BadRep: Tell us a little bit about the series in your own words.

Kathrynne Wolf: The Scarlet Line is an action-drama about a secret lineage of female bodyguards who are, when on active duty, code-named “Scarlet”.

Our premise is that the Line started with the famous “Jujitsuffragette” bodyguard team in Edwardian London. In the world of our story, after the First World War the organisation – ‘The Scarlet Line’ – went international and Scarlets have operated ever since then, protecting people who need their help.

“We blow the Bechdel test straight out of the water.”

Our main character, Amanda, is a retired Scarlet whose very ordinary life is suddenly thrown into chaos. Details of the reasons for this disruption, the purpose, history and future of the line get revealed throughout the season.

BR: What gave you the idea to do this?

KW: I was literally falling asleep one night when I had the idea for a secret lineage of female bodyguards, quietly going about the business of making the streets safer.

This is the sort of story I wanted to see on screen. It’s an old adage that you should write the story you want to read, be the change you want to see, and so on. I had been distressed by the narrow representation of women – and the UNDERrepresentation of interesting roles and stories for women in media – for a long time.

Two issues I find particularly insidious are the tendency for any female protagonist driving the story to be called a “Strong Female Character”, where this adjective seems unnecessary for a male protagonist, and the tendency for “Strong Female Characters” either to a) be somehow supernaturally or technologically augmented, or b) have a tendency to cry, even when on the job.

I wanted to see a story of a woman who kicks butt and takes names as a matter of course. It’s her job. She does her job, she does it well. The fact that she’s female is not excused, it’s not augmented, it’s not commented on; it is not, in fact, the point. The point is the story – there’s a crisis that needs solving, there are obstacles, stakes get raised, we wrestle with issues of morality, trust, crime, betrayal…

“The fact that she’s female is not excused, it’s not augmented, it’s not commented on; it is not, in fact, the point. The point is the story.”

The other major factor that made me want to tackle this project is that I come from a background of what is generally referred to as ‘Chicago Storefront Theatre’. We have over 150 small theatre companies in Chicago, producing shows in all kinds of spaces that weren’t originally intended to hold a theatre, because they have stories they want to tell. It’s very much a ‘do it yourself’ mindset.

That’s why I produced the web-series myself, rather than writing a screenplay and then sending it off to Hollywood, hoping it would catch someone’s eye and that it wouldn’t get lost in ‘option-land’… I wanted to see it happen.

BR: What made you decide to set the series in the US rather than Britain?

KW: The main factor is that I live in Chicago, and this is where I have connections, know the locations, and where it was, in fact, possible to produce the series.

That said, the ‘mythology’ of the Scarlet Line definitely lends itself to satellite stories. It would make a great CSI-style franchise. I would love to see The Scarlet Line: London, The Scarlet Line: Seattle, The Scarlet Line: Barcelona – I’d just need to figure out how to go about licensing the sucker.

BR: The lead Scarlet’s wig and makeup are very striking, and call to mind vigilante superheroes such as Catwoman, Silk Spectre from ‘Watchmen’ and Hit Girl from ‘Kick-Ass’. In other press, you’ve previously mentioned Wonder Woman in connection with the unusual ‘web’ weapon used by the Scarlets – are you inspired at all by comics, as well as martial arts and action cinema?

KW: I was raised on Wonder Woman and Kitty Pryde was my favourite X-Man. Like all storytellers, I can’t help but draw from everything I’ve studied, read and seen.

I would say the Scarlet character was drawn as much from The Equalizer and the Guardian Angels as from comic books and movies.

The lack of a current TV show like Wonder Woman is part of what goaded me into this. One of my oldest friends in the world had a baby daughter, and I had a “what will she WATCH???” moment of panic, as I considered the statistics that show that women’s representation in media has actually shrunk in the last few years.

I wanted to contribute to the ongoing development of a wider range of roles available to actresses and, therefore, role models available to young girls.

I don’t only mean morally upright ‘ideals’, I mean characters that represent the spectrum – that model all kinds of ways of being and behaving, living in the world, experiencing victories and consequences. The wider the spectrum presented, the more agency is given to young girls to figure out how they want to live for themselves.

The other major factor involved in the Scarlet wig and makeup is modern surveillance technology. The Scarlets have to keep their true identities secret, and research on the advances in facial recognition software led me to take the disguise angle to more extreme lengths than I’d originally planned.

It turns out that software has gotten scarily good at working around minor augmentations. Diana Prince’s glasses were NOT going to cut it.

BR: You perform quite a bit of realistic fighting in the episodes, as well as very kinetic movement with the Web weapons. Is it difficult to find film or theatre roles for women which showcase more realistic techniques?

KW: It is maddeningly difficult. For 13 years, I belonged to Babes With Blades Theatre Company, which is a Chicago company whose mission is to ‘place women and their stories centre stage’ using combat as a major part of their expressive vocabulary.

