The Australian Jewish News appears to disagree.
No, Don Perlglut, amateur film critic disagrees, he just sent them the piece which they reprinted.
That's the thing about community newspapers, they often just accept submissions 'as written', even I have had articles get up word for word in the local papers.
There's people that have acquired a taste for Woody Allen. . . ? ? ?
Yeah. Soon Yi.
*Edit: ninja'd by meatrace
Soon-Yi, Mia Farrow, Diane Keaton, Louise Lasser...
On the one hand, we've got evidence that at least one film critic in Australia "gets" Woody Allen, and on the other we have a blanket statement that nobody in Australia "gets" him.
Anyway, as Judy Davis said in Husbands and Wives when told by her would-be suitor that they were attending a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni, "Don Juan de Doodlebug? They should've cut his f+@$ing dick off!"
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This is Australia, we have one of just about everything mate, including a Woody Allen fan. We used to have two of everything, but the bloody flora and fauna ate the other ones.
I've seen probably a dozen woody Allen movies. Of them, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) was sorta funny. I keep trying and it's always a snoozefest.
See, Mr. Shifty, there's philistines on both sides of the Pacific.
I once tried to get a French guy to explain why he and his countrymen were so into Jerry Lewis. He somehow temporarily lost his ability to speak English.
Without Martin and Lewis films, we would never have had Asprin's MYTH series.
Whether that's a good or bad thing is for each one of you to decide on your own.
I once tried to get a French guy to explain why he and his countrymen were so into Jerry Lewis. He somehow temporarily lost his ability to speak English.
No wonder. The French also love their Louis de Funès, which is the same kind of humor.
(Just for the record, I don't like any of them.)
On The Road to Martin and Lewis? Oh, Doodlebug...
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I once tried to get a French guy to explain why he and his countrymen were so into Jerry Lewis. He somehow temporarily lost his ability to speak English.No wonder. The French also love their Louis de Funès, which is the same kind of humor.
(Just for the record, I don't like any of them.)
Comparing Louis de Funès to Jerry Lewis is like calling Foie Gras "paté".
We let it pass and snicker under our collective breath at how crass and gauche some non-French people are ;-)
BTW, we do love Woody Allen too.
I have to admit that I like Michel Blanc. Grosse Fatigue was awesome.
So, read the first third of Ehrenreich, and, I must say, choosing this from Sister Margatroid's list of books on Feminism is totally cheating. This is, as Norman Mailer quipped above, just old socialism. I'll have to delve deeper, I guess.
But I chuckled when she speculated that working people continue, perversely, to smoke because "work is what you do for others; smoking is what you do for yourself. I don't know why the antismoking crusaders have never grasped the element of defiant self-nurturance that makes the habit so endearing to its victims--as if, in the American workplace, the only thing people have to call their own is the tumors they are nourishing and the spare moments they devote to feeding them."
I also liked it when she blamed her potty mouth on being married to a Teamster organizer. See, mods, it's not my fault. It's f#~%in' cultural.
On The Road to Martin and Lewis? Oh, Doodlebug...
Oh yeah, and I bet that there isn't a single Woody Allen film that passes the Bechdel test. Or whatever it's called.
Okay, that one with Gena Rowlands probably passes, then.
Maybe Interiors.
Hannah and Her Sisters, as I recall, has scenes with Dianne Wiest trying to get Mia Farrow to lend her money. Of course, my favorite scene of hers is when she's duking it out with Carrie Fisher over Sam Waterston.
EDIT: Scene ends too soon, alas.
Supplemental checking Bechtel site...
Manhattan passes.
To pass the Bechdel test, a movie must:Have at least two women
Who talk to each other
About something other than a man.That's it.
The Bechdel test is a stupid test, and I reject it completely.
I remember reading in a British film mag once that Woody Allen was the proof to the lie that "Yanks don't do irony."
As far as I can tell (and because Comrade Jeff and Sister Sarkeesian informed me) the Bechdel test is a joke from a comic book.
Applying it to one of the more famous not-quite-feminist film auteurs of the 20th century is, imho, even funnier.
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The Bechdel test is a stupid test, and I reject it completely.
