General Discussion Thread

[Emil]

my mom is the weird horse girl (you know, the one who keeps drawing horses all the time) that collects rocks (NO MOM WE CAN'T CARRY THAT ROCK WITH US they won't even let us take it on the plane to norway what the heck)
I REALLY WANNA SEE IT?? when i saw the trailer I was like "this looks either really great or really bad", but since then I've only heard praise and people complaining it's feminist propaganda, which... if it's feminist propaganda, I definitely wanna see it. even if the propaganda is as feminism101 as "women are not things".

I've never really known what or who mad max is though, will i be very confused if i see this movie just like that?

If you haven't watched the original Mad Max, go watch it. Post-apocalyptic car-fueled action. It's violent though, as is Fury Road. And there's a couple of disgusting scenes in Fury Road, but it's done in a way that's really good because it puts emphasis on the bad guy.

The whole feminism thing a lot of men's right activists moan about is the plot and the second main character played by Charlize Theron.
If you want to know the basics of the plot:

Spoiler: show

a bunch of sex slaves used for breeding escaping the hell in paradise that is the bad guy's land with help from Theron's character Furiosa, who was the bad guy's trusted one-armed warlord

[Viisikielinenkantele]

Only loosely related to the discussion, do you know the Bechdel Test for movies? Only three criterias to pass the test: 1. two women in it, 2. they have to talk to each other, 3. about something other than men.
A list of tested movies here: http://bechdeltest.com/
I'm always surprised which movies pass the test and wich don't...

[Haiz]

Only loosely related to the discussion, do you know the Bechdel Test for movies? Only three criterias to pass the test: 1. two women in it, 2. they have to talk to each other, 3. about something other than men.
A list of tested movies here: http://bechdeltest.com/
I'm always surprised which movies pass the test and wich don't...

oh yes do i know the bechdel test. A lot of things have been said about it lately, because there are a lot of ~*feminist-approved*~ movies that don't pass the test, and a lot of pretty bad movies that do, but the whole point isn't that it decides whether a movie is good or not, it's just........... the bar is set so low and the majority of movies still don't pass it.

ok, maybe the 'majority' part is finally starting to change! yay

[hushpiper]

Oh yes, I know the bechdel test! Always thought it was fascinating. I tend to use a very vague expanded version of that for whatever media I'm looking at--how many female characters are there? Are they as fully fleshed-out as the men? How much agency/independence do they have in the story? Are they important to the plot as people, rather than as women/love-interests/greek choirs for the men/etc?

Interestingly, so far in my run of One Piece it fits those criteria very well. You still have /more/ men than women, but the women are indispensable and have their own storylines that have absolutely nothing to do with how they relate to the men.

[Amity]

Bechdel Test, yes.

(Or Bechdel-Wallace Test, if you want to sound really with it and knowing, after Bechdel's friend Liz Wallace to whom she attributes the idea.)

I would like to offer a brief defense of the test as a serious critical tool -- not (just!) as a way of saying, "look how ridiculously low the bar is!"  What makes it so useful is that it calls into question whether something is really all that feminist if it, technically, includes "feminist topics" or expresses "feminist politics" in a way that still always centers around men.

Some of my personal experience with this question revolves around writing in a group that includes men and women, and finding that most if not all of the women have a very hard time passing the BWT.  They generally write about or from the perspective of women as narrators, which is great, but have the damnedest time not just spending their entire pieces having their point-of-view character talking with or about or interacting with men.

One of my fellow participants even told me once, quite frankly which I appreciated, that for her the thought of two women in a conversation that didn't involve men was terminally boring.  "Like, what would they even talk about?"

What indeed!

[Sunflower]

Bechdel Test, yes.

(Or Bechdel-Wallace Test, if you want to sound really with it and knowing, after Bechdel's friend Liz Wallace to whom she attributes the idea.)

