The Bechdel Test actually help me realize how little writers actually engaged in the activity of writing dialog for female characters that didn't centralize its focus on the male leads or character. It took a while to actually accept the idea that they really think that line of thinking scores them both and audience and a profit.
They do. Part of this is because many filmmakers and TV executives are firmly convinced that women don't go to movies or only buy products that are exclusively female, and that therefore we're not a demographic worth paying attention to. (Ask me about The Dresden Files TV show sometime. That was a study in willful blindness. And there was no justification for it.)
Women talking about other things = "no profit" doesn't strike me as sound logic so much as does suits scared of thinking of female characters outside of the realm of a man's status within a narrative.
I think that a lot of them are, yes. But there's also a modern phenomenon called "protecting the star" that injures a lot of stories. What this says is that the star MUST be the focus of everyone and everything, and MUST get all the good lines and all the good scenes. The other characters can't think about anything else and certainly can't do anything independently that actually works, because that would show that the star wasn't an absolute necessity without whom the world (personal or global) would perish.
And this terrified, egocentric star is, more often than not, male.
As a result, in movies where this happens, every other character operates as an adjunct to the star's character--the male friends, the parents, the boss, the co-workers--rather than as an ensemble trying to tell a good story. It's just more noticeable with the female characters because female characters nowadays are often written with a painfully limited range of "love interest," "sex interest," "wife/mother," "older woman/grandmotherly type," "plucky female sidekick" and "evil woman." (Chick flicks sometimes feature two women who are friends, but most other movies don't, preferring to make them rivals/enemies instead.) And while a female character being a love interest, a wife, mother or grandmother, a sidekick or evil are not bad things, it's damned annoying to realize many film and TV directors and studios think that's all that women can ever be. (I'm looking at YOU, Stephen Moffat.) Apart from the damaging sexism and the possible loss of profit, it limits the stories they can tell...which is very, very dumb.
Now that I'm older I understand the story and her effect on the events she participated in far better than I did when I simply watched it for the animation and wolves. But I don't ever remember really hating her in way I would have with a character like the Evil Queen in Snow White. Maybe because Miyazaki never promoted her as a singularly evil or good?
I think that's it. I can only think of one time when Miyazaki went to town trying to prove that the character in question was unusually good and virtuous, and that was with Nausicaa. Most of the time, his people are just...people. Even in the fairy tales he tells, people aren't all good or all bad; he just tries to make the story so interesting that you'll care what happens to the characters even if they screw up--and they do screw up.
Disney, however, has never gone in for protagonists with serious flaws; the Disney execs go for the likable protagonist that the audience can easily identify with. They also don't want to alienate the audience by having the protagonist do anything that's wrong. Foolish, yes. Reckless, certainly. But not morally questionable and certainly not morally wrong. Even though Disney protagonists are now much more pro-active, I can't think of a single one who was the source of a problem. Which means that you need another character to introduce evil into the mix. And so you have the sources of outside evil who exist to make things miserable for the protagonist--the Evil Queen, Maleficent, Scar, Jafar, Ursula, Cruella DeVil.
(Although I have to say that I loved Maleficent from the moment that I first saw her. I didn't care about the baby, and I thought that Flora and Fauna gave her pointless gifts--seriously, they couldn't give a future queen wisdom or compassion instead of beauty and a good singing voice? But Maleficent got my attention IMMEDIATELY.)
no subject
They do. Part of this is because many filmmakers and TV executives are firmly convinced that women don't go to movies or only buy products that are exclusively female, and that therefore we're not a demographic worth paying attention to. (Ask me about The Dresden Files TV show sometime. That was a study in willful blindness. And there was no justification for it.)
Women talking about other things = "no profit" doesn't strike me as sound logic so much as does suits scared of thinking of female characters outside of the realm of a man's status within a narrative.
I think that a lot of them are, yes. But there's also a modern phenomenon called "protecting the star" that injures a lot of stories. What this says is that the star MUST be the focus of everyone and everything, and MUST get all the good lines and all the good scenes. The other characters can't think about anything else and certainly can't do anything independently that actually works, because that would show that the star wasn't an absolute necessity without whom the world (personal or global) would perish.
And this terrified, egocentric star is, more often than not, male.
As a result, in movies where this happens, every other character operates as an adjunct to the star's character--the male friends, the parents, the boss, the co-workers--rather than as an ensemble trying to tell a good story. It's just more noticeable with the female characters because female characters nowadays are often written with a painfully limited range of "love interest," "sex interest," "wife/mother," "older woman/grandmotherly type," "plucky female sidekick" and "evil woman." (Chick flicks sometimes feature two women who are friends, but most other movies don't, preferring to make them rivals/enemies instead.) And while a female character being a love interest, a wife, mother or grandmother, a sidekick or evil are not bad things, it's damned annoying to realize many film and TV directors and studios think that's all that women can ever be. (I'm looking at YOU, Stephen Moffat.) Apart from the damaging sexism and the possible loss of profit, it limits the stories they can tell...which is very, very dumb.
Now that I'm older I understand the story and her effect on the events she participated in far better than I did when I simply watched it for the animation and wolves. But I don't ever remember really hating her in way I would have with a character like the Evil Queen in Snow White. Maybe because Miyazaki never promoted her as a singularly evil or good?
I think that's it. I can only think of one time when Miyazaki went to town trying to prove that the character in question was unusually good and virtuous, and that was with Nausicaa. Most of the time, his people are just...people. Even in the fairy tales he tells, people aren't all good or all bad; he just tries to make the story so interesting that you'll care what happens to the characters even if they screw up--and they do screw up.
Disney, however, has never gone in for protagonists with serious flaws; the Disney execs go for the likable protagonist that the audience can easily identify with. They also don't want to alienate the audience by having the protagonist do anything that's wrong. Foolish, yes. Reckless, certainly. But not morally questionable and certainly not morally wrong. Even though Disney protagonists are now much more pro-active, I can't think of a single one who was the source of a problem. Which means that you need another character to introduce evil into the mix. And so you have the sources of outside evil who exist to make things miserable for the protagonist--the Evil Queen, Maleficent, Scar, Jafar, Ursula, Cruella DeVil.
(Although I have to say that I loved Maleficent from the moment that I first saw her. I didn't care about the baby, and I thought that Flora and Fauna gave her pointless gifts--seriously, they couldn't give a future queen wisdom or compassion instead of beauty and a good singing voice? But Maleficent got my attention IMMEDIATELY.)