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After watching Bumblebee last month, I got thinking about the treatment of women in recent superhero films, namely, the incomparable Black Panther, its goofier mirror Aquaman, Ant-Man and the Wasp, the other tale of a lost mom, and of course Bumblebee and Venom, where a person with a personal problem finds a new friend from space.
Out of all of these films, Black Panther is the only one where women deal with each other as a part of a greater context beyond family - Ramonda and Shuri are mother and daughter, but Shuri is an inventor and engineer in her own right, Nakia is a government agent and important enough in her own tribal group to be invited to the ritual combat to establish T'Challa's rule in addition to being his love interest, