My favorite example of a film that passes the Bechdel test is the video to Sir mix a lot's baby got back
That one also amuses me, but I do think that being catty about someone's body does not pass the spirit of the Bechdel test.
Wait, 57% of the lines in Frozen are spken by men? That's really shocking to me. Do they count songs in a weird way? Or is this just my implicit sexism not noticing?
3: Is there a wind-up Olaf that keeps repeating "Some people are worth melting for" in the movie?
They have the data later, for Frozen the point is that Elsa has surprisingly few lines and there are 3 major male characters to the two major female ones.
Similarly, The Hunger Games skews slightly male, despite Katniss have way way more lines than anyone else. Even if you look at the top 5 characters women have a clear majority of the lines, but I guess all the minor characters add up.
Is the number of lines literally number of lines on the page of the screenplay? Because that would inflate one-word utterances by minor characters -- ten times someone says "Yes" or "No" is ten lines, whereas a ten-line speech by a major character might have a hundred words. But I have no idea if that would affect the gender balance of the results overall.
It's fascinating that Gosford Park, with a huge cast each with relatively few lines, is exactly 50/50.
This reminds me of the joke about why women watch porn films all the way to the end, but I won't repeat it, because I'm a feminist.
I have always thought the age curves are interesting:
(Not really talking superstars)
Women actors get work as early as twenty, can't get hired after fifty
Male actors don't make a living til they're thirty, but get work up to sixty
Both get thirty working years
Could also have an effect on pay differentials
Rosanna Arquette (who's Debra Winger movie I saw) had like 40 credits by age thirty
Tommy Lee Jones had five bit or supporting parts
Mickey Rooney: 88+ year career.
Paul Newman: 56+ year career.
Helen Mirren: 50+ year career and still going.
Obviously not typical, of course.
It would be interesting to know the screentime breakdown too, but if you put digital copies of all those fims into a dataset for audiovisual processing, the studios would probably sue you for having made illegal copies.
12:Good point.
Brighouse just had a post thread about women's lack of participation in philosophy classes/seminars. Someone mentioned that sometimes if the class had three of more women, they would be more likely to talk, although I think B's classes were 50/50. The thread had more women commenters than usual, many...never mind.
My point might be something about when and how much do women talk in mixed situations, and do we need Bechdel situations to increase women's lines for verisimilitude.
The point about supporting characters in the article I think is very important, but I would want a little finer grain than is in the article.
I could try to say something about anime, but for instance "harem" situations are common where women far outnumber the men, the male character is the uninteresting "straight man" setting up the women for them delivering best funny lines and physical jokes, but in those cases he is still POV, gaze, and narrator.
What Young Japanese Women want
Also Free about men's swimming, Haikyuu about men's volleyball, etc as long as there is an absolute minimum of women characters and het romance to get in the way of the quasi-gay imaginaries.
Bechdel-passing media with young women will have only a young male audience. The break point seems to be high school, middle-school girls will watch media with girls in it. And older women are into movie and tv het romance.
This is a generalization, but it's pretty strong.
As a defender of the patriarchy, I'm afraid I can't let you have that joke, my dear.
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Anime Report
(remember I watch a niche of niche, not primetime or Sat morning)
1) Spring is blockbuster season for anime, so what we get is entertaining, but not thematically interesting or visually experimental
2) Everything is getting simulcast now, a very new development. Crunchyroll, Funimation, Amazon, China, Korea, India, etc. So far this doesn't mean very much new money for Japanese studios, but I think has fueled some optimism and upfront investment dollars. Budgets feel somewhat higher.
Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress (Wit, Attack on Titan studio) is nothing more than a zombie apocalypse (violent gory despair) in a steampunk setting + Snowpiercer (writing is a little weak, tho better than SnK), but the production values in the first episode are generally agreed to be motherfucking psychotic. Amazon Prime, Check it out.
3) I suspect a lot of artist coddling and auteur soothing may be occurring in shorts, which also seem to be increasing. Space Patrol Luluco, 7 min, Crunchyroll, is...different.
4) Nothing much at all with young women leads and casts. Bakuon!, about girl motorcyclists, is K-on 2, and more about the bikes than the girls. But the girl who never speaks or takes off her helmet and communicates with placards is funny.
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4 is wrong. What can I say, there are like fucking 50 series opening in April. Two full female casts passing Bechdel:
Flying Witch is a relaxing slice of life in the countryside about a twenty something, well title, and the ten year she trains.
Haifuri looked like Girls and Panzers Battleships but took a surprise unannounced turn toward the grimdark at the end of Ep 1. Girls will die. Bechdel passing conversations about artillery firing rates count, right? PS:Not silliness like Kancolle or Heavy Object.
PPS: Most other series may not pass Bechdel, though they usually do, but are guaranteed to have strong female second leads or supportings, cause guys want it. Last anime image watched Thursday night was a 4'6" woman decapitating a 6'5" male zombie.
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A warm embrace is powerful.
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