the bechdel test

I don’t think the second season of Orange is the New Black is as good as the first one. I’ve only seen an episode and a half, though, so maybe things will improve.

One series that is really good is Call the Midwife, from the BBC. It has popped up as a suggestion on my Netflix for a long time, but when I finally gave in to the algorithm I had to admit they were right. (Key words, I’m sure: British, strong female lead, costumes.)

Set in London’s East End in 1957-58 it shows up close how poverty and the absence of birth control made life hard for women. The series makes a strong argument for national health care. It also gives great insight into nursing, and the importance of compassion.

It’s absolutely refreshing to see fiction where almost every scene passes the Bechdel test. To pass the Bechdel test a movie has to have at least one scene where two (named) women have a conversation about something else than a man. The list of movies that fail the test is, of course, endless. Among a list of movies that surprisingly fail the Bechdel test are Run Lola Run, and Avatar.

I think Netflix should incorporate the Bechdel test into their algorithm. Or maybe they already did.

the magical negro

Here is a good piece for anyone interested in hegemonic media representation: a blog post about ‘Girlfriend Intervention’, a new Magical Negro show. The show will feature sassy black women helping white women with style choices, much like the help that gay men provide for straight men in ‘Queer Eye For the Straight Guy‘.

The expression ‘Magical Negro’ was coined by Spike Lee, and refers to a black character who guides a white character in TV or movies. The black character holds wisdom and power that sometimes, at least in my mind, sits awfully close to plain common sense. Here is a list of ‘Magical Negro’ characters in recent movie and TV.

One addition to the list could be the nurse Chantelle in Passion Fish, John Sayles’s film from 1992. Chantelle takes care of a self-destructive white woman after an accident. One scene from Passion Fish spurred a comment from a black student ten years ago that I still quote to all my classes: “I’m tired of seeing my people as magical healers.”

an extended family

My friend Steve is making a movie with his wife, and their family. That may sound mundane enough, but whole point of the movie is to question and expand the concept of family: The project An Extended Family connects families who used the same Northern California sperm bank, and the same sperm donor, some 15 years ago. Right now they’re in the middle of raising funds through Kickstarter, and the link for their page is here. Watch the video. It’s wild.

at middleton

At Middleton is a bad movie, and one I would never have watched hadn’t it been for a scathing write-up in The Atlantic. The title of the piece, by Noah Berlatsky, is College Is Not A Playground.

The movie tells the story of two parents who show up for a campus tour, with their respective kids, at a small, pretty, liberal arts college. The parents let themselves be separated from the tour, get to know each other, and spend the afternoon together. They run in sprinklers, smoke pot, steal bikes, and generally “let loose”. Their behavior is contrasted to that of their kids: The young woman (the daughter of the female parent) is high strung and focused on being a linguistics major. She meets her linguistics idol and is disappointed. The young man, the son of the male parent, didn’t want to come and doesn’t want to be there, but meets the aging campus DJ, and gets to pick and announce a song. He loves the experience, and, it follows, the college. One tiny detail from the visual story telling: In the process of the afternoon both father and son untie their bow-tie and tie. (“Letting loose.” Get it?)

In his piece Berlatsky calls out the parents for irresponsibility towards their kids, and the movie for being classist. (The mom avoids her daughters calls, and lies to her all afternoon. The cost of “Middleton”, and many liberal arts colleges, runs in the tens of thousands of dollars per academic year.) Berlatsky ends his take on the film’s message with this sentence: “The college experience is not in books, or lectures. Instead, it is a dream of freedom and possibility, for some.”

The question is what you are supposed to gain in college. A broad, general, education, skills for a profession, or something more diffuse; life skills and “experience.”

At the private college where I teach we aim for the first. A broad education that will prepare students for both life and a professional life. When talking with students it sometimes seems to me that what they want is the second, and the third: A set of specific skills to prepare them for a well defined profession, and a “college experience” of travel, trips, clubs, and parties.

I think travel, trips, clubs, and parties are great. Everyone should have them. But universities don’t need to be responsible for offering them. Just because they’re part of life, or part of being in your twenties, your college shouldn’t be required to set up the sprinklers you want to run through. To portray college as a main sprinkler (if you have patience with that analogy) provider is doing everyone a disservice. It’s making higher education look frivolous, and it’s making those who go there look stupid.