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westudiedfilmfor3years · 3 years

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Our First Episode: The Bechdel Test and its Various Offspring

Maddy: Hello and welcome to our podcast, "We Studied Film For Three Years And All We Got Was This Podcast". I'm one of your hosts, Maddy Raven. I'm a third-year theatre and film student.

Jemima: I'm Jemima. I'm also a third year, but just straight film student.

Sarah: And I'm Sarah. And I'm also studying film and television.

Maddy: So this podcast is going to be about film criticism, specifically focusing on diversifying female voices in film criticism, because we think that there are a lot of male, straight white voices in film criticism. Shout out to Michael, who is a straight white male editor.

Maddy: He's looking from side to side!

Jemima: We love Michael.

Maddy: And we're putting this together partly as part of our assessment. So this will be assessed, but also because we want to talk about films and we like to talk about films and we have super interesting conversations about them.

Maddy: And we want to share them with the world because frankly, my opinions are fantastic, actually. And I'm going to force them on everyone else.

Jemima: Yeah, our opinions matter. And because we've kind of done three years of this, I think that we can all agree we have a kind of educated response to films that we just want to put across and create a dialogue about.

Jemima: But at the same time, we want to keep it informal. We want every person, people that don't watch films often know nothing about the theory of it, and then the people who have also studied it as well. We just want to make it fun, accessible and yeah, hope you enjoy it.

Maddy: We'll also be having guests on the show, hopefully including, you know, like friends, even family, I'll get my dad to come on and rant about how much he loves Jeff Bridges. My dad is like a massive crush on Jeff Bridges. And he's like, no, no, I'm sorry. I'm sure I'm straight.

Maddy: It's like, you are gay for Jeff Bridges, like so gay for Jeff Bridges, it's ridiculous.

Maddy: But having people on to talk to people from the film industry as well and hopefully talk about various things to do with the industry as well, because as everyone knows, it is really difficult to get into the film industry and hopefully at least one of us will somehow make it there and we will be able to share knowledge.

Jemima: Yeah, let's hope all of us, but at least one that would be great.

Maddy: There's four of us, one in four should make it. Yeah.

Jemima: Twenty-five percent. That's fine.

Maddy: So each episode will be about like a topic. We like topics. It's a general topic and we're going to start out. Oh my God, my text has disappeared from my notes. That's terrifying.

Maddy: So we just thought we'd start out pretty gentle and start by talking about the Bechdel test, which since it came out as part of Allison Bechdel's comic, which came out I think was in the 70s when I can't find it in my notes.

Sarah: I think that one was from nineteen eighty-five.

Maddy: Nineteen eighty five. Thank you Sarah.

Maddy: Since then it has become, you know, this huge thing it has come so far since then, and there's even a website where you can go and search up your favourite films and we'll be talking about some of our favourite films and why they passed the test and why they don't and how we feel about that and also why the Bechdel Test exists, in our opinion. So, um, Sarah, do you mind giving us a little rundown of what the Bechdel Test is? Because you sound super knowledgeable and smart.

Sarah: Thank you. Sure. So it's called the Bechdel-Wallace Test, it originates from a comic strip called The Rule by Allison Bechdel from 1985, part of her comic called Dykes to Watch Out For.

Sarah: Yeah, lesbians to watch out for lesbians, lesbians substituting a word that can be considered a slur.

Sarah: And yeah, basically these two characters in the comic strip, they're walking past the cinema, I think, talking about movies. And one of them says how they only go to see a film if it passes three simple rules.

Sarah: So it needs to have at least two female characters who talk to each other about something other than men.

Sarah: And I think since then, people have added that the female characters need to have names, so, yeah, it started off as just a kind of tongue in cheek little joke about how few films actually do have something really simple, like two women in them. And I think, yeah, Alison Bechdel said this is inspired by a conversation she had with her friend Liz Wallace, which is why sometimes it's called the Bechdel-Wallace test. But since then, yeah, critics have kind of rolled it and made a more official kind of way to look at films.

Maddy: Yeah, yeah, that's it. So have any of you seen Pacific Rim?

