Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

QC and the Bechdel test

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ReindeerFlotilla:
The purpose of this conversation was not discuss Raven's band, therefore I judged that strip to pass. Raven's statement was a digression and not a natural progression of the topic. This gets tricky, but I try to be fair and consistent. For example, 304 counts despite most of the content being Dora talking to Marten.

Ellen and Faye discuss octopi and connect four without connecting those topics to a man or men.

Also counts if two women talk and any third person introduces a man. However, I don't count 258 because, despite the fact that no man is spoken of, the intent and action in that strip is about Marten, even though Vicky is unaware of that fact. There is a danger, here, of allowing infinite regression--Faye discussing her injury without context could be linked to her father, but the proximal cause and intent of 258 were about Marten and his relationship to Vicky. I judged this one on the meaning of the interaction, which is clearly, "Fuck you for doing that to Marten."  Returning to the scar, one could say that Faye's thing unsaid eventually lead back to her father, but it's not direct. The direct, implied statement is "I am not comfortable explaining the full details of this."

That's debatable, I know, but my memory of QC suggests it doesn't come up often that a script is about a man, while not involving a man in any direct way. If this turns out to be wrong, I will evaluate more literally.

Wildroses:
Can I just thank this forum for getting me curious enough about the Bechdel test to do some research on it? Quite fascinating. I was surprised people were saying QC failed it as I thought the three stages were sequential, meaning QC passes because it has more than two female characters, and if you have more than two female characters the Bechdel test doesn't care if they talk to each other or what they talk to each other about.

But I ended up not caring about that question in my fascination with discovering the original comic which inspired the Bechdel test, my discovery it was originally intended for movies and all the other tests it inspired.

jwhouk:

--- Quote from: ReindeerFlotilla on 09 Mar 2015, 22:52 ---<snip>
That's debatable, I know, but my memory of QC suggests it doesn't come up often that a script is about a man, while not involving a man in any direct way. If this turns out to be wrong, I will evaluate more literally.

--- End quote ---

Y'know, RF, you could start a separate thread on this - "QC and the Bechdel Test".

Tub:
Tai must be pretty desperate to seek relationship advice about Dora from someone who couldn't make a relationship with Dora work. Instead of doing what Marten would have done, she should do what she would do - it's her relationship, after all.


--- Quote from: ReindeerFlotilla on 09 Mar 2015, 20:30 ---In Bechdel test news QC is still running a strong F. This points out an odd weakness of the test. Several good conversations where two or more women are being people are ruined because they are about music and musicians who are men. I've been liberal here and not taken references to a band, but only points where a conversational arc leads to one or more statements about a person or persons identified as a man or men. Now at 338 and the girls now out number the boys after a long sting of parity.
--- End quote ---
There's more than one odd weakness in that test.

The reason single comic strips keep failing the test is mostly because a single comic strip is short: usually there are only few characters, and only a single conversation. Assuming a non-biased work: the chance of two talking characters being both female is statistically no higher than 25%. Even then, as soon as the topic includes someone human, there's another 50% to fail the test - a higher chance if the topic includes multiple humans, like a conversation about artists. By the test, as stated, the following sentence fails: "Hey, I like <female artist 1>, <female artist 2> and <female artist 3>. I hate <male artist 1>." So, by chance alone, an unbiased comic would have a less than 10% chance of passing the test. Now consider that the comic deals heavily in romance (with mostly hetero relationships), and those chances sink even lower.


IMHO, the metric is useless as a test of gender-bias unless it is compared to the reverse Bechdel test: are two man talking about something other than a woman?

So let's try this. Counting both trans people and robots as the gender they identify as.

We're at #2913.
The most recent comic where two males are talking is #2896, 17 comics ago. If you count wordless looming as conversation. Fails the third test though, since it's about Claire.
The second last male-male-conversation I can find is #2858, 55 comics ago. If you count a conversation where a woman is present. Also, fails the third test, they're talking about Emily. A few other comics in the arc have conversations involving Clinton and Marten, but they're all about Emily.
Further back, we're at #2766, 147 strips ago. Marten and Pintzsize talk about.. Emily.
#2756, 157 strips ago, Steve and Sven about.. Faye.
The most recent comic I could find that might pass the reverse Bechdel test is #2743, 170 comics ago, but only if that elf robot identifies as male. The comic doesn't say.
Finally, at #2667, we can see two males talking about beers and poetry! 246 comics ago, we finally passed the reverse Bechdel test!


In other words: a low passing rate of the strict interpretation of the Bechdel test implies nothing interesting. Certainly not any of the things the Bechdel test was designed to imply.

TRVA123:

--- Quote from: Tub on 10 Mar 2015, 07:47 ---In other words: a low passing rate of the strict interpretation of the Bechdel test implies nothing interesting. Certainly not any of the things the Bechdel test was designed to imply.

--- End quote ---

I don't really think the bechdel test is a good one to apply to a daily comic.

It was meant to apply to movies, to show just how difficult it is to find movies that show women in multiple roles that aren't centered around a man. In my opinion the goal of the bechdel test is to show how low that bar should be to pass, and to vote with your dollar to try to ensure that more movies are made that meet those very basic criteria.

A lot of movies are like "hey, we gave you one woman, and she's like totally strong and tough! What more do you want?" A token woman, essentially, and she is rarely the main character. Luckily this has been changing recently, but there is still farther to go.

To evaluate a comic by the bechdel test, I think you'd have to go on a weekly basis... or maybe a monthly basis.

Even then, I'm not worried about QC. The bechdel test asks for multiple female characters who aren't centered wholly around men. As a whole QC passes this easily.

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