To pass the Bechdel test, a movie must:Have at least two women
Who talk to each other
About something other than a man.That's it.
Not every movie needs to pass the Bechdel Test. It's designed to be an extremely simplistic method of analyzing movies to help paint the overall landscape that is presented by an entire industry.
Much the same way that game companies avoiding female protagonists tells us something about video games. It isn't definitive or complete, but it helps us understand what might be going on, it is not the end-all-be-all of what IS going on, or SHOULD be going on.
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I don't think the Bechdel test is a joke, it just doesn't tell you anymore than it tells you. The point is that asking the same questions about male characters in any movie ever would just be pointless.
I'm especially surprised at you, Doodlebug. Given your experience with comics I thought you would have heard about the notice Alison Bechdel garnered with Fun Home.
It's a bit of a derail, but...
The Bechdel test is a stupid test, and I reject it completely.
No, the Bechdel test is a joke, and should be treated as such.
What don't you guys like about it?
The Bechdel test is a stupid test, and I reject it completely.What don't you guys like about it?No, the Bechdel test is a joke, and should be treated as such.
Well lets look at your harry potter for example, which fails the test yet has
Hermonie, who basically drags the other two protagonists along for most of the movie, and is the only one smart/skilled enough to have actually prepared for what was coming by making her family move to Australia without her, having muggle cash, clothes and food on hand, as well as camping equipment. She's also the one that has compassion for the poor dragon, and gets it on their side.
Professor McGonagal who's an unparallelled transmuter, beats the snot out of snape, and controls the most powerful defenses of the school
Mrs Weasley, who lays an epic beat down on...
Bellatrix Lestrenage, a wickedly powerful witch that scares the living hell out of most entire country.
The idea that females are being ignored in that movie is kind of silly.
I'm especially surprised at you, Doodlebug. Given your experience with comics I thought you would have heard about the notice Alison Bechdel garnered with Fun Home.
I did comics hardcore for a couple years in elementary school (all Marvel) and then discovered heavy metal, sex, drugs, punk rock and communism, in that order.
After I came out the other end of communism for a many-year sabbatical, I rediscovered comics and did them pretty intensely for a couple of years. Got pretty obsessive about it, running down a lot of stuff like Preacher and Transmetropolitan and, of course, Alan Moore.
I gave it up after a couple of years because I came to the realization that $3 for a comic book that I could read in 5 minutes was terrible value compared to $3 for a used copy of The Aeneid which would at least take me a week. (Not as good as Transmetropolitan, btw.)
As for the Bechdel Test, I lied. I knew about it before I met my internet beloved (OHWFA!) but I did learn about it on Paizo.com. Maybe from Comrade Jeff, maybe from Lord You. I apologize for the possible slight. I must also apologize for the slight to the Bechdel Test. I remembered the page being amusing and concluded it was a, but not merely, joke. I remember contemplating my favorite movies and being amazed at how few "Passed the Test."
But, yeah. Learning my feminism, little piece at a time, bit by bit, on Paizo.com.
I wonder what's going on in that other thread...
And yet, pretty much anyone who brings up the Bechdel test makes it clear that the point isn't to say "This movie is bad". And then goes on to explain how it is useful.
Which is always ignored when someone who wants to critique it pulls out a movie that doesn't pass and argues that it's not sexist.
I ignored nothing.
quote you: It's to highlight how little our culture focuses on women
Its absurd to argue that the test is accurate in this case because a number of women clearly ARE being focused on. A very strong female character is one of the main three as well as a large number of the supporting cast.
I ignored nothing.quote you: It's to highlight how little our culture focuses on women
Its absurd to argue that the test is accurate in this case because a number of women clearly ARE being focused on. A very strong female character is one of the main three as well as a large number of the supporting cast.
Golly, you're right! I'm going to go throw away all the pregnancy tests in the local pharmacies, too. They're absolutely useless because they can get false postives as well.
Golly, you're right! I'm going to go throw away all the pregnancy tests in the local pharmacies, too. They're absolutely useless because they can get false postives as well.
With a pregnancy test you can test their effectiveness and accuracy (by either getting a regular test or just waiting nine months) What checks the accuracy of the Bechdel Test?