Jemima: Yeah, wait, there's more to say about that.

Jemima: There's the whole Virginia Woolf thing. OK, so also another thing is that Alison Bechdel, she prefers it to be called the Bechdel-Wallace test just because they created it together and she got most of the credit. That's one thing to say. And then the Virginia Woolf thing, she read A Room of One's Own and thought that was a great way of just kind of encouraging the feminist writings to be transferred onto film.

Jemima: So this test should be really easy to just apply. Another thing as well: there's an additional, Sarah, you said the named character one. The other one is a total of more than 60 seconds of conversation. That's another important one.

Maddy: So what is A Room of One's Own, because I've not actually read the book. So when you say the Virginia Woolf thing, what do you mean?

Jemima: So it's a nineteen twenty-nine essay.

Jemima: "All these relationships between women, I thought, rapidly recalling the splendid gallery of my fictitious woman, utterly simple. And I try to remember any case in that course of my readings where two women are represented as friends. They are now and then mothers and daughters are almost without exception, they are shown in relation to men.

Jemima: It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman's life is that?

Maddy: Oh, that's quite pretty, actually. Maybe I should read that, I'll say that, but I won't read it for years to come because I'm bad at concentrating,

Sarah: You can borrow it if you'd like.

Maddy: Yeah, I would. Genuinely, I wish I could read, but I'm probably sitting down and doing it. So obviously, the Bechdel test is a pretty simple test. It has been elaborated on slightly, but I've read a lot of articles about this and in particular, people notice that certain films were passing the test, while other films were failing them. There was such a disparity, like it said here, like Pacific Rim fails the Bechdel Test, despite having like this badass woman, called Mako Mori, she's a Japanese fighter like she because she kicks this guy's ass like ten minutes into the film. It's amazing because the film fails the test essentially and somehow, Thor passes it.

Maddy: So, you know, people are wondering how do we- how do we remedy this? So a Tumblr user called Chila invented the Mako Mori test after watching Pacific Rim. And you will pass this test if you have one female character who gets her own narrative arc that is not supporting a man's story. So moving on from, they have the bare minimum, which is like two female characters talking about, you know, something other than a man to each other: it's also at least one of these women getting a narrative arc and getting to live her own life. And it's not because of a guy, basically.

Maddy: And then Roxane Gay, who is fantastic, you should follow her on Instagram, we love her. She proposed this six-part test. And it says, is there a central female character who is supporting female characters, who doesn't compromise herself for love or live extravagantly for no explained reason? And at least half the time is this character, a woman of colour, transgender and/or queer?

Maddy: And there's also a sixth point, which is a requirement, which is the suggestion that female characters shouldn't have to live up to an unrealistic feminist standard. They can be flawed so long as they feel like they're human beings because, you know, like women, in order to win a place in film a lot of time, it's almost as if women have to be on their best behaviour. They have to be really good. And that's something I'm particularly interested in. I'm really interested in women that are horrible people. I am obsessed with Gone Girl. It's a little bit of a problem. But the Cool Girl Monologue, it changed my life. I know everyone says that everyone, everyone on Twitter was just like the Cool Girl Monologue created so many monsters. And yes, it should have done because I love it. I love women who are horrible. And I think we should allow women to be horrible in films as well. And I think we should allow them to be angry and cry. And just off the top of my head, just like I've seen so many amazing, like montages like this, especially like I tried to with my social media feeds, with a lot of like women that are talking about film and just watching female rage on screen can be so exciting sometimes. Like, um, have any of you watch Lovecraft Country yet?

Jemima: Yeah, I have.

Maddy: When she smashes the car windows with the baseball bat.

Jemima: Yeah. Yeah. And then everyone's like, oh, I can smash windows too. Yeah.

Maddy: And there's also like well - what were some other examples I was thinking about? Ready or Not. We studied that a couple of weeks ago with Peter Falconer in our Contemporary Hollywood cinema unit. She's just screaming at her husband. She's so angry she doesn't even have words anymore. She just starts yelling. And I'm like, yes, you know, I love that. I've got away from myself. Yeah. I just love women who are horrible people, and I think that should be more of them. Yeah.

