That's true enough, but not passing the Bechdel Test can be a symptom of greater problems with characterization.

Luckily Joss is good enough to not pass and still get away with making interesting characters. I know I've been hard on him here, but all of the females on the ship really do have their own distinct (enjoyable) personalities, even if characterization is at times dependent on male characters.

"I think the Bechdel test is specifically talking about men, I think a babies focus is something else I don't know the word for, but shallowing the female experience/indentity/characterization (especially living here in Utah)."

The Bechdel test isn't perfect, and if a show or movie passes it that doesn't mean it's feminist. Or that a show that doesn't pass it isn't feminist. Sex and the City probably passes the Bechdel test at some point, but I would hesitate to call it feminist.

Another good conversation could be Kaylee and Inara talking about Sihnon. We already know Kaylee is entranced by fancy, rich things (even if what she considers rich isn't, really), so I can see her wondering about Inara's life of luxury on a Core planet.

Now that's the good kind of parental discussion. :) Not to say the other kind with diapers and spit up is all bad, but I can only take it in limited quantity. I'm overexposed to it out here, you see.

Regarding River, I bet Zoe and Inara both have made assumptions or drawn inferences about the kind of parenting Simon and River got. And, River ending up in the Academy with her brother, not her parents, taking the initiative to get her out - that has to raise questions about what was going on with them. I could see that naturally developing into a more philosophical discussion about what the essential elements of good parenting are, and how those elements can manifest themselves in different situations and cultures.

Fashion? Maybe. My first thought was, there's not a woman in the 'verse who's not interested in where to find comfortable underwear.

*throws high heels at MB*

But you made some pertinent points before, despite your not caring.

yinyang, GR, I like those too.

I think that discussing caretaking for River is just fine for a topic, besides, I think the Bechdel test is specifically talking about men, I think a babies focus is something else I don't know the word for, but shallowing the female experience/indentity/characterization (especially living here in Utah). River is not a baby, but rather a friend in need of caretaking.

On the other hand, if any of them begin having conversations about the best technique they've found for changing diapers or cleaning up spit-up, I'm SO gone.

Hey, I have an idea about what Inara, Zoe, and Kaylee could discuss besides boys (and by boys, I mean the dreaminess of Mal). How about...fashion?

[ducks and covers]

Come to think of it, parenting and children would be a hard topic not to get into, once River is on the ship. They'd have to have a lot of questions about what happened to her and about the family structure that she came from, the decisions that got made that got River on the path to the Academy. And she's not exactly unobtrusive...

I could see Zoe opening a conversation about childhood, upbringing, parents, expectations, with Inara, both as a way to pass the time and as a way to keep working on her thoughts about starting a family. Sharing some of her own stories, too. And of course what each woman chose to share and to hold back, the assumptions they made, what they learned, what they didn't hear or maybe heard but couldn't accept - all of that would reveal elements of their characters as well.

Byte: "Perhaps I simply don't have the normal female perspective to apply to this."

First off, there's no normal female perspective. Second off, even if there was, it wouldn't make your perspective less valid.

As for me, my experience is that straight women talk about men, but it's far from the only common reference point - there's politics, art, music, school, work, family, money, etc. And just because Serenity is a more closed off and isolated environment doesn't mean that all there is for the women to talk about are men. For one, they could talk about each other - Kaylee and Inara could talk about River or Zoe. And I really like the idea of Inara and Zoe talking about the war. Maybe Zoe could also come to Inara for counsel about kids or something.

If I may offer my sexist, hetero-normative two cents.

My first reaction is that nothing is off limits for fiction, and that feminist criticism is a drag. If the story calls for two two girls giggling about a boy's dimples, or bemoaning that they are single, then the story should get it.

The alamaring thing is how often the story calls for that.

Our imaginations are limited by our cultural orientation, and our narratives may reinforce the world's crap, as opposed to offer an alternative to it. Of course boys talk about girls amongst themselves, or at least their anatomies. Fiction reflects this--but boys also talk plot (and the "deep six"). And two girls talking about a guy is a sort of plot-substitute. It is, however, easier than portraying a female character with a personality, and isn't romantic longing just as good as identity?

If I were a girl, I imagine this sort of stuff would piss me off. However, as a dude, I have the luxury of not caring.

Maybe I'M the confused one. The only time I ever talk about men is when I'm discussing fictional pairings on the internet. I had a few friends in high school who talked about nothing but boys and sex... It got tiring and boring. Very quickly.

Perhaps I simply don't have the normal female perspective to apply to this.

I agree with clio. The thing is, in life as in fiction, who we are is often defined by the relationships we make, value, nurture and protect. And in fiction, it is those relationships we cherish. We don't come to Firefly to watch Jayne field-strip Vera -- we come to watch him interact with the rest of the crew, and they with him, to see what happens and determine what that tells us about Jayne AND the crew.

Kaylee talks men with other women because she LIKES men, and she's pretty sure the woman she's talking to likes men. It's an easy, common reference point for two women to have, if they're both heterosexual. If she were striking up a conversation with another woman mechanic, she'd probably talk both machines AND men, assuming the other woman was straight.

*shrugs* Tests are tests, and life is life. And woman talk about sex and men with each other all the time, just like guys talk about sex and women all the time. How is this news? And why should anyone think it's a bad thing in fiction?

To paraphrase vampire Willow ... "Confused now" *grin*

"I think Joss tries, bless his evil dark and shriveled heart, he tries to be a feminist and does a better job than most other male writers out there. But that doesn't mean he's got a perfect record on this issue."

I agree. Although I think the things he does outside of his fiction - like his speech for Equality Now back in 2006 - are often better in terms of feminism.

Oh, Dollhouse. I actually stopped watching it early in the second season when the feminism was lacking and I couldn't bring myself to keep caring about the story. I read some critiques that argued Dollhouse was feminist, including some from authors I normally agree with*, but ultimately I just didn't see it.

*Like Sady Doyle: http://tigerbeatdown.com/?p=261
http://tigerbeatdown.com/?p=524

I think Joss tries, bless his evil dark and shriveled heart, he tries to be a feminist and does a better job than most other male writers out there. But that doesn't mean he's got a perfect record on this issue.

Dollhouse had a female lead, and while the show did a very good job of highlighting themes of feminine exploitation, to the point that it's extremely uncomfortable and disturbing, at the same time the show is also a love song to Eliza Dushku and her character, who is perfect and asskicking beyond the wildest aspirations of any normal girl despite the horror and trauma she goes through.

It was a strange juxtaposition, and I'm not sure if it was ironic or not, but at the same time the show was decrying exploitation of women, it was basically exploiting women. And more than that, ultimately pedestalling them AND protecting them, making them dependent upon the males in their lives. Sierra and even DeWitt, an actual ball buster, end up safe and secure on a refuge planting a garden, while their mutual love interest Victor goes off to fight and turn himself into a techhead. Echo is the closest female character to operating independent of a male, to the point that she basically becomes a Mary Sue... Yet the show always has Ballard there to guide her and protect her. Mixed messages.

In Firefly, River is most like Echo, her Ballard (in a not love interest way) is Simon, only Simon is not as much of a cynic. Zoe is pedestalled by her strength, but defined mostly by Mal and Wash. Kaylee and Inara are also pedestalled, but they're more damsels in distress types.

One of the articles I posted talks about "comic book culture," about the portrayal of women as an "exotic other." Joss tries to transcend the backwards and sexist ideas common in a lot of comic books, but this is clearly a culture he identifies with as well. It's a big influence, and as a fellow geek, it's what he's been raised to know.

Yeah, Firefly's not exactly one of Joss' strongest shows in terms of feminism. I think most of that has to do with the fact that it's essentially Mal's show, so the fact that the other characters depend on him is part of the deal, I think. (And I can't remember exactly what they said in the commentary, but there was something about the other characters symbolizing things Mal lost in the war.)

Whereas with Buffy, she was the main character, with the other characters depending on her to a certain extent.

Also, that's why I don't read any MSM articles that talk about dating/relationships, because they're usually full of sexist and hetero-normative dreck. I'd rather clean up cat vomit, and that stuff grosses me out.

Now, see, THERE'S another good one. The War. Inara's interested, even in the Independent's perspective, which is so different from what she's known. And Zoe, if she felt safe enough to talk about it, she'd have a lot to say. It'd be an amazing conversation, I agree with you, I'd LOVE to see it.

The Lonesome Dove analogy also makes sense, and there really are more limitations for this than I'd thought about. It's a shame, it's something I hope we would have seen if we'd have had more.

I have been meaning to read Lonesome Dove. Maybe sometime I'm not behind on story writing, or when I don't have work. I was thinking of taking an Alaska cruise this year or next, that could be a good time to devour, what, near a thousands pages in a couple nights. I'm a fast reader, I could do it.

I'm thinking the constraints of the show, as well as how few episodes we saw, contribute to the problem. In each episode, there are about 50 minutes to introduce a problem, have the characters respond to the problem, have the problem get much, much, much worse, and then have our heros marshall all their resources and overcome the problem enough to keep flying for another day. So there's not a lot of time to show the depth of the relationships between characters. Your post made me think of the lovely, heartbreaking conversation between Buffy and Tara after Joyce's death. I would hope that, given more time, Joss might have shown us more substantive interactions between the Firefly women. I would particularly like to have seen Inara and Zoe talking about the war - two very intelligent, thoughtful women who responded to THE event of their generation in very different ways. I would like to think these two would have enough respect for each other to be honest, to be good listeners. Of course, it might have taken a few seasons to get there.