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The Bechdel Test isn't a test that is useful in a case by case basis. There are plenty of reasons a particular work would fail the Bechdel test.
The Bechdel Test is useful in the aggregation of many its results on all works (or as many as anyone cares to rate, anyway), in that a heavy preponderance of failures in art says something about our culture - especially if the reverse bechdel test doesn't show a similar result set over the same group of works.
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Golly, you're right! I'm going to go throw away all the pregnancy tests in the local pharmacies, too. They're absolutely useless because they can get false postives as well.
A better comparison would be to stop buying the ones that just don't work. :)
The test isn't useful for categorizing single movies. It is useful when applied to a large number of works. Especially if done in comparison to the reverse test.
Not really even then. All it does is falsely suggest something. Especially in a niche medium that is primarily focused at appealing to and being relevant to males anyway, but also in general when it comes to entertainment in any medium. All it does suggest is that <the world finds> women's personal issues to be more interpersonal while men's are more external. It really doesn't say anything about the larger number of works. Feminism itself fails the test, (as the writers <probably women> tell the reads <mostly other women> just how much they do not need men to be happy).
With a pregnancy test you can test their effectiveness and accuracy (by either getting a regular test or just waiting nine months) What checks the accuracy of the Bechdel Test?
I kinda let myself get roped into this, because I was trying to be funny. (Note to self: Stop trying to be funny!!)
The idea behind the Bechdel Test (outside of the initial idea that it was how one of the characters in Alison Bechdel's comic strip decided if she would watch a movie or not) was simply to demonstrate that the depths of female characters' stories and the range of their concerns were largely under-represented in movies.
It set out to demonstrate this by setting up the already discussed criteria. Fortunately, sometimes a movie can represent the stories and concerns of women well without passing the test, and the movie can also fail to do this while passing.
But this isn't something that happens too often, and I think the Bechdel test is useful, if only for sparking conversations like this, and helping people to thoughtfully consider the subject.
So I guess, to answer your question, even though it was an admittedly poor analogy, the "accuracy" of the Bechdel test, in that it is indicating a lack of complexity in the female cast member's story, can be tested by further observation.
Sometimes you'll see that, oh, that movie didn't pass the test, but it still does a good job of telling a woman's story, and sometimes you'll see that, oh, that movie did pass the test, but it still did a poor job.
But, at least in my experience, those times are likely to be on par with the accuracy of a home pregnancy test.
And both are still useful.
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The Bechdel Test is useful in the aggregation of many its results on all works (or as many as anyone cares to rate, anyway), in that a heavy preponderance of failures in art says something about our culture - especially if the reverse bechdel test doesn't show a similar result set over the same group of works.
A reverse bechdel test would honestly probably be along the lines of a man going to another man and not seeking aid in overcoming whatever issue they are presented with that they feel is beyond their power to overcome. Two men having a conversation about a topic that doesn't involve a woman seems to be missing a huge point of the "test", in my opinion. Men tend to be a lot less "lets talk about my problems" than women, by nature (rather than nurture), and presenting men/women as such would probably lead a lot of people to simply find them offensive or unrelatable.
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Feminism itself fails the test, (as the writers <probably women> tell the reads <mostly other women> just how much they do not need men to be happy).
This is news to me. I always thought feminism was about equality.
Weird.
I've been doing it wrong this entire time.
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The Bechdel Test is useful in the aggregation of many its results on all works (or as many as anyone cares to rate, anyway), in that a heavy preponderance of failures in art says something about our culture - especially if the reverse bechdel test doesn't show a similar result set over the same group of works.A reverse bechdel test would honestly probably be along the lines of a man going to another man and not seeking aid in overcoming whatever issue they are presented with that they feel is beyond their power to overcome. Two men having a conversation about a topic that doesn't involve a woman seems to be missing a huge point of the "test", in my opinion. Men tend to be a lot less "lets talk about my problems" than women, by nature (rather than nurture), and presenting men/women as such would probably lead a lot of people to simply find them offensive or unrelatable.
Ding! Exactly! The Bechdel test, applied in aggregate to large numbers of stories, hypothesizes that in our culture, by and large, women are defined primarily by their relation to men.
