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Have you guys considered re-posting these on a blog or something somewhere, with the comments feature mercifully turned off? I'd really like to share these with my Doctor Who fan friends. It's rare to see a review of Doctor Who as a whole that isn't extreme hate or fanboy/fangirl-ism.
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Aug 25, 2014 13:25
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Watching you alternate between hating and loving then hating then loving Doctor Who is the most wonderful rollercoaster ride. David Tennant is definitely a hit-or-miss Doctor, and for me he was definitely a hit. My favourite actually, although the newest is threatening to change that.
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Aug 25, 2014 13:54
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The Bechdel is not a foolproof test and given that Doctor Who is often about isolating people from having conversations with anyone besides the Doctor and/or his companions because they could only hire four extras for the quarry they were filming it, it's probably not the best show to apply it to. The little ways in which popular fiction diminishes women is definitely very present in the show, though, which is something worth paying attention to, no matter what HUMAN FISH happens to think.
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Aug 25, 2014 14:02
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The Bechdel Test isn't really anything you ever want to be applying to a specific work anyway. It's more of a statistical argument. It's not a problem that any given work fails or passes the Bechdel test, it's the sheer number that fail compared to the reverse.
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Aug 25, 2014 14:07
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Bicyclops posted:The Bechdel is not a foolproof test and given that Doctor Who is often about isolating people from having conversations with anyone besides the Doctor and/or his companions because they could only hire four extras for the quarry they were filming it, it's probably not the best show to apply it to.
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Aug 25, 2014 14:43
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Bicyclops posted:The Bechdel is not a foolproof test and given that Doctor Who is often about isolating people from having conversations with anyone besides the Doctor and/or his companions because they could only hire four extras for the quarry they were filming it, it's probably not the best show to apply it to. *nods respectfully towards you* stay strong, brother
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Aug 25, 2014 14:46
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If the Doctor was a woman the Bechdel test would probably pass just about every time.
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Aug 25, 2014 14:55
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Bicyclops posted:The Bechdel is not a foolproof test and given that Doctor Who is often about isolating people from having conversations with anyone besides the Doctor and/or his companions because they could only hire four extras for the quarry they were filming it, it's probably not the best show to apply it to. #NotAllDoctors am I right my man
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Aug 25, 2014 15:39
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A lot of you are getting pretty darn angry about a post that couldn't be more correct
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Aug 25, 2014 16:01
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No don't you see, Bown, feminism won and anyone with any reservations about the sexist undercurrents in western culture is a crazy tumblrtot SJW feminazi white knight.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:11
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Bown posted:A lot of you are getting pretty darn angry about a post that couldn't be more correct Like... we're in a thread where a self-described feminist is reviewing Doctor Who and discussing, in his reviews, whether or not Stephen Moffat is writing strong women characters, what the hell did they expect people to talk about 
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Aug 25, 2014 16:12
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Jsor posted:The Bechdel Test isn't really anything you ever want to be applying to a specific work anyway. It's more of a statistical argument. It's not a problem that any given work fails or passes the Bechdel test, it's the sheer number that fail compared to the reverse. So, an individual work failing is meaningless, but then sheer numbers of individual works failing is supposed to mean something? How is that supposed to work? If the test can't judge something properly individually, it won't suddenly be worthwhile on a larger scale.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:22
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thexerox123 posted:So, an individual work failing is meaningless, but then sheer numbers of individual works failing is supposed to mean something? How is that supposed to work? If the test can't judge something properly individually, it won't suddenly be worthwhile on a larger scale. There are various reasons why an individual work might fail the Bechdel test (for example, a father and son story), which doesn't automatically disqualify it as a meaningful piece of art. The problem comes when there are no stories that feature multiple female characters that aren't centered around romance. My example of this is the opposite - just because something passes the Bechdel test doesn't mean it's all well and good either. If the Doctor was a woman then you could pass the Bechdel test but most/all of the writing staff would still be men and that would still be a problem.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:26
