Princess Bride.

You know what sucks? Princess Bride doesn't pass the Bechdel Test and it's really not girl-friendly movie at all. I've always genuinely enjoyed it but there's NO ONE of color in that movie and TWO chicks in the entire thing. Three if you count the dream sequence hag, and I don't.

I watched it tonight with the teens for a Quote-Along program and it just disappointed me to watch a movie I've seen a dozen times in my life (if not more) not uphold any of my values at all as an adult. Buttercup wasn't even a "helpful damsel" really. She was completely helpless. She did nothing forcefully or assertively but profess her love.

And there was the dream sequence with the hag and then Carol Kane as "wife of Billy Crystal"-whatever. I keep thinking about that award speech Julianne Moore gave recently wherein she talked about how amazing each of her fellow nominees were and that as a woman she doesn't get to act with other women often and how sad that is.

I'm so over this nonsense. A demographic that is 50% of the human population shouldn't be 5% of an ensemble movie cast.

OVER. IT.

I hate that I can't enjoy Princess !fucking! Bride anymore because of my pervasive feminism. But it is as it should be. I'm done falling into lightning sand and standing still screaming while the fire pits consume me.

Disappointment in Analysis, volume 2.

I'm not entirely certain, but I think my favorite episode ("Fancyman, Part 1") of New Girl doesn't pass the Bechdel Test. I'm distraught, dismayed, disappointed. The Mighty Boosh and The IT Crowd rarely pass. So many of my favorite things are becoming tainted by an underrepresentation of women...and that tainted tint is evident simply because I've opened my eyes to that harshly glinting light, the source of which is a crippling patriarchy piercing every aspect of my life.

Before the event was cancelled, I was due to attend a burlesque show this evening. I was all atwitter worrying about whether or not I would get outraged at the objectification of women, even if they're objectifying themselves. I've been to a burlesque show before, several years ago. I really enjoyed it the first time, finding it empowering and exhilarating, but now...now I'd be bitching about the lack of men taking off their clothes. Now I'd be noticing the comments of men in the audience. Now I'd probably be storming out of the bar, blood boiling. I'm angry all the time these days, simply because I am paying attention.

Examples of television with very small casts, such as The Mighty Boosh and The IT Crowd, would be acceptable forms of entertainment not passing IF it wasn't such a problem everywhere else. If only every media representation of people in the human race (casts) included non-sexist humor, equal numbers of women to men, well-rounded character representations of women, trans-people, racial diversity, sexual orientation, size-variance, and people enduring disabilities of various kinds. I could enjoy so many more things! I would spend all my money buying entertainment! Is this too much to ask? How are we still a humanity that barely includes HALF (women) our human race on television and in movies?! How have we maintained this white dude dictatorship for so long? How have intelligent people such as myself been brainwashed to not see it for so FUCKING LONG?! I'm so outraged to have to live in a culture of obscured truths and obfuscated perceptions. I will always stand up for those being slighted/de-humanized, but it is exhausting to realize how often this needs to be done.

In the last couple of days I've watched five more episodes in my search for my top ten TV shows of all time. Three episodes passed the Bechdel Test, and that's counting Rupaul's Drag Race, a show that includes a cast that is about 98% men.

I just went back to the New Girl episode and rewatched the two scenes including women talking to each other. There was a very BRIEF paragraph wherein Jess is telling her boss something about assembling a group of kids together for a fundraiser, but really, everything in both conversations is about a man...I'm stretching it to let it pass.

Most of the time, New Girl is very great about representing race, size, gender, and feminism. Of the five main characters (Jess, Nick, Cece, Winston, and Schmidt) two are women and two are of a race other than white. Often, side characters represent many different aspects of humanity as well. The jokes are usually not sexist and the "minority" characters are represented as well-rounded people with nuance. They're not there to be the butt of jokes, at least not any more so than Nick and Schmidt, the two white dudes on the show.

