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Terminator 2: Sarah, Action Hero, But… (Women & Men in the Movies No. 6)

This week I’ll look at how women are portrayed and interact with other characters in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the sequel to my favorite movie, sci fi thriller The Terminator, which I wrote about last week..

(Find out more about 3 tests I’ll use to guide the conversation in Women, Men, and Movies or just read on.)

The Story

A powerful computer network sends a cyborg back from the future to kill John Connor, the leader of the humans who defeat it, when he’s a boy. The human resistance sends back its own cyborg to protect him. It’s a reprogrammed older model that tried to kill John’s mother before he was born.

I watched the “Extreme” edition, which has some extra footage.

Chasing Bechdel

(Does a (named) female character talk to another named female character about anything other than a man?)

Who’s Talking To Whom

As in Ex Machina and Terminator, I’ll refer to machines designed to look like a particular gender as being characters of that gender.

Women to Women:

Sarah Connor says one line to the wife of Miles Dyson (a computer programmer):

Sarah tells her to get on the floor

No named female character talks to any other named female character.

Men To Men:

The good Terminator (which is how I’ll refer to the reprogrammed Terminator sent to protect John Connor) and John talk about many things, including:

How the good Terminator works
Its mission
Following John’s instructions
The evil Terminator
Strategy
John’s foster parents
Sarah, including saving her
Not shooting people
Injuries to others
What crying is
How Terminator can blend in
Human nature
John’s childhood years learning to fight
Other people thinking Sarah is crazy
Emotions
Fear of dying
The mission
Guys Sarah dated
John’s real dad and the back story from The Terminator
Time travel

John also talks one-on-one to many named and unnamed side characters, including a friend his age, Todd (his stepfather), unnamed guys who try to harass him, and Danny (Miles Dyson’s son), about:

John’s foster parents
Stealing cash from ATM
Sarah and that she’s “psycho” and blew up computer factory
Insults
Where John’s not supposed to be
Danny going to his room

The good Terminator talks to bikers in a bar and an unnamed security guard on different topics, including:

Clothes, boots
Taking a motorcycle
Visiting hours

The evil Terminator, posing as Janelle (John’s foster mom) talks to John about:

Where John is
Dinner
The dog

The evil Terminator also talks with a biker cop, a helicopter pilot, a truck driver, and John’s friend separately about:

Getting out of the way
Whether he’s all right
Where John is
A motorcycle

Miles Dyson, who is key to designing what will become Skynet, talks with an unnamed man, a security guard, and a police officer separately about:

The Terminator arm (from last movie)
Dyson’s wife and kids
The detonator he’s holding

Women And Men:

Sarah talks to Dr. Silberman (the psychologist) about:

Injuring him
Sarah’s dream of children burning
Seeing John
When the world will end
When she can be transferred to minimum security and have visitors
Terminators
Her diagnosis and “delusions”

Sarah talks to Kyle Reese from the first movie in a dream (he holds her while she weeps) about:

John being a target
Kyle will always be with her

John and Sarah talk one-on-one about:

The good Terminator being there to help
How John shouldn’t have come for her
Sarah didn’t need John’s help
Whether or not to “kill” the good Terminator
John coming to Miles Dyson’s home to stop her
Sarah loves John

Sarah, John, and the good Terminator talk together about:

Ammunition
The Terminator’s abilities, including to learn
Whether John is okay
Terminator’s knowledge of anatomy
Terminator’s life span
How Terminator works
Miles Dyson
Cyberdyne
How the war starts
Getting away from the evil Terminator
Driving
John urges Sarah, who is injured, to get up
Whether the evil Terminator is dead
Why the good Terminator has to be destroyed

The good Terminator and Sarah talk once one-on-one:

Terminator says “Come with me if you want to live”

The evil Terminator talks once one-on-one to Sarah:

Tells her to call out to John

Sarah also talks to Dougie (a male orderly), to male and female guards, to an unnamed male driver, and to male police officers (along with Dr. Silberman):

Medication (she tries to refuse)
Threatening Silberman
Sarah’s escape
Terminator spotted
John

Miles Dyson and his wife talk about:

His work
Taking kids to amusement park
The neural net processor he’s designing
Their kids and marriage

Dyson’s wife and Danny (their son) talk about:

Going to bed

Sarah and Miles talk one-on-one about:

Skynet
War in the future

Miles, the good Terminator, Miles’ wife, Danny, and John talk about:

Whether Sarah is hurt
Miles’ wound
The war
Terminators
Sarah rants about men like Miles building the hydrogen bomb and knowing nothing about creating a life the way women do
Changing the future
Destroying Cyberdyne

Janelle (John’s foster mom) and Todd (foster dad) talk about:

How difficult John is

Dr. Silberman talks with unnamed doctors and staff (men and women) about:

Sarah’s diagnosis
Her “delusion” about Terminators, Reese, the war, etc.
Escape attempts, Sarah stabbing him

The evil Terminator talks to Todd and Janelle, to two girls, and to two women at the mental health facility about:

Finding John and/or Sarah

An unnamed man and woman at mental health facility talk about:

Coffee

Sarah and Enrique (a revolutionary) talk about:

He should get out of country
His truck

Enrique, Jolanda (his wife or partner), the good Terminator, John, and Sarah talk about:

Cops looking for Sarah
Things Sarah left with Enrique

(Sarah and Jolanda hug but don’t say anything audible to one another.)

Miles, Sarah, John, the good Terminator, and others at Cyberdyne (including Carl Gibbons, a security guard) talk about:

Excuses to get in
Alarms triggered
Getting to the chip
Gas masks
Police
The detonator

Sarah Voiceover

Sarah does several voiceovers, talking about:

The war against machines
Terminators sent back in time to try to strike at Sarah and John
Someone sent to protect John
Good Terminator was best “would be” father because it would always be there
It would die to protect John
Summary of what the good Terminator told Miles
The unknown future
The value of human life

Conclusion

Not only do no named female character talk to each other about anything other than a man, none talk to each other at all. I counted only one line spoken from a woman to another woman, when Sarah tells Miles Dyson’s wife, whose name I never heard, to get down.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day fails the Bechdel Test.

Women v. Sexy Lamps

(can a female character be replaced by a sexy lamp without affecting the plot?)

John drives the first part of the story, as he orders the Terminator to help him rescue Sarah from a prison/mental ward.

But Sarah moves the plot forward once she’s freed. The team relies on her stored weapons and provisions. She hones in on Miles Dyson, who is working on what will become Skynet. Sarah takes off on her own to deal with him and is key to every plot development afterwards.

Conclusion

Sarah, the only significant female character, cannot be replaced with a sexy lamp. Terminator 2: Judgment Day passes.

Mako Mori

(does a female character have her own narrative arc that does not support a man’s story line?)

Sarah’s story is entwined with John’s because he’s the one the evil Terminator is trying to kill and he’s the future leader of the resistance. But she does have a narrative arc about saving the world.

She gets a lot of help from John and the good Terminator. You could argue that she is helping them, not the other way around, but she does enough that I think she has her own arc.

Sarah also experiences some limited character growth. In the beginning she expresses nothing but anger at John for risking himself and concern about his value to the world. At the end, she expresses her feelings of love for him.

Conclusion

Terminator 2: Judgment Day passes the Mako Mori Test.

Quick Results

Bechdel:  Fails

Sexy Lamp:  Passes 

Mako Mori:  Passes

Did I Like It

Terminator 2: Judgment Day has never worked as well for me as the original movie.

In The Terminator I loved seeing Sarah grow from a somewhat inept waitress who is frightened and disbelieving into a woman who, though she has no special skills, fights with every ounce of strength she has.

If you love action heroes, though, you might well like T2 better. Sarah’s buff, she fights more, she handles weapons well. Setting The Terminator aside, she’s more active than women in almost all movies of the time period.

But she has little in the way of character growth. And though she drives part of the story, she literally (in one scene) and figuratively takes a back seat to John and the good Terminator.

Also, I loved The Terminator in part because it was so tightly plotted.

In contrast (as I note in Super Simple Story Structure), who the protagonist of the movie is becomes a bit muddled. It potentially could be John or the good Terminator or Sarah.

Also, that so many men talk to one another and so many male walk on characters get names (such as Dougie, the orderly; Gibbons, the security guard; and Danny, Miles’ son) while no named woman character talks to another named woman character even once bugs me. There’s no reason I can think of that the same attention to detail couldn’t have gone into the women characters. That it didn’t distracted me as I watched and rewatched.

Finally, Terminator 2: Judgment Day shows Sarah as so hardened by incarceration and her struggles that she has little compassion left for her son as a person. Yes, we see her distraught at dreams of children, including him, burning.

But when she interacts with him she seems cold and almost irrational despite that we know her fears are real. The only reason I still empathized with her was that I loved her in the first movie.

Coming Soon

Avengers: Infinity War. I’ve never seen it, and I’m really looking forward to it.

You might also like:

The Terminator: Men Talk, A Woman Fights (Women, Men, and Movies No. 5)

Ex Machina: If An A.I. Were A Woman (Women & Men in the Movies No. 3)

The post Terminator 2: Sarah, Action Hero, But… (Women & Men in the Movies No. 6) appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

Terminator 2: Sarah, Action Hero, But… (Women, Men, and Movies No. 6)

This week I’ll look at how women are portrayed and interact with other characters in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the sequel to my favorite movie, sci fi thriller The Terminator, which I wrote about last week..

(Find out more about 3 tests I’ll use to guide the conversation in Women, Men, and Movies or just read on.)

The Story

A powerful computer network sends a cyborg back from the future to kill John Connor, the leader of the humans who defeat it, when he’s a boy. The human resistance sends back its own cyborg to protect him. It’s a reprogrammed older model that tried to kill John’s mother before he was born.

I watched the “Extreme” edition, which has some extra footage.

Chasing Bechdel

(Does a (named) female character talk to another named female character about anything other than a man?)

Who’s Talking To Whom

As in Ex Machina and Terminator, I’ll refer to machines designed to look like a particular gender as being characters of that gender.

Women to Women:

Sarah Connor says one line to the wife of Miles Dyson (a computer programmer):

Sarah tells her to get on the floor

No named female character talks to any other named female character.