To do this, they’ve focused on developing new work, and they include an all-female-cast Shakespeare in every other season, as there simply are not many plays out there where women get to explore this range of human expression.

Again, it’s ridiculously rare in Western cinema, TV, and theatre that a female character is allowed to simply be proficient at combat without being superhuman, having a ‘super suit’, or being the ‘chosen one’.

Again, it’s ridiculously rare in Western cinema, TV, and theatre that a female character is allowed to simply be proficient at combat without being superhuman, having a ‘super suit’, or being the ‘chosen one’.

Don’t get me wrong – I love superhero stories, and am always happy for any opportunity actresses get to be that kind of hero. I just wanted to help open up the field so that they didn’t have to be somehow ‘other’ in order to do so.

BR: There are more women in TV and film who are action heroines these days, but they’re still often lone figures. Already in the trailers for early episodes we’re seeing that relationships (such as the one between Amanda and Marcus) are a big part of the story – are the relationships between female characters also focused on, alongside the ass-kicking?

KW: Most of the major characters in the series are women. We blow the Bechdel test straight out of the water.

The relationships are very important, and they’re explored much more deeply in Season 2. Season 1 is very much the set-up – it’s where the ball gets rolling. We introduce the major players, the major conflicts, the major themes, and some things get resolved by the final episode, but not all.

BR: What were the challenges of creating a web-series? Did the format give you more freedom to pursue feminist themes?

KW: The fact that we’re doing it all ourselves means we have no one to answer to. There’s no studio executive or marketing department saying ‘You have to include a male authority figure! She has to cry or it’s not believable!’ or any such nonsense.

The challenge, of course, is that we do not have studio resources. The good side of that is that no one is working on this project for any reason other than that they want to.

BR: What do you hope the series will achieve?

KW: I would love to inspire other folks with good stories to stop waiting for permission and MAKE THEM. I think the online short-form potential is evolving rapidly. The democratization of access to technical production capability is an amazingly wonderful thing, if you’ve got a story to tell.

I’d also like to help raise some awareness of some of the ass-kicking women of history – in fact, that is the subject of a panel I am doing at GeekGirlCon in Seattle in October – drawing from history to find inspirational stories of “non-super” superheroines.

If the series reaches some young (or not so young) folks who hadn’t yet realised that they’re allowed to take charge of their own stories and get them out there, and maybe some who hadn’t considered that there might be more roles for women than eye candy, damsel in distress or obstacle, even better.

The Scarlet Line Trailer 1 from Wolf Point Media on Vimeo.

• Huge thanks to Kathrynne Wolf for the interview, and we wish her all the best with the series! There’s a kickass trailer for Season 1 over here, and more info on the Facebook group and Scarlet Line website.
• Thanks also to Kathrynne’s husband Tony Wolf who wrote the book about the life of Edith Garrud, which prompted the original piece in our 2011 ‘Revolting Women’ series. Tony is currently working on a three-part graphic novel series inspired by the Ju-jutsuffragettes titled Mrs Pankhurst’s Amazons, due in 2014.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

There was literally nothing from the trailer for Sucker Punch that I didn’t squee with joy over and clap my hands like a small child about. I was so excited. It was as if someone had written down a big list of “things Sarah likes” and then made a film of it. It even had reams of clockwork, zombie nazis mowed down by women with Really Big Guns. Get in.

I bought a vast tub of popcorn and settled down gleefully to absorb the aural extravaganza of a super-cooltasm created Just For Me.

Except…

…I hated it.

…Really hated it.

Sucker Punch is like a blind date who is perfect on paper but in the flesh there’s just no spark. Worse, they are annoying, their opinions and anecdotes are unfunny, meandering nonsense and they lied about how tall they were (I’m 5’9″, this matters). You spend the whole, pitiful date alternately bored and clockwatching or actively fighting down the urge to laugh out loud in mild hysterics at the awfulness of the situation.

The plot is a pile of garbage, which given Zack Snyder directed (300, anyone?) I was sort of expecting. But I at least wanted to be entertained. This was never going to be high art, but it was beyond mindless. I’m summarising for the sake of summarising because the plot is basically irrelevant, consisting of pointless scenes in which the unfortunate actors mug badly scripted dialogue whilst sobbing through mascara until the next fight happens.

So, “plot”.

There’s this girl called Baby Doll (don’t ask) who is put into an asylum due to Evil Male Relative Action (don’t ask). She uses her Sexy Magic Hypno Dance (don’t ask) to summon up a Mystical Goffick World in which other scantily clad women – who may or may not be aspects of either her OR of another girl called Sweet Pea (don’t ask) – Fight Their Demons (like, totally deep, meaningful metaphor, whoa) and Collect Quest Items under the tutelage of Replacement Male Figure (don’t ask). Eventually after many tears, violence, death and bullets, one of them escapes. I think.

TL;DR: Some Kinda OK Fight Scenes Happen. Women Cry Lots. The End.