Jemima: And Carrie is an awesome one to do female rage about. Of course, she's a flawed, flawed character, but we have compassion for Carrie. We understand her because she has depth to her.

Jemima: And that's all we want, female characters with depth, motivation. We can determine throughout the film, not just prancing off to a man.

Maddy: So then the next test after that was the Sexy Lamp Test, which was made by Kelly Sue DeConnick. I love the name: Sexy Lamp Test. It's quite easy to pass. You pass it if your female character, it could be replaced by a sexy lamp without the plot falling apart. You're a fucking hack. So, yeah, I'm thinking back to maybe, X-Men First Class where that woman who like turns to diamond half the time follows - is it Kevin Bacon? I think it is Kevin Bacon. It's like she's one of the baddies, I swear, because, like, all she does is just be hot, have boobs and turn to diamonds sometimes. I fully believe, like, she could literally turn into a sexy lamp at any point through the film and nothing would change.

Jemima: Like, I mean, her turning into diamonds is kind of commenting on that itself, she's nothing but a mere object of desire in that way.

Maddy: And just talking about like, yeah, if she could literally be replaced by a lamp and the plot wouldn't change. You've got an issue with your female character. And then when you put all these tests together, it's been put together and formed the Crystal Gems test. So it's named after the heroes in Steven Universe, which I still haven't watched and still need to watch Steven Universe.

Maddy: And it creates this big triangle. And you just kind of you can mark whether or not it passes the tests and it creates a cute little graph. And there's also other stuff like the Ellen Willis test, so that requires the story to make sense if the genders were flipped. So I'm thinking about Overboard! Have any of you seen Overboard?

Jemima: The new one?

Maddy: Yeah, I'm thinking about the fact that they swap the genders for the new version like it's problematic both ways. Just for context, Overboard, is it Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn? Yeah, so she's like this rich woman living on a boat and he's like a workman on the boat. And I think they get into that argument because she's a dick and he pushes her off the boat - I don't know, she falls off the boat. She gets amnesia and then he's somehow got a load of kids. His wife is dead or something, I think. And he's got loads of kids. And so instead of like a normal human being, when he finds that she has amnesia, she goes to the police station and she doesn't know where she is, who she is, instead of being like a normal non-psychotic human being and just leaving her on her own, after he's basically- actually I don't think he pushes her off the boat. He takes her home and tells her that she's his wife and makes her help him raise the kids. I think it's supposed to be this comment about like teaching her humility and teaching her to be a good person. But it's not that. It is kidnap.

Jemima: It's like 50 First Dates. I had a real, real big problem with the fact that she could not consent to any of the dates. She was vulnerable. She had a disability. She was basically being forced to, like, fall in love with Adam Sandler. And great, cute I understand the rom-com assets of that, but at the same time, like you do not know this person. She wakes up every day. Like just because you've invested so much in her does not mean she should be forced to hang out with you every hour of the day and love you.

Jemima: You know, it's just a bit crazy.

Maddy: So, then they obviously remade Overboard, but they were like, oh, instead of, like, remaking it - obviously people would have had an issue with it if they'd remade it today with the same role models, everyone would've refused. Actually not everyone, sane human people would have been like, this is fucked up. You can't just kidnap women and tell them that your wife because they've got amnesia. But like, they decided to swap the gender roles as if that made it better. So this is Chris Pratt's ex-wife.

Jemima: You just called her Chris Pratt's ex-wife!

Maddy: I did! Because I've been thinking about him a lot and the fact that he's a conservative and he's like a horrible, homophobic Christian.

Jemima: Allegedly.

Maddy: Allegedly, allegedly. Allegedly. Oh, no. I'm already getting sued.

Maddy: But yeah, I was just thinking about - it's still messed up, even if it's a girl kidnapping a guy, it's still messed up. But then in that way, I guess it does pass the Ellen Willis test.

Sarah: It's an awful idea.

Maddy: And in the last one, the last test I really do like is called the Tauriel, the one the Evangeline Lily plays in the altogether too long Hobbit franchise. The one who falls in love with Aidan Turner.

