missionlameturtle

positivelyqueerace:

dare-to-dm:

“As the Bechdel Test began to creep into the sightline of mainstream movie criticism, it was notable to see the surprise of some male critics that their favorite movies—One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Goodfellas, The Princess Bride, Clerks, the original Star Wars trilogy, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, and even Tootsie, when you get right down to it—so soundly flunked it. For many women, the reaction was more of a shrug, along with relief that, finally, there was a simple way to help writers and directors step over an embarrassingly low baseline. To be clear, applying the rule isn’t about snatching away the well-earned status of Raging Bull or The Godfather or even This Is Spinal Tap. As Anita Sarkeesian, creator of the Web site Feminist Frequency, noted in a 2009 video about the rule, “It’s not even a sign of whether it’s a feminist movie, or whether it’s a good movie, just that there’s a female presence in it.” The latter point is something that many people fail to grasp when trying to explain away why their favorite movies don’t pass the test (“But Batman is the hero of the movie! Of course the women characters are going to talk about him!”): the Bechdel Test is not a judgment of quality or nuance. After all, the beautiful, moving Gravity fails the test, while a formulaic rom-com like 27 Dresses passes with no problem. But the test itself is a simple, bloodless assessment of whether female characters are deemed important to a story—and a way to conclude that, most of the time, they aren’t.”

— We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement (Zeisler, Andi)

This makes me happy that it has an explanation, because too many people misunderstand the point of the test. “It sets the bar too low!” They say. That’s the point. It’s the lowest bar possible and many movies can’t pass it.

rositalagata:

amimijones:

aubreysflame:

forgot to say that, without Howl chasing girls and Sophie resenting him for it, the film completely erases part of the point of Sophie being old.  Wynne Jones is using an idea that Beauvoir talked about – that being an old woman is both tragic (as we lose male attention/attractiveness) and freeing (as we are freed from the male gaze).  the idea is that with being old comes liberation, and the true meaning of what it is to be a woman, as society no longer forces gender norms on us.

Sophie is free from Howl’s attentions and therefore safe from harm (a big part of the book is the fact that Sophie believes he eats women’s hearts, and him chasing girls proves this to her).  she takes solace in the fact that she’s old, and finds it freeing.  when she learns more about Howl (notably: that he doesn’t eat hearts and that he’s not evil), she starts to curse her age and resent him chasing girls.  BUT she remains old OF HER OWN VOLITION – Howl notes that she’s perpetuating the spell by wishing to remain “in disguise”.  there are SO many layers to this, and lots to do with gender politics – if she’s still old Sophie can’t get hurt, she likes the freedom, etc.  but of course on a personal level being old is her denying her feelings for Howl, and also a representation of her low self esteem – being old is a defence mechanism and protection, both on a gender level and a personal one.

and the film kinda… loses this?  the only thing that remains is being old = low self esteem.  which really sucks.  because there’s SO MUCH MORE to Sophie being old in the book (perspective I already mentioned), and a HUGE amount of this is gender politics.  that the film just erases.

Also there’s the subversion of that in the book. Sophie’s belief that she’s safe from Howl, isn’t quite true because he fell in love with her while she was under the spell (and in the book, there’s no switching between looking young and old. Sophie is looking ninety the entire time, and Howl falls in love anyway.)

Also, her belief that being old means she can’t go to her stepmother or her sisters, that they’d fail to recognize her or reject her, is also unfounded. Fanny almost immediately recognizes her at the end of the book, and hugs her and cries over her and asks why Sophie disappeared. Sophie’s belief that the love of her family, friends and even her romantic interests is somehow conditional on her appearance is shown to be completely false at the end, which I think is absolutely beautiful.

Like, there’s definitely gender politics and commentary going on about beauty and youth and age and the male gaze and male violence going on, but there’s also this message about how love, real love, transcends all of that.

I generally think of the book and the film as entirely separate entities: the film is a lovely Ghibli movie, but it’s focus is almost entirely on questions of the (mis)use of power and the consequences thereof. It loses the book’s brilliant commentary on gender politics and personal identity.

Imo, some reasons for this are that a) Ghibli is run by men and b) Japan’s mythos and fairy-tale logic is totally different from the Western ones that the book builds off of.

dirtydirtychai:

moxperidot:

tilthat:

TIL if you polish an ancient sword that’s been used in battle, even a 2000 year old sword, it literally bleeds out the blood of the people it’s been used on, which “smells like a steak cooking”.

via reddit.com

cool and definitely not cursed!

This article is pretty neat: 

https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/my-afternoon-with-the-ace-of-swords/

rory:

rory:

good thing about the hurricane though is its making all of those fun facebook hurricane event groups

this is facebooks only contribution to society. the ability to make events to stop the weather

itsacpsideblog:

someone asked Ngozi what would be her hockey dream team of literary characters (which first of all, an INCREDIBLE question), and I just…

…I may never recover from “Lydia Bennet (LW)”