Like the crap date, the film reeked of desperately wanting to be clever, ironic, sexy and cool. It was none of those things. It wasn’t even a good, silly action film. And I like good, silly action films. The fight scenes were very fast and quite short so you didn’t get any sense of excitement or drama from the battles: they focused on the look of the costumes and scenery rather than the actual fighting.

The whole thing was tedious in a watching-someone-else-play-a-computer-game way. You watched, but didn’t really engage. There was no tension of any sort, at any point. I had no feelings nor empathy for any of the supposed “characters”. Even in the brief moments when I was vaguely aware of what was going on, or why, I just didn’t care. The exception was one tiny scene between the Doctor/Madam and the Pimp/Asylum Owner. Needless to say, this minor moment only served to remind me of what I wanted the film to be like.

I exited the cinema feeling horribly disappointed (to the point of anger), let down, and deeply confused. You see, not only did the film contain all of the things that I liked and I still hated it – but half of the people I was with really enjoyed it. The other half, like me, hated it. There were arguments on the tube ride home. Maybe it’s a Marmite thing.

I hate Marmite.

It's a close run thing, but I would probably rather eat all this than watch that film again

Like a trauma victim (and speaking of which, this film contains pretty much every abuse trigger in existence handled with the tact and sensitivity of a brick in a sock), I am now trying to post-rationalise the film into being less awful.

The effort of trying to think of any way in which the film is “acceptable” or “average” or even merely “an alright way to pass the time if you are really bored” is beyond me. I’m too angry.

My poor, betrayed brain mourns the loss of the film it wanted to see. The film that was screaming quietly inside, trying to get out.

Like me in the cinema.

Writing this post has actually been somewhat cathartic and therapeutic, so thank you for being there for me during this terrible moment in my life. And for understanding. It’s appreciated. I’m actually starting to feel a little better for having relieved myself of this weight and have begun, a little, to think of the positive sides. Like that I don’t need to see it again. And that really it was just a big, long, not-very-good trailer for the computer game. Which I am looking forward to. The acting will probably be better.

Oh yeah, and like a really unironic sucker punch (geddit?) I’ve just realised that this film totally passes Bechdel. Yeah. Woo. Way to perfectly prove that just because there’s more than one female character and that they manage to talk to each other doesn’t mean it’s any bloody good. Or even particularly feminist. Which this film isn’t, by the way.

Fortunately, it is such utter drivel that it won’t register as meaningfully anti-feminist because nothing it contains is meaningful or worth registering.

YOU SHOULD SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• You like Marmite.
• Um… Dragons? For a few minutes, anyway.
• … by reading this review you accept that I have warned you to the best of my ability, and do not blame me for wasting your time and money.

YOU SHOULD NOT SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• You will be sad over all the things it could have been.
• You are tired of explaining to fellow cinema-goers that women dressed in their sexy pants fighting evil doers is not “empowering”.
• You will then have to watch Warlock: The Armageddon, which I am reliably informed is actually the worst fantasy film ever made, in order to be able to rank Sucker Punch against this grim standard.
• If we give that man any more money, he might make another just like it.

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?

Created in the same spirit as the Bechdel Test, the somewhat tongue-in-cheek Frank Miller Test goes to show how much some writers (coughFrankMillercough) are obsessed with writing about sex workers. Like the Bechdel Test, this is not the final word on whether or not a work is feminist, it is merely useful shorthand for a very common trope.

If the proportion of female sex workers to neutrally presented women is above 1:1, the author fails the test.

While sex workers have stories that we want to hear about, it is all too common for writers to create works where the only roles for women are in the sex industry – where the sex industry is the only place that women can be successful. While this could be interpreted as political comment, it all too often seems merely an excuse, especially in visual mediums such as films and comics, to portray lots of scantily-clad young women and pander to the male gaze.

Genres such as historical fiction, noir, crime and detective stories are where this trope is most often found.

The Shortpacked webcomic’s take on Frank Miller. Miller is the creator of Sin City.

The test was first proposed by ‘thene’, blogger at Aaru Tuesday here.

To pass the Bechdel Test, a work must:-

1. Have at least two women in it-

2. who talk to each other-

3. About something other than a man.

Some commentators will stipulate that the women named in 1. must be named characters, and some will add to 3. that the women must not be talking about babies or pregnancy, either.

The test was first mentioned by Alison Bechdel in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. She gives the credit for the idea to her friend, Liz Wallace.

The test is not the final word on whether a work is feminist or not – the work does not become ‘feminist’ merely by passing this test. Rather, the number of works which do not pass the test are a measure of how uninterested a culture is in women and their stories.

A.K.A. the Mo Movie Measure or the Bechdel-Wallace Test.

Some links:

• View the original comic here.
• Watch a video about the Bechdel test in films here.
• Hathor Legacy examines what the spirit of the test should be about: It’s Not About Passing.
• Related: The Frank Miller Test!