Beyond Bechdel-Wallace

[gryphonsegg]

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.

Comments

[gryphonsegg]

The triplets were Chinese. Their family name is Wei, their individuals names are Cheung, Jin, and Hu, the actors are Chinese (and real triplets), and they were described as "local boys" in the movie (Hong Kong). But they didn't get any lines that made the final cut of the movie.

It wasn't surprising that the focal point character was a white guy, given the kind of movie it is (screenwriters who want to make it big in Hollywood are pretty much told, sometimes in exactly as many words, that the lead in an action movie MUST be a straight, white man, and preferably American). What did surprise me was the barrage of white dudes in secondary roles. The Australians get character development, but the Chinese and Russian pilots don't! Character development about daddy issues! And apparently the triplets were so severely backgrounded that some viewers didn't even notice they were Chinese! The scientists are both white men because apparently no one could find, in all of Asia, a mathematician and a biologist who was also a Kaiju fan! Nope, have to go to Germany for that! The communications officer is played by a white or at least very light-skinned Latino actor, is coded as belonging to a very white US-centric subculture, and is supposed to be half Chinese according to supplementary materials even though the actor is not part Chinese at all, so we have a Ricardo Montalban as Khan type of situation in 2013! And that's still not as cringe-inducing as the actual Star Trek movie that came out the same year, with a white BRITISH actor playing Khan! And if that character had been female, nothing would have had to change, and the movie would have passed the Bechdel test by miles! *sigh*

[denelian]

they were Chinese? really?!

i really only noticed them shooting hoops, so... sigh.

i haven't seen ST. just... no, thanks.

[gryphonsegg]

Yep, they're definitely Chinese. I don't know what it was about them that coded as either "white" or "Latino" for you, but they were backgrounded so hard it's not surprising that some people missed where exactly they were from.

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.

[denelian]

i can't even remember what those guys looked like. so i think i just... i don't know, filled in with an image of "semi-famous triplets" that are brazilian? not that i even remember the names of the guys i just thought they were...

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.

[gryphonsegg]

Yeah . . . and now the franchise is under the control of JJ Abrams, who doesn't even want it to seem to be about equality on the surface. He just wants to make movies about explosions and punching people and how awesome Kirk and Spock are as individual (white, male) characters. Oh, and lens flare. How could I forget about lens flare?

[gryphonsegg]

The turn this conversation has taken makes me think about several online discussions I've seen about how Star Trek could be rebooted in a way that makes it as progressive for our time as the original series was for the time when it was created. The bridge crew would surely have to be 50% female. Maybe audiences are finally ready for Number One (the female second-in-command from the original pilot, who so appalled focus groups in the sixties) or even Dr. Pulaski (the temporary chief medic from TNG who basically consisted of Dr. McCoy's personality in a female body . . . and fans LOATHED her for being "bitchy").

[denelian]

sometimes, i think we've regressed...

[gryphonsegg]

From everything I've read, the movie industry actually has regressed in some ways, at least in terms of willingness to give weighty roles to white women. And Star Trek in particular has regressed under Abrams, both in terms of gender issues (Original Kirk was not nearly as bad about creeping on unwilling/unwitting women, at least not when he wasn't divided into his "animalistic" and "moral" sides by a transporter accident) and in terms of race (see Blunderbuss Cabbagepatch as Khan above).