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFQfNTIk8iA&w=420&h=315]

 

A lot of you lovely weirdos have created fanworks about 50 Shades of Grey, and they’re often shared in the comments and beloved by all. But last night, I received this jem via twitter and I would hate for anyone to miss it: Bic McPenlamperson by Bookjunk. You might recall Bic McPenlamperson from the 50 Shades Freed chapter nine recap:

Seriously, have you guys noticed how conveniently “lunatics” pop up in their lives, causing these dramatic and unavoidable threats that mean Ana absolutely must stay at home or under Christian’s surveillance all the time? First it was Leila, now it’s Jack Hyde and the mystery woman driving the Dodge. I’m going to guess that this will become a regular thing. “Honey, don’t forget, I have Kate’s bachelorette party to go to.” “Oh, um, you can’t, because, uh, um, huh… uh… Bic… Mcpen… lamp…erson, yeah, that’s right! Bic McPenlamperson! My old nemesis Bic McPenlamperson is out to destroy us. So you can’t go.”

I’m not sure how to properly express just how charmingly bizarre I find it to have someone write fan fiction of my work. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I’m always super flattered. This time, it’s also hilarious; this is fanfic of something I wrote about somebody else’s book. See also: the recursion photo in that chapter nine recap. That about sums it up.

Coming soon: the next Buffy recap!