omw_68
10d ago
Kill Bill definitely passes. The bride talks with 3 of her female victims about things other than Bill. Mostly that she wanted to kill them and she hates them.
Ok, and I doubt that Quentin Tarantino was setting out to try to pass the Bechdel test. Arguably, he just made a female-centered action movie and as a natural result of that there was dialogue between women which wasn't about men.
I'm still just spitballing here, but I think what it comes down to is that at some fundamental level, (1) men are not that interested in discussions about relationships and are more interested in discussions about the villain's plan to steal a nuclear bomb or whatever; and (2) women are very interested in discussions about relationships and how the female lead got a text message from her ex and she doesn't know whether to meet up or not.
Another interesting thing about Kill Bill:
By far the most memorable conversation in the movie between two men was about Beatrix -- the scene where Bill goes to warn Bud that Beatrix was coming to kill him. So the movie kind of fails a reverse Bechdel test. In fact, off the top of my head I can't remember any scenes in which two men were talking and it wasn't about Beatrix. Maybe the scene in the Okinawa bar? But Beatrix was present and the argument was related to her order.
Anyway, the point is that Quentin Tarantino is not some kind of misandrist. He just made a female-centered action movie and as a natural consequence, a lot of the dialogue in the movie for which Beatrix was not present was about Beatrix. Which makes sense. The whole plot revolved around her and her quest for revenge.
omw_68
10d ago
I hate any and all discussion of the bechdel test from feminists, I think it's all in bad faith. But if I think about the bechdel test myself and try to separate the concept from the pop feminist application if the concept, I think it really is interesting and intriguing. I really don't understand why there are so few movies that pass the bechdel test, and I feel like something may be wrong about the formulation of the question, but I can't put my finger on it.
Here's a hypothesis:
Generally speaking, most movies center on a single main character. And that character is either a man or a woman. Male-centered movies tend to fall in the genres of action, adventure, etc. Stuff that men like. For example Conan the Barbarian (1982) or Die Hard (1988). In such a movie, most of the dialogue is going to involve the central male character and his conflict with the Bad Guy, quest for the Macguffin, etc. In terms of advancing the plot, there's not much need for female characters to speak to each other and if they do, there's not much to discuss other than the male character.
On the other hand, female-centered movies tend to be romantic comedies, family dramas, etc. chick stuff. In those movies, people are mainly talking about their relationships with other people. So if two female characters are talking, there's a good chance their discussion will touch on a male character. (And discussions between male characters will touch on a female character. Nobody is talking about how to sneak in to the enemy's fortress and liberate the MacGuffin.)
What about a female-centered action movie, e.g. Kill Bill? It's been a while since I've seen it, but I would be pretty surprised if it didn't pass the Bechdel test. If it fails, then I'll definitely have to rethink my hypothesis.
omw_68
10d ago
Jessica Fletcher? OK, maybe it's only me who'd want to punch her at least three times an episode.
I never watched Murder She Wrote, not even once. However out of curiosity I just watched a couple clips on YouTube, and I would say that based on this limited sample, she is more annoying to viewers than she is narratively annoying. By contrast, Dr. House is narratively annoying but entertaining to viewers.
Black Widow from the Avengers.
I watched a couple clips of her as well, and I'm not seeing it there either.
To be sure, I am going by very limited samples . . maybe link to a couple clips?
omw_68
10d ago
Little of this, however, is actually the cost of his skills. Except maybe the recklessness and ethics violations. You could have a show about a less-flawed House, but it wouldn't be as good.
But to me the interesting question is where are the female versions of this type of character? I can't think of any off the top of my head, and I suspect a big part of the issue is that people (including feminists) think that Women are Wonderful and would be very uncomfortable with a female protagonist who is so deeply flawed. I suspect that even giving the woman a limp (when there are male colleagues around who walk perfectly fine) would bother feminists quite a bit. The upshot of this is that it would be difficult to prevent a female House from being a Mary Sue type who is extremely annoying outside of the narrative. (Of course the actual House is annoying within the narrative but it's entertaining for viewers.)
Kamala Harris could have made attack ads against Trump [on foreign policy].
Umm, I said "Israel." Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem. He also recognized Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights. Certainly that's at least as pro-Israel as Kamala Harris' interview remarks were pro-trans.