Men To Men:

The good Terminator (which is how I’ll refer to the reprogrammed Terminator sent to protect John Connor) and John talk about many things, including:

How the good Terminator works
Its mission
Following John’s instructions
The evil Terminator
Strategy
John’s foster parents
Sarah, including saving her
Not shooting people
Injuries to others
What crying is
How Terminator can blend in
Human nature
John’s childhood years learning to fight
Other people thinking Sarah is crazy
Emotions
Fear of dying
The mission
Guys Sarah dated
John’s real dad and the back story from The Terminator
Time travel

John also talks one-on-one to many named and unnamed side characters, including a friend his age, Todd (his stepfather), unnamed guys who try to harass him, and Danny (Miles Dyson’s son), about:

John’s foster parents
Stealing cash from ATM
Sarah and that she’s “psycho” and blew up computer factory
Insults
Where John’s not supposed to be
Danny going to his room

The good Terminator talks to bikers in a bar and an unnamed security guard on different topics, including:

Clothes, boots
Taking a motorcycle
Visiting hours

The evil Terminator, posing as Janelle (John’s foster mom) talks to John about:

Where John is
Dinner
The dog

The evil Terminator also talks with a biker cop, a helicopter pilot, a truck driver, and John’s friend separately about:

Getting out of the way
Whether he’s all right
Where John is
A motorcycle

Miles Dyson, who is key to designing what will become Skynet, talks with an unnamed man, a security guard, and a police officer separately about:

The Terminator arm (from last movie)
Dyson’s wife and kids
The detonator he’s holding

Women And Men:

Sarah talks to Dr. Silberman (the psychologist) about:

Injuring him
Sarah’s dream of children burning
Seeing John
When the world will end
When she can be transferred to minimum security and have visitors
Terminators
Her diagnosis and “delusions”

Sarah talks to Kyle Reese from the first movie in a dream (he holds her while she weeps) about:

John being a target
Kyle will always be with her

John and Sarah talk one-on-one about:

The good Terminator being there to help
How John shouldn’t have come for her
Sarah didn’t need John’s help
Whether or not to “kill” the good Terminator
John coming to Miles Dyson’s home to stop her
Sarah loves John

Sarah, John, and the good Terminator talk together about:

Ammunition
The Terminator’s abilities, including to learn
Whether John is okay
Terminator’s knowledge of anatomy
Terminator’s life span
How Terminator works
Miles Dyson
Cyberdyne
How the war starts
Getting away from the evil Terminator
Driving
John urges Sarah, who is injured, to get up
Whether the evil Terminator is dead
Why the good Terminator has to be destroyed

The good Terminator and Sarah talk once one-on-one:

Terminator says “Come with me if you want to live”

The evil Terminator talks once one-on-one to Sarah:

Tells her to call out to John

Sarah also talks to Dougie (a male orderly), to male and female guards, to an unnamed male driver, and to male police officers (along with Dr. Silberman):

Medication (she tries to refuse)
Threatening Silberman
Sarah’s escape
Terminator spotted
John

Miles Dyson and his wife talk about:

His work
Taking kids to amusement park
The neural net processor he’s designing
Their kids and marriage

Dyson’s wife and Danny (their son) talk about:

Going to bed

Sarah and Miles talk one-on-one about:

Skynet
War in the future

Miles, the good Terminator, Miles’ wife, Danny, and John talk about:

Whether Sarah is hurt
Miles’ wound
The war
Terminators
Sarah rants about men like Miles building the hydrogen bomb and knowing nothing about creating a life the way women do
Changing the future
Destroying Cyberdyne

Janelle (John’s foster mom) and Todd (foster dad) talk about:

How difficult John is

Dr. Silberman talks with unnamed doctors and staff (men and women) about:

Sarah’s diagnosis
Her “delusion” about Terminators, Reese, the war, etc.
Escape attempts, Sarah stabbing him

The evil Terminator talks to Todd and Janelle, to two girls, and to two women at the mental health facility about:

Finding John and/or Sarah

An unnamed man and woman at mental health facility talk about:

Coffee

Sarah and Enrique (a revolutionary) talk about:

He should get out of country
His truck

Enrique, Jolanda (his wife or partner), the good Terminator, John, and Sarah talk about:

Cops looking for Sarah
Things Sarah left with Enrique

(Sarah and Jolanda hug but don’t say anything audible to one another.)

Miles, Sarah, John, the good Terminator, and others at Cyberdyne (including Carl Gibbons, a security guard) talk about:

Excuses to get in
Alarms triggered
Getting to the chip
Gas masks
Police
The detonator

Sarah Voiceover

Sarah does several voiceovers, talking about:

The war against machines
Terminators sent back in time to try to strike at Sarah and John
Someone sent to protect John
Good Terminator was best “would be” father because it would always be there
It would die to protect John
Summary of what the good Terminator told Miles
The unknown future
The value of human life

Conclusion

Not only do no named female character talk to each other about anything other than a man, none talk to each other at all. I counted only one line spoken from a woman to another woman, when Sarah tells Miles Dyson’s wife, whose name I never heard, to get down.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day fails the Bechdel Test.

Women v. Sexy Lamps

(can a female character be replaced by a sexy lamp without affecting the plot?)

John drives the first part of the story, as he orders the Terminator to help him rescue Sarah from a prison/mental ward.

But Sarah moves the plot forward once she’s freed. She has weapons and provisions stored. She hones in on Miles Dyson, who is working on what will become Skynet. She takes off on her own to deal with him and is key to every plot development afterwards.

Conclusion

Sarah, the only significant female character, cannot be replaced with a sexy lamp, Terminator 2: Judgment Day passes.

Mako Mori

(does a female character have her own narrative arc that does not support a man’s story line?)

Sarah’s story is entwined with John’s because he’s the one the evil Terminator is trying to kill and he’s the future leader of the resistance. But she does have a narrative arc about saving the world.

She gets a lot of help from John and the good Terminator. You could argue that she is helping them, not the other way around, but she does enough that I think she has her own arc.

Sarah also experiences some limited character growth. In the beginning she expresses nothing but anger at John for risking himself and concern about his value to the world. At the end, she expresses her feelings of love for him.

Conclusion

Terminator 2: Judgment Day passes the Mako Mori Test.

Quick Results

Bechdel:  Fails

Sexy Lamp:  Passes 

Mako Mori:  Passes

Did I Like It

Terminator 2: Judgment Day has never worked as well for me as the original movie.

In The Terminator I loved seeing Sarah grow from a somewhat inept waitress who is frightened and disbelieving into a woman who, though she has no special skills, fights with every ounce of strength she has.

If you love action heroes, though, you might well like T2 better. Sarah’s buff, she fights more, she handles weapons well. Setting The Terminator aside, she’s more active than women in almost all movies of the time period.

But she has little in the way of character growth. Also, though she drives part of the story, she literally (in one scene) and figuratively takes a back seat to John and the good Terminator.

Also, I loved The Terminator in part because it was so tightly plotted.

In contrast (as I note in Super Simple Story Structure), who the protagonist of the movie is becomes a bit muddled. It potentially could be John or the good Terminator or Sarah.

Also, that so many men talk to one another and so many male walk on characters get names (such as Dougie, the orderly; Gibbons, the security guard; and Danny, Miles’ son) while no named woman character talks to another named woman character even once bugs me. It seems like pure laziness rather than an organic result of the story being told.

Next Week’s Film

Avengers: Infinity War. I’ve never seen it, and I’m really looking forward to it.

You might also like:

The Terminator: Men Talk, A Woman Fights (Women, Men, and Movies No. 5)

Annihilation: Five Women And The Unknown (Women, Men, and Movies No. 4)

Ex Machina: If An A.I. Were A Woman (Women, Men, and Movies No. 3)

The post Terminator 2: Sarah, Action Hero, But… (Women, Men, and Movies No. 6) appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

The Terminator: Men Talk, A Woman Fights (Women & Men in the Movies No. 5)

This week I look at how women are portrayed and how they interact with other characters in the sci fi/thriller classic The Terminator.

(Find out more about 3 tests I’ll use to guide the conversation in Women, Men, and Movies or just read on.)

The Story

A young woman, Sarah Connor, must flee from and ultimately fight a cyborg from the future intent on killing her.

Chasing Bechdel

(Does a named female character talk to another named female character about anything other than a man?)

Who’s Talking To Whom

As in the discussion of Ex Machina, where I referred to an A.I. designed as female as a woman, I’ll refer to the Terminator, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, as a man.

Women To Women:

Our hero, Sarah Connor, and unnamed female restaurant coworkers talk about:

Sarah being late
Who will care about a bad work day in 100 years (a little foreshadowing)
A news story about a different Sarah Connor being shot and killed

Sarah and her roommate, Ginger, talk mostly about men and cover these topics:

Ginger’s boyfriend
How they look before going out with their dates
Sarah’s pet lizard
Sarah’s date, who cancels on her
Sarah going to a movie

Sarah talks to an unnamed female door person about:

Using the pay phone (remember those?)
The cover charge

Men To Men:

In the first spoken words of The Terminator, an unnamed male driver talks to himself when he sees what looks like a naked man appear in the midst of lightning.

Unnamed male punk rockers talk to each other about:

A naked man approaching them

The Terminator talks to many unnamed male characters, including the punk rockers, a hotel guest, a gun shop clerk, a phone booth occupant, an intake officer at the police station, and a hotel clerk, about:

The Terminator being naked
Clothes
The rotting smell from his room
Guns and how they work
The Terminator’s attitude
Wanting to see Sarah
“I’ll be back” (the classic line)
The hotel address

An unnamed drunken man in an alley talks to himself, to Kyle Reese (who has come from the future to help protect Sarah), and to policemen about:

Bright lights
Reese stealing his pants

Policemen talk to Reese about:

Trying to get him to stop running
The date and year

One unnamed policeman also talks to another about Reese having his gun.

Lieutenant Ed and Detective Hal (who I don’t think ever has his name spoken), talk briefly to the press (to say No Comment) and talk to each other about:

Two Sarah Connors being dead
Reaching the remaining Sarah
Using press/TV to reach out to her
How they look
Reese’s story

Reese and Dr. Silberman, a (male) psychologist, talk about:

Future war
A computer defense system
The machines’ plan to kill Sarah
Time travel
The Terminator
Reese’s mission
That Reese can’t go back to his own time
Weapons
The Terminator will keep going until it kills Sarah

Max, Ginger’s boyfriend, tells the Terminator “Don’t make me bust you up.”

Reese speaks one line to the Terminator at the end to tell him to “Come on.”

Women And Men:

Sarah talks to male customers and a bartender about:

Food orders
Complaints about poor service
Not touching the TV (when a news story about a second Sarah Connor’s death plays)

The Terminator talks to the first Sarah Connor he visits to confirm her name.

