Writing Women Characters
Dec. 14th, 2009 07:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
philosoraptor42Okay, so a recent interview with Sigourney Weaver has her saying that writers should just imagine that they are writing a man if they want realistic female characters. She appears to be one a series of actresses asked about "women in film". On the one hand it must be irritating for actresses like Sigourney to be asked this sort of question over and over again. (Mark Kermode mocks himself in his recent podcast for being "the umpteen shlub who's come in and said: 'So Sigourney, please tell me about the feminist undercurrent of the alien movies and the entire cycle as a metaphor for birth'" *with interview quote in squeaky voice*.) On the other hand, I guess it means she's had plenty of time to consider her answer. (Perhaps unlike Eliza Dushku who says that exploiting sexuality is beautiful and Joss agrees on this. Somehow I found that a little creepy.) So here's Sigourney's own words on the subject:
A few pointers before I give my view on Sigourney's comments:
The Bechdel Test
First of all, I've become quite a big fan of the Bechdel Test, because while I might well love a lot of movies which fail miserably it's opened up a whole way of looking at movies. For those who haven't heard of the test before it has three rules:
1. The movie must contain at least two female characters (with actual names)....
2. who talk to each other...
3. about something other than a man.
I was talking to my dad about this recently. I explained how interesting it had been to consider when I gave up on "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" about half way through. Despite the movie having the two main female protagonists mentioned in the title and inevitably talking to one another over the course of the movie, rather ludicrously they still hadn't passed rule number 3 within that first half. (To make matters worse the man they tend to be talking about most of the time is a complete misogynist and the protagonist who most clearly recognises this decides to sleep with him. - Oh dear god, shoot me now!)
The point of this test does not seem to be that women should be portrayed in a distinctly 'feminine' way (and what does that really mean anyway?), but simply that they should be given the same amount of onscreen exposure as men. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this is that I'd so often taken for granted how much freedom and depth male characters are afforded by comparison to their female counterparts. Even the strong female characters we are told are so popular, often seem to be portrayed as anomalies in this all too familar "man's world" of tv and cinema.
With Sigourney taking the opportunity to sell Avatar at the end of her little speech, I'll be interested to see if it passes the Bechdel test. Certainly Cameron's "Aliens" barely does so. (A woman queries the "acid for blood" in a conference meeting, but that's more said in Ripley's direction. And when a female marine says she only needs to know where the aliens and then she can shoot them, Ripley replies to everyone that she hopes that is true. In both cases, these female characters do not so much talk to one another as at one another.)
Samus: Not feminine enough?
The video game reviewer Yahtzee writes in his blog that there's an odd decision by games developers that the best way to make a female character strong and independent is to make her a bitch. He recognises that this sounds a bit dodgy (as if female videogame characters should be limited to staying in the kitchen and making cakes for Mario) and clarifies as follows:
In a discussion of all the problems with MMORPGs inevitably sexism comes up as one of the issues. The article used an image of Samus is used to illustrate the issue:
Yes that's a girl. No, she will not send you noods.
Meanwhile the following image shows how weird it looks when you 'feminise' Samus:
Back To Sigourney
I've long viewed that there's no real difference between men and women in the same way that there's no difference between people who like or dislike bananas. Sure social pressures mean there are differences (and I similarly don't think that class distinctions are set in stone) and, as with any group, physical differences will make a difference to you (though amongst men and women this is still the case, so the fact that women are often weaker than men seems pretty unimportant). However, it doesn't seem to me that gender makes people essentially different.
As such, I think I rather agree with Sigourney on this. Writing a man and then putting a woman in the role doesn't sound like an awful idea at all. In the end the important thing is that they are a convincing person. That doesn't mean that female experience as understood from female writers isn't important. After all, to produce convincing characters, you can't just ignore social pressures any more than you can ignore class distinctions or racial prejudices. These things are part of life and good writing will encompass the various aspects of life in all their grittiness. Still, I think the idea that male and female characters are inter-changeable is a lot more healthy than insisting on characters who are hold to some ideal of essential femaleness. There isn't an essential man or an essential woman. There are people and there are cliches, so let's try to aim for the former and avoid the latter, ok?
A few pointers before I give my view on Sigourney's comments:
The Bechdel Test
First of all, I've become quite a big fan of the Bechdel Test, because while I might well love a lot of movies which fail miserably it's opened up a whole way of looking at movies. For those who haven't heard of the test before it has three rules:
1. The movie must contain at least two female characters (with actual names)....
2. who talk to each other...
