Something something people not knowing the history something ...
I am increasingly of the view that the besetting flaw of modern, internet-based, leftist-progressive culture is the tendency to take concepts that were intended as consciousness-raising, "have you noticed"/"makes you think" moments and treat them as all-encompassing rules for life. The Bechdel test is not a yardstick for feminism and/or artistic worthiness. It's not a test you were ever meant to apply to any single work. It's a thought experiment intended to illustrate how the entertainment industry as a whole discounts the interiority, desires, and relationships of women except as they relate to men. But again and again you'll see people - and perhaps especially people who define themselves as feminists - who treat it as the one and only meaningful measure of a work's value. In reality, there are feminist works that don't pass the Bechdel test, and works that pass the Bechdel test that are not feminist, and works with tremendous political value that do not foreground feminism because they're about something else.
And if the Bechdel test is a relatively old example, this is a phenomenon that keeps cropping up. "Some artifacts in museums were stolen or looted, with colonialism and racism providing a cover for acts that in other circumstances we'd easily recognize as criminal" has become "all museums are piles of loot and stealing from them is righteous even it it's to melt the artwork down and funnel the profits to organized crime." "Zoos sometimes abuse their animals and the goal should be to reintroduce specimens to the wild" has become "open all the cages and let the animals out (to spaces where they will almost certainly die/be killed to stop them killing people)". "Ethnic foods are sometimes treated as more palatable, and sold for more money, when they're marketed by white people" has become "people should only prepare and eat food from their own ethnicity". Again and again, it feels like these ideas that were meant to make us think, to pause a moment and notice the unspoken assumptions and elisions that exist in our world, have been turned into catchphrases that shut down thought. I think the reason that happens is that people enjoy the feeling of righteousness that comes from calling out institutions like museums or the film industry, but along the way you can become just as dogmatic and tunnel-visioned as the bodies you were calling out.
"It's not a test you were ever meant to apply to any single work."
Stress falls on you here. You weren't meant to apply it at all. It was a comic strip joke; a trenchant comment, sure, but not film criticism or feminist theory. Liz Wallace, a friend of Alison Bechdel's, had it as a personal standard for movies. Bechdel thought it was a funny joke for other lesbians, and put it in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For in her local alternative weekly paper.
It was published in 1985, so 6 years after Alien. That's it, that's the joke. Lesbian no longer watches movies because movies that don't have women talking about topics other than men aren't fun for her.
Is it a useful way to talk about movies in general? Yeah. It's also funny to point out which movies do pass it. Like Alien. But the way it's treated, as some kind of serious critical commentary, instead of what it is, a personal standard and a limited-audience joke, is absurd.
I have to confess "your web browser's assistive AI can be instructed to steal your online banking password via prompt injection because it operates with full privileges and treats all text it ingests as equally authoritative sources of user instructions, including the text of web pages it's summarising" is more surprising to me than it should have been. There really is no one involved at any point in the development of these tools who actually understands what they're doing, huh?
ID: TikTok comment that reads "I would also like to remind us all that even if the fiber arts community didn't contribute to technological advancements: they kept millennia of humans warm. We live and breathe because someone once upon a time made someone else clothes. You have ancestors for whom a woven garment made the difference between freezing and seeing tomorrow or kept their skin protected from diseases spread by bugs. Textiles give protection from the sun, the elements, parasites and pests. It is never insignificant in any incarnation." end ID
Clothes have always been technology though! Art and technology are not mutually exclusive categories of human achievement. Spun thread and metal needles and tanned leather don't grow on trees, people developed them as technology! Where is that Ursula K Le Guin quote
Containers for carry things (nets, baskets, bags) are also fiber arts, and that was a really essential gateway technology. Being able to take a bunch of small items (nuts, roots, good rocks, whatever) back to a home base, rather than eating/using them as you go along, made it possible for people to figure out more complicated ways to use those items.
i NEED people to realise foreshadowing is. in fact. a literary device. and not a Bad Thing. the audience picking up on your hints is a Good Thing. because. it makes the story and it’s conclusion make sense. and some people will not see those but enjoy seeing them on a second read through. red herrings are one thing but if your novel consists of nothing but red herrings it’s not a coherent story it’s just a collection of paragraphs that don’t actually plausibly link to one another. you're not fighting with the audience you don’t look clever you look like you don’t know how basic fiction works. be vulnerable for once in your goddamn life and don't treat writing like a game to be won where the audience losing is a good thing.
We do not do elf of the shelf but our house does have borrowers. Penny knows that if she leaves a mess out at night the borrowers will take that as a sign that they can have it and take it into the walls to build their homes
This teaches her to out her stuff away at the end of the night or I chuck it out and also sometimes she wakes up and yells "HEY ELEVES I LEFT YOU SOME STUFF!" And it is hilarious
Penny: THE ELVES HAVE ONIONTIZED
My mom on FaceTime: ???
Me: I had to explain to Penny how the borrowers are part of the elf union and so they go to North Pole the last 3 weeks of the year so no one ever has to work too much over time and that's why they haven't taken mommy's wrapping paper or scissors or anything else I've left out... shes trying to explain the elf union to you.
Penny: THEY GET PAID EXTRA CAUSE OF THE ONION
I'm in tears 🤣🤣🤣