Max, Ginger’s boyfriend, talks to Sarah on the phone about:

Sex (when he thinks Ginger answered)
An apology (when he realizes it’s Sarah)

Max talks to Ginger when she gets on the phone about:

Sex (same words he said to Sarah)

Sarah and Lt. Ed, Det. Hal, and Dr. Silberman talk about:

Sarah being followed
Where Sarah is
Ginger’s death
Whether Reese is crazy
What Reese told her
Reese being deluded and/or on PCP
Trying to sleep
Her mother
The many cops in the police station

Sarah and Reese talked the most, including about:

Reese’s line, another classic: “Come with me if you want to live”
Whether she’s hurt
Doing what Reese says
Reese is there to protect her
Sarah’s targeted for termination
Cyborgs from future
Reese being from the future
What a terminator is and whether Reese can stop it
Nuclear war
The defense network and machines
How John Connor led the resistance to the machines
Time travel
Reese’s injuries
What John is like
That Sarah’s a legend
A message for Sarah from John
Fighting machines in the future
Reese’s childhood
Explosives
Reese’s love for Sarah
What women are like in his time
Dealing with emotional pain
Continuing to fight

The Terminator and Sarah talk about:

Where Sarah is (when he’s pretending to be her mom)
That they love each other (when he’s pretending to be her mom)
Sarah tells him he’s terminated

Sarah, a boy who takes her photo, and a gas station attendant talk about:

the photo
how much she’ll pay for it
a storm coming

People and Machines

People talk to machines in addition to the Terminator, including Sarah talking to her and Ginger’s answering machine to ask for Ginger’s help, which tips the Terminator to where she is, and Sarah talking to a tape recorder in the end in a message to her unborn son.

Conclusion

A lizard and Sarah’s offhand mention of going to a movie save The Terminator from failing the Bechdel Test.

That the film barely passes surprised me. I’ve watched it many times. In my memory, it passed right away because of Sarah’s conversation with her coworkers about the other Sarah Connor’s death. But we never hear that coworker’s name. I also had not remembered how much of her conversation with her roommate was about men.

I also noticed on this watch how many more unnamed characters are men and how much more often men talk with other men (named or unnamed) than do women.

Still, Ginger and Sarah do talk about Pugsley, the lizard who, while male, probably doesn’t count as a man for purposes of the test. Go Pugsley.

Women v. Sexy Lamps

(can a female character be replaced by a sexy lamp without affecting the plot?)

Despite that Reese is sent to protect her, he is not the protagonist. (In a different movie, one I would never have been interested in, he probably would have been.)

Sarah’s choices for better or worse drive the story. Had she been a sexy lamp, Reese would have found her and spirited her away. When the Terminator tracked them down, Reese alone would have had to fight and the outcome would have been far different.

Our other named female character (yes there is only one other), Ginger, plays a small role. But she influences the plot.

She is sympathetic when Sarah’s date cancels and supportive when Sarah decides to go out alone. That decision means Sarah’s not there when the Terminator arrives. Also, Ginger’s struggle to survive brings the Terminator into the living room when Sarah calls, which is why he hears her talk to the answering machine.

So while Ginger doesn’t make a huge difference in the plot, I think it’s enough.

Conclusion

The Terminator passes the Sexy Lamp Test.

Mako Mori

(does a female character have her own narrative arc that does not support a man’s story line?)

Sarah goes from struggling in her work as a waitress (who says she can’t balance her checkbook) to a woman who fights first alongside Reese and then alone to defeat the Terminator.

In a way her storyline supports a man’s—specifically that of her future son, John Connor. Reese says Sarah is a legend for training John to fight and preparing him for the war. Also, the machines send the Terminator to kill her specifically to keep John from being born.

The larger point, though, is to save the world and the future, and the story revolves around Sarah.

Conclusion

Sarah has her own narrative arc that drives the movie. The Terminator passes the Mako Mori Test.

Quick Results

Bechdel:                    BP (barely passes)

Sexy Lamp:                P

Mako Mori:               P

Did I Like It

The Terminator is my favorite movie of all time. (Check out the Reel Chat podcast for an in depth, fun conversation among filmmakers about it.) I love how circumstances force Sarah into an impossible situation and she rises to the occasion. Her growth is gradual and believable.

While I was disappointed The Terminator didn’t do better on the Bechdel Test, for a 1984 action film it’s less surprising that few women talk to each other and more surprising that Sarah is the protagonist.

While initially a target/victim, she takes every step she can to protect herself.

When she sees the news story in a bar and grill, she tries to call the police. When she can’t get through, she goes out among people and later into a crowded club where she’s more likely to be safe. She follows Reese’s advice when the Terminator is pursuing, but when things are quieter she reevaluates to decide what makes sense.

She accepts the explanations the police give at first because they’re logical and more plausible than Reese’s. But when later events prove Reese is telling the truth, she throws all in with him, learning as much as she can as quickly as possible. And when she’s alone, she fights as hard as she can despite serious injuries and intense fear.

She’s a strong, sympathetic woman hero, and the story is tightly plotted and exciting.

Next Week’s Film

Terminator 2: Judgment Day. What else?

You might also like:

Annihilation: Five Women And The Unknown (Women, Men, and Movies No. 4)

Ex Machina: If An A.I. Were A Woman (Women, Men, and Movies No. 3)

 

The post The Terminator: Men Talk, A Woman Fights (Women & Men in the Movies No. 5) appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

The Terminator: Men Talk, A Woman Fights (Women, Men, and Movies No. 5)

This week I look at how women are portrayed and how they interact with other characters in the sci fi/thriller classic The Terminator.

(Find out more about 3 tests I’ll use to guide the conversation in Women, Men, and Movies or just read on.)

The Story

A young woman, Sarah Connor, must flee from and ultimately fight a cyborg from the future intent on killing her.

Chasing Bechdel

(Does a named female character talk to another named female character about anything other than a man?)

Who’s Talking To Whom

As in the discussion of Ex Machina, where I referred to an A.I. designed as female as a woman, I’ll refer to the Terminator, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, as a man.

Women To Women:

Our hero, Sarah Connor, and unnamed female restaurant coworkers talk about:

Sarah being late
Who will care about a bad work day in 100 years (a little foreshadowing)
A news story about a different Sarah Connor being shot and killed

Sarah and her roommate, Ginger, talk mostly about men and cover these topics:

Ginger’s boyfriend
How they look before going out with their dates
Sarah’s pet lizard
Sarah’s date, who cancels on her
Sarah going to a movie

Sarah talks to an unnamed female door person about:

Using the pay phone (remember those?)
The cover charge

Men To Men:

In the first spoken words of The Terminator, an unnamed male driver talks to himself when he sees what looks like a naked man appear in the midst of lightning.

Unnamed male punk rockers talk to each other about:

A naked man approaching them

The Terminator talks to many unnamed male characters, including the punk rockers, a hotel guest, a gun shop clerk, a phone booth occupant, an intake officer at the police station, and a hotel clerk, about:

The Terminator being naked
Clothes
The rotting smell from his room
Guns and how they work
The Terminator’s attitude
Wanting to see Sarah
“I’ll be back” (the classic line)
The hotel address

An unnamed drunken man in an alley talks to himself, to Kyle Reese (who has come from the future to help protect Sarah), and to policemen about:

Bright lights
Reese stealing his pants

Policemen talk to Reese about:

Trying to get him to stop running
The date and year

One unnamed policeman also talks to another about Reese having his gun.

Lieutenant Ed and Detective Hal (who I don’t think ever has his name spoken), talk briefly to the press (to say No Comment) and talk to each other about:

Two Sarah Connors being dead
Reaching the remaining Sarah
Using press/TV to reach out to her
How they look
Reese’s story

Reese and Dr. Silberman, a (male) psychologist, talk about:

Future war
A computer defense system
The machines’ plan to kill Sarah
Time travel
The Terminator
Reese’s mission
That Reese can’t go back to his own time
Weapons
The Terminator will keep going until it kills Sarah

Max, Ginger’s boyfriend, tells the Terminator “Don’t make me bust you up.”

Reese speaks one line to the Terminator at the end to tell him to “Come on.”

Women And Men:

Sarah talks to male customers and a bartender about:

Food orders
Complaints about poor service
Not touching the TV (when a news story about a second Sarah Connor’s death plays)

The Terminator talks to the first Sarah Connor he visits to confirm her name.

Max, Ginger’s boyfriend, talks to Sarah on the phone about:

Sex (when he thinks Ginger answered)
An apology (when he realizes it’s Sarah)

Max talks to Ginger when she gets on the phone about:

Sex (same words he said to Sarah)

Sarah and Lt. Ed, Det. Hal, and Dr. Silberman talk about:

Sarah being followed
Where Sarah is
Ginger’s death
Whether Reese is crazy
What Reese told her
Reese being deluded and/or on PCP
Trying to sleep
Her mother
The many cops in the police station

Sarah and Reese talked the most, including about:

Reese’s line, another classic: “Come with me if you want to live”
Whether she’s hurt
Doing what Reese says
Reese is there to protect her
Sarah’s targeted for termination
Cyborgs from future
Reese being from the future
What a terminator is and whether Reese can stop it
Nuclear war
The defense network and machines
How John Connor led the resistance to the machines
Time travel
Reese’s injuries
What John is like
That Sarah’s a legend
A message for Sarah from John
Fighting machines in the future
Reese’s childhood
Explosives
Reese’s love for Sarah
What women are like in his time
Dealing with emotional pain
Continuing to fight

The Terminator and Sarah talk about:

Where Sarah is (when he’s pretending to be her mom)
That they love each other (when he’s pretending to be her mom)
Sarah tells him he’s terminated

Sarah, a boy who takes her photo, and a gas station attendant talk about:

the photo
how much she’ll pay for it
a storm coming

People and Machines

People talk to machines in addition to the Terminator, including Sarah talking to her and Ginger’s answering machine to ask for Ginger’s help, which tips the Terminator to where she is, and Sarah talking to a tape recorder in the end in a message to her unborn son.

Conclusion

A lizard and Sarah’s offhand mention of going to a movie save The Terminator from failing the Bechdel Test.

That the film barely passes surprised me. I’ve watched it many times. In my memory, it passed right away because of Sarah’s conversation with her coworkers about the other Sarah Connor’s death. But we never hear that coworker’s name. I also had not remembered how much of her conversation with her roommate was about men.

I also noticed on this watch how many more unnamed characters are men and how much more often men talk with other men (named or unnamed) than do women.

Still, Ginger and Sarah do talk about Pugsley, the lizard who, while male, probably doesn’t count as a man for purposes of the test. Go Pugsley.

Women v. Sexy Lamps

(can a female character be replaced by a sexy lamp without affecting the plot?)

Despite that Reese is sent to protect her, he is not the protagonist. (In a different movie, one I would never have been interested in, he probably would have been.)

Sarah’s choices for better or worse drive the story. Had she been a sexy lamp, Reese would have found her and spirited her away. When the Terminator tracked them down, Reese alone would have had to fight and the outcome would have been far different.