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thexerox123 posted:So, an individual work failing is meaningless, but then sheer numbers of individual works failing is supposed to mean something? How is that supposed to work? If the test can't judge something properly individually, it won't suddenly be worthwhile on a larger scale. It's the difference between individual instances and systemic issues. This shouldn't be so mind-bogglingly weird. Any individual [work of art that fails the Bechdel Test] might have an artistically valid reason to fail the Bechdel Test. It might be about, say, WW2 vets, or whatever. But the fact that such a huge proportion of works of art focus on men in such a way raises distressing questions about what stories people are telling, what stories are popular, what art gets support - and why.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:26
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DoctorWhat posted:It's the difference between individual instances and systemic issues. This shouldn't be so mind-bogglingly weird. My issue is more with the fact that things like Gravity and Run Lola Run fail the test because of the way it's phrased/put together. If it can't properly identify individual examples of the systemic issues, applying it to more movies is just going to increase the size of the error.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:28
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DoctorWhat posted:No don't you see, Bown, feminism won and anyone with any reservations about the sexist undercurrents in western culture is a crazy tumblrtot SJW feminazi white knight. I think the point is that, no, Moffat's episodes don't pass the Bechdel test, but neither do Davies episodes. So what the hell is the point of pointing out that Moffat's episodes don't? Shouldn't it just be said that Doctor Who doesn't pass the Bechdel test? It's not like anyone brought it up in a Davies written episode, while it was equally true there.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:28
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So the Emmys is tonight and- Oh sorry, I'm talking to doctor who fans The Emmys is an event held by the academy of television arts and sciences to honor the best television programs that have aired in the past year Anyways so the Emmys is tonight and I'm gonna watch it so probs no review tonight Feel free to mock me for giving a poo poo about the Emmys
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Aug 25, 2014 16:31
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thexerox123 posted:My issue is more with the fact that things like Gravity and Run Lola Run fail the test because of the way it's phrased/put together. As I said, it's not about individual works of art. It's about tracking the symptoms of a wider problem. When there are dozens of films each year that "fail" the Bechdel Test the same way Gravity or Run Lola Run do, maybe then the Bechdel Test will be totally meaningless. But that's not how things are. Plus, you can see just from the marketing for Gravity how those attitudes persist - George Clooney's role in the advertisements was hugely overplayed! thrawn527 posted:I think the point is that, no, Moffat's episodes don't pass the Bechdel test, but neither do Davies episodes. So what the hell is the point of pointing out that Moffat's episodes don't? Shouldn't it just be said that Doctor Who doesn't pass the Bechdel test? It's not like anyone brought it up in a Davies written episode, while it was equally true there. The only time that failing the Bechdel Test itself, rather than (the) Moffat (era)'s other weird sexisms, irritated me was in an episode in Series 7, where the failure is telegraphed so hugely and played so straight as to be bizarre in its brazenness.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:31
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thrawn527 posted:I think the point is that, no, Moffat's episodes don't pass the Bechdel test, but neither do Davies episodes. So what the hell is the point of pointing out that Moffat's episodes don't? Shouldn't it just be said that Doctor Who doesn't pass the Bechdel test? It's not like anyone brought it up in a Davies written episode, while it was equally true there. The Bechdel test is a red herring here, as far as I'm concerned. Moffat's later tendency to have women of a certain archetype as villains over and over and leer at them through the writing is a problem though, and something a bit absent from the RTD years. Moffat isn't Satan by any stretch of the imagination and he definitely writes some of the show's best episodes, both during his tenure as showrunner and before it, but he is not particularly good about writing women and he does seem to get worse as he goes on.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:32
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DoctorWhat posted:As I said, it's not about individual works of art. It's about tracking the symptoms of a wider problem. Except you can't track the symptoms of this wider problem without applying it to individual works of art. Which the test constantly fails at.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:33
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thexerox123 posted:Except you can't track the symptoms of this wider problem without applying it to individual works of art. Which the test constantly fails at. This assumes that each individual work of art is representative of the whole.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:35
