Bechdel Meets The FBI

FRINGE: Olivia and Nina Sharp talk about boys. ...No, wait. ©2008 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Barbara Nitke/FOX

I’ve been thinking about the Bechdel Test recently, and it’s something which has come up frequently in the comments on this site. For those who don’t know, this is a test which rates a movie by whether it has:

• At least two women in it
• Who talk to each other
• About something other than a man

Now let’s face it, this shouldn’t be difficult. It actually doesn’t go very far – it’s entirely possible to write a movie which passes but is in no way “feminist”, or is even actively misogynist. It’s very important not to overestimate Bechdel. It tells you nothing about the tone, content or values of a film.

But it does prove that there are two women, and they talk about something other than men. That has value, in an industry where the pass rate for movies is truly pathetic.

Some of the reasons for this low pass rate are actually more about lazy narrative structure than lazy sexism. Far too often if a conversation between two women happens, it still fails because it is only about the lead character, who is a man. In order to maximise tension and pace, all small talk not relating to explosions or imminent danger is cut from the script. (Sadly it’s more often replaced with “I hope hero-man X can save us!”. Even today, it’s ridiculous how much this happens.)

Network TV suffers from this more than cinema because in most television the lead character MUST, MUST be a white male. Must. No negotiation. Must. If you deviate from this, you are That Brave Show with the Alternative Lead, and some other stuff that no-one pays as much attention to as the fact you have an Alternative Lead. Some movies are pushing the boundaries, but the US networks generally refuse to.

So I’m going to talk briefly about TV shows instead of the usual movies. TV science-fiction is a genre which usually scores pathetically badly in particular, so let’s take a series from there which Does It Right:

Fringe. (Minor spoilers to follow!)

Olivia Dunham, a female FBI agent, investigates paranormal events with the aid of a genius, his insane father, another female FBI agent and occasionally some very recognisable beloved genre actors.

Even here there are problems. The biggest one is that she’s arguably not the main character anymore: the show provided such a rich story for the insane father (and to be fair, an absolutely astonishing actor) that he’s nearer the centre of the show.

But it certainly does pass the Bechdel test. Olivia frequently speaks to her female colleague, her sister and various others on work and personal matters. Although she’s quite unemotional about many things (due to trust issues and a twisted childhood), a lot of the screen time is on her experience as a woman in her role. The character is sympathetic and far from two-dimensional.

Much more impressive (and one point which really raised the series) is the episode where she is kidnapped and the male leads are racing to save her from several armed thugs.

But they don’t need to, because she’s an FBI agent – she promptly frees herself and beats the living crap out of everyone nearby, escapes and phones it in. Because female agents are armed and trained professionals, not princesses in a tower.

True, it’s another case of a woman excelling by acting in ways traditionally associated with male aggression. Proving they can punch people in the face as hard as men can is NOT the same as depicting realistic female lives on TV. Similarly in politics, being more aggressive, intolerant and eager for war than the male Hawks isn’t the way to be an inspiration for women – it just means there’s another right-wing patriarchal asshole in the room, and the world has enough of those. But in this case, Dunham’s principles are so strong and her courage so constant that the show is very clearly about her being a competent agent and a woman in the FBI… without her gender ever marking her out as special. She isn’t cut any slack by her bosses, and isn’t expected to react differently under pressure. Olivia naturally starts as the focus and no-one ever reacts to it as being unusual.

Female leads in action movies are still a hot issue. Elsewhere on the site we’ve had a blogpost on the movie “Salt”, which got made because Angelina Jolie can do anything the hell she wants in Hollywood, and they’re already reassured that she can handle guns and car chases. But the press were astonished at the idea of a woman playing a role which had been written for a male spy.

I would dearly love to see something that has a truly interchangeable lead. A fully-rounded character with opinions and instincts, but one which could be equally played by a man or a woman. What would be really interesting is “Person X has a love interest Y, and doesn’t get on with their ex, Z”. Now roll some dice to decide which gender everyone is.

For me, Bechdel isn’t the point. It proves itself, and is therefore a useful barometer for how female roles are being treated across the industry, but it doesn’t tell you about the movie or show. Fringe goes way beyond it, and the interesting parts about Fringe aren’t described by the pass/fail: the female characters are SO strong that it’s the struggle of wills between Olivia and Nina that is really behind the drive to reveal or cover the truth, not the men.

For example, another TV show which passes the test (but this time just barely) is the unashamedly cowboy-centred modern police story Justified.  At one point it has the main character’s current lover and ex-wife talk to each other, but naturally includes him as a subject of the conversation. Given their romantic connection to him and the tension between them right at that moment which comes from it, it’s not an ignorant fail on the part of the writers. It would be bizarre for him not to be a topic of conversation… but this example is typical of the few times that two women talk to each other in a lot of movies and TV.

In this case the lead is once again a white male, but the show’s entire existence is due to the actor playing a Sheriff in (the excellent) Deadwood, so we can forgive it White Male syndrome a little. (Incidentally, HBO are responsible for Deadwood, The Wire, Rome, True Blood etc, all of which are phenomenally good at passing the Bechdel test.)

It’s the other conversation which is missing. Conversation about… anything except the male lead. Studio execs seem to think this must be women talking about Women’s Things, and that male viewers will vomit themselves into a coma after being exposed to anything more than 5 seconds of it. (This is actually true for Grey’s Anatomy, but then it had that effect on EVERYONE after the first couple of series.) What never seems to get answered on the internet is… what would that conversation be about? Do men get equivalent conversation screentime, or is it that they just don’t talk as much about anything except the task at hand?

So here’s what I’d like to do: as well as suggesting what the Bechdel time should be spent on, I’d like the commenters to answer a modified version of the Bechdel Test for TV, as below.

Does the TV series feature at least two named female characters…

• Who talk to each other
• About something other than 1) a man or 2) the immediate danger they themselves are in
• And does it do this at least once every 5 episodes?

(One occurrence in a 23-ep run or over several series does not deserve to pass the test, frankly.)

Are there any good shows out there? Any absolute stinkers? Is the action / tension so constant and high in modern tv that characters MUST talk about the male lead all the time, because all other spare time involves dodging explosions?