Our other named female character (yes there is only one other), Ginger, plays a small role. But she influences the plot.

She is sympathetic when Sarah’s date cancels and supportive when Sarah decides to go out alone. That decision means Sarah’s not there when the Terminator arrives. Also, Ginger’s struggle to survive brings the Terminator into the living room when Sarah calls, which is why he hears her talk to the answering machine.

So while Ginger doesn’t make a huge difference in the plot, I think it’s enough.

Conclusion

The Terminator passes the Sexy Lamp Test.

Mako Mori

(does a female character have her own narrative arc that does not support a man’s story line?)

Sarah goes from struggling in her work as a waitress (who says she can’t balance her checkbook) to a woman who fights first alongside Reese and then alone to defeat the Terminator.

In a way her storyline supports a man’s—specifically that of her future son, John Connor. Reese says Sarah is a legend for training John to fight and preparing him for the war. Also, the machines send the Terminator to kill her specifically to keep John from being born.

The larger point, though, is to save the world and the future, and the story revolves around Sarah.

Conclusion

Sarah has her own narrative arc that drives the movie. The Terminator passes the Mako Mori Test.

Quick Results

Bechdel:                    BP (barely passes)

Sexy Lamp:                P

Mako Mori:               P

Did I Like It

The Terminator is my favorite movie of all time. (Check out the Reel Chat podcast for an in depth, fun conversation among filmmakers about it.) I love how circumstances force Sarah into an impossible situation and she rises to the occasion. Her growth is gradual and believable.

While I was disappointed The Terminator didn’t do better on the Bechdel Test, for a 1984 action film it’s less surprising that few women talk to each other and more surprising that Sarah is the protagonist.

While initially a target/victim, she takes every step she can to protect herself.

When she sees the news story in a bar and grill, she tries to call the police. When she can’t get through, she goes out among people and later into a crowded club where she’s more likely to be safe. She follows Reese’s advice when the Terminator is pursuing, but when things are quieter she reevaluates to decide what makes sense.

She accepts the explanations the police give at first because they’re logical and more plausible than Reese’s. But when later events prove Reese is telling the truth, she throws all in with him, learning as much as she can as quickly as possible. And when she’s alone, she fights as hard as she can despite serious injuries and intense fear.

She’s a strong, sympathetic woman hero, and the story is tightly plotted and exciting.

Next Week’s Film

Terminator 2: Judgment Day. What else?

You might also like:

Annihilation: Five Women And The Unknown (Women, Men, and Movies No. 4)

Ex Machina: If An A.I. Were A Woman (Women, Men, and Movies No. 3)

 

The post The Terminator: Men Talk, A Woman Fights (Women, Men, and Movies No. 5) appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

Annihilation: Five Women And The Unknown (Women & Men in the Movies No. 4)

This week I’ll look at how women are portrayed and interact with other characters in the 2018 suspense/thriller film Annihilation.

(Find out more about 3 tests I’ll use to guide the conversation in Women, Men, and Movies or just read on.)

The Story

Annihilation was written and directed by Alex Garland, who also wrote and directed last week’s movie Ex Machina.

In Annihilation, Natalie Portman plays Lena, a biologist and professor grieving the disappearance/ presumed death of her husband on a secret military mission.

In an effort to help him, Lena joins a team of women going into the Shimmer, a sort of force field that surrounds a jungle-like area.

Previous attempts to penetrate it with drones, animals, or military men have failed. Inside, everything is both beautiful and dangerous.

Chasing Bechdel

(Does a (named) female character talk to another named female character about anything other than a man?)

Who’s Talking To Whom

Women To Women:

Lena’s first conversation with Dr. Ventress (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) is mainly about Lena’s husband, Kane, but topics they cover in all conversations include:

How Lena feels physically
Lena’s military service and current work
What Lena’s husband, Kane, said about the mission
How Kane got back from the Shimmer
Why Lena stopped contacting Kane’s unit for information
What Lena knew about Kane’s mission
Kane being extremely ill
What Kane might have been exposed to
How Lena could help Kane
Theories about Shimmer and when and where it started
People, animals, drones sent into Shimmer that haven’t returned
The Shimmer’s growth and threat to the earth
Kane dying, and Lena wanting to stay with him
Lena not telling rest of crew about being married to Kane
Why Ventress is going into Shimmer
Maps and routes through Shimmer
Why Kane volunteered for “suicide mission”
Suicide versus self-destruction and biology versus psychology
What the Shimmer wants

Lena and the other crew members (Anya, Kass, and Josie) talk together about:

Their careers and why they volunteered to go into the Shimmer
Ventress
Previous teams
Theories about the Shimmer
Kane being the only one to get out
Missing food and provisions
Time and memory loss
Plants, animals, and mutations in the Shimmer
Lena’s military background
Video left for them by previous crew (including Kane)
Being scared
Whether to go back when one of them is killed
Ventress’ determination to go to lighthouse inside the Shimmer
Radio and light waves
The Shimmer refracting DNA
Lena not having told the rest of the crew at the beginning that Kane is her husband

Josie and Lena also talk about:

How long Kane was in the Shimmer
Whether Kane was still intact when got out
Refractions
Their DNA/blood changing

Men To Men:

In a video Kane talks to a second person who looks like Kane about:

Whether he is Kane anymore or ever was
His flesh moving, and his mind feeling cut loose
Finding Lena

Women And Men:

Lomax, an official, grills Lena about what happened in the Shimmer in scenes that wraparound and cut in between the action in the Shimmer. The two talk about:

What Lena ate while inside, how long she was in
What happened to the other crew members
Why she went in
Mutations in Shimmer, how mutations work, whether she hallucinated
Why Lena lied to the crew about her reasons for going on
Ventress’ reasons for going on in Shimmer
Why Lena’s the only one who came back
Whether the Shimmer was alien or wanted anything
A seeming alien that mirrored Lena
Whether the Shimmer was destroying or changing the world
What happened at the lighthouse in the Shimmer

Lena and Dan, a colleague, talk about:

An invitation to a garden party held by Dan and his wife
Lena painting her bedroom
Kane’s disappearance
Their affair
Kane’s work
Lena hating herself and Dan for the affair

Lena and Kane talk about:

His mission and his unit
How he got back and how long he was gone
God
The life of cells
What she does when he’s gone
Loving each other
Who he is

Conclusion

Annihilation passes, as while many of the conversations women have with other women are about Lena’s husband they also talk about a lot of other topics.

Women v. Sexy Lamps

(can a female character be replaced by a sexy lamp and the plot still works)

Both Lena and Dr. Ventress are driving forces in the story.

Ventress because she’s determined to understand the Shimmer and see it to the end; Lena because she wants to help her husband. Neither is merely an object for a man to obsess over or seek to possess.

A couple of the women on the crew felt interchangeable with one another. Even on second watching, I had a hard time tracking which was which.

But none could be replaced with a sexy lamp.

Conclusion

For all the named female characters, Annihilation passes.

Mako Mori

(does a female character have her own narrative arc that does not support a man’s story line?)

This test is tougher.

Lena displays professional and intellectual curiosity about the animals and plants in the Shimmer, yet it’s clear her main goal is to help her husband. A mix of love for and guilt about him motivate her. I also question whether Lena has a character arc, as she doesn’t seem to evolve or change.

All the same, it is her story, not a narrative arc merely supporting Kane’s story. She starts unsure what happened to her husband, decides to enter the Shimmer to find out, and perseveres despite tremendous obstacles.

In addition, Dr. Ventress has a story arc.

Ventress has studied the Shimmer and sent many crews in, only to lose almost everyone. She has a deep need to understand the Shimmer. She, too, chooses to enter and to persevere until she finds answers.

Conclusion

Annihilation passes the Mako Mori test.

Quick Results:

Bechdel:  Pass

Sexy Lamp:  Pass

Mako Mori:  Pass

Did I Like It

What I liked most and what I found less engaging flipped in my two viewings of Annihilation.

On first watch in the theater I felt a sense of wonder at everything in the Shimmer. I identified with Lena’s amazement at what she found. The suspense of what happened to the previous crews and how Kane got out kept me riveted.

The ending, though, I found dissatisfying. It seemed more like oddity for the sake of oddity. It also felt like it left off in the middle, providing no answers.

On rewatching so I could write this entry, I felt a bit bored by the very parts that had engaged me before. The suspense was gone, and unlike with last week’s movie, Ex Machina, I didn’t find more layers in the first three quarters of the movie or achieve insights I didn’t have before.

The end, though, I found more compelling.

For one thing, I felt I had a better sense of what the ending meant and how the film resolved–or at least engaged in depth with–certain questions. I also appreciated the unanswered questions more, as they seemed to fit a theme of the effects of growth, change, and evolution.

As to female characters specifically, despite that Annihilation passes all three tests, on both viewings I kept wondering whether the characters’ stories would be told differently if they were male, which drew me out of the story.

For instance, Lena states she survived the Shimmer because she had to for her husband because she “owed” him.

Why can’t she survive because she’s tough and goddamned determined to? The way the character’s drawn, I would have believed that with no problem, so making her say she had to get back because of her husband just distracted me.

Similarly, Ventress says her reason for going in is the number of teams she’s sent who have not returned. She wants to stop sitting on the sidelines and sending other people to die. Yet the film later undercuts that in a couple ways, including stressing that she has no friends or family and giving her a backstory that means she has nothing to lose. That makes her far less interesting.

The other crew members also each have a tragic backstory or psychological issue mentioned just once. I felt like the filmmakers threw in the explanations because, hey, women wouldn’t just go do something heroic because it’s the right thing to do, or because they want answers, they need to have some trauma because, well, X chromosomes.

Also, yay that on the one hand Annihilation is the flip of most movies in that it includes tons of conversations among only women and only one man-to-man section of dialogue.

But, sadly, almost half the woman-to-woman dialogue is about Lena’s husband. It’s hard to imagine a five-man crew in a similar movie would spend half the time talking about one of the crewman’s wives (despite that female characters seem to exist in most movies solely to be terrorized by one man and saved by another).

Despite my qualms, though, I found a lot more to like than not. The mix of intriguing concept, action, and psychological suspense plus Natalie Portman’s performance made it worth watching.

Next Week’s Film

Sci Fi/thriller classic and my favorite movie of all time The Terminator.

The post Annihilation: Five Women And The Unknown (Women & Men in the Movies No. 4) appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

Annihilation: Five Women And The Unknown (Women, Men, and Movies No. 4)

This week I’ll look at how women are portrayed and interact with other characters in the 2018 suspense/thriller film Annihilation.

(Find out more about 3 tests I’ll use to guide the conversation in Women, Men, and Movies or just read on.)