Maddy: Anyway, it's a test that says that if there's going to be a woman in the film where she works a job the same as a load of guys, she has to be good at what she does. At least one woman has to be good at her job because they never have jobs. It's always like, you're a housewife. That's your job.

Jemima: You're a mother and a wife first and that is your job.

Maddy: Exactly, like if there's going to be a woman, she's going to have a job and she's going to be good at that job. Just one, the rest can be terrible. Just one. Just one of them has to be a smart human being who is capable.

Maddy: That's all we want.

Jemima: Practical skills. I don't know her.

Maddy: Yes, exactly.

Michael: I've had to not interject like three times. The sexy lady from X-Men is called Emma Frost. And turning into diamond is her secondary mutation. And they've just they've just really badly represented the character on film. I'll defend her.

Jemima: When I was like 15, I read this autobiography by one of the world's most famous groupies from the 60s and 70s. Reread it the other day. And it's the most horrendous anti-feminist paedophilic disgustingness I have ever read. I don't know. It's like glamorising everything. And of course, it was a sign of the times. But like even in her, like, epilogue, she was just like, I excuse myself and my behaviour, it's all fine and it's like, no.

Jemima: So I guess it just takes a twenty-first century perspective on things, isn't it? To reflect, hopefully.

Maddy: Yeah, so I guess. Oh, there are so many more tests I could go into if you guys are up for that

Jemima: Do you reckon we should start doing the film stuff?

Maddy: Yeah, I would like to mention, though, just to make it clear that I'm not a terrible person. There are also lots of tests. So the Deggans rule requires a show that's not about race to include at least two non-white human characters in the main cast.

Maddy: The Morales Rule by actor Natalie Morales, asks that no one calls anybody papi, dances to salsa music, or uses gratuitous Spanish if they're a latinx character.

Maddy: And one of my personal favourites is the DuVernay test, or sometimes referred to as the Kent test, after Clarkisha Kent. She's an interesting film critic. A piece of work passes it if African-Americans and other minorities have fully realised lives rather than serve as scenery in white stories. That makes me think back to The Help, you know, Viola Davis. She's been saying, I regret being part of that film, but a lot of the time it is about making sure that you're not just including women and giving them a seat at the table, but making sure that people of colour and people who are queer as well because there's also - I'm not how to say this, I'm probably going to butcher it, the Vito-Russo test.

Maddy: There are three requirements to pass this test. The film must contain a lesbian, gay or bisexual or transgender character. That character must not be predominantly defined by the orientation or their gender identity. They need to be as unique as straight cis characters, and they must be important enough to affect the plot. They can't just crack some jokes or paint urban authenticity.

Maddy: There's also the Topside test for trans literature and there are plenty of other tests like the Finkbeiner Test for non-fiction and the Lauredhel test for toys. So there's loads of tests. The Bechdel test started quite a few movements in film, and it's all very interesting. So I think next we're going to be looking at some of our favourite films and seeing whether or not they pass the test.

Maddy: And you are welcome to judge us and our favourite films, as I'm sure you will. And I'm sure we'll judge each other.

Jemima: Please do.

Maddy: I think Jemima should go first.

Jemima: Well, I have a few that I can pick from. I think a good one to start would be - have any of you guys in Starship Troopers? OK, so any one of us, which is Michael and he doesn't even speak a lot, so we'll get him to speak - unmute yourself at this point.

Jemima: OK, I'm going to quiz you on it. Do you think it's a feminist film?

Michael: Isn't like - they're fighting bugs, right? Yeah, isn't like the main enemy, like the queen bug.

Jemima: OK, I'm talking about interpersonal, human relationships.

Michael: Yeah, I think there's only two female characters and they're both trying to, like, vie for the attention of one male character. If I remember.

Michael: Is that right?

Jemima: But what is it? What I find to be really interesting about the film is that, basically, the protagonist, male, heterosexual character, he goes into the army because his girlfriend encourages it, she's in the army, he's like, I don't know what to do. I'm going to follow Carmen to the army.