In an episode called "Jess and Julia", Julia is a lawyer dating Nick who is intimidated and hateful towards Jess because she makes cupcakes and brakes for birds. Julia is a woman that has made her brand of feminism about distancing herself from everything "girly". This is exactly the type of dismissive attitude women like Zooey Deschanel have to endure daily. I am this type of girl. I like unicorns and glitter and Hello Kitty, but I'm also a fierce feminist who will rip you a new asshole if you say something sexist to me. I am not less of a badass bitch because I like hearts and have a baby deer tattooed on my forearm. Don't call us "manic pixie dream girls"! Jess notices this attitude and attempts to be nice and make friends with Julia, being met only with disdain and passive-aggressive insults. Finally, Jess makes this speech:

"Ok, HEY. I've got something to say to you, man! I brake for birds. I rock a lot of polka dots. I have touched glitter in the last 24 hours. I spend my entire day talking to children....and that doesn't mean I'm not smart and tough and strong...I'm about to go and pay this $800 fine and my checks have baby farm animals on them, bitch!"

This was a moment for me. Perhaps this is really my favorite episode of New Girl. Later in the ep, Julia goes over to the apartment to hang out with Jess and they become friends. It's ok to be a Julia in pantsuits but it's also ok to bake cupcakes and wear Rainbow Bright t-shirts. Never forget that.

It sucks to want to put a shit-ton of glitter on your face but feel hindered knowing the comments you'll have to endure by doing so. Because Jess represents the exact type of girl I feel I am in my glittery pink heart, I will always love this show. Also, it's really hilarious most of the time. Lately, they've been stumbling, but I still watch the show every week.

Whatever slight feminist failings New Girl possesses, Parks and Recreation has none that I can see. Passes Bechdel Test? Check. Half the cast is women? Check. Racial diversity? Check. Size diversity? Check. Well-rounded, flawed, nuanced characters of all kinds represented? Check. Non-sexist humor? Check. Feminist agenda? Check. Feminist icon? Check!

This show is just, perfect. It is lacking in vampires and ass-kicking, but not every feminist show can be Buffy. I'm learning to accept that. This show is like if The Office were more feminist. This show, sorry Tina Fey, is what 30 Rock wishes it could have been. Oh, God, I just pitted two wonderful, iconic, fierce women against each other! I take it back!

{Lately I've been asking myself if my life passes the Bechdel Test. I have spent the entirety of my adult life in relationships with white men. I've internalized a good chunk of my personality based upon the reflections I make in the men that I have loved. I have to genuinely ask myself how I feel, when it is easy to think about how someone else feels. Nauseating, isn't it? I'm at least 75% the doormat society wants me to be, but I'm LEARNING.}

The episode of Parks and Rec I rated is called "Pawnee Rangers" and it involves a men-only camping trip headed by Ron versus Leslie's all-girl camping trip. Leslie's is much more fun and eventually all the boys from Ron's group want to join, so they are then initiated as "Pawnee Goddesses". There wasn't a single second of this episode that wasn't enjoyable to me. It's also the one with

No spoilers, but this show will be on my top five, which is a feat, because the show isn't over yet, so it loses points for not having a complete arc to judge and it STILL made the top five.

"Just a little prick in the mouth." 

Judging the feminism of Rupaul's Drag Race proved a more interesting and difficult task than I originally anticipated. Fortunately, most episodes include at least two women judges, though they're mostly critiquing/talking about men, men dressed as women. The men refer to each other by their female drag names and female pronouns most of the time. One could argue that drag queens are men making fun of women, but I think they're really making fun of the over-the-top expectations of women. Much of the time they're honoring female icons that they identified with as young gay boys growing up in our sexist culture. I would argue that many gay men that often dress as women would consider themselves feminists. So, do I judge Rupaul's Drag Race as a show about men, a show about men so in love with women that they want to become them, or perhaps the more important question, is a show whose premise is about gender really the LEAST about gender of any of the shows I love? Each episode you get to see these men as men, these men as women, and these men in every stage on their way in and out of Dressing As Girls (drag).

At the very least, this show is eye-opening, gorgeous, and fascinating. At its very best, it's a pun-filled punch of eye candy that humanizes gay men (more than Will and Grace EVER did) and is schooling a nation in acceptance of gay men both as themselves AND as women. If you've never seen this show, it truly is extremely entertaining. These girls are gorgeous and witty and campy and talented and they cry backstage when their parents Skype them telling them they accept them for the first time since they came out two decades ago. It is heartwarming, breathtaking, and hysterical.

You will be amazed at how fishy (feminine, mistaken for women) these queens can be.

I've learned more about charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent from these lady boys than I have from most female icons in the media. I think the way men imitate women can teach us a lot about how very NOT seriously we can take ourselves. Sure, for them it's a costume they can take off, many of them reverting to masculine white men that can "pass" if they wanted to. The "otherness" of gay men, all other things being white, can be hidden. However, there is something refreshing about men doing women better than I can. Being beautiful is baldly an act for these men, but it's an act for women too, only we're supposed to be "authentic". You're not supposed to see beyond our mask, but this show exhibits that mask for what it truly is. It is ARTIFICE, children. Employ it whenever you wish, do as you please, but boys and girls, don't ever forget:

Ultimately, I came on the side of Rupaul definitely being a feminist show. The episode I watched is called "Snatch Game", an episode played each season wherein the queens impersonate a famous female celebrity. I used season 4's version of this episode. It was delightful. I can't believe I almost didn't consider Rupaul's Drag Race in my quest for best TV shows ever.

Next, I watched Firefly's episode entitled "Our Mrs. Reynolds". This episode's premise involves an accidental marriage (custom confusion on a planet the crew visited) between captain Mal and a woman who, by all appearances, seems to want nothing more out of life than to be a very good and submissive wife. Throughout the episode, almost everyone on the ship's crew attempts to teach her a bit of autonomy, tries to lift her up, and treats her like a human being. It turns out that she was playing them to steal their ship, but she was gooooood.

Firefly is a Joss Whedon enterprise. It's basically space cowboys, if you're into that, and who ISN'T, amiright? Don't judge it by the ATROCIOUS theme song. Being a Whedon show, it passes the Bechdel Test with its hands tied behind its back. Nearly every shot involves men and women on equal footing. Women on this show are to be respected, even if they're prostitutes. This show has the most interesting portrayal of a prostitute I've ever seen in television, actually. In this universe, courtesans are trained in a very high class and sophisticated way. In fact, they are considered among the highest class in the caste system. Inara is constantly getting the crew (who are mostly thieves and law-breakers) out of deep shit with her aristocratic influence. She chooses her clients (men and women) very carefully and takes pride in her job. There's this whole involved ritual process in her seduction techniques that sometimes don't even involve sex. Inara has complete control and can back out at any time she feels her work is not progressing to her liking. She's one of the most beautiful (pictured above) women I've ever seen in my life, and she's a PROSTITUTE, but she's not treated with less respect or objectified by the fellow members of her crew. When someone does treat her derisively, she shuts them down. She is principled, funny, and is seen cultivating genuine relationships with other members of the crew.

The show itself is like any other Whedon show. The characters are funny and well-developed. The show is thought-provoking, feminist, and entertaining (did I mention space cowboys?!?). I am among the legion of fans outraged by she show's cancellation after only one short season. We could have had so much more time with this wonderful troop of outlaw space explorers!

"The One With the Football"

Then there's FRIENDS. Despite the obvious criticisms of the show (no racial diversity, some sexist humor, some backhanded gay jokes, etc), I really enjoy FRIENDS. It employs pure physical comedy that lasts 10 seasons without getting stale, in my opinion. I'll rewatch this show forever. Almost every episode is quotable and accomplishes the biggest goal of entertainment in my book: total immersive distraction. There are definitely things to not like about FRIENDS, but I forgive them a lot of these things having grown up with Rachel, Phoebe, Ross, Chandler, Joey and Monica. The show is also wayyyyyy less sexist than the most popular sitcom on television now (Big Bang Theory).

In conclusion, I like TV a lot, though I'm learning to see the terrible injustices within the things that I love, a fact which is both disappointing and sadly, not surprising. I'll take painful truth over blissful ignorance any day if it makes me appreciate fabulous feminists such as Amy Poehler, Joss Whedon, and Zooey Deschanel even more than I already do.

Quantifications.

The hardest part of "scientifically" picking apart the art that you love, besides the obvious ramifications of infusing intellect upon something that maybe shouldn't be thought about quite so much, is that you have to decide how to define your parameters at every turn, a task that's sure to give you pain in the membrane. Yeah, I said it.

