A while back I wrote a little thing about applying the Bechdel Test to YA and whether it was something that should be addressed, but a couple things have tripped my wires that have caused me to revisit the question.
I won’t recap what the Bechdel Test is here – there are plenty of places that do – except to say that I think it’s a good method of examining gender relations in popular culture and could lead to more balanced and entertaining storytelling if applied carefully.
The brain switch was flipped when a Tweet sent me to film critic John Scalzi’s examination of the Bechdel Test in recent(ish) sci-fi and fantasy films. Of the fourteen films he looked at that came out between 2005 and 2009 he found only one that truly passed the test and three “technical passes” where the films only barely scraped by, but not entirely in the spirit of the goal.
The second jolt came just a few weeks ago when a list surfaced of the top 100 sci-fi books everyone should read. Without looking at the list, how many were written by women? How many do you think would pass the Bechdel Test?
11 women represented. Technically one YA and two middle grade books on that list. I can’t even guess about the list’s Bechdel ratings.
To cut to the chase, we have sci-fi movies written by men, directed by men, who as boys probably read a lot of sci-fi written by men, books that most likely failed the Bechdel Test.
It’s like a cycle of abuse. It goes unnoticed, unbroken, and it starts young.
One of the things I learned as a bookseller was that there is an incredible interest in sci-fi among middle grade readers and not a lot of books for that market. And when I say middle grade sci-fi I don’t mean books about aliens who take over as school teachers, there’s a lot of that. I mean actual science-based speculative work, the kind of mind-probing, thought-bending examinations of all that exists within the adult sci-fi genre. Kids are hungry for that stuff, and when they need to feed that hunger they usually get shuttled to the usual suspects: The Giver, or A Wrinkle in Time, or maybe Enders Game. Beyond that, when they go further afield, they land squarely in the adult sci-fi, in the classics, among the 100 everyone “should” read.
Schools and religions know full well that if you’re going to make any headway you have to reach your audience while they’re young, and I propose that the only way future generations of screenwriters and sci-fi novelists are ever going to tilt toward more gender-balanced stories is if we show them alternative narratives and lots of them. We need to reach them before they’ve assimilated the “norm” of a future full of same-as-it-ever-was gender biases.
Now I don’t believe one can truly predict a next big trend, or tailor ones writing to meet potential audience demand, but if I had the kind of mind that could write sci-fi – the kind with girls who talk about things other than boys, aren’t competitive with one another, and were partners with and not sidekicks to boys – I would do it in a heartbeat.
The future is wide open.
On that list of books: there’s no C.J. Cherryh, nor any any Sherri Tepper, nor any Anne McCaffrey, nor James Tiptree. How could they leave those out? Incredible! Plus: they included Ayn Rand in there? Umm… no.
T. is writing a YA Sci-Fi novel, probably not deliberately aimed at middle-grade, but seeing as how Mare’s War wasn’t aimed at them either (yet they read it), I’m guessing that it’ll end up in MG. If she can get it published without having to switch publishers, even better.
You know, I wouldn’t mind it going further. For years I’ve wanted to see a good buddy comedy with two women instead of two men. (Or at least one in which one of the men ISN’T Will Ferrell, Jonah Hill, or Seth Rogan …) The closest I’ve come to seeing that is in Ghost World.
And there I am rambling about movies. But think about it: all the most hilarious comedy duos in fiction are boys. (I’m thinking specifically of Abundance of Katherines here.)
I remember bringing this dilemma up to some of my (male) friends, and their response was, “Women aren’t funny.” And my response to that is something akin to, “What kind of sad-sack women are you hanging out with?” But there is that idea that women’s jokes only consist of “Why can’t men put down the toilet seat” and “Ugh, periods.”
Wow, that turned into a bit of a rant. Hi, David! I’m reading your blog now.
hey, robin, welcome about the post-grad crazytrain!
i’ve got a similar story. i once asked a bunch of film critics to name a female buddy comedy and after a pause a known bay area movie critic said “thelma and louise” and then laughed himself silly. because, hey, that was such a comedy, right?
this may be a deeper problem than we want to get into here, about the nature of gender and humor, but its a perfectly valid point. when i was trying to write screenplays (emphasis on trying) i once outlined a black comedy with two cheerleaders who go on a drunken robbery spree for spring break and dead bodies happen to pile up in their wake.
“not funny,” the lone woman in my writing group said. but all i had done was taken the formula for a drunken overgrown fratboy comedy (think “the hangover” or “very bad things) and made the leads female. isn’t what’s sauce for the goose also sauce for the gander? why is it funny and acceptable one direction and not another.
is it because we accept “boys behaving badly” as okay, but that’s not acceptable for girls? and why the heck not?