Jemima: And that is a switch from tradition - it's gender play, which I enjoy. And also the other female character, called Izzy, who also enters the army. But her motivation is to get the protagonist because she fancies him. But they met because they both played American football together on the same team. And it's a Paul Verhoeven film. Paul Verhoeven works a lot with eroticism. So you can see the kind of anti-feminist stuff from sexualising women, but at the same time.

Michael: Is it Showgirls?

Jemima: Yeah, the same time he's giving female voices power and narrative arcs and all this stuff. And I really enjoy it. And I think when I was a kid, some of my favourite films like Starship Troopers, Aliens, all of that stuff, I really enjoy strong female protagonists. And I think he got somewhere with it, although there's a lot of tits and ass. But you got somewhere.

Jemima: I don't even know - this is just talking to you guys. But I don't even know if it's good to talk about film if we haven't watched it or whatever, because it's hard because you guys haven't got much to comment on those two.

Maddy: Interesting comment.

Sarah: Yeah. I mean, we can cut it out later if it doesn't work, but like you have some interesting stuff say so like. Go ahead.

Jemima: Thank you. I'll just do a bit on the Bechdel test. So the movie does have at least two women in it, surprisingly, only two though. Some of the other women are nameless characters like you do have women captains, all of that stuff. But yeah, I think the point of having women able to do like military stuff, at a time when women couldn't even do that in the 90s. So I appreciate that. And I think it's much better than our world at that point. So that's a good point. And then they don't talk to each other. That's one that interests me. They only talk in relation to the guy. I think - I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but one of the females dies halfway through, so they can't really talk to each other. Plus, it's all narratives in different parts of space and time and super difficult. Three: about something other than a man. Well, obviously, that's not applicable because they don't talk to each other. And when they do discuss it, it's all about men. And then two additional points that we could make is: two women must be named characters, they are called Carmen and Dizzy, so that's yes and/or they must have at least a total of 60 seconds of conversation. If I was to manipulate this, I would say at least 60 seconds of action, because they're both strong, physically strong women in the film. And you see that throughout. Carmen, at the end, she's like there, fully, with this giant bug and all the men and all the army surrounding her, but she keeps her cool and she survives an awful lot and she does it all by herself.

Jemima: So I think that's a good point. Yeah, that's me done.

Maddy: How about Sarah next?

Sarah: So one of my favourite movies is Lady Bird, have we we all seen that one?

Jemima: Yes.

Sarah: So, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, films that are written and directed by women, well, more likely than films written and directed by men, it seems, Lady Bird does pass all of the features of the Bechdel test because when women write, we know that we have lives and we speak to women. And that's a normal thing that would happen in, you know, a character's life.

Sarah: Yeah, we've got several named female characters who are friends who have conversations about various things. They do talk about men now and then. But like that isn't their only interest in life.

Sarah: I think that Lady Bird's like a pretty good bit of female representation, I mean, the characters are quite well rounded, the main character, Lady Bird, but she's a likeable character that lot of people, you know, relate to in some way, but she isn't, like, flawless, she's quite emotional, but not in a sort of derogatory hysterical kind of way - in a kind of stereotyped fashion.

Maddy: Yeah, I was just thinking I've just been thinking about the fact that we've also been looking at Little Women, which is obviously also directed by Greta Gerwig, this term as once again, as part of our Hollywood unit. And I was thinking about, you know, the moment not that not the proposal moment, but the bit where Joe is in the attic with her mom and she's talking about, you know, her life.

Maddy: And she goes women. They have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts. And they've got ambition and they've got talent as well as just beauty. I'm so sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for. And I think Greta Gerwig does that very well. I mean, it's the same actress both times. It's Saoirse Ronan and I think they're a very good duo.

Maddy: And I think you're right. You know, female directors and female writers, they are women, they talk to other women a lot of the time, hopefully. And they are aware of the fact that, you know, I can't believe I have to say this, but we have complex inner lives. We have thoughts and stuff.

Maddy: I have many opinions, like I've said, and we deserve to have them represented on screen.