Based on the numbers you quoted*, and assuming it's an apples-to-apples comparison, Democrats should be aggressively attacking Trump (and other Republicans who voted in favor of aid) on the Israel issue. But they don't do it. Because, even assuming your poll numbers are accurate, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.
*"37% favorable and 60% unfavorable. Slightly higher for "the Israeli people" and much lower for 'the Israeli Government.' So Israel is slightly less popular than 'transing kids.'"
omw_68
10d ago
This is going to come off as much more flippant than I intend it, especially given the brevity, but: I really think part of growing up is learning to ignore spurious female complaining.
It's interesting that in many traditional cultures, there is a norm against public female complaining. Grievances are supposed to be filtered through the woman's husband/father/male guardian. (Both traditional cultures and modern western culture have norms against public male complaining, in the sense that if a man does it too much he will be accused of being a whiny and/or effeminate.)
Not that complaining is inherently wrong, of course. But it does seem that women have a tendency to go overboard and to make complaints which are logically contradictory.
omw_68
10d ago
So are we talking about a protagonist like Frodo, then? She wants a female Frodo?
I think it's worth noting that Frodo was regularly surrounded by characters who were clearly superior to him in many ways. I think it's pretty likely that modern feminists would not be happy with a female character who needed guidance and support from male characters who were superior to her.
omw_68
10d ago
Every author and publisher could be feminist and every problem with the industry would still be men's fault.
Sure, if nothing else they could blame men for not buying, reading, and gushing about their books. But that's the nature of hate ideologies. The out-group is blamed for essentially everything.
omw_68
10d ago
There's no need to detail how much a man pays for it in his personal life: the societal standard is that men are deficient in their personal lives so it is assumed by default even without being spelled out.
Yeah, I think this is part of what's going on. In television, movies, etc. when men suffer it's not really noticed. Not the way it's noticed if women suffer. People (including feminists) have blinders to men "paying the price." So to feminists, it seems like only women "pay the price."
It reminds me of the criticisms of early James Bond movies. People (including feminists) were outraged that the movies depicted women getting killed. Even though far more men got killed than women.
omw_68
10d ago
I've been rewatching that show recently and "best X in the business but pays for it" is a perfect description of him. The tortured male genius isn't new. I don't stop thinking House is competent because House has a limp or a drug addiction or is, frankly, a cunt. If anything these weaknesses are what make him tolerable as a character. You can't both be an all-knowing genius and get away with being a cunt unless you have an excuse.
It's an interesting thought experiment: What would happen if somebody made a television show or movie with an equivalent female character. An extremely capable professional but a very difficult person with a drug addiction and a limp. I don't think people would go for it, even feminists. Because women are supposed to be Wonderful.
I think that if the networks tried to make a gender-swapped version of House, it would be difficult to resist the temptation to (1) soften her difficult personality and make her more sympathetic; and (2) take away the drug addiction since it's a red flag of poor character. In short, it would be difficult not to make her something of a Mary Sue.
omw_68
10d ago
What I’m really excited for is the actual Holodeck / Tron / what people thought future virtual worlds would be like in the 80s / type stuff where it just generates fully immersive, coherent, endless, well-written virtual worlds on the fly. I don’t even need VR, just an endless Red Dead II tier world
In theory I agree with this but I'm a little nervous about holodiction.
omw_68
10d ago
It was bound to happen. If vibecoding is so easy that software companies can dump all their programmers, then why do we need software companies to begin with?
Yeah, it's sort of like that bank robbery scene in The Dark Knight where each thug does his job and then gets shot by the next thug who thinks that he's increasing his share of the loot, until finally at the end the Joker ends up with everything.
I could easily see something like that happening with AI. i.e. a company uses AI, fires most of its workers; then the company's customers start using AI and dump the company; and then the same thing happens to the customers; and so on. Probably that's part of the reason the big AI companies are going so crazy right now - they are hoping to be among the last companies standing after the chain of dominoes goes down.
omw_68
10d ago
In a comment down the thread, I mentioned that (1) my business makes use of proprietary software; (2) the software company wanted to switch to one of those monthly subscription extortionate pricing schemes; (3) I used AI to build a stripped down version of the software with only the features I need; and (4) so far it's working fine.
So while I agree that it would be a challenge to get 100% of the way to a reverse engineered copy, a lot of the time 50% of the way is more than good enough.
Based on my experience, I would say that AI poses a big threat to these software companies that try to lock you into their system and then rent-seek.
omw_68
10d ago
"I can't fly like a bird" is objectively true, especially in an age without planes. "Females characters are not allowed to be interesting or competent" is just not
I agree, but I think a more charitable interpretation of her claim is that female characters are not allowed to be interesting or competent in every last way that male characters are allowed to be interesting or competent.
And I think that so stated, the claim is true. But a big part of the difference is that it's far more acceptable (both to feminists and society in general) for male characters to be humiliated; seriously harmed; made to look foolish; defeated; outsmarted; mocked; helped by other characters; and so on. Which is why so many female hero-type characters end up being extremely annoying Mary Sue types.
omw_68
10d ago
Part of it is that audiences consider female characters with major flaws to be unsympathetic. For example, there are many widely liked male main characters who cheat on their loving wives (Don Draper etc). This isn’t necessarily portrayed positively, but it doesn’t detract from their masculine appeal really.
I think you may have a point when it comes to sexual promiscuity. People naturally see sex as something that women give and men receive. So that a female main character who sleeps around isn't going to be seen as positively as a male main character who does so. Even in Sex and the City, the Samantha character was nowhere nearly as promiscuous as your typical male womanizer character in network television.
But when it comes to other issues, I'm skeptical. Here's an example of what I mean: In the all-girls Ocean's 11 movie, there's a sequence where Julia Roberts' character runs a return scam on a department store. How would audiences have perceived this if George Clooney's character had done something similar in the original Ocean's 11 movie? I'm pretty sure it would not have been received more sympathetically and I would guess it would have been received less sympathetically.
Perhaps those aren't good examples since Oceans 11 movies are heist movies which glorify crime. But even so, I think there is a rather straightforward explanation: People, including feminists, think that Women are Wonderful and don't like portrayals of women with significant flaws.
omw_68
10d ago
What your post mostly made me think, though, was--yeah, as it turns out, people don't usually identify and discuss problems because they are interested in obviously relevant solutions. They identify and discuss "problems" as a negotiating tactic for getting whatever it is they actually want--usually, greater leverage or control over whoever it is they're complaining to.
For the most part, I agree. At some level, everything is about signalling; playing status games; etc. Probably this very post is just an echo of a successful point made by some hunter-gatherer ancestor sitting around the campfire on the plains of Africa.
omw_68
10d ago
Luke got his friends tortured and lost his arm
Yes, but it wasn't only that. At the beginning, he's portrayed as kind of a whiny brat. And immediately encounters men (Ben and Han) who are superior to him in various ways. Even at the end of the movie, Luke needs Han's help to blow up the Death Star. At the beginning of the next movie, Han rescues Luke who has been stranded in the middle of nowhere on the ice planet. Probably there are other examples as well.
Feminists don't only object to female characters being flawed, they object to female characters being seriously harmed; defeated; outsmarted; humiliated; made to look immature; and so on.
So that's how you end up with really annoying Mary Sue type characters. It's not only that they have little or nothing in the way of flaws. They are also annoyingly superior to everyone around them. They undermine the opportunities of other characters to shine.
omw_68
11d ago
But does anyone have any examples where the original video is correct? Where are the thousands of immensely popular books with competent men who don't pay the tax?
Here's a possibility: Lazarus Long in Heinlein's Time Enough for Love. Basically a male Mary Sue.
But I think few critics would try to argue that Time Enough for Love is serious literature or that Lazarus Long is a complex character. He's basically just a Mary Sue who is always smarter and better and more competent than anyone around him.
I enjoyed Time Enough for Love and I also enjoyed the Honor Harrington series (which has a female Mary Sue as the lead character) but you have to approach both with the right attitude. Typically, science fiction is more about world-building and plot than it is about characters.
Anyway, I suspect what's going on is that in general people are a lot more sensitive to female suffering than male suffering. So if there is a story where a man "pays the price" or otherwise suffers, it's just not as noticeable or memorable. Thus the idea that only women "pay the price."
I remember that some of the early James Bond movies were criticized by feminists on the ground that they depicted women getting killed. But that if you did an actual count, far more men get killed than do women.
omw_68
11d ago
FWIW I use proprietary software for my business and the provider recently switched from a modest one-time-for-life fee for the software to a subscription model which was far more expensive. (I guess they were counting on the fact that for most users it would be time consuming, inconvenient, and expensive to switch over to something else.)
