The Mortal Instruments gets Bechdelized!
While contemplating your awesome entry into the current City of Bones contest up on our website, have a gander at this interview by Mortal Instruments author Cassandra Claire over at Comicbookresources.
In it, Cassandra talks about the importance of creating strong female protagonists, and her committment to having both her books and the subsequent movies made about them pass the Bechdel Test.
If you've never heard of the Bechdel test before, it was created by legendary alt comic artist Alison Bechdel to assess the relative gender bias of a movie. In order to pass the test, a movie has to:
- Have at least two women in it
- The women have to have a conversation with each other
- The conversation has to be about something other than a guy.
Once you know about the Bechdel test, its pretty eye-opening to apply it to the films, television, video games or books that you watch or play or read. While it seems like a dead simple test to pass, its shocking how many pieces of pop can't meet these basic requirements.
So good on Cassandra Claire for taking up the Bechdel challenge! Yet another example of how awesome her books are.
How many of your favourite movies pass the Bechdel test? How many fail spectacularly? Share your thoughts!
6 thoughts on “The Mortal Instruments gets Bechdelized!”
We shouldn’t be impressed by the ability of the media to portray strong female characters, but we are because of their scarcity, we live in the 21st century, gender bias should be dead by now.
I really want to read this series! I totally agree. I think that a lot of books and movies show a woman as an important part but not the lead. In these novels it’s clear that a female is the leader, the protagonist.
I agree that its pretty sickening how we still have such an enormous amount of gender bias in our media today. Look at all the new releases in the movies right now, i guarantee that 90% of them like fast and furious, man of steel and even childrens movies like despicable me all have male protagonists. I believe that its time for us to realize that women can star in action movies and be perceived as more than toy to be fought over. I really really admire the work of writers like Cassandra or Suzanne Collins or Veronica Roth
I want to read this book
Of course, the very moment i’m asked to analyze all the movies i’ve seen my mind chooses to go blank.
The trailer seems really interesting, definitely going to read the series first though.