The first question I had to ask myself was how a show even gets to be on my top shows list. At first, I decided not to include reality competition shows such as Project Runway and RuPaul's Drag Race, using the lack of a plot-driven storyline as my reasoning. Earlier today, with my composition book, a pink pen, and many scribblings I realized that RuPaul has to be on my list. It's no less plot-driven than Daria or The IT Crowd. I love it because it represents a chunk of culture that's entertaining, moving, and beautiful to look at. I've never missed an episode. I watch it every Tuesday night with my girls Kim and Lindsey in a Facebook chat box nearby. I've rewatched seasons. So

Ru, your show was added to my quest for the top ten TV shows!

As a newly-more-aware feminist, I couldn't include Big Bang Theory or That '70s Show in my list, though I have previously considered them favorites and are both shows I've spent many hours enjoying. On both shows the females are outnumbered and sexist jokes are sprinkled throughout the dialogue like glitter at a strip club. Donna and Penny are both fierce women with their own agencies for the most part (and two of my favorite female characters on a sitcom), but they both make and endure sexist jokes with a smile most of the time. Their male counterparts (Eric Forman and Leonard Whatever-His-Last-Name-Is) are lauded as wonderful boyfriends and sweet men, though they are both contemptible, arrogant, sexist assholes, if you ask me. You didn't, so I'll move on.

Then I wondered if fluff shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Beavis & Butthead, and Sifl 'n Olly could count amongst my favorites. These are shows I enjoy without higher levels of thinking...well sometimes my levels of thinking while watching these shows are, ahem, high, but not intellectually so. Under these considerations, even Daria skirts the line of "Is this GOOD enough to be a favorite?" I'd say Daria represents the type of outsider-feminism me and my friends exhibited in high school in the late '90s, so that means something, I suppose.

Sifl 'n Olly means a lot to me, but the lack of DVD releases of the seasons leaves me with the arduous task of tracking down as many episodes as I can find dubbed from old VHS tapes onto YouTube, so unfortunately, it's out of the running for a stupid reason. If anyone has all of these episodes on VHS, please mail them to me and I will upload them to YouTube and send you a package of amazing kitschy things and love you forever. I live for these hilarious sock puppets!

In the vein of television that simply makes me laugh uncontrollably, I have a soft spot in my giggle bones for Beavis & Butthead and Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Shake reminds me of my brother Sagan, the presence of which both comforts and fills me with overwhelming outbursts of love. Beavis and Butthead were two figures that were there as I grew up, reminding me of my male friends. They were the way I came to understand adolescent boys to be, and overall, I think that's still a pretty accurate portrayal. I always identified with Beavis more, myself, if you care to know such personal details.

Even after my top 13 and their rating parameters were finally decided upon, I had to figure out a way to apply my ratings of the parameters so that they could make the shows numerically comparable to one another. It got complicated, as I tend to make things. I decided upon a point system of 0-10. As described in an earlier blog entry, I knew I'd be averaging the scores.

FEMINISM: I decided that for an episode or show to be deemed (by me) as feminist it would be judged upon five parameters. It would get three points for passing the Bechdel Test, two points if the show as a whole represented well-rounded female characters (women with personalities, flaws, and agency), two points if the ratio of females to males was at LEAST 1:3 (being generous on that point), two points if the show overall had non-sexist humor, and one point if one of the characters was a feminist icon.

CHARACTERS: For a show to receive top marks in character development, I have many requirements. First, I will isolate the Core Four characters in each show. For The Office, that would be Jim, Pam, Michael, and Dwight. Then I give the show one point for each of the Core Four that I like. I then give the show two points if at least two of the Core Four are women. The show then gets one point each if it portrays/represents the following people in a positive light: trans-individuals, people of varying body types, people of varying sexual orientations, and a variety of race representation.

STICKINESS/INTEGRATION INTO MY DAILY LIFE: In order to receive many points in this category, a show must be quotable (three points), memorable (four points) and re-watchable (three points).