Maddy: And I think for Greta Gerwig, despite the overwhelming whiteness of a lot of the people that she casts in her films, she does a very good job of showing, you know, a particular type of female character.

Maddy: And she's very good at teenage girls as well, I think. Yeah, very good at that age group. And she clearly remembers her own adolescence quite well. And she does a very good job of just kind of like, talking about that kind of stuff. I don't know. I rate her for it, I think it's pretty cool.

Jemima: Yeah. I think one of the great things about Greta is the fact that she has completely found a niche in the market. How many times have like we heard about a mother-daughter film? Not a lot like - can we think of any right now?

Maddy: Still Alice, I think is it called?

Jemima: Yeah, that's one.

Maddy: I guess, is My Sister's Keeper a mother-daughter film?

Jemima: We do not talk about that film. *inaudible giggling*

Jemima: Yeah, so Greta really works with the kind of bringing - fleshing out people, not just women, people, and then bringing the interplay between them into question. Just flawed characters - we all have- like, we still love each other. We all make mistakes. And her films really brilliantly portray that. And growing up is also like coming of age films, heart-wrenching. And I really enjoy the fact that, like at the end of the film, I feel like men, women, children, anyone can get something out of Lady Bird, get something out of Little Women.

Jemima: But one additional point is that Little Women, the text of it, she is like the film is- it basically keeps the fidelity with the book, so the literature is really, really ultra-feminist, of course.

Jemima: With Little Women, she obviously was inspired by the text and kind of did it in a contemporary fashion. It was feminist in the start and it really encouraged that narrative and pushed it forward. So yeah.

Maddy: Yeah, I found somehow a way to bring up in almost all of my seminars so far with my girl, that being like, hey, you know, Jo March, she's a lesbian, right? And everyone has, like a little debate about it. I'm just like, guys, she is a lesbian. But, yeah, like a lot of fun to talk about Little Women.

Maddy: I was just looking at my little list of films and I kind of wanted to talk about, um, I think in particular The Personal History of David Copperfield.

Maddy: It came out earlier this year, it's Dev Patel as David Copperfield.

Jemima: We love the casting.

Maddy: We do. So I found a really interesting website and it's called Mediaversity Reviews.

Maddy: And it gives a kind of like A to F grade for overall diversity for films. And it gives really in-depth reviews of just like, you know, films in terms of like their diversity points.

Maddy: But it does it in a really good way. Like it's not to virtue signal-y. And even, you know, it talks about, you know, like the directors.

Maddy: It's got like a little emoji next to the director. And it shows you whether or not the writer like where they're from is a guy, are they white, you know?

Maddy: Basically, The Personal History of David Copperfield gets a B. So A would be the highest, but it gets a B because they give it five out five for- my Internet connection is unstable.

Maddy: Yeah, The Personal History of David Copperfield gets a B, so the technical diversity, which is kind of talking about overall in terms of just like casting and crew was five out five. But despite passing the Bechdel test, it does point out that a lot of the women kind of like- well, the thing is, it is called The Personal History of David Copperfield.

Maddy: And a lot of the women in the film kind of like exist on the periphery of his life. And, you know, it's all about him and his angst and his stuff he's doing.

Maddy: And it - apart from obviously the fact that it's Agnes, the one who ends up marrying him - which is another thing, she ends up marrying him - she helps to uncover Uriah Heep, who voices Paddington, by the way. She obviously helps to, like, expose the fact that he's swindling her dad and that he's taken over the company and is terrible. So for that, it gets points because it's like, yeah, she's a badass. Like she steals the documents, she does a load of stuff. She's super smart. But apart from that, the film is about a guy and the women tend to exist on the periphery. And, you know, even though, like. Did any of you ever watch Wolfblood?

Sarah: Yeah, I did.

Maddy: Did you recognize Maddie from Wolfblood? She's the one that runs off with Steerforth.

Maddy: Yeah, just a random point. You know, it's Maddie from Wolfblood, but like, you know, just thinking about her, like she kind of like exists on the periphery of the story. And the only time she really comes into play is when she's like either engaged to Ham or she runs off with Steerforth and then he abandons her in London, goes off and dies on the boat. I found him hilarious. I probably shouldn't have done. I just- I just love the way he's always like, "remember me at my best." And I'm like, dude, at best your best is literally someone else's rock bottom. You kind of suck. He's like, "remember me at my best" - you're kind of a dick, though. No one thinks that you're the best.