Women are relatable primarily in how they relate to the men, who are the protagonists of the story. Men are unrelatable if they define themselves in relation to the women in the story.
Well, it's kind of hard to see how the Bechdel Test would apply to works of non-fiction that don't normally have "characters," but:
Ain't I A Woman? by bell hooks has suffragettes arguing amongst themselves about whether or not to allow black women into their organizations: Passes the test.
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer has women chatting about tasting their own menstrual blood: Passes the test.
Vamps and Tramps by Camille Paglia has essays about such varied subjects as declining academic standards, "Gay Stalinism," and Madonna. Don't recall if there are two female voices discussing these subjects, however. Fails for now.
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich has women discussing their crappy jobs. Passes the test.
None of them, by the way, could be summarized as women telling other women that they don't need men to be happy.
Golly, you're right! I'm going to go throw away all the pregnancy tests in the local pharmacies, too. They're absolutely useless because they can get false postives as well.A better comparison would be to stop buying the ones that just don't work. :)
The test isn't useful for categorizing single movies. It is useful when applied to a large number of works. Especially if done in comparison to the reverse test.Not really even then. All it does is falsely suggest something. Especially in a niche medium that is primarily focused at appealing to and being relevant to males anyway, but also in general when it comes to entertainment in any medium. All it does suggest is that <the world finds> women's personal issues to be more interpersonal while men's are more external. It really doesn't say anything about the larger number of works. Feminism itself fails the test, (as the writers <probably women> tell the reads <mostly other women> just how much they do not need men to be happy).
So you consider "movies made for the US market" to be "a niche medium that is primarily focused at appealing to and being relevant to males anyway"? I didn't realize that movies were such a small market, or that women didn't go to them.
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Not really even then. All it does is falsely suggest something. Particularly when it comes to entertainment in any medium. All it does suggest is that <the world finds> women's personal issues to be more interpersonal while men's are more external.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
Other than that you seem to be making a huge number of assumptions and dismissing it based on them. Or I could be wrong. Because I have no idea what you said.
I was saying that the test really isn't even indicative of anything when used s a gauge of works in general (rather than just specific ones). If we say that, for example star wars fails the test, so then assume that it does not represent women as having either diverse interests or issues, or having any real problems that do not include men, then we can ignore that Princess Lea was the leader of the Rebellion against the evil empire, whose are of concern was both her entire planet as well as the entirety of the rebellion. We add in the love interests (both male), her struggle later on with family issues, or the fact that she holds her own in practically every conflict she is in, all at the same time and not needing either a wookie sidekick or an assortment of mentors on their hero's journey. Again, at the same time she was also able to help others on all levels, both taking an active part in the raid on Endor, as well as a leadership role. Able to, in the midst of all her own issues able to advice and elevate others, an be empathic/sympathetic to their issues and help them grow from them. Or that she saves every other protagonist in the series, (more than once). So what I'm saying is that simply saying the failing the test shows, well anything of value about anything is just ignorant, and probably misleading.
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I was saying that the test really isn't even indicative of anything when used s a gauge of works in general (rather than just specific ones). If we say that, for example star wars fails the test, so then assume that it does not represent women as having either diverse interests or issues, or having any real problems that do not include men, then we can ignore that Princess Lea was the leader of the Rebellion against the evil empire, whose are of concern was both her entire planet as well as the entirety of the rebellion. We add in the love interests (both male), her struggle later on with family issues, or the fact that she holds her own in practically every conflict she is in, all at the same time and not needing either a wookie sidekick or an assortment of mentors on their hero's journey. Again, at the same time she was also able to help others on all levels, both taking an active part in the raid on Endor, as well as a leadership role. Able to, in the midst of all her own issues able to advice and elevate others, an be empathic/sympathetic to their issues and help them grow from them. Or that she saves every other protagonist in the series, (more than once). So what I'm saying is that simply saying the failing the test shows, well anything of value about anything is just ignorant, and probably misleading.
Um...saying it shows nothing when used as an aggregate measure of broad swaths of work, and then picking out a single movie is...sorta not proving your point. It's almost the opposite of proving your point.