The Story

Annihilation was written and directed by Alex Garland, who also wrote and directed last week’s movie Ex Machina.

In Annihilation, Natalie Portman plays Lena, a biologist and professor grieving the disappearance/ presumed death of her husband on a secret military mission.

In an effort to help him, Lena joins a team of women going into the Shimmer, a sort of force field that surrounds a jungle-like area.

Previous attempts to penetrate it with drones, animals, or military men have failed. Inside, everything is both beautiful and dangerous.

Chasing Bechdel

(Does a (named) female character talk to another named female character about anything other than a man?)

Who’s Talking To Whom

Women To Women:

Lena’s first conversation with Dr. Ventress (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) is mainly about Lena’s husband, Kane, but topics they cover in all conversations include:

How Lena feels physically
Lena’s military service and current work
What Lena’s husband, Kane, said about the mission
How Kane got back from the Shimmer
Why Lena stopped contacting Kane’s unit for information
What Lena knew about Kane’s mission
Kane being extremely ill
What Kane might have been exposed to
How Lena could help Kane
Theories about Shimmer and when and where it started
People, animals, drones sent into Shimmer that haven’t returned
The Shimmer’s growth and threat to the earth
Kane dying, and Lena wanting to stay with him
Lena not telling rest of crew about being married to Kane
Why Ventress is going into Shimmer
Maps and routes through Shimmer
Why Kane volunteered for “suicide mission”
Suicide versus self-destruction and biology versus psychology
What the Shimmer wants

Lena and the other crew members (Anya, Kass, and Josie) talk together about:

Their careers and why they volunteered to go into the Shimmer
Ventress
Previous teams
Theories about the Shimmer
Kane being the only one to get out
Missing food and provisions
Time and memory loss
Plants, animals, and mutations in the Shimmer
Lena’s military background
Video left for them by previous crew (including Kane)
Being scared
Whether to go back when one of them is killed
Ventress’ determination to go to lighthouse inside the Shimmer
Radio and light waves
The Shimmer refracting DNA
Lena not having told the rest of the crew at the beginning that Kane is her husband

Josie and Lena also talk about:

How long Kane was in the Shimmer
Whether Kane was still intact when got out
Refractions
Their DNA/blood changing

Men To Men:

In a video Kane talks to a second person who looks like Kane about:

Whether he is Kane anymore or ever was
His flesh moving, and his mind feeling cut loose
Finding Lena

Women And Men:

Lomax, an official, grills Lena about what happened in the Shimmer in scenes that wraparound and cut in between the action in the Shimmer. The two talk about:

What Lena ate while inside, how long she was in
What happened to the other crew members
Why she went in
Mutations in Shimmer, how mutations work, whether she hallucinated
Why Lena lied to the crew about her reasons for going on
Ventress’ reasons for going on in Shimmer
Why Lena’s the only one who came back
Whether the Shimmer was alien or wanted anything
A seeming alien that mirrored Lena
Whether the Shimmer was destroying or changing the world
What happened at the lighthouse in the Shimmer

Lena and Dan, a colleague, talk about:

An invitation to a garden party held by Dan and his wife
Lena painting her bedroom
Kane’s disappearance
Their affair
Kane’s work
Lena hating herself and Dan for the affair

Lena and Kane talk about:

His mission and his unit
How he got back and how long he was gone
God
The life of cells
What she does when he’s gone
Loving each other
Who he is

Conclusion

Annihilation passes, as while many of the conversations women have with other women are about Lena’s husband they also talk about a lot of other topics.

Women v. Sexy Lamps

(can a female character be replaced by a sexy lamp and the plot still works)

Both Lena and Dr. Ventress are driving forces in the story.

Ventress because she’s determined to understand the Shimmer and see it to the end; Lena because she wants to help her husband. Neither is merely an object for a man to obsess over or seek to possess.

A couple of the women on the crew felt interchangeable with one another. Even on second watching, I had a hard time tracking which was which.

But none could be replaced with a sexy lamp.

Conclusion

For all the named female characters, Annihilation passes.

Mako Mori

(does a female character have her own narrative arc that does not support a man’s story line?)

This test is tougher.

Lena displays professional and intellectual curiosity about the animals and plants in the Shimmer, yet it’s clear her main goal is to help her husband. A mix of love for and guilt about him motivate her. I also question whether Lena has a character arc, as she doesn’t seem to evolve or change.

All the same, it is her story, not a narrative arc merely supporting Kane’s story. She starts unsure what happened to her husband, decides to enter the Shimmer to find out, and perseveres despite tremendous obstacles.

In addition, Dr. Ventress has a story arc.

Ventress has studied the Shimmer and sent many crews in, only to lose almost everyone. She has a deep need to understand the Shimmer. She, too, chooses to enter and to persevere until she finds answers.

Conclusion

Annihilation passes the Mako Mori test.

Quick Results:

Bechdel:  Pass

Sexy Lamp:  Pass

Mako Mori:  Pass

Did I Like It

What I liked most and what I found less engaging flipped in my two viewings of Annihilation.

On first watch in the theater I felt a sense of wonder at everything in the Shimmer. I identified with Lena’s amazement at what she found. The suspense of what happened to the previous crews and how Kane got out kept me riveted.

The ending, though, I found dissatisfying. It seemed more like oddity for the sake of oddity. It also felt like it left off in the middle, providing no answers.

On rewatching so I could write this entry, I felt a bit bored by the very parts that had engaged me before. The suspense was gone, and unlike with last week’s movie, Ex Machina, I didn’t find more layers in the first three quarters of the movie or achieve insights I didn’t have before.

The end, though, I found more compelling.

For one thing, I felt I had a better sense of what the ending meant and how the film resolved–or at least engaged in depth with–certain questions. I also appreciated the unanswered questions more, as they seemed to fit a theme of the effects of growth, change, and evolution.

As to female characters specifically, despite that Annihilation passes all three tests, on both viewings I kept wondering whether the characters’ stories would be told differently if they were male, which drew me out of the story.

For instance, Lena states she survived the Shimmer because she had to for her husband because she “owed” him.

Why can’t she survive because she’s tough and goddamned determined to? The way the character’s drawn, I would have believed that with no problem, so making her say she had to get back because of her husband just distracted me.

Similarly, Ventress says her reason for going in is the number of teams she’s sent who have not returned. She wants to stop sitting on the sidelines and sending other people to die. Yet the film later undercuts that in a couple ways, including stressing that she has no friends or family and giving her a backstory that means she has nothing to lose. That makes her far less interesting.

The other crew members also each have a tragic backstory or psychological issue mentioned just once. I felt like the filmmakers threw in the explanations because, hey, women wouldn’t just go do something heroic because it’s the right thing to do, or because they want answers, they need to have some trauma because, well, X chromosomes.

Also, yay that on the one hand Annihilation is the flip of most movies in that it includes tons of conversations among only women and only one man-to-man section of dialogue.

But, sadly, almost half the woman-to-woman dialogue is about Lena’s husband. It’s hard to imagine a five-man crew in a similar movie would spend half the time talking about one of the crewman’s wives (despite that female characters seem to exist in most movies solely to be terrorized by one man and saved by another).

Despite my qualms, though, I found a lot more to like than not. The mix of intriguing concept, action, and psychological suspense plus Natalie Portman’s performance made it worth watching.

Next Week’s Film

Sci Fi/thriller classic and my favorite movie of all time The Terminator.

The post Annihilation: Five Women And The Unknown (Women, Men, and Movies No. 4) appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

Ex Machina: If An A.I. Were A Woman (Women & Men in the Movies No. 3)

This week I’ll look at how women are portrayed, and interact with other characters, in one of my favorite suspense/thriller movies, Ex Machina.

(Find out more about 3 tests that guide the conversation in Women, Men, and Movies or just read on.)

The Story

In Ex Machina, a programmer, Caleb, is thrilled and overwhelmed when he wins a week at the isolated mountain retreat and research compound of Nathan, the brilliant founder of the search engine company where Caleb works. Nathan wants Caleb to test Ava, an A.I. designed to look, speak, feel, and think like a human woman.

Who is testing whom and why, however, becomes complicated—and disturbing—as the movie plays out.

Chasing Bechdel

(Does a (named) female character talk to another named female character about anything other than a man?)

In a way Ex Machina is an odd movie to cover because while Nathan designed Ava to be like a human woman, she is neither. But regardless of her humanity, Ava clearly is a female character, a fact that’s key to the plot and the relationships.

Who’s Talking To Whom

Women To Women:

Even counting a female A.I. as a woman, there are no woman-to-woman conversations here.

Ava speaks to Kyoko, Nathan’s servant. Nathan tells Caleb early on when he’s berating Kyoko for spilling wine that she doesn’t understand English. Later events suggest she does, but that she can’t speak it.

Ava and Kyoko interact twice:

The first time they meet Ava says to Kyoko, “Who are you?” but we don’t see her answer
The second time they run into one another Ava whispers something in Kyoko’s ear that we don’t hear

Men To Men:

Nathan’s and Caleb’s conversations with each other always have an element of Nathan throwing Caleb off balance. Nathan often pretends to be joking with Caleb or says things designed to shock him or test his reactions.

Some (but not all) of the things Caleb and Nathan talk about together:

Food, exercise, alcohol consumption, cleanses, and hangovers
Nathan tells Caleb he understands Caleb’s freaked out about meeting him and asks him to get past it and just be two guys, not employer/employee
Caleb’s access (and lack thereof) to different parts of the house and underground research complex
A non-disclosure agreement granting unlimited access to Caleb’s devices pretty much forever (this happens at 9:56 minutes into the movie and is a good signal of what’s to come)
The underground, claustrophobic nature of Caleb’s room at the complex
The Turing test
Artificial Intelligence
Man, creativity, and the gods (Nathan later quotes Caleb saying Nathan is a god, which Caleb points out he didn’t say)
Ava’s creation, personality, intelligence, and sexuality
Why Nathan won’t explain how Ava works (he claims he doesn’t want to give a “seminar,” just have beer and conversation)
How Caleb feels about Ava
How Ava feels about Caleb
Power outages and security lockdowns
How best to test Ava
Koyoko’s limited intelligence, sexuality, and love of dancing
Why Nathan gave Ava gender and sexuality
The nature of consciousness
Sex
Whether Nathan programmed Ava to like Caleb
How to know if a machine is expressing a real emotion or simulating one
Whether heterosexuality is programmed in people
Jackson Pollock
The contest that led Caleb to the compound
Nathan’s view that humans will become extinct and A.I.s will exceed them
Whether Ava is pretending to like Caleb
The real nature of the test Nathan designed

Caleb also talks to the unnamed helicopter pilot about the estate, how to find Nathan’s building, and the helicopter.