Maddy: Just stop. But yeah, for race, it gets four out of five and they make a point that obviously Charles Dickens when writing the book, everyone he would have been imagining would have been as white as snow. And that's how he saw the world at the time. But they made a point of just like casting actors they knew would do a good job.

Maddy: And you know, it literally doesn't matter, like it's a story - it is a fictional story and the people are like, oh, but why would so-and-so have so-and-so as a father? That doesn't make sense. It's like, yeah, but, you know, this isn't a film for people who are masters of genetics. This is a film for people that enjoy films and enjoy the story. And all would do a fantastic job.

Maddy: So it gets a really good score for race diversity, but it makes a point, it says, 'when white directors cast blindly without making changes to the character based on the actor's ethnicity, it merely ticks a box of diversity. Meanwhile, matters of true representation not just in body but through diverse narratives defaults to a white experience'. So essentially, I think- I think what they're kind of trying to make is kind of like a point is a bit like the Sexy Lamp test. If you could change the race of this character and it would have absolutely no effect on the plot: is that true representation? I think that's the point they're trying to make. I think what they're trying to say is, yes, this is really good, like I know they had Dev Patel in mind to play David Copperfield from the start, but I think they're making the point that, like, if you're going to cast someone as a character, you need to bring into consideration how their race changes the way that they interact with the world around them and how that might be reflected in the narrative.

Maddy: And it's not interchangeable. And, you know, David Copperfield, looking the way he does, would not have had the same experience as a David Copperfield who was white would have done, especially in Victorian England. But in the end, it's a film. It's a fictional film.

Sarah: It's a difficult balance to strike, isn't it?

Sarah: You don't want to make it all about race all the time, but you still need to like acknowledge it. It's difficult to represent without overshadowing other elements.

Jemima: If you look at the director, Armando Iannuci- butchered his name. But like, if you look at his authorship, so Death of Stalin, he had Russians from Yorkshire, like his thing is and I listened to an interview when he released Personal History and his justification for all of this stuff is the fact that we can put history, not the kind of the racial side of things, but just history and how things would have been accurately presented, we can put that aside to just have quality in cast and crew.

Jemima: And I think that's a very good point. And of course, this stuff does make a great grounds for the other side. But at the same time, I think he and a lot of people and including what's his name, Dev Patel, all of those people they really, really appreciated and kind of acclaimed, the casting direction, because now so many casting decisions are based on-

Jemima: His essentially groundbreaking thing, because obviously the controversy around having a brown person in a white film as the main protagonist, whatever, and now everyone seems to be doing it. So it kind of has some rubbish sides to it, but at the same time, it's encouraging diversity in a lot of different ways.

Maddy: I remember when the trailer came out for the film, when the comments were just full of the, you know, "Charles Dickens would be rolling in his grave". And it's like, yes, he would, because he was a racist. Everyone back then was racist. But I don't care what he has to say because he's dead.

Maddy: And thanks for the books, Charles, but they're ours now. And then it got zero points for disability.

Maddy: It makes a point. Obviously, it's oh, my God, I'm forgetting everyone's names. Hugh Laurie. Yes. Hugh Laurie playing Mr Dick.

Maddy: He obviously has some issues with his mental health and everyone's really lovely to him about it. I don't - I think they get points for that. But then that's kind of cancelled out by the fact that Mr. Wickfield is serious, he has serious alcohol problems and everyone just kind of think this is a big joke.

Maddy: So for all the points that it gains for being like Mr Dick clearly has something going on there and everyone's super lovely to him about it. And they're never mean to him and they appreciate him for his intelligence and he's great, that gets cancelled out by the fact that Mr. Wickfield is a serious alcoholic and they all kind of make fun of him, but they get zero points for that.

Maddy: I don't know if I would count alcoholism as a disability.

Jemima: It is a mental illness.