COPING: I watch television to either escape (comedy) or learn skills to cope (fantasy/drama) with my life. A show gets up to five points if it allows me to be sufficiently distracted from and/or better equipped to cope with life. The other five points are allotted when I feel that a show as a whole has achieved a specific goal. This "goal" is one I perceive as the viewer and may be a "goal" it achieves for me specifically, and not one any of the creators intended. For example, Buffy has a very clear goal of being a feminist show with a feminist icon. Buffy has achieved that goal, completely. A show like The Office on the other hand, doesn't have an obvious goal, though I do find it to be a good-natured show that's HILARIOUS and awkward and changed the way comedies were created from then on. Without it, we might not have Parks and Recreation or New Girl.

With all parameters set, I've settled in for some serious television watching/scrutinizing. Today I watched three episodes.

Let's begin with Daria's "Malled". It's the fifth episode of the series wherein everyone takes a school-enforced field trip to the Mall of America. Honestly, I still have no idea what my favorite episode of Daria would be. Unfortunately, plots in the show are not memorable enough to choose a favorite, for me anyway. What I like about Daria is what I like about my good friend Lindsey, dry sarcasm and a fierce wit. Daria is a feminist icon, to be sure, but her day-to-day activities don't make big statements or quotable impressions most of the time. I can watch Daria with the type of partial attention my teenage-self-on-the-phone probably paid it the first time around. Daria and Jane (and even several other secondary characters) are great characters and high schools and malls are two of my favorite settings in film, but there's not a lot else with which to assess here.

I was very disappointed to find that what I typically list as one of my favorite episodes of television ever, The Office's, "The Injury", does not pass the Bechdel Test. Pam talks only to Jim, Michael, Dwight, and Oscar in this episode. Angela talks only to Dwight. Phyllis only talks to Michael. Kelly doesn't even have a line in this episode. As a whole, the show represents females in an honest way, though they are often outnumbered and out-shined by their male counterparts.

With that said, I quote this episode almost every day. "I can feel the blood coursing through my foot veins!" I find several scenes to be laugh-out-loud funny. It is an excellent example of comedy in exactly the way I take my comedy: weird, awkward, and sweet-natured. It's the one where Michael clamps his foot on a George Forman grill and Dwight gets a concussion and is really nice to Pam all day.

The characters on this show are very endearing to me. They are all essentially good human beings and I prefer them to the assholes of It's Always Sunny... or Seinfeld. I have rewatched the entire series at least twice and will do so again and again throughout my life. Getting swept up in Jim and Pam's love-story is something I look forward to doing over and over. It is one of two popular heterosexual love-arcs I enjoy as much as the rest of the world. (The other is Pride and Prejudice, btw.) If I was the type to channel-surf, I'd watch The Office anytime I found it on. I suspect the show will make my top five.

The IT Crowd is a new favorite for me, having only just watched it twice through in the last few months, but I liked it immediately. What started as a huge crush on Moss (above, quite possibly the cutest boy on television EVER, in my opinion) blossomed into a genuine appreciation for both Jen and Roy, the other two main characters of the show. A British comedy about a nerdy tech-support trio working in the basement of a big corporation, all three of whom are pretty to look upon? Sign me up! I think I have a predilection towards workplace comedies because they tend to stay in the realm of not-too-emotional and not-too-serious. In fact, all three kinds of television I enjoy (workplace comedy, high school drama, and fantasy -- hey, Buffy is all three!) have barriers to bald emotions of an intense nature. I have no problem dealing with intense emotion if I am tricked into it by falling in love with a vampire, but don't show me real tragedy and sadness.

I don't seem to have much deep thought about The IT Crowd. I enjoy the eye candy (and humor, because Richard Ayoade's character is perfection) of Moss while laughing often at every other character/situation of the show. The episode I watched today was "Aunt Irma Visits". The boys get sympathetic-PMS alongside Jen and hijinks ensue, basically. This episode also includes the rare cameo from a sexy gothed-up Noel Fielding. I'll talk more about my crush on HIM in a different post.

Sadly, this episode also does not pass the Bechdel Test. However, as the show typically deals mostly with the three main characters, two of whom are men, this is not as big of a slight to me as it is when a show with a larger ensemble cast, such as The Office (a show that has NO excuse to ever have a non-passing episode) doesn't pass.