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computer parts posted:This assumes that each individual work of art is representative of the whole. No, it's assuming the whole is comprised of individual works. My view is just, I know that it's made to look at the larger picture, but it can't do that properly if it doesn't work consistently on an individual level. thexerox123 fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Aug 25, 2014 |
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Aug 25, 2014 16:36
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thexerox123 posted:No, it's assuming the whole is comprised of individual works. The point is that non-Bechdel passing works of art are fine, just that the proportion right now is skewed too far in one direction. For a simple example: say you have a machine that makes red and blue widgets. Ideally, you want to have about an equal number of red widgets as blue widgets. The fact that an individual widget is red doesn't really matter that much, it's the fact that 75% of the widgets as a whole are red is the problem. Obviously it's a bit more complicated then that (ideally non-Bechdel passing works of art should be significantly lower than half) but it's the general idea.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:39
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computer parts posted:For a simple example: say you have a machine that makes red and blue widgets. Ideally, you want to have about an equal number of red widgets as blue widgets. The fact that an individual widget is red doesn't really matter that much, it's the fact that 75% of the widgets as a whole are red is the problem. Yes, and so you don't want a monitoring system that sometimes mixes up blue and red widgets.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:41
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thexerox123 posted:My issue is more with the fact that things like Gravity and Run Lola Run fail the test because of the way it's phrased/put together. If it can't properly identify individual examples of the systemic issues, applying it to more movies is just going to increase the size of the error. People definitely misapply the Bechdel Test all the time. There are people who will, indeed, say Lola Rennt or Gravity or whatever is not feminist (or not feminist enough) because it fails. Nevermind that Alison Bechdel herself wouldn't have used that logic. That doesn't mean the test should be discarded, though. It looks fishy when many more movies pass the Reverse Bechdel Test (at least two men who talk to each other about something other than a woman) than the normal one. The purpose of the Bechdel Test was never to pass judgment on an individual work, it was to make people think critically about how many movies pass and fail. The joke in the 1985 strip that created the "Bechdel test" was that, by only seeing movies passing the test on principle, the last movie the character was able to see was Alien (which came out in 1979). Obviously a movie was almost certainly made between 1979 and 1985 that passed the test, but the joke pretty clearly was "not enough good movies worth watching pass the test". It never postulated that it was a direct marker of feministosity.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:41
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Technically what you'd need to do for it to be wholly scientific would be compare the overall statistics of passing the Bechdel Test with passing a gender-flipped Bechdel test to make your point but we know what they'd be and you get the drat idea
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Aug 25, 2014 16:41
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Jsor posted:The purpose of the Bechdel Test was never to pass judgment on an individual work, it was to make people think critically about how many movies pass and fail. This part is still exactly what I have a problem with, because saying that it was never meant to pass judgement on an individual work is meaningless when that's exactly what it does. You can't think critically about how many movies pass and fail without passing or failing all of those individual works. Which it does not do properly. And pointing out that it was originally a joke doesn't mean much either, since it's certainly not applied as a joke these days. I actually totally agree with what the bechdel test is trying to say, I just think it itself is a lovely metric. thexerox123 fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Aug 25, 2014 |
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Aug 25, 2014 16:47
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thexerox123 posted:This part is still exactly what I have a problem with, because saying that it was never meant to pass judgement on an individual work is meaningless when that's exactly what it does. You can't think critically about how many movies pass and fail without passing or failing all of those individual works. Which it does not do properly. You are expected to use your brain as well as the test. Yeah, Gravity fails because of the way it's structured, but most films that fail the test fail because the women are satellites to the men. No, it turns out that you can't brainlessly apply a simple test to every piece of fiction ever made and expect it to give you perfect results.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:50
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Like, the Bechdel test is illustrative, for example, for romantic comedies, which are ostensibly about and for women, but frequently fail the test spectacularly. I don't think it's particularly relevant for Doctor Who, though, and we're on a pretty big derail.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:54
