Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

QC and the Bechdel test

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ReindeerFlotilla:
The Death Star II.

The second Death Star would have been larger than first. Incomplete the total mass of this 160,000 meter sphere was comparable to first.

It was constructed, deployed, and destroyed in close orbit around an inhabited moon known as Endor.  While the destruction of the Death Star was highly energetic, pulverizing much of the material that made up the battle station, several chunks tens of kilometers in length, are observed being ejected from the explosion. None of these debris is seen moving with enough velocity to escape Endor's gravity.

The battered rebel fleet would have been hard pressed to stop them from striking the moon in an extinction level event.

But let's assume they did. That doesn't account for the pulverized debris, which would be enough to cover the entire surface of the forrest moon to a depth of 2 meter. Atmosphere being what it is, most of probably didn't make it to the surface, but most of the moon was likely covered in several centimeters of fine metalic dust, and the atmosphere itself poisioned by having the rest of the battle station vaporize during entry.

This analysis is not mine. It's nigh on 20 years old. While I'm old enough to have made it, I was a big fan of math 20 years ago. It's not really fair to the story tellers. It's not going to become canon, in all likelihood.

Someone put a fair amount of effort into it--identifying and tracking debris suspects in the explosion VFX to determine their speed, calculating the density of the Death Star, judging the size of Endor to determine it's surface area.

The answer to your question is found in the fact that this was calculated.

John Cleese has a fantastic bit on creativity. I was on the web, but the DMCA struck, so this is no longer a thing you can watch, easily. One of the bits in it is extremely serious and extremely important. I will summarize it thus: Serious is not solemn. It's a mistake to conflate the two. If you want to have a productive anything, it's very important to realize that trying to force solemnity on to something because it is being treated seriously is just going to suck the life out of it. In his words, he went on invoke the funeral of a friend (not naming anyone, but as there is video of it, it is safe to assume this friend was a Python) which was one of the most hilarious events of his life.

This is not even serious. But why does it have to be. I invite you to examine the tag line for this section of the forum. The part after the "Hannelore and Claire squee factory."

Try to assign an objective value to anything that goes on in here. You will fail. It's all subjective.

This Strip is about relationships. What kind?

Romantic? In 3000 strips there have been seven of note, and five between minor characters that didn't really constitute an arc.

The first 500 strips were absolutely about how a boy and girl were not going to get together, and--by word of god--represented the whole plan for the strip. It was supposed to end at that point.

During the period where the male to female regular ratio was effectively at parity the strip managed to pass the inverse of the Bechdel test over a quarter of the time without passing the actual test once.

Not once.

The inherent penalty you postulate applies to the inverse test, as well. During a period where the comic's limited scope and major focus was stacked against it passing either formulation of the test (the majority of the focus being the interactions of a boy and girl) it still managed to pass the inverse test 11 times before it passed the basic test once.

I think that illustrates that the test can be administered fairly: by pitting the comic against itself. Being about relationships is not really a factor--or in scientific terms, it is controlled for by applying the inverse test as the meter. Worth this much effort is a subjective question. Nothing that happens here is worth this much effort, objectively. Think of all the cancer not being cured because for the attention and effort devoted to ruminations on a thing that is, as the tag line says, just a comic.

tl:dr; Yes.

Khazgar:
I never heard about the Bechdel test before and have been doing some reading.

Very interesting idea and a valuable test on how some Hollywood people see the world, or at least think the world should be seen.

But...

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/16/8046157/fifty-shades-of-grey-feminism

Possibly the most anti-feminist film in a very long time, and a story that encourages men to trample RIGHT OVER the rights of women passes the test.

So I would use it with caution and certainly not as a be-all-and-end-all. Passing or failing the test is an indication of the way the film treats women, not a verdict.

And as has been said before, applying it to a comic where the characters (as we all do in real life in a circle of friends) talk about relationships is unrealistic.

I would argue that QC certainly passes the test in spirit with its strong female characters. And why can't feminists talk about men sometimes anyway?

Aziraphale:
The Bechdel Test is a blunt instrument, not a scalpel. I think it was meant more as a conversation-starter and a quick-and-dirty way to point to a broader issue in pop culture, but it fails as a hermeneutical tool because, whether by accident or by design, it leaves out as much critical information as it includes (as others have pointed out).

Thrillho:
So basically the Bechdel Test is the BMI of feminism.

Aziraphale:
Well put, and yeah, that just about nails it.

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