Anyway, I asked the AI to create a system for me which had all the features I needed and which could upload and incorporate my current data. It took less than an hour to get it running and so far everything seems to be working perfectly fine.
So yeah, I would say that AI poses a threat to software providers who try to engage in rent-seeking behavior with subscription fees.
omw_68
11d ago
has anyone ever had their mind changed by fact checking?
I would say "yes," in the sense that fact-checkers are part of the overall cultural milieu which sends a message to people about what they are supposed to believe.
But I think that's not what you are asking about. The real question is what happens in a specific situation when some partisan hears some really juicy news which puts his political enemies in a bad light, and then that news gets debunked by a "fact checker"
In that case if the partisan is on the Left, what I would expect to happen is that the partisan sees that this latest slander is "mostly true," feels basically vindicated; feels that to the extent the original report was incorrect it's a "fake but accurate" situation; the partisan's basic opinion about his political enemies remains unchanged, although he might not bring up that specific incident again.
On the other hand if the partisan is on the Right, what I would expect to happen is that the partisan sees that this latest slander is "false," doesn't put much credence in it because he believes the fact-checker has been captured by the Left; feels that to the extent the original report was incorrect it's a "fake but accurate" situation; the partisan's basic opinion about his political enemies remains unchanged, although he might not bring up that specific incident again.
So yeah, I don't think fact-checking does much in terms of changing peoples' minds.
It would be pretty great if there were a truly non-partisan fact-checking institution which was well-respected by everyone. But I think such a situation is basically impossible -- if such an institution started to develop it would be too juicy of a target to remain independent. Years ago, I had a fantasy about an AI system which could be programmed to be objective and non-partisan, but sadly it seems that our machines are inheriting our human foibles.
omw_68
12d ago
My position is that they do seem to care, and are wrong to care.
Ok, and in your view, what are they doing to influence the outcome of the elections? And what would they do differently if they were desperate?
Sentiment and policy outcome are two very different things. In the GOP, the populists are strong and fighty enough to occasionally force an issue they care about. In the DNC, they're either too unagentic (in the case of migrant anti-Israelism) or too thoroughly 'buckbroken' (in the case of redditor anti-Israelism) to meaningfully contest the party establishment. AOC being made to vote in favor of an Israel aid bill that was already going to pass by a massive margin is a pretty useful case study.
I guess that means your answer is "yes"?
omw_68
12d ago
That seems off, because there are certain provocations (see 9-11 and Afghanistan) which would make all patriotic Americans support a war against Iran
That's kind of the point. By contrast, there are a lot of people who would oppose "transitioning" of minors no matter what.
The relevant comparison is "Are you categorically opposed to wars against far-off countries which are no more obnoxious than early-2020s Iran?
Perhaps, I would need to think about that one. But either way, a poll showing that X percent of Americans believe the war is being mishandled is very different (in my opinion) from a poll showing that X percent of Americans are against "transitioning" of minors.
omw_68
12d ago
All the numbers I've seen indicate that support for the war climbed slightly after it started compared to pre-war polling around questions like "Should the US launch strikes against Iran?" or "Should the US invade Iran?" but we can't get an apples-to-apples comparison because nobody polled the question
I think a more appropriate apples-to-apples question would be something along the lines of "Are you categorically opposed to war against Iran?" Certainly there are a lot of Americans who are categorically opposed to transing of children under any circumstances.
Similarly, just asking people if they have an unfavorable opinion about Israel is not apples-to-apples either. A more appropriate question would be something along the lines of: "Do you believe Israel has a right to exist"?
Anyway, the proof is in the pudding. It would be easy enough for supporters of Democratic candidates to start using support of Israel as an issue against Republicans. Kamala Harris could have made attack ads against Trump on the Israel issue just as he attacked her on the trans issue. He did move the US embassy to Jerusalem in his first term, after all.
omw_68
12d ago
The flag I don't care about, but the fact that they apparently chose to immediately lie at the drop of a hat and produce a deepfake as their response, is a pretty serious and telling flaw.
The most charitable interpretation I can think of was that some idiotic and incompetent staffer handled the situation. A more realistic (in my opinion) guess is that this is a kind of Jason Arday situation. That this woman is not that bright and used to just saying whatever is convenient without getting challenged on it or called out.
So you would say her main flaws are that she is autistic (or at least somewhat autistic) and that she is a difficult person?
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