The Ides of March fails the Bechdel Test spectacularly

[wem]

Went to see it last night. There's one female character (plus a bit part 'wife') and she is purely there to serve as a love interest and then an inconvenience in the big important men's lives. I don't think DH noticed and he quite enjoyed it, but it completely put me off.

Urgh. Not recommended.

And just remembered, the bitpart wife has about three lines of dialogue and everything she says is explicitly credited to a male character, she has no ideas of her own and is simply a mouthpiece for him.

Double urgh.

Bugger, I wanted to see that.

Um have remembered another female character who is reasonably significant. But still, technically it fails as there's no interaction between them. But perhaps 'spectacularly' is over stating it...

Not all films/tv that mainly feature are men are a no no, Anchorman is a mainly men , the main woman is the only smart one in there, not really feminist but not misogynist either.

Breaking Bad is phenomenal mainly men.

Isn't the bechdel test quite flawed? satc passes doesnt it.

I really enjoyed Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy recently - that must fail but I think it gets let off on account of being about a weird and unique organisation at a particular point in history. ? OTOH it has women in it who are doing vital work, it just all pertains to men....therefore that's all they talk about, and not to each other. Hmm.

The Bechdel Test isn't a test of quality, it simply points out a dynamic. That the Test even exists as a concept shows how poorly one half of the population is presented and represented on screen.

I went to see The Help with my Mum the other night and on the drive back I explained the Bechdel Test. She has since casually pointed out a number of films/books etc that pass or fail.

You could say it's flawed as a general measure of quality of a film. Just because a film passes the test doesn't mean it's going to be any good. I think it just highlights how few films there are out there that do feature women as more than adjuncts to the male protagonists.

I haven't seen satc but I understand one of the reasons it was so successful is that it drew in crowds of women who weren't used to seeing themselves on the big screen.

I may have let it slide with the Ides of March if it weren't for the way the main female character is portrayed. Pretty much the only thing you find out about her back story is that her dad is another big important man. Her dad is the only interesting thing about her. Her dad.

Is that not a reflection of the sort of people who end up working in American politics, though? (Limited impression got via friends.) I mean, family connections and all that.

I don't mind that she has an important dad, I'd just have liked to have found out a bit more about herbeyond that!

Thanks for the warning wem - must admit though, I thought it looked like shit anyway (worthy no-shit-sherlock-politicians-are-a-shady-bunch oscar fodder?)

But yeah, it's crap when there is a woman character who is just a cipher like that. At least in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy the all-maleness is historically accurate, and the few women in it are portrayed as actual believable people, not story-serving love-interest-for-the-menz ciphers.

wem - absolutely.

That's exactly how I felt at the end Prolesworth, I think my comment to DH was, 'what was the point of that?'. Not exactly a new perspective on politics.

(meant to add to last post - not that predominance of men in contemporary politics isn't accurate as well, it's just that I thought the all-maleness in Tinker Tailor was something the film was commenting on rather than the accepted default position unworthy of comment iyswim)

I just got back from seeing this, wem, and I don't think you're portraying it accurately. Firstly, there are two significant female characters, the intern and the reporter, not counting his wife.

The intern (main female character) is shown as intelligent, assertive, but flawed. She is shown as having a strong interest in politics, she mentions her university and her work on the campaign - hardly her only backstory being that she has an important father. I'm not sure why you think the only interesting thing about her was her father - did you not watch the same movie that I did, where the plot centred around her decision (SPOILER) to have an abortion?

The reporter was shown as just as aggressive, cut-throat and manipulative as the male politicos. They even spent some effort to make her 'ugly' (well, movie-ugly, which equals scruffy hair, disheveled clothing, but still perfect teeth, skin, and symmetrical features).

Correct, it failed the Bechdel test, but it's not as bad as you're painting it, imo.

I did say I'd forgotten about the other female character in a subsequent post. But thinking about her part in it, she's just another plot point, she exists for the other characters to carry out their plans, you don't get much of her motivation.

The main female character though, yes she mentions previous work and her university, but only in passing, they're facts, the only emotional depth you get from her while they're introducing the character (i.e. before bigger events happen) is when she's talking about her dad.

There's other stuff I'd like to add but don't want to include spoilers.

p.s. In no world could Marisa Tomei ever be considered of equivalent unattractiveness to Paul Giamatti and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, no matter how scruffy they make her hair!

Well, all the characters are plot points, that's how characters in stories work - they only exist to further the plot. Should a character be introduced to the story who adds nothing, doesn't affect anyone or anything, and doesn't change?

I didn't think that the revelation that her dad was a big deal was particularly leaned upon - they spent more time discussing their ages than her father.

Yes, Marisa Tomei is herself attractive, but they tried to make the character look unattractive, which they didn't do for the others.

If you have further points, go for it, I think people know to expect spoilers in these kind of threads.

Ok - SPOILERS

Molly gets fucked (raped?), gets pregnant, has an abortion, kills herself. You barely know how she feels about any of it, in fact most of it happens off screen. I'd say those are all pretty major events and they are all reduced to plot points in Steve's story. Which is what, he gets fired and becomes an arsehole in order to get his job back? Fascinating.

To put this into context, the film spent longer showing you Phillip SH getting his hair cut than Molly's emotional distress leading up to her suicide.

I disagree that we don't know how she feels about it; her actions, the phone messages, her interaction with Steve when she tells him and when he drives her to the clinic - all this paints (to me) a clear picture. But granted, that's subjective, so you may not interpret that the same as me.

I think it happened off-screen because the story is about Steve, not Molly, and how events affect him. Besides, explicitly showing an abortion and then a suicide by overdose would be, imo, too much. Also, that it happened off-screen reinforced the message that Steve was trying to keep it hidden, under wraps.

I have a Bechdel test thread if anyone is interested in reviving it.