(I Didn’t Know I Was Supposed to Care About) Strong Female Characters in Fiction.

She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illuminated her alone and left all else dark.  She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful.  Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad.

‘I pass the test,’ she said. ‘I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.’

~J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings: The Mirror of Galadriel

       Over the past few years in my observances of entertainment media, one discussion point appears without fail, the strong female character or strong female role.  No book can be published, neither movie or television show can be premiered without the question being asked if such story contains at least one strong female character.  I somehow managed to reach adulthood without realizing that the status of a female role in a work of fiction was necessary. There were books, films, and shows I liked and those I didn’t, but I never stopped to think whether or not the females (if any) in those stories had “strong” or “weak” roles.  I don’t know that there is such a thing as a “weak female role” but presumably if there are strong female characters there are weak ones. 

     To determine if a work of fiction contains at least one strong female role, it must pass a thing called the Bechdel Test, so named for its originator Alison Bechdel, who in 1985 laid out the rules for this test in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For (yes, it is exactly what it sounds like).  The rules from the comic strip were later formulated in to a test with three requirements.

1.    The work must have at least two women in it

2.    Who talk to each other

3.    About something besides a man.

A variation on the test requires that the at least two women must be named.  If all such requirements are met, huzzah! the work of fiction has strong female characters.

   So that begs the question, why are strong female characters required these days in fiction?  Such a thing was only seen as a requirement (and the absence of as a problem) within the past 30 years.  Certainly the rise of radical Feminism has a lot to do with it, but the desire for such goes deeper than audiences just wanting more females in literature.  The reason given for this desire is “little girls need a character to look up to” or alternately “women need a character they can relate to”.  As a woman myself, I find that offensive.  Are women really so small-brained they are incapable of relating to or sympathizing with a person of the opposite sex? One (not I) would expect such a sentiment from knuckle-dragging-chauvinist-pig men, but most often it is women that are expressing the fact that women and little girls need female characters to relate to.  It would be bad enough if such a thought were coming from men, but I am staggered and affronted that women who want to feel empowered and feel that they can do anything a man can do claim that females are only able to understand other females.

   Granted, it is not always women that express this opinion, there are some men who concern themselves with the fact of strong female roles in fiction.  This past summer, for example, I read an article by a man who took his eight-year-old daughter to see both Jurassic World and Mad Max: Fury Road. While he expected his daughter to appreciate Jurassic World more (all eight-year-olds love dinosaurs) she was apparently more impressed by Mad Max. The little girl was very interested in the movie and for several days afterward, her Barbies were the wives. His conclusion: his daughter enjoyed Mad Max over Jurassic World because the former had strong female roles while the latter did not.

   First off, I am tempted to launch into a discourse about letting eight-year-olds view PG-13 and R-rated movies, something my parents would have never done and something I myself do not approve of.  But that is a topic for some other time.  Rather than jumping to the conclusion of strong female roles yields child enjoyment, the author perhaps should have asked his daughter what she liked about each movie and why she liked one better than the other. I found both films appealing for different reasons (all thirty-one-year-olds love dinosaurs) but neither one had anything to do with female characters or the lack thereof.  I freely admit to not being a typical female, so I doubt I make a good control group for an experiment, but for the sake of example, I have listed below some of my favorite films and graded them on whether or not they pass this Bechdel test, in following known simply as “the Test”.  

  The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogies- these really do not pass the Test. Even though most of the female characters are extra-textual and added to interest female audiences (or for male viewing pleasure), there isn’t much talking between women about things other than men, or much of anything.  The lack of female characters is not really the producers’ “fault”, Tolkien only writes about one-third as many women into his works as men, if even that much. But the women he does write are not simpering showpieces, most of them could probably rule Middle-Earth by themselves if the need arose. 

  Tombstone- I admit this is one of my all-time favorite films.  There are a total of five female roles in it, but they mostly stay in the background.  Save for possibly one or two small scenes, this film doesn’t really pass the Test. 

 The Alamo- No, not the one with John Wayne from the 1960s (the less said about the glaring historical inaccuracies of that film the better), the other one made in 2004.  This film has a total of three females in it, maybe four, minus the extras.  And they all have about a total of about three lines.  Certainly does not pass the Test. 

A Man for All Seasons- This one might pass the Test, although the few women in it don’t do much talking about things other than men (1535 was very much a man’s world). But this film should at least get some extra credit for Sir Thomas More’s rather modern (for his era) attitudes toward women.

The Eagle- With the exception of some background extras, this film has zero female characters, so it completely failed the Test.  Despite that, it is an excellent story about Roman Britain and I highly recommend it.

The 13^th Warrior- This film has very few females in it (aside from extras and background characters) but the few that exist are almost as strong as the men, they are Vikings after all. It should at least get some credit for that among the Feminists. 

Mystery Men- Another good story whose lack of females I never noticed until I learned I should care, this band of wannabe superheroes has only one woman, and the few other women don’t talk to each other.  Surprisingly, it fails too.

Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows-  The lack of “strong” women or women in general in these two movies have had Feminist Sherlockians (or “Holmesians” depending which side of the Pond you are on) roiling since they were released in theaters.  Yes, they spectacularly fail the Test, but somehow the BBC series Sherlock fails almost much but doesn’t seem to have the feminists in such a tizzy.

  I could go on and discuss other films like Cowboys and Aliens, Galaxy Quest, Secondhand Lions, Master and Commander:the Far Side of the World, In the Heart of the Sea, The Highwaymen, or John Carter, and I could go into television shows and books that I highly enjoy that are short in the female character department, but I won’t belabor the point.  As an historian, I will say that my bookshelves are crammed with books about men that I admire, emulate, and have no difficulty whatsoever sympathizing with.  The popular saying goes “well behaved women rarely make history”. I disagree with this, but I am not interested in the not-well behaved ones because… they misbehaved. I am far more interested and willing to look up to and follow the moral and upright rather than those that go against convention just to go against something, regardless of their sex.  The reality is, not all women are strong, neither are all men.  People are people, some are weak, some are strong, some good, some bad, others indifferent. No one worries whether or not there are strong male roles, men are written into stories as all types, and no one so much as thinks twice about it.  Perhaps instead of worrying about whether or not a story has enough of each sex in it and make sure there are strong females to check a box, artists should simply write people as they are.

The three non-female leads in my most favorite movie: The Alamo