3. about something other than a man.
I was talking to my dad about this recently. I explained how interesting it had been to consider when I gave up on "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" about half way through. Despite the movie having the two main female protagonists mentioned in the title and inevitably talking to one another over the course of the movie, rather ludicrously they still hadn't passed rule number 3 within that first half. (To make matters worse the man they tend to be talking about most of the time is a complete misogynist and the protagonist who most clearly recognises this decides to sleep with him. - Oh dear god, shoot me now!)
The point of this test does not seem to be that women should be portrayed in a distinctly 'feminine' way (and what does that really mean anyway?), but simply that they should be given the same amount of onscreen exposure as men. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this is that I'd so often taken for granted how much freedom and depth male characters are afforded by comparison to their female counterparts. Even the strong female characters we are told are so popular, often seem to be portrayed as anomalies in this all too familar "man's world" of tv and cinema.
With Sigourney taking the opportunity to sell Avatar at the end of her little speech, I'll be interested to see if it passes the Bechdel test. Certainly Cameron's "Aliens" barely does so. (A woman queries the "acid for blood" in a conference meeting, but that's more said in Ripley's direction. And when a female marine says she only needs to know where the aliens and then she can shoot them, Ripley replies to everyone that she hopes that is true. In both cases, these female characters do not so much talk to one another as at one another.)
Samus: Not feminine enough?
The video game reviewer Yahtzee writes in his blog that there's an odd decision by games developers that the best way to make a female character strong and independent is to make her a bitch. He recognises that this sounds a bit dodgy (as if female videogame characters should be limited to staying in the kitchen and making cakes for Mario) and clarifies as follows:
Rubi is not a badass. A "badass" is something to aspire to, someone who can handle a situation. She's more like the female equivalent of 50 Cent as depicted in Blood On The Sand: thoughtless, insecure, thick as pigshit and quite, quite mad.... Rubi has no backstory and no apparent justification. Without those we're forced to come up with our own explanation for her actions, which for most of us will be "because she's a massive bitch."Still the most obvious long-running female character which comes to mind as a Nintendo fan is Samus from the Metroid games. Sure, she's been feminised a little more with the recent inclusion of the 'zero suit' (her attire when not encased in a metal suit), but for the most part in her games she is still shown as a no-nonsense figure in a large metal genderless suit. One response to this in the forum responding to Yahtzee's article was the following:
While I do agree that Samus is more to what the tough female lead should be like, Samus doesn't really count because her femininity is minimized because of her armor and the lack of any human features while she is wearing it. This might change now that Team Ninja is working on the next Metroid game, but it doesn't seem likely from early footage. While we recently have seen Samus kick ass in her Zero Suit, it's her Power Suit that defines her, not her gender.But surely this is the whole point? If you want a properly portrayed female character surely she shouldn't need to act especially "feminine"? Heck, "feminine" often seems to mean either "appealing to men" or "pink with polka-dots and ribbons". Also, it should be noted that treating a character who spends the vast majority of the game in a metal suit in a sexist manner isn't as difficult as you might think.
In a discussion of all the problems with MMORPGs inevitably sexism comes up as one of the issues. The article used an image of Samus is used to illustrate the issue:
Yes that's a girl. No, she will not send you noods.
Meanwhile the following image shows how weird it looks when you 'feminise' Samus:
Back To Sigourney
I've long viewed that there's no real difference between men and women in the same way that there's no difference between people who like or dislike bananas. Sure social pressures mean there are differences (and I similarly don't think that class distinctions are set in stone) and, as with any group, physical differences will make a difference to you (though amongst men and women this is still the case, so the fact that women are often weaker than men seems pretty unimportant). However, it doesn't seem to me that gender makes people essentially different.
As such, I think I rather agree with Sigourney on this. Writing a man and then putting a woman in the role doesn't sound like an awful idea at all. In the end the important thing is that they are a convincing person. That doesn't mean that female experience as understood from female writers isn't important. After all, to produce convincing characters, you can't just ignore social pressures any more than you can ignore class distinctions or racial prejudices. These things are part of life and good writing will encompass the various aspects of life in all their grittiness. Still, I think the idea that male and female characters are inter-changeable is a lot more healthy than insisting on characters who are hold to some ideal of essential femaleness. There isn't an essential man or an essential woman. There are people and there are cliches, so let's try to aim for the former and avoid the latter, ok?