The characters are also very, very isolated - they are in space, thousands or millions of miles from other people. It's hard for me to imagine. And this thought, for me, calls to mind Lonesome Dove. I don't know if you've read it; Charlie BZ recommended it to me and I enjoyed it very much. I thought about how on the frontier the nearest neighbor might be 50 miles away, how the average person knew and had contact with so few other people, how even the slightest human contact was so momentous to them. In that story, we see characters return in their memories, again and again, to conversations from years ago. One character reflects, very matter-of-factly, on the people he knows who have committed suicide out of loneliness. Some of the "friends" annoy each other mightily; but nevertheless, there is nothing more precious than a friend. For me, a lot of this resonates with the 'verse and the way the characters talk about each other, with each other.

Hmm, okay, so I can see how there's SOME limitations owing to respective jobs and simply the small space and limited amount of activity.

Still, why do the girls need to talk about the men with each other at all?

Kaylee at least does have additional depths, as you mentioned, and I suppose it can be forgiven her wanting to discuss Simon because she's crushing hard. But Inara is always trying to DENY her feelings about Mal, why would she ever need to discuss them with any of the crew? And Zoe is relatively self secure in her relationship with Wash, she says it best in bushwhacked, she's a private person. Talking about her sex life with Wash with the other women is terribly out of character.

Inara is a business woman, Zoe is a business woman and second in command. Both of them have a strong interest in the crew surviving all those insane crime jobs. So why don't they ever just discuss them? Of the two girls, as I see it, besides Inara being more openly feminine and for Zoe femininity being something she indulges only now and then, they have the most in common. And yet, they can't seem to have a conversation about the overlap.

I haven't really looked at the test, but it seems to me just from personal experience that it's often hard to talk to other people about a very particular set of skills or interests, even if they're really what drives you, if they don't share those interests – primarily because it results in a non-mutual conversation. Unless they have some background in your very technical interest, then it results in your talking AT them, explaining to them, not with them. So how do we relate best in conversation with other people? Often by talking about other people whom we mutually know – or some source of common knowledge, like politics, or the weather, or our children, or our pets. You get the picture.

The point being that on Serenity, all of those normal points of conversation – politics, weather, family, etc – have been stripped away. (Well, we see some talk of politics, but it's mostly hushed or results in anger.) All there is to talk about is 1) jobs (though because some crew have more knowledge about these than others, even that's a little difficult); 2) other crew; 3) technical know-how. And with no two crew-members actually sharing technical know-how, that becomes a very difficult source of conversation. Say Kaylee suddenly started gushing about mechanics – which she DOES, occasionally – is it going to generate conversation, or just indulgent smiles? Thus, feminism aside, it doesn't surprise me that virtually all conversation on Serenity takes the form of talk of other crew, or other people recently met, or talk of jobs, including very recent experiences on-world.

In short: I haven't looked at the test you mention, but I think that the kinds of things crew talk about, including, for Kaylee, boys, is pretty realistic. They live in a world in which most of our everyday topics of conversation are completely removed. And what that leaves to talk about is one another.

Inara is interesting because she doesn't actually talk about anything, ever. She reflects other people's sources of conversation. Is this because she doesn't have anything to talk about, though? No, I don't think so at all, and I think Joss gives us enough hints that that's not the case. It's either because she's been trained very well to only respond to other people's interests, or because the things that are on her mind are not things she wishes to share. I think it's some combination of both, which makes her such an interesting character but so difficult to get a grip on.

No, neither of them pass, unfortunately, because when Kaylee is with another female, she doesn't talk about mechanics, she talks about men. Same with Zoe, she rarely ever just talks to Inara or Kaylee, but the one time I can think of is in Trash, Zoe talks to Inara about being unable to fake an orgasm, which inevitably brings her to talk about her sex life with Wash. Then, Inara asks Zoe to protect Mal from Saffron. Zoe's characterization is ALSO very dependent upon Mal and Wash. She is not an independent female character either.

The point of the Bechdel test is two female characters talking to each other. Female characters talking about other things to male characters does not count. When Inara, Zoe, and Kaylee ever talk to each other, the conversation is inevitably about men. As such, they don't pass.

i would say kaylee would pass because she's the mechanic and so would have all the technobabble stuff with wash. and zoe is kind of the expostiotion character so i don't know if that counts or not.

"Guys are good at left brain stuff - be a social butterfly!"

WHAT THE HELL?!

I need to break something. Preferably over someone's HEAD.