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I agree, pointing out that literally hundreds of movies come out each year in which multiple named male characters speak about any number of topics, whereas nearly zero movies come out each year in which the same can be said of woman characters is a totally meaningless observation if Gravity can be a Good Movie without passing the test. Or maybe you could pull your head out of your rear end.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:55
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I like this conversation. I like the tone of it. Here's a knife. Someone take the knife. Do something with the knife.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:56
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DoubleDonut posted:You are expected to use your brain as well as the test. Yeah, Gravity fails because of the way it's structured, but most films that fail the test fail because the women are satellites to the men. That's literally the case in Gravity 
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Aug 25, 2014 16:56
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thexerox123 posted:This part is still exactly what I have a problem with, because saying that it was never meant to pass judgement on an individual work is meaningless when that's exactly what it does. You can't think critically about how many movies pass and fail without passing or failing all of those individual works. Which it does not do properly. You're thinking of "failing" wrong. Movies fail in the technical sense that 2+2 fails at being greater than 5. It's just an inexact sorting mechanism. Yes, some stupid people blindly apply it in a needlessly stringent way; that doesn't mean it's invalid, it means those people are idiots. On the whole the test says something significant about the way we produce and consume media. Yes, there are exceptions, but the reason the Bechdel test works is because, though it's inexact, it has (relatively) clear and objective criteria. The test would be even worse if it wanted you to sort movies that are feminist and movies that aren't because that's an inherently subjective critique. Oxxidation posted:I like this conversation. I like the tone of it. Here's a knife. Someone take the knife. Do something with the knife. I use the knife to sacrifice a cow and summon forth the dread god Feministargumentgorgoth.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:57
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The Star Wars prequels pass the test. So, how often would the test need to blatantly miscategorize movies for you all to think that it's a bad metric? And I think the argument that people need to use their own brains and come up with metrics beyond the questions in the bechdel test in order for it to work properly just proves the point. You know people already apply it as-written. Edit: I think I'm gonna stop posting about this now. I didn't want to derail the thread to this extent, I should have known better. thexerox123 fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Aug 25, 2014 |
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Aug 25, 2014 17:01
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thexerox123 posted:The Star Wars prequels pass the test. Jsor posted:On the whole the test says something significant about the way we produce and consume media. Yes, there are exceptions, but the reason the Bechdel test works is because, though it's inexact, it has (relatively) clear and objective criteria. The test would be even worse if it wanted you to sort movies that are feminist and movies that aren't because that's an inherently subjective critique. Edit: Like, dude, do you want a list of passing and failing movies? Becuase there is one. I've looked at it and I think it holds pretty well.
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Aug 25, 2014 17:03
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Jsor posted:You're thinking of "failing" wrong. Movies fail in the technical sense that 2+2 fails at being greater than 5. It's just an inexact sorting mechanism. Yes, some stupid people blindly apply it in a needlessly stringent way; that doesn't mean it's invalid, it means those people are idiots. That doesn't pass the Bechdel test. It must be used by a woman on another woman, without said persons referencing any males!
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Aug 25, 2014 17:04
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I don't pass the Bechdel test 
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Aug 25, 2014 17:44
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I specifically remember being really bored with this episode because I was so sick of ladies fawning over the Doctor. Tennant looks like a loving cartoon character, he's definitely not attractive. Anyway thats my two cents.
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Aug 25, 2014 18:47
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Beekeeping and You posted:I specifically remember being really bored with this episode because I was so sick of ladies fawning over the Doctor. Tennant looks like a loving cartoon character, he's definitely not attractive. Anyway thats my two cents. Boy does Moffat have a surprise for you!
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Aug 25, 2014 18:50
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Beekeeping and You posted:I specifically remember being really bored with this episode because I was so sick of ladies fawning over the Doctor. Tennant looks like a loving cartoon character, he's definitely not attractive. Many many many ladies (and men) would disagree
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Aug 25, 2014 18:55
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