Women And Men:

Including female A.I.s, there are conversations between males and females. Those between Caleb and Ava are fascinating, and how I view them has changed with each watching. (This time was my third viewing of Ex Machina.)

Caleb and Ava talk about, among other things:

Ava never having met anyone before other than Nathan
Caleb never having met anyone like Ava
Ava’s age
Ava always having known how to speak and the nature of language
Ava’s drawings
Friendship
Where Caleb lives and his age
Caleb being single
Caleb’s family
Nathan’s company
A car crash Caleb was in
Nathan’s programming skills
Whether Caleb can trust Nathan and whether Nathan and Caleb are friends
Where Ava would go if she went outside
Ava’s clothes
Going on a date
Whether Caleb is attracted to Ava
The difference between human and A.I. consciousness
Caleb’s memories and preferences when Ava tests him (she says she can tell if he’s lying)
Whether Caleb is a good person
What happens if Ava fails the test
Why anyone has right to switch her off if she fails a test and why Caleb doesn’t have to be tested to be allowed to survive
Whether Caleb wants to be with her
Whether Nathan is a good or bad person, has lied to Caleb, or is listening to all their conversations
How Ava could get out of the complex

Nathan and Ava interact, though mainly we see it without audio. The conversations we do hear includes:

Whether Caleb is watching
Ava’s drawing
Ava hating Nathan
Whether Nathan will ever let Ava out

Nathan and Koyoko interact but don’t speak with one another, though Nathan yells at her.

Caleb and Koyoko interact:

Caleb asks her where Nathan is (she doesn’t answer)
Koyoko shows him her body and how it works without speaking

Conclusion

No question Ex Machina fails the Bechdel Test even if we include female A.I.s.

Women v. Sexy Lamps

(can the main female character be replaced by a sexy lamp without affecting the plot?)

The entire movie revolves around the nature of Ava’s consciousness. Nathan knows that she thinks, and her conversations with Caleb demonstrate that. Nathan wants to learn if she truly feels or if she is simulating emotions.

Ava, though, is not merely an object Nathan manipulates, though he may believe that’s the case. She drives much of the story. In fact, on third viewing, I can see an argument that she is the protagonist, though Caleb is our viewpoint character for almost the entire movie.

Kyoko, though she doesn’t speak and appears in relatively few scenes, also takes an active part in the plot. She reveals herself to Caleb, feeding into his fears and his views of Nathan. She also aids Ava in her plan to escape.

Conclusion

Ava clearly can’t be replaced by a sexy lamp. Nor can Kyoko, for that matter. Ex Machina passes.

Mako Mori

(does a female character have her own narrative arc that does not support a man’s story line?)

Ava begins as a captive and a subject for testing. She responds to Caleb’s questions, but she quickly turns the conversation. While she appears to be trying to learn about him or perhaps to mirror his way of speaking, she has a desire of her own—to escape the complex. She is simultaneously open and covert about it, playing a game and conducting a test of her own.

This story arc is her own. It requires her to subvert Nathan and Caleb, and it’s not about supporting a man’s story.

Kyoko, too, has a story arc, though she’s a far less developed character. She begins as a servant who appears to always do what Nathan requires, including sexually. But she become active and makes her own choices.

Conclusion

Ex Machina passes, as a female character has a story arc of her own that is not about supporting a man, and you can argue that two female characters have such arcs.

Quick Results:

Bechdel:        Fail

Sexy Lamp:    Pass

Mako Mori:   Pass

Did I Like It

I love this movie.

I first saw Ex Machina in the theater with no particular expectations, and I was drawn in immediately. The sweeping aerial views of the mountains and stunning outdoor spaces are juxtaposed with the isolated scenes in the compound. Every conversation is tightly written and each line has a purpose, yet never feels shoehorned in as if the writer needed it to make a point. I believed these character would say exactly these things.

Also, the story has many levels. It works as suspense on first watching. How you see the characters and what you think they want changes as the movie progresses. The tension remains high despite that most of the time all you really see is two people talking.

On additional viewings, the movie raises all kinds of questions about the nature and ethics of creation, the way gender is constructed, the power of a creator over his creations, what constitutes free will, and probably dozens of other major philosophical questions.

Yet it never feels like a treatise. It is a story about these characters. And each time I watched it I saw each one of them slightly differently.

Finally, it seems to me that the way the characters interact and don’t and who talks with whom are deliberate choices by the filmmakers. No female characters talk to one another because Nathan fails to see them as full persons. The restrictions on them and their actions to change that go to the heart of the points the film makes about gender, sexuality, power, free will, intelligence, and ethics. (And make it a great movie.) Because of that, while Ex Machina fails the Bechdel Test, it’s a failure that underscores why the test matters.

Next Week’s Film

Annihilation, starring Natalie Portman as a biologist who joins a dangerous military excursion into a section of jungle where natural laws don’t apply and from which almost no one has returned.

 

The post Ex Machina: If An A.I. Were A Woman (Women & Men in the Movies No. 3) appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

Ex Machina: If An A.I. Were A Woman (Women, Men, and Movies No. 3)

This week I’ll look at how women are portrayed, and interact with other characters, in one of my favorite suspense/thriller movies, Ex Machina.

(Find out more about 3 tests that guide the conversation in Women, Men, and Movies or just read on.)

The Story

In Ex Machina, a programmer, Caleb, is thrilled and overwhelmed when he wins a week at the isolated mountain retreat and research compound of Nathan, the brilliant founder of the search engine company where Caleb works. Nathan wants Caleb to test Ava, an A.I. designed to look, speak, feel, and think like a human woman.

Who is testing whom and why, however, becomes complicated—and disturbing—as the movie plays out.

Chasing Bechdel

(Does a (named) female character talk to another named female character about anything other than a man?)

In a way Ex Machina is an odd movie to cover because while Nathan designed Ava to be like a human woman, she is neither. But regardless of her humanity, Ava clearly is a female character, a fact that’s key to the plot and the relationships.

Who’s Talking To Whom

Women To Women:

Even counting a female A.I. as a woman, there are no woman-to-woman conversations here.

Ava speaks to Kyoko, Nathan’s servant. Nathan tells Caleb early on when he’s berating Kyoko for spilling wine that she doesn’t understand English. Later events suggest she does, but that she can’t speak it.

Ava and Kyoko interact twice:

The first time they meet Ava says to Kyoko, “Who are you?” but we don’t see her answer
The second time they run into one another Ava whispers something in Kyoko’s ear that we don’t hear

Men To Men:

Nathan’s and Caleb’s conversations with each other always have an element of Nathan throwing Caleb off balance. Nathan often pretends to be joking with Caleb or says things designed to shock him or test his reactions.

Some (but not all) of the things Caleb and Nathan talk about together:

Food, exercise, alcohol consumption, cleanses, and hangovers
Nathan tells Caleb he understands Caleb’s freaked out about meeting him and asks him to get past it and just be two guys, not employer/employee
Caleb’s access (and lack thereof) to different parts of the house and underground research complex
A non-disclosure agreement granting unlimited access to Caleb’s devices pretty much forever (this happens at 9:56 minutes into the movie and is a good signal of what’s to come)
The underground, claustrophobic nature of Caleb’s room at the complex
The Turing test
Artificial Intelligence
Man, creativity, and the gods (Nathan later quotes Caleb saying Nathan is a god, which Caleb points out he didn’t say)
Ava’s creation, personality, intelligence, and sexuality
Why Nathan won’t explain how Ava works (he claims he doesn’t want to give a “seminar,” just have beer and conversation)
How Caleb feels about Ava
How Ava feels about Caleb
Power outages and security lockdowns
How best to test Ava
Koyoko’s limited intelligence, sexuality, and love of dancing
Why Nathan gave Ava gender and sexuality
The nature of consciousness
Sex
Whether Nathan programmed Ava to like Caleb
How to know if a machine is expressing a real emotion or simulating one
Whether heterosexuality is programmed in people
Jackson Pollock
The contest that led Caleb to the compound
Nathan’s view that humans will become extinct and A.I.s will exceed them
Whether Ava is pretending to like Caleb
The real nature of the test Nathan designed

Caleb also talks to the unnamed helicopter pilot about the estate, how to find Nathan’s building, and the helicopter.

Women And Men:

Including female A.I.s, there are conversations between males and females. Those between Caleb and Ava are fascinating, and how I view them has changed with each watching. (This time was my third viewing of Ex Machina.)

Caleb and Ava talk about, among other things:

Ava never having met anyone before other than Nathan
Caleb never having met anyone like Ava
Ava’s age
Ava always having known how to speak and the nature of language
Ava’s drawings
Friendship
Where Caleb lives and his age
Caleb being single
Caleb’s family
Nathan’s company
A car crash Caleb was in
Nathan’s programming skills
Whether Caleb can trust Nathan and whether Nathan and Caleb are friends
Where Ava would go if she went outside
Ava’s clothes
Going on a date
Whether Caleb is attracted to Ava
The difference between human and A.I. consciousness
Caleb’s memories and preferences when Ava tests him (she says she can tell if he’s lying)
Whether Caleb is a good person
What happens if Ava fails the test
Why anyone has right to switch her off if she fails a test and why Caleb doesn’t have to be tested to be allowed to survive
Whether Caleb wants to be with her
Whether Nathan is a good or bad person, has lied to Caleb, or is listening to all their conversations
How Ava could get out of the complex

Nathan and Ava interact, though mainly we see it without audio. The conversations we do hear includes:

Whether Caleb is watching
Ava’s drawing
Ava hating Nathan
Whether Nathan will ever let Ava out

Nathan and Koyoko interact but don’t speak with one another, though Nathan yells at her.

Caleb and Koyoko interact:

Caleb asks her where Nathan is (she doesn’t answer)
Koyoko shows him her body and how it works without speaking

Conclusion

No question Ex Machina fails the Bechdel Test even if we include female A.I.s.

Women v. Sexy Lamps

(can the main female character be replaced by a sexy lamp without affecting the plot?)

The entire movie revolves around the nature of Ava’s consciousness. Nathan knows that she thinks, and her conversations with Caleb demonstrate that. Nathan wants to learn if she truly feels or if she is simulating emotions.

Ava, though, is not merely an object Nathan manipulates, though he may believe that’s the case. She drives much of the story. In fact, on third viewing, I can see an argument that she is the protagonist, though Caleb is our viewpoint character for almost the entire movie.

Kyoko, though she doesn’t speak and appears in relatively few scenes, also takes an active part in the plot. She reveals herself to Caleb, feeding into his fears and his views of Nathan. She also aids Ava in her plan to escape.

Conclusion

Ava clearly can’t be replaced by a sexy lamp. Nor can Kyoko, for that matter. Ex Machina passes.

