Beyond Bechdel-Wallace
It has come to my attention that some people on this very internet are misusing the Bechdel-Wallace test to an egregious degree. Specifically, they have been asserting that anything that clears this very low bar is a net good for "female representation in media," even if the thing in question is Oz: The Great and Powerful or A Game of Thrones.
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arguably, BW is THE hero - she's the one who closed the gate.
and while she did sort of use "feminine wiles" - Maria Hill DID NOT. she just kicked ass, took names, and didn't say much. she was never dressed up or anything.
there were 3 whole women in the movie [theater release, i mean - there's a whole sub-plot with "Beth" - a waitress - and Steve that didn't get shown] and i'm not sure they ever even talk to each other...
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Pacific Rim also passes the other three tests I describe here, but not the Bechdel-Wallace test (although the latter failure is kind of extra-frustrating for me because the cast is very unbalanced for absolutely no logical reason).
Black Widow is very much a mixed bag for me because there are good stories where I have great sympathy for her as a character, but it's impossible not to be aware of the context in which male writers use her to play off and simultaneously perpetuate sexist tropes.
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i mostly quit reading comics books 15(ish) years ago, in part because of how characters like BW were used. [though i SORT OF kept up with over-arcing plots]
but i was referring specifically and only to the movie. wyich was SO MUCH BETTER than i'd thought it would be. i;d been worried about it for a long time, and then it was, well... almost perfect!
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I saw Pacific Rim earlier than my friends, so I had to warn them about how, even though Tumblr was collectively freaking out about IDRIS ELBA!!! OMG!!!!!! and STRONG! FEMALE! CHARACTER!!! OF COLOR!!!, the movie was otherwise filled with white dudes and included a completely unnecessary side story about white dude daddy issues.
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and the main hero was a white dude? really? like, they were ALL white except the chick and the token black dude
[or were the triplets supposed to be something non-white? they came across to ME as white Latino, which... i mean, why the hell WEREN'T there any other South Americans involved?!?!?! just fucking LOOK AT A MAP!!!!!!!!!!]
but that was later, after i took off my "enjoyment" goggles [i had to buy a pair of those a decade or more ago...]
what i liked about Avengers was they characters seemed like PEOPLE. even those we got VERY little about = like, say, Maria Hill - you still got the idea that there was a STORY there, that they had backgrounds and...
gah, i don't know how to explain it.
then, of course, it took over my brain. i don't even like most fan fic! i've certainly never WRITTEN any before. gah
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i really only noticed them shooting hoops, so... sigh.
i haven't seen ST. just... no, thanks.
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I didn't want to support Star Trek because of the whole white-British-guy-playing-an-Indian-character mess. Then I found out about the underwear scene and was so relieved that I missed that because it's exactly the kind of thing that always leaves me feeling like crap. That's one thing Pacific Rim did right-- it might have had been short on female characters, but it didn't do any of the sexually gross things that upset me in other action/SF movies.
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meh.
i;ve never been a huge ST fan, and a LOT of it is because they seem, on the surface, to be about equality.... but look at Troi's clothing. or other gratuitious things, like underwear scene.
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