And her presence pretty much enabled Thor to pass the Bechdel test (barely), so I'm not complaining.

The Bechdel test is two women talking to each other about something other than men, right?

Right.

Sadly, Avengers failed it, but at least we got Black Widow kicking ass.

There is something I'm not clear about with the Bechdel Test. If the two women - say, a female homicide detective and a female medical examiner - are discussing a case, and the corpse in question has a penis, does that fail? Or does it pass on the grounds that they were talking about the work that they are doing?

It's usually a question of whether or not it's a romantic interest, or a man who takes up the woman's whole life. Like, if the whole movie is about a woman taking care of her brother, and she talks only with her friend about that brother, that wouldn't pass the test for me.

What difference does it make to you in practice if a work passes or fails the test? If not in practice, then in theory?

What difference does it make to you in practice if a work passes or fails the test? If not in practice, then in theory?

It's not a question of whether a particular movie passes, really: it's more a question of how many movies fail to pass, and what that says about the Hollywood system.

So I'm not going to penalize a movie for failing the Bechdel test (neither Haywire nor The Avengers passed it, after all), but I pay attention to movies & tv shows that pass it, because they generally tend to have women do more interesting things.

It's so rare that I see the Bechdel tests cited in anything but the specific, and when you're looking at a specific movie it's way more important to consider more complex things.

I think it's cited way more than the root premise of it is applied, but I was wondering what it means to an individual when an given movie passes or fails.

I'm with Dana: I really enjoy reading the Darcy stories, even though probably because she's a reader-proxy.

Which, frankly, I think is different than a Mary Sue. A Mary Sue is, IME, a writer proxy, with powers out of proportion with her position, and a tendency to warp the narrative around her rather like a black hole.

In the particular stories I've been running into, there seems to be a writer-proxy thing going on and the warping narrative effect. I was OK with the Darcy character in the Thor movie, and wouldn't mind reading about her in relation to him. But I'm side-eyeing all these stories where she suddenly becomes integral to the social lives of bunch of super heroes/government agents who have grown up on earth and don't need a guardian angel/pixie girl to introduce them to pop culture.

Musesfool wrote an Avengers/DCU crossover that is a delight: [link]

"Nightwing?" Clint scoffs. "That guy's not real."