Mako Mori

(does a female character have her own narrative arc that does not support a man’s story line?)

Ava begins as a captive and a subject for testing. She responds to Caleb’s questions, but she quickly turns the conversation. While she appears to be trying to learn about him or perhaps to mirror his way of speaking, she has a desire of her own—to escape the complex. She is simultaneously open and covert about it, playing a game and conducting a test of her own.

This story arc is her own. It requires her to subvert Nathan and Caleb, and it’s not about supporting a man’s story.

Kyoko, too, has a story arc, though she’s a far less developed character. She begins as a servant who appears to always do what Nathan requires, including sexually. But she become active and makes her own choices.

Conclusion

Ex Machina passes, as a female character has a story arc of her own that is not about supporting a man, and you can argue that two female characters have such arcs.

Quick Results:

Bechdel:        Fail

Sexy Lamp:    Pass

Mako Mori:   Pass

Did I Like It

I love this movie.

I first saw Ex Machina in the theater with no particular expectations, and I was drawn in immediately. The sweeping aerial views of the mountains and stunning outdoor spaces are juxtaposed with the isolated scenes in the compound. Every conversation is tightly written and each line has a purpose, yet never feels shoehorned in as if the writer needed it to make a point. I believed these character would say exactly these things.

Also, the story has many levels. It works as suspense on first watching. How you see the characters and what you think they want changes as the movie progresses. The tension remains high despite that most of the time all you really see is two people talking.

On additional viewings, the movie raises all kinds of questions about the nature and ethics of creation, the way gender is constructed, the power of a creator over his creations, what constitutes free will, and probably dozens of other major philosophical questions.

Yet it never feels like a treatise. It is a story about these characters. And each time I watched it I saw each one of them slightly differently.

Finally, it seems to me that the way the characters interact and don’t and who talks with whom are deliberate choices by the filmmakers. No female characters talk to one another because Nathan fails to see them as full persons. The restrictions on them and their actions to change that go to the heart of the points the film makes about gender, sexuality, power, free will, intelligence, and ethics. (And make it a great movie.) Because of that, while Ex Machina fails the Bechdel Test, it’s a failure that underscores why the test matters.

Next Week’s Film

Annihilation, starring Natalie Portman as a biologist who joins a dangerous military excursion into a section of jungle where natural laws don’t apply and from which almost no one has returned.

 

The post Ex Machina: If An A.I. Were A Woman (Women, Men, and Movies No. 3) appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

Set It Up: A Rom-Com Where Women Talk About Something Other Than Men (Women & Men in the Movies No. 2)

This week I’ll look at how women characters are portrayed and how they interact in 2018 Netflix rom-com Set It Up.

(Find out more about the tests mentioned below in Women, Men, and Movies or just read on.)

The Story

Think Devil Wears Prada crossed with Parent Trap.

In Set It Up, two assistants, Harper and Charlie, work long hours for horrendous bosses. When Harper orders a midnight second dinner for her boss but has no cash to pay for it she meets Charlie.

Charlie has cash, so he swoops in, pays the delivery man for Harper’s takeout, and attempts to whisk it away to his boss. After arguing over who is more likely to get fired, Harper finds a creative way to split the food.

The two eventually decide to try to bring their bosses together. If the bosses become involved, they’ll necessarily work less, freeing Harper’s and Charlie’s time.

Chasing Bechdel

(Does a (named) female character talk to another named female character about anything other than a man?)

Who’s Talking To Whom

Women To Women:

Unlike in last week’s movie, The Invitation, where women spoke one-on-one to each other almost entirely in two-line conversations (such as, “So nice to meet you,” “You too”) in Set It Up Harper talks with other women in depth.

Harper and her boss, well-respected sports writer Kirsten, talk about:

careers
work habits
dinner (as in Harper getting Kirsten’s—repeatedly)
exercise (as in Harper wearing Kirsten’s exercise tracker to fool her trainer)
sleep
ideas for articles (particularly Harper’s about seniors who run their own Olympics)
pitching an idea
Rick (Charlie’s horrendous boss)
sex
parties, showers, weddings, events
fitting in with other women when you’re single and have no kids
advice on men and dating
bikini waxes
advice on succeeding at work
the set up
Kirsten’s and Rick’s planned marriage
challenges for women in sports writing
Harper’s potential
writing advice

Harper talks with her roommate (Becca) about:

Kirsten’s writing and how Harper admires it
dating
marriage
their sex lives (or lack thereof in Harper’s case)
their friendship
Mike (Becca’s fiancé)
Becca’s dress
Harper’s work
Harper getting fired
Writing advice

Harper and Kirsten separately talk to an unnamed woman alumnus of Kirsten’s college:

Kirsten gives the woman advice on her article (delete the adjectives)
the woman raves to Harper about how lucky she is to work with Kirsten
the woman says Kirsten agreed to be her mentor

Men To Men:

The interactions between Charlie and his horrible boss, venture capitalist Rick, mirror Harper’s and Kirsten’s, but with Rick portrayed in a worse light.

Kirsten snaps at Harper and makes unreasonable demands. Rick behaves similarly and also throws office equipment, stamps on Charlie’s laptop (he thinks it’s his own and can’t get it to accept his password), and fires an intern for delivering mail from Rick’s soon-to-be ex-wife.

Charlie and Rick talk about:

dinner (as in Charlie failing to get Rick dinner though Rick specifically said he didn’t want it)
Rick’s wife divorcing him
Rick’s son’s science project (which Charlie creates and Rick smashes, leaving Charlie, with Harper’s help, to come up with a new project in 24 hours)
Complaints from Rick about seats Charlie saves for him
Kirsten
complimenting women
Rick cheating on Kirsten with his soon-to-be ex-wife
an exclusive businessmen’s club
Charlie’s career (finally)
Charlie being promoted
Rick wanting to beat his ex to the altar by marrying Kirsten
a ring for Kirsten (which Charlie is to buy)
Rick wanting to know about his ex-wife’s likes and dislikes (he doesn’t know because Charlie kept track of all the details)

Charlie and his roommate (Duncan) talk about:

sex
Charlie’s girlfriend
Duncan’s hookups
careers

Charlie also talks with an intern (Beau) about:

how to deal with Rick
Rick’s ex-wife

Women And Men:

Harper and Charlie cover so many topics I can’t list them all, but here are the major ones:

who gets to take the carryout Harper ordered and who is more likely to get fired (their meet cute)
Defcon 1 and Defcon 5 (okay, not major but it was a fun part of their first conversation)
jobs, their awful bosses, and careers
sports
Kirsten’s interview skills
parties and dates (that they miss because of work)
Harper never having had a boyfriend
their ambitions
getting Rick and Kirsten together
the nature of love
the Yankees
their newfound free time once Kirsten and Rick are together
“Golf guy” (whom Harper starts seeing)
Charlie’s dating advice and Harper’s response
Charlie’s relationship with his girlfriend
Rick cheating on Kirsten and Charlie’s willingness to cover it up
Harper’s writing and her fears about it
Charlie’s character

Rick and Kirsten talk about:

the disturbing package delivery guy they’re stuck in the elevator with
whether it’s better to hit the elevator Help button or call emergency services
stress
the Yankees
sex
restaurants and food
whether Rick really knows Kirsten

Charlie talks to his girlfriend (Suze) about:

working late (Charlie)
missing dates (Charlie)
sex
Suze’s modeling career
the type of man Suze wants to date
Charlie’s hopes for a promotion
Charlie not wanting to be like Rick

Charlie and Kirsten talk about:

Rick not really knowing Kirsten
what an amazing woman Charlie knows (through Harper) that Kirsten is
Kirsten deserving someone better than Rick

Set It Up includes many other conversations between women and men one-on-one as well as in groups of three or four.

Some of the topics:

Charlie and Harper talk to “Creepy Tim” (who it turns out doesn’t mind when he learns people call him that) about trapping Kirsten and Rick in an elevator
Harper’s admiration for Kirsten
Kirsten and Rick getting married
Harper’s article idea
Charlie’s promotion
Charlie’s roommate and Harper feeling as if they are already friends on first meeting

Conclusion

Set It Up passes the Bechdel Test and then some.

The first conversations in the movie occur between two named women characters (Harper and Kirsten) and they talk about work. The topics of men in general, romance, or any specific man don’t come up. The first time a man is the subject of a conversation between two women is over eleven minutes into the movie.

The women in this movie talk about all kinds of things, as do the men. They all talk about work, careers, what they do for fun, sex, love, and friendships.

Women v. Sexy Lamps

(can the main female character be replaced by a sexy lamp without affecting the plot?)

Harper drives the story with her desire for a happier work life and more free time. She also evolves as a person and a writer.

Kirsten, who could have been merely a prop or caricature given that the real story is about Harper and Charlie, also is a real person. She’s extreme in her demands on Harper, but Lucy Liu does it so well that it provides some of the funniest parts of the movie.

Conclusion

Set It Up passes the Sexy Lamp Test.

Mako Mori

(does a female character have her own narrative arc that does not support a man’s story line?)

Harper has her own story arc separate from Charlie and from the Kirsten/Rick set up. She wants to be a sports writer. She loves sports, she loves to write, and she puts up with Kirsten’s challenges because she hopes to learn from her and follow in her footsteps.

Yet Harper hasn’t finished a single article.

In one of my favorite scenes Harper’s roommate, Becca, congratulates her on being fired because now she can do what she wants to do. When Harper says what she’s writing is bad and so she can’t finish it, Becca gives her the best advice I ever got as a new writer—write something bad and finish it because you can’t make it better until it’s done.

Harper finally gets past her fears and does this. Later scenes show us she’s finally pursuing her real goal.

Normally I don’t like writers writing about writing, but here it really works.

Conclusion

Set It Up passes the Mako Mori Test.

Quick Results

Bechdel: Strong Pass

Sexy Lamp: Pass

Mako Mori: Pass

Did I Like It

I really liked Set It Up with a few caveats.

I especially enjoyed that Kirsten ultimately tells Harper she is hard on her to prepare her for a tough business and because she sees great potential in Harper.

As an example of this, Harper mentions a story idea but says she hasn’t really thought it out yet.

Kirsten snaps at her for saying the idea is bad before she’s shared what it is. But Kirsten listens, and her point is a solid one—don’t undercut your work before your pitch even starts. (As when a junior lawyer handed me a legal brief and said, “I took a stab at it,” making me biased toward finding it poorly done, but I digress.)

I also loved Harper’s roommate, Becca. She’s a young woman who has had a lot of sex with different men and enjoyed it, and her fiancé is untroubled by that. As a woman who falls into the Kirsten character’s age range rather than Harper’s, that’s almost unheard of in movies and television I watched as a young adult and for most of my adult life.