Maddy: Yeah, it's mental illness, I think.

Maddy: But that means that overall it gets a B grade. And I just thought that was an interesting article. I'll probably link it below. It was written by - I'm probably butchering this again, Alicia Johnson, but the Alicia's got a J in it. I think it sounds like it's kind of Polish, so I don't know. And yet it seems like a really interesting website like they give diversity grades to loads of different films, including Lion, another film by Dev Patel, which again, because it doesn't pass the Bechdel test but obviously is very diverse. And yeah, I just- I love The Personal History of David Copperfield, it makes me happy. It's also because obviously, like Bleak House, like the actual Bleak House is in Broadstairs and I'm from Broadstairs.

Maddy: So like, like literally the school next to my school growing up is called Charles Dickens. There are so many pubs in town named after various Charles Dickens things like, when I worked in the pharmacy, so many people would like have prescriptions. It would be like, oh, your address is literally Bleak House. That's so cool.

Maddy: And I don't know, I don't think he was a particularly good person, I've really struggled to read a lot of his work because it's long, it's Victorian. But Charles Dickens obviously is a little bit like- I'm very territorial about it. I'm like, oh, my God, Charles Dickens!

Jemima: Heritage, isn't it?

Maddy: I don't know. I shouldn't be so protective over it, but, you know, I enjoy it. Oh, yeah. How long is the recording so far, Michael?

Michael: I can't actually see a time- if I click on recording will it tell me?

Maddy: Oh, I thought you were timing it. I thought that would have been-

Michael: Would have made sense when I started, yeah.

Sarah: I've been timing it on my phone and that's coming up to like forty-eight minutes - I set it off a bit before we, like, started.

Jemima: Yeah. Shall we do a conclusion then, we probably can't fit much more.

Maddy: Yeah.

Sarah: I read some stuff about the Oscars and how like only 50 percent of Oscar Best Picture winners have passed the Bechdel test. Yeah, only half of the Best Picture nominations this year did, might be worth mentioning.

Maddy: I don't want to defend any one, but I will make the point that there have been far less films to choose from this year. Like if- the way we're going the Husavik song Eurovision: Fire Saga or whatever is going to be the one that wins the Best Song for the Oscars.

Maddy: And that would obviously not be ideal, but it's a pandemic! Let Will Ferrell win an Oscar.

Jemima: I just think that, like what makes films Oscar-worthy does not make films good. Yeah, I think that's something that we can all agree on.

Jemima: And so it's just like to win Oscars, you basically have to tick a couple of boxes. Is it melodramatic and sloppy? Yes. Like has it got some really pretentious narrative points? Yes. And then is it either a musical or biographical, all of those things, then it passes. But then that's why a lot of directors and auteurs and stuff just completely reject the whole award system. It's just like the most anti-diverse, anti-feminist, anti-everything. But obviously, as we see in the next couple of years, they have just released that new classification - it won't be implemented for a while, as we know, but I guess they just copied the BAFTAs with a lot of it, doing the whole score marking system of they have to have this amount of diversity in the cast and crew for them to even be allowed to be considered for the award.

Maddy: Cool. Who would like to conclude, I would like not to because I introduced.

Jemima: And so I really hope. Well, we really hope that you have enjoyed this. Obviously, it's a first time, but yeah, I think we've made some really insightful points.

Jemima: And if you would like to look into them further, I'm sure, Michael, God bless his soul, our little white guy at the site-

Jemima: Yes. He'll put some great resources, everything that we were talking about in the description. Yeah. Is there any final thoughts from anyone?

Maddy: I love Dev Patel.

Sarah: Yeah, I second that.

Jemima: I agree with that wholeheartedly.

Resources:

Failing the “DuVernay Test”: 6 signs your on-screen black character is a tired stereotype

The Bechdel Test, and Other Media Representation Tests, Explained

The Personal History of David Copperfield on Mediaversity Reviews

#podcast #transcript #film criticism #dev patel #personal history of david copperfield #greta gerwig #lady bird #saoirse ronan #peter vanhoeven #xmen #bechdel test #ava duvernay

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