One of my favorite Twitter accounts is The Claremont Run. He analyzes various aspects of Chris Claremont's time spent writing The X-Men and its spinoffs. One thing he painstakingly tackles is whether Claremont passels the Bechdel Test aka the Bechdel-Wallace Test. The Wikipedia entry tells you what you need to know about the test, the origin and why it can be a useful tool for female representation. Quite simply, applied to a movie, in order to pass, it must check three boxes:
- The movie has to have at least two women in it,
- who talk to each other,
- about something other than a man.
Sounds simple enough, right? It does boil down a bit to defining parameters. Some add the element that both women must be named, or there must be a total of sixty seconds of conversation. Obviously, the time limit can be seen as arbitrary, but I think that named aspect is fairly important. A female character asking a waitress about specials on the menu passes the test in the broadest sense, but if that is the only female-female conversation in a movie, should it pass? We really didn't learn anything about either woman in that time, except what foods they may prefer. Not really deep stuff.
Nevertheless, this tool can be applied to comics. Because of the nature of comics, I think we should look at it from a sharing of panels. I think the characters should be named, but there really can't be a time limit (we all read at different paces).
So I think I want to apply this to the Legion of Superheroes. I have often been critical of the Legion over the years. They hadn't always been good at positive representation of female characters. My intent is to break down various runs by writers. This will of course be difficult considering Paul Levitz had three separate runs on Legion titles with sometimes multiple concurrent series. I also intend to log the years as well to help analyze any trends or other factors. Bendis will the easiest writer to start with since I feel. Wish me luck.
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