Allison Bechdel, an indie cartoonist whose subject matter isn't my thing, still did everyone a solid and accidentally created a standard to measure films by. In a cartoon in the mid 1980's, she created what's known today as the Bechdel test. To pass the test, a film has to meet three seemingly simple criteria:
Have at least two women characters.
Those two characters have to have at least one conversation.
The conversation has to be about something other than a man.
It's surprising how few films pass such a simple test.
Oh, there are plenty of films with strong female leads, or with more than one woman character, but they don't always talk to each other in accordance to the test. Many that technically pass the test do so with just the briefest snippet of passing conversation between the two women characters.
It's actually kind of a weird thing, once you become aware of it, though I'm probably not going to spend a lot of time making a list of qualifying films, or arguing about the list with people. You don't have to be an angry patriarch-hating feminist to appreciate the strangeness of it.
The Alien franchise, with Sigourney Weaver (one of the best female leads of all time in my opinion), passes the test but not with the ferocity you might expect. It's odd how in many movies where there are strong and necessary female characters, they don't actually talk too much to each other.
For the record, however, despite the awful aliens, Aliens (the second film of the franchise) is just one of the best movies ever.
The characters are off the charts and Weaver is a strong woman without today's brutish attempt to make strong women be as much like men as they can; she is not physically masculine but is strong mentally and emotionally, physically when it counts, and still shows a loving mothering side.
It's tough to get people to watch the film for the great characters what with all the rampaging monstrous aliens killing everyone, to be sure.
Anyway, I've long been fascinated with the idea of the Bechdel test, particularly since in real life, theoretically, women tend to talk to each other.
I mean, I think they do.
I'm not around people much. I do talk to people, and women are people, and I don't tend to talk about men, but most of my conversation is with men, not women.
Well, men and God. Also, sometimes a cat. And squirrels. I've yelled at squirrels and they've chattered back.
But anyway, meaningful conversation and such.
Connecting with other people today, Bechdel test standards or not, is really difficult. It is made more painful in that I am of a generation that remembers pre-smartphone pre-internet days and remembers the joy of hanging out with friends in person without the ability to fudge that with virtual socialization.
In a recent Bible study, we got to talking about Hebrews 10: 24-25.
"Let's think about how we can spur each other toward love and good deeds," the passage reads. "That means not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing. Instead, we should encourage each other, and all the more in these last days."
This was the troublesome verse of 2020 when churches went virtual, including small churches that hadn't broadcast their sermons on Facebook or elsewhere before. People realized they didn't have to go to a church building anymore. In fact, they didn't even have to watch their home church. They could just watch any church sermon and check the box.
Or could they?
"The question is what it means to meet together," I said during the Bible study. "Does a virtual meeting count? Or is physical presence necessary?"
God made us to be physical beings so my assumption is that is the preferred method. You stay alone too long and it doesn't matter how many Zoom calls and virtual events you attend; you're going to start writing manifestos that will scare your family eventually.
Discussion veered into how, even when we are in person, we still choose virtual. We've all seen (or been guilty) of seeing a group of people out in a restaurant and instead of talking one or more are staring at their phones. During a recent camping trip, I looked around the campfire and saw a blue screen glow on faces instead of an orange campfire glow, and it made me incredibly sad. Campfire time has a way of loosening tongues and enriching the remember-whens. Did we have nothing to say to each other? And if not, could we not even just sit in silence together, staring at the fire and listening to the cracks and pops, watching the flames lick at the wood together? Or did we have to pipe in something from the outside and doom scroll through news, conspiracy theories, for-sale sites, and memes?
While drifting off to sleep in my camper, I started listing ideas in my head that could maybe solve the problem next time. Conversation starter cards or books. Poetry. A book of scary stories. Riddles. Something—anything!—to spark conversation.
Whether you're at the restaurant or around a campfire or in your living room, there is no social media feed, online news article, message, or potential photo or video worth missing out on being in the moment or worth denying the moment from happening. None.
Who cares about the Bechdel test at this point, from a real-life view?
There's a new test, and it's called Being Human text in which you look at or communicate in person with a human more than a screen. I'd even take looking at a screen less than looking at your kitchen, the messy living room, your garden, or a pet.
We used to joke about the Windows operating systems' blue screen of death (BSOD), which you'd see when something went terribly wrong and your computer just crashed.
The blue screen of death is everywhere, now, but hidden. Its blue glow covers faces and pulls eyes and minds and hearts out of reality and hides it elsewhere, where it cannot be accessed.
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