I would like to offer a brief defense of the test as a serious critical tool -- not (just!) as a way of saying, "look how ridiculously low the bar is!"  What makes it so useful is that it calls into question whether something is really all that feminist if it, technically, includes "feminist topics" or expresses "feminist politics" in a way that still always centers around men.

Some of my personal experience with this question revolves around writing in a group that includes men and women, and finding that most if not all of the women have a very hard time passing the BWT.  They generally write about or from the perspective of women as narrators, which is great, but have the damnedest time not just spending their entire pieces having their point-of-view character talking with or about or interacting with men.

One of my fellow participants even told me once, quite frankly which I appreciated, that for her the thought of two women in a conversation that didn't involve men was terminally boring. "Like, what would they even talk about?"

What indeed!

ghaaak (*)&**%#~@#$%!

I mean.... wow.   That's seriously what she said?  AmityM, you're like an Adventurer Archaeologist who comes back out of the jungle with news that some weird primitive life-form that we thought went extinct long ago still survives in a remnant population. 

I mean, whether she actually thinks that way or just is under the impression that you always have to tell men what you think they want to hear regardless of your actual opinions, I... whoa.  MIND BLOWN. (Having just finished a long conversation over tea with a friend about running shoes, animal breeding w/r/t dog domestication, why neither of us has pets right now, the Rise of the Novel in the 18th Century, my life and hard times, parents are weird amirite?, our respective favorite kinds of tea, and more...  Granted, that would make a very boring movie, like a lesser "My Dinner with Andre."  But I have to wonder what kind of sad, limited universe this poor thing lives in...)

[hushpiper]

I would like to offer a brief defense of the test as a serious critical tool -- not (just!) as a way of saying, "look how ridiculously low the bar is!"  What makes it so useful is that it calls into question whether something is really all that feminist if it, technically, includes "feminist topics" or expresses "feminist politics" in a way that still always centers around men.

Mmm, I have mixed feelings about the Bechdel test as a tool, to be honest, at least for the purpose of criticizing any individual story--after all, passing the Bechdel test doesn't make your story "feminist", it just makes it a story where two women talk to each other about something other than men at one point. It can easily be misogynistic in every other way. It's better as a commentary on stories in general and what the stories we tell say about us as a culture, which is what it was really meant to be, I think.

[Vafhudr]

ghaaak (*)&**%#~@#$%!

I mean.... wow.   That's seriously what she said?  AmityM, you're like an Adventurer Archaeologist who comes back out of the jungle with news that some weird primitive life-form that we thought went extinct long ago still survives in a remnant population. 

I mean, whether she actually thinks that way or just is under the impression that you always have to tell men what you think they want to hear regardless of your actual opinions, I... whoa.  MIND BLOWN. (Having just finished a long conversation over tea with a friend about running shoes, animal breeding w/r/t dog domestication, why neither of us has pets right now, the Rise of the Novel in the 18th Century, my life and hard times, parents are weird amirite?, our respective favorite kinds of tea, and more...  Granted, that would make a very boring movie, like a lesser "My Dinner with Andre."  But I have to wonder what kind of sad, limited universe this poor thing lives in...)

Well those are the kind of conversation you might have with university buddies (as far as I am concerned your friends are very much like mine) - and even then, it depends on the university buddies - and people like on the forum. As far as I am concerned, that's everyday life for most. And if woman can only talk of men, the reverse is true. Many people of my age have only that for topic - and you can imagine it's not necessarily the most positive kind of discourse either.

[Haiz]

my eyelid is still twitching but I SURVIVED THE EXAM

it went both worse and better than expected, which maybe means it went exactly as expected, which is again to say it's nowehre near A material but I'm proobablyy not getting an F.

It was a little awkward to find out that I had described a completely different artist than Caspar Friedrich on that one particlar question, but for a shot in the dark I guess it was better than none. At least now I'll remember who Caspar Friedrich is forever. Neither did I remember Le Courbuisier's five principles on functionalism, but they're kinda dumb anyway I mean what did decoration ever do to you, dude

[Fimbulvarg]

what did decoration ever do to you, dude

I don't know about this Le Corbuisier, but I once got a piece of glass lodged in my forehead after (accidentally) headbutting a piece of decoration (glass angel). So I can relate to him if he's apprehensive about decorations.

