How can you tell when women have significant roles in movies?

There are lots of movies with great relationships between men.  There are a number of movies with interesting roles for women.  But how many movies out there feature multiple major female characters who interact with each other?  That’s the question the Bechdel Test for Women in Film tries to answer.  I stumbled across this amazingly simple tool for analyzing films in one of those “You might also like” boxes at the bottom of the Mediaite page.

Here’s the scoop, quoted from Rachel Sklar’s Mediaite article (which references a post from Boing, Boing):

The Bechdel test—named for the cartoonist Alison Bechdel who wrote a long-running comic strip called Dykes To Watch Out For and the critically acclaimed graphic novel Fun Home—is a test to assess whether women have a meaningful presence in a movie. It consists of three questions.

1. Are there two or more women in it that have names?
2. Do they talk to each other?
3. Do they talk to each other about something other than a man?

Once you start thinking about it, you’ll be surprised by how many films don’t pass this test. In fact, there are entire genres (action-adventure, for example) that seem to fail the Bechdel test, by and large. This page has a year-by-year list of movies, along with their Bechdel status.

Not surpisingly, male-centric movies such as Fight Club, or Lawrence of Arabia, or Das Boot don’t pass the test.  But as Rachel Sklar points out, other notable non-passing movies include:

  • Shrek
  • Clerks
  • Big Lebowski
  • Home Alone
  • Slumdog Millionaire
  • The Truman Show
  • Lord of the Rings
  • Tomb Raider
  • and even…. Princess Bride

This test doesn’t judge the quality of the movie or whether it is misogynistic, only that it doesn’t portray the interaction of two women with names dealing with something other than a man.

It seems to me that this would make a great media literacy assignment.  Any college freshman is capable of performing the test.  It’s easy to understand the point it makes.  You could easily turn it on its head.  (How would it work with men?) It gives your students the opportunity to do some research on their own on a very accessible critical theory topic.  I’m planning on doing this assignment this spring.

In the mean time, here’s a video explaining how it all works:

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Media News I Learned From Twitter

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Summary of Why WikiLeaks Matters

Here’s a great summary article from the Nieman Journalism Lab on why we, as journalists and citizens, need to be thinking about the implications of WikiLeaks.  Thanks to Jay Rosen for pointing out this article.

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The Real Meaning of WikiLeaks

The Economist has a great blog post up explaining why the importance of WikiLeaks transcends Julian Assange and his merry band of leakers.  The magazine’s writer argues that we are undergoing a huge shift from paper documents that are heavy and tied to a place to electronic documents that can be moved with the click of a mouse.  The writer goes on to argue that no amount of prosecuting Assange will change that fact.

This isn’t a defense of WikiLeaks; rather, it’s an explanation of the long term impact of what this transformation means.

I’ve seen virtually no mention of this anywhere, but The Economist is essentially bringing Canadian economist Harold Innis’ ideas about media having biases of lasting a long time or of being easy to distribute.  Paper documents, which we are more used to, are heavy and hard to move.  Electronic documents don’t have a physical form, and thus can be moved with incredible ease.  (Marshall McLuhan was a lot sexier with “the medium is the message” and “global village,” but Innis makes a lot more sense to me.)

And that’s what we need to deal with when it comes to WikiLeaks.  Even going so far as executing the leaker who supplied the documents or assassinating Assangewill not change this fundamental change in the nature of our documents.

As we think about WikiLeaks and the transformations in our society that it is a sign of, remember Truth 5 – New media are always scary.

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WikiLeaks and Journalism

The website WikiLeaks has continued its project of posting huge numbers of secret government documents, generating a lot of news and a lot of controversy.  There is debate over whether the website is damaging national security for the United States, whether it is informing people of information they really need to know, embarrassing lots of people in the diplomatic corps by making what was thought to be private comments public, or merely confirming through documents what lots of people already knew.  (The one thing we know is that it isn’t treason.  Why?  The person behind WikiLeaks is Julien Assange, who is Australian, not American.)  At any rate, without too much further comment, here are a number of links to articles about the controversy:

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Disability, Humor, and Pop Culture

One thing we have an awkward relationship with is humor connected with disabilities.  There is the crude movie humor, there’s the “very special” episode humor, and finally, rarest of all, genuine humor that deals with the disability from the point of view of the people who have to live with it.