Once The IT Crowd has been seen by me four and five and six times and inevitably become part of my vocabulary, I will have more to say about it. For now, enjoy this, my current favorite quote from Moss:

My "unreasonable" expectations.

I recently learned about this phenomenon called the Bechdel Test for movies. Essentially, it is thus: For a movie to pass the Bechdel Test, it has to a) have two or more NAMED female characters that b) talk to each OTHER c) about a topic other than MEN.

Sounds simple, yeah? NO. It is unfortunately not FUCKING SIMPLE at all. I am angry.

So, after finding out about this thing I decided that I would check on the status of my favorite movies and every potential movie in the theatre I wanted to see. I have, for now, refused to see any movie that doesn't pass. Guess what doesn't pass? "Star Trek" barely has two female characters and they sure as shit don't talk to each other. A movie about the future doesn't include women, apparently. Gene Roddenberry would NOT approve. "World's End" (wtf, Simon Pegg? What the ACTUAL fuck?) has two or more named female characters but all they do is talk about the men. This movie is ostensibly (and I don't know, because I prevented myself from seeing a film that I SHOULD really enjoy) about a bunch of friends drinking and hanging out waiting for the end of the world. God, that sounds like a riot. I want to watch this movie, but it's on the surface a film that doesn't care enough about half the population to have them talking about something other than their male counterparts.

This thing has RUINED TV and movies for me, but it needed to be done, so I hope it ruins it for you too.

After the "World's End" debacle I asked myself if I was being too strict. I decided I was not. In the year 2013 women (again, 50% of the population of Earth? You know, HALF?!?!?) should be respected enough to appear in movies for reasons other than support of men in the form of sexuality and pep talks. I happen to know a lot of women (being that we're HALF the population of Earth) and you know what? We barely ever talk about men, especially for the purposes of trying to figure them out and never, I repeat NEVER, to worship them. There's the occasional, "He's so dreamy" but then we shake the stars out of our eyes and talk about our creative projects and music and pop culture and politics and literature and....

*deep cleansing breath*

When you think about it, this Bechdel Test is a really low expectation. All a movie has to do is have named females talking to each other about something, ANYTHING, but boys. How hard is that? A lot of terrible movies can pass the test. The test was created in the '80s and we still need it. This pisses me off to such a ginormous degree that I can actually feel my heart slamming against my rib cage right now. We deserve better, Simon Pegg. How hard would it have been to include three or four females in your pack of boy BFFs in your damn blockbuster movie?

One ray of hope is Paul Feig, the creator of "Bridesmaids" and "The Heat". "The Heat" is the only movie I've been able (As in wanted to watch and then succeeded in going to watch, time and funds allowing. There are others I have yet to see that pass.) to watch this summer. It is hilarious. See it. Paul has stated he strives to make everything he creates pass the Bechdel Test. Thanks for being on our side, Feig. Thank you so much.

Another pet peeve that's so far in our hypothetical future that it's like four post-Bechdel Tests from now: men in graphic sex scenes are never shown with a hand to the vagina during coitus. Most women need clitoral stimulation to have an orgasm during sex. As in the majority. But the women in movies and TV are shown losing their fucking minds during sex while the dudes are just jackhammering away (I'm talking to you, Bill Compton) without any regard to the nerve-centric pleasure center on the female body. Cliteracy, people!

My favorite movie of all time (as stated in this blog after extensive hours of analysis) is "High Fidelity" and it doesn't pass. There are many named female characters, but the only conversation between two of them occurs at a lunch between the characters of Laura and Liz and they're just talking about Rob the whole time. I had to reorganize my brain to explain away this betrayal by telling myself that they probably talked about several other topics too but because this movie is told from the point of view of Rob, this conversation could have been entirely in his head anyway and he's a selfish character so why would he think they talked about anything BUT him? Check out bechdeltest.com to see if your favorite movies pass.

The Bechdel test can be modified for minorities as well. Are there two or more named (insert minority here) characters? Do they speak to each other? about something other than the main white male characters?

Why the fuck is our society so backwards? We're just now letting same sex people get married but we still act as if women and people of color are second class citizens decades/centuries after legally giving them "equal rights" so how long will gay people still have stigma-status after their rights have been equalized? We're backsliding. I hate us so much right now.

*drops mic*