Anyways, congrats with the exam!

[Laufey]

my eyelid is still twitching but I SURVIVED THE EXAM

it went both worse and better than expected, which maybe means it went exactly as expected, which is again to say it's nowehre near A material but I'm proobablyy not getting an F.

WOOP WOOP! Main point is passing anyway!

[Eich]

WOOP WOOP! Main point is passing anyway!

Learning is for suckers!  \o/

For real though, congrats on the exam, Haiz!

[Mélusine]

my eyelid is still twitching but I SURVIVED THE EXAM

It's a good new !

[Amity]

Mmm, I have mixed feelings about the Bechdel test as a tool, to be honest, at least for the purpose of criticizing any individual story--after all, passing the Bechdel test doesn't make your story "feminist", it just makes it a story where two women talk to each other about something other than men at one point. It can easily be misogynistic in every other way.

You say "just!" 

The idea is that depicting women with agency as full human beings -- able to have a conversation without depending on men to make it important or real -- is by itself a thing of importance:  even, that it's more fundamentally upsetting of the Established Order of Things than simply saying or not saying certain kinds of things.

For example, a tv series about 4 women who seem very independent and self-actualized and say lots of self-actualized-sounding things -- but every conversation they have, no matter how sassy, is always about sex with men or romance with men or problems with men.  They have no life, as characters, outside of men.

Versus a movie in which two women develop an intense, antagonistic, but eventually grudging mutually respectful work relationship in the field of high fashion, and spend lots of time talking and arguing about clothes, shoes, belts, and handbags.

The classic Andrea Dworkin type viewpoint would say that the second one is bad because the subject matter is on a checklist of bad, misogynistic topics.  But topics aren't misogynistic -- people are.

In practice it doesn't seem easy to pass the test as a writer and be a misogynist -- it appears to be very difficult if not impossible for people with real misogynistic streaks to write these kinds of character interactions in the first place.  In fact it appears to be easier to recite the things you're "supposed" to say than to structurally change the gender dynamic.  (Yes, Kathryn Bigelow, that means you too.)

At least that's been my observation!

[Amity]

I mean.... wow.   That's seriously what she said?  AmityM, you're like an Adventurer Archaeologist who comes back out of the jungle with news that some weird primitive life-form that we thought went extinct long ago still survives in a remnant population. 

Hahaha, I will take that as a good sign.  What I love about fan cultures, no matter how weird or obsessive they sometimes get, is that all the baloney of regressive social attitudes really is so alien.  That's good.  It should be alien.  So many people (me included!) are like, "ack, I'm so poorly socialized, why am I such a freak compared to normal people?" but this is the thing -- you don't want to be well-socialized.  Well-socialized people say those sorts of ridiculous things and don't even notice.

And yes, that was pretty much word for word.  She even thought about it, actually -- which I really, sincerely did appreciate -- and had more to say, along the lines of how writers write what's exciting, and since women love sex and romance and relationships with men, then it's natural or even inevitable to only focus on those things.

That was just one writer though.  Another one had a different reaction, and actually started trying to write more scenes where some conversation essential to the plot took place between two women instead of a woman and a man.  She said she hadn't thought before about why in previous drafts it had always with a man.  I really do think this stuff goes deep!  If a group of extremely forward thinking, progressive-minded indy writers are like this, think about what Hollywood must be like...

Having just finished a long conversation over tea with a friend about [...awesome stuff...]  Granted, that would make a very boring movie...

I don't know, Sunflower.    The art of dialogue is in making anything interesting.  It was an interesting conversation to the two of you, right?  You managed to make it interesting to one another.  I bet someone could make it interesting to an audience.

...without making one of you George Clooney.