I was reminded of this today when I came across a blog post that discussed why the author liked how the webcomic Girls With Slingshots has dealt with a couple of different disabled characters. Anna writes about the story arc at GWS that dealt people at a wedding, including one blind guest and one deaf guest.   She writes:

“Soo Lin, who is blind, and Melody, who is deaf. (Sadly, the strips don’t seem to have a transcript that I can find. I’ve written up a transcript for the relevant strips.) [Soo Lin’s first appearance] [Melody’s first appearance]

“What I like about the jokes in this strip are that they’re all over the place.Some are about how clueless people can be about blindnessSome are disability-related humour as told by people with disabilitiesI think my favourite is this joke about getting a bad ‘terp. There are others, of course.

“The jokes are all based around disability, sure. But the jokes aren’t “ha ha ha, look at the crippled person having difficulties getting around!” And at no point is the humour about a very special lesson for anyone else. Soo Lin and Melody are part of the joke, they aren’t the butt of it.”

Anna has more to say on the topic at this post from a year ago.

Take a look at the examples linked to above, and think about how GWS deals with disability not so much in a sensitive way as in an everyday life way.  (By the way, if you don’t read Girls With Slingshots, you should.  One of the best webcomics out there!

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Digital Media News Roundup

  • WSJ’s Walter Mossberg says Google TV not yet ready for prime time.
    Google’s entry into the set-top box tries to merge Web video and television into a single universe.  He likes the idea, but says it isn’t a smoothly operating product yet.
  • 7 Truths: Actavism and analysis are not the same thing: Comcast claims “Consensus at hand on net neutrality”
    Comcast claims the engineers will solve everything in the best interest of the public, but Ars Technica writer suggests that  only the threat of federal regulation kept the cable giant (and new owner of NBCU) on the net neutrality path.
  • 7 Truths: New media always scary: 10 years post Napster, Warner Music is still selling plastic discs
    Despite the fact the that music listening public has pretty much moved over to digital music files in one form or another, 75 percent of Warner Music’s sales are still in the form of CDs.
  • 7 Truths: Media are essential components of our lives: Mobile WiFi hits Mount Everest
    You no longer need a satellite connection to go surfing at Everest base camp.  There’s almost nowhere to escape our media.
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Link Ch. 14 – NY Times Ombudsman – Q&A with Clark Hoyt

C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb talks with Clark Hoyt, former ombudsman for the New York Times:

“Clark Hoyt talked about his career in newspapers and the state of journalism. He recently finished a three-year stint as public editor of the New York Times. A public editor, sometimes called an ombudsman, is designed to be a representative for the newspaper’s readers and a way for newspapers to examine their own practices. He was the newspaper’s third public editor.”

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Great Journalism Myths – Q&A with W. Joseph Campbell

NOTE: I’m going to be posting a host of C-SPAN Q&A interview programs today that deal with journalistic issues.  I’ll embed the video and provide a link back to the show in the C-SPAN Video library.  These are great programs where the guest is really allowed to talk.

NOTE 2: Running into problems with embedding the video.  Will add that later.

W. Joseph Campbell talked about his book Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism(University of California Press, 2010). In his book Professor Campbell looks at examples of events where news has been altered, exaggerated, or fabricated. They include: 1) that the aftermath of the “War of the Worlds” radio program in 1938 caused panic across the country; 2) that the New York Timescensored itself about the Bay of Pigs invasion at the request of President Kennedy; 3) that the news coverage of Hurricane Katrina was “superlative;” 4) that the reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein resulted in end of Richard Nixon’s presidency; 5) that Walter Cronkite’s February 1968 on-air statement about the Vietnam War led President Johnson to say some variation on “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the war;” 6) that Edward R. Murrow’s “See It Now” program on CBS in 1954 featuring Senator Joe McCarthy was responsible for the senator’s downfall; 7) that in 1897, William Randolph Hearst ever said to Frederic Remington who was on assignment in Cuba, “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.”

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Complete Rachel Maddow interview with Jon Stewart

Last night MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow had a long interview with news satirist and critic Jon Stewart.  I’m going to have a lot more to say about this later, but in the mean time, here’s the complete, uncut interview.

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