In the first one-quarter of the movie, though, I almost stopped watching.

The tone was a bit too goofy for me, including a scene where the package delivery guy pees in the elevator due to his claustrophobia. But the film hits its stride as far as humor goes later.

Also, early on the movie plays a bit on the trope of a woman boss being so demanding because she opted not to marry and have children (as Kirsten says, “I could have been thrice divorced by now”). But the movie speeds past it, and for the most part avoids that cliché.

While there’s a little bit of stereotyping in that Rick is portrayed as more into sex than love and Kirsten is somewhat more interested in love than sex, both desire both, and the differences are grounded in their characters as a whole, not simply their genders.

In the end, Charlie and Harper provide the real story and balance off the Kirsten/Rick arc. Their relationship is based on honesty, friendship, kindness, and humor, and it’s great fun to watch.

Next Week’s Film

Ex Machina. It’s one of my favorite movies of the last couple years, a suspense film about a computer company founder who flies a young programmer to an isolated mountain estate to evaluate the human qualities of a newly-created A.I.

 

 

 

The post Set It Up: A Rom-Com Where Women Talk About Something Other Than Men (Women & Men in the Movies No. 2) appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

Set It Up: A Rom-Com Where Women Talk About Something Other Than Men (Women, Men, and Movies No. 2)

This week I’ll look at how women characters are portrayed and how they interact in 2018 Netflix rom-com Set It Up.

(Find out more about the tests mentioned below in Women, Men, and Movies or just read on.)

The Story

Think Devil Wears Prada crossed with Parent Trap.

Two assistants, Harper and Charlie, work long hours for horrendous bosses. When Harper orders a midnight second dinner for her boss but has no cash to pay for it she meets Charlie.

Charlie has cash, so he swoops in, pays the delivery man for Harper’s takeout, and attempts to whisk it away to his boss. After arguing over who is more likely to get fired, Harper finds a creative way to split the food.

The two eventually decide to try to bring their bosses together. If the bosses become involved, they’ll necessarily work less, freeing Harper’s and Charlie’s time.

Chasing Bechdel

(Does a (named) female character talk to another named female character about anything other than a man?)

Who’s Talking To Whom

Women To Women:

Unlike in last week’s movie, The Invitation, where women spoke one-on-one to each other almost entirely in two-line conversations (such as, “So nice to meet you,” “You too”) here Harper talks with other women in depth.

Harper and her boss, well-respected sports writer Kirsten, talk about:

careers
work habits
dinner (as in Harper getting Kirsten’s—repeatedly)
exercise (as in Harper wearing Kirsten’s exercise tracker to fool her trainer)
sleep
ideas for articles (particularly Harper’s about seniors who run their own Olympics)
pitching an idea
Rick (Charlie’s horrendous boss)
sex
parties, showers, weddings, events
fitting in with other women when you’re single and have no kids
advice on men and dating
bikini waxes
advice on succeeding at work
the set up
Kirsten’s and Rick’s planned marriage
challenges for women in sports writing
Harper’s potential
writing advice

Harper talks with her roommate (Becca) about:

Kirsten’s writing and how Harper admires it
dating
marriage
their sex lives (or lack thereof in Harper’s case)
their friendship
Mike (Becca’s fiancé)
Becca’s dress
Harper’s work
Harper getting fired
Writing advice

Harper and Kirsten separately talk to an unnamed woman alumnus of Kirsten’s college:

Kirsten gives the woman advice on her article (delete the adjectives)
the woman raves to Harper about how lucky she is to work with Kirsten
the woman says Kirsten agreed to be her mentor

Men To Men:

The interactions between Charlie and his horrible boss, venture capitalist Rick, mirror Harper’s and Kirsten’s, but with Rick portrayed in a worse light.

Kirsten snaps at Harper and makes unreasonable demands. Rick behaves similarly and also throws office equipment, stamps on Charlie’s laptop (he thinks it’s his own and can’t get it to accept his password), and fires an intern for delivering mail from Rick’s soon-to-be ex-wife.

Charlie and Rick talk about:

dinner (as in Charlie failing to get Rick dinner though Rick specifically said he didn’t want it)
Rick’s wife divorcing him
Rick’s son’s science project (which Charlie creates and Rick smashes, leaving Charlie, with Harper’s help, to come up with a new project in 24 hours)
Complaints from Rick about seats Charlie saves for him
Kirsten
complimenting women
Rick cheating on Kirsten with his soon-to-be ex-wife
an exclusive businessmen’s club
Charlie’s career (finally)
Charlie being promoted
Rick wanting to beat his ex to the altar by marrying Kirsten
a ring for Kirsten (which Charlie is to buy)
Rick wanting to know about his ex-wife’s likes and dislikes (he doesn’t know because Charlie kept track of all the details)

Charlie and his roommate (Duncan) talk about:

sex
Charlie’s girlfriend
Duncan’s hookups
careers

Charlie also talks with an intern (Beau) about:

how to deal with Rick
Rick’s ex-wife

Women And Men:

Harper and Charlie cover so many topics I can’t list them all, but here are the major ones:

who gets to take the carryout Harper ordered and who is more likely to get fired (their meet cute)
Defcon 1 and Defcon 5 (okay, not major but it was a fun part of their first conversation)
jobs, their awful bosses, and careers
sports
Kirsten’s interview skills
parties and dates (that they miss because of work)
Harper never having had a boyfriend
their ambitions
getting Rick and Kirsten together
the nature of love
the Yankees
their newfound free time once Kirsten and Rick are together
“Golf guy” (whom Harper starts seeing)
Charlie’s dating advice and Harper’s response
Charlie’s relationship with his girlfriend
Rick cheating on Kirsten and Charlie’s willingness to cover it up
Harper’s writing and her fears about it
Charlie’s character

Rick and Kirsten talk about:

the disturbing package delivery guy they’re stuck in the elevator with
whether it’s better to hit the elevator Help button or call emergency services
stress
the Yankees
sex
restaurants and food
whether Rick really knows Kirsten

Charlie talks to his girlfriend (Suze) about:

working late (Charlie)
missing dates (Charlie)
sex
Suze’s modeling career
the type of man Suze wants to date
Charlie’s hopes for a promotion
Charlie not wanting to be like Rick

Charlie and Kirsten talk about:

Rick not really knowing Kirsten
what an amazing woman Charlie knows (through Harper) that Kirsten is
Kirsten deserving someone better than Rick

The movie includes many other conversations between women and men one-on-one as well as in groups of three or four.

Some of the topics:

Charlie and Harper talk to “Creepy Tim” (who it turns out doesn’t mind when he learns people call him that) about trapping Kirsten and Rick in an elevator
Harper’s admiration for Kirsten
Kirsten and Rick getting married
Harper’s article idea
Charlie’s promotion
Charlie’s roommate and Harper feeling as if they are already friends on first meeting

Conclusion

Set It Up passes the Bechdel Test and then some.

The first conversations in the movie occur between two named women characters (Harper and Kirsten) and they talk about work. The topics of men in general, romance, or any specific man don’t come up. The first time a man is the subject of a conversation between two women is over eleven minutes into the movie.

The women in this movie talk about all kinds of things, as do the men. They all talk about work, careers, what they do for fun, sex, love, and friendships.

Women v. Sexy Lamps

(can the main female character be replaced by a sexy lamp without affecting the plot?)

Harper drives the story with her desire for a happier work life and more free time. She also evolves as a person and a writer.

Kirsten, who could have been merely a prop or caricature given that the real story is about Harper and Charlie, also is a real person. She’s extreme in her demands on Harper, but Lucy Liu does it so well that it provides some of the funniest parts of the movie.

Conclusion

Set It Up passes the Sexy Lamp Test.

Mako Mori

(does a female character have her own narrative arc that does not support a man’s story line?)

Harper has her own story arc separate from Charlie and from the Kirsten/Rick set up. She wants to be a sports writer. She loves sports, she loves to write, and she puts up with Kirsten’s challenges because she hopes to learn from her and follow in her footsteps.

Yet Harper hasn’t finished a single article.

In one of my favorite scenes Harper’s roommate, Becca, congratulates her on being fired because now she can do what she wants to do. When Harper says what she’s writing is bad and so she can’t finish it, Becca gives her the best advice I ever got as a new writer—write something bad and finish it because you can’t make it better until it’s done.

Harper finally gets past her fears and does this. Later scenes show us she’s finally pursuing her real goal.

Normally I don’t like writers writing about writing, but here it really works.

Conclusion

Set It Up passes the Mako Mori Test.

Quick Results

Bechdel: Strong Pass

Sexy Lamp: Pass

Mako Mori: Pass

Did I Like It

I really liked this movie with a few caveats.

I especially enjoyed that Kirsten ultimately tells Harper she is hard on her to prepare her for a tough business and because she sees great potential in Harper.

As an example of this, Harper mentions a story idea but says she hasn’t really thought it out yet.

Kirsten snaps at her for saying the idea is bad before she’s shared what it is. But Kirsten listens, and her point is a solid one—don’t undercut your work before your pitch even starts. (As when a junior lawyer handed me a legal brief and said, “I took a stab at it,” making me biased toward finding it poorly done, but I digress.)

I also loved Harper’s roommate, Becca. She’s a young woman who has had a lot of sex with different men and enjoyed it, and her fiancé is untroubled by that. As a woman who falls into the Kirsten character’s age range rather than Harper’s, that’s almost unheard of in movies and television I watched as a young adult and for most of my adult life.

In the first one-quarter of the movie, though, I almost stopped watching.

The tone was a bit too goofy for me, including a scene where the package delivery guy pees in the elevator due to his claustrophobia. But the film hits its stride as far as humor goes later.

Also, early on the movie plays a bit on the trope of a woman boss being so demanding because she opted not to marry and have children (as Kirsten says, “I could have been thrice divorced by now”). But the movie speeds past it, and for the most part avoids that cliché.

While there’s a little bit of stereotyping in that Rick is portrayed as more into sex than love and Kirsten is somewhat more interested in love than sex, both desire both, and the differences are grounded in their characters as a whole, not simply their genders.

In the end, Charlie and Harper provide the real story and balance off the Kirsten/Rick arc. Their relationship is based on honesty, friendship, kindness, and humor, and it’s great fun to watch.

Next Week’s Film

Ex Machina. It’s one of my favorite movies of the last couple years, a suspense film about a computer company founder who flies a young programmer to an isolated mountain estate to evaluate the human qualities of a newly-created A.I.

 

 

 

The post Set It Up: A Rom-Com Where Women Talk About Something Other Than Men (Women, Men, and Movies No. 2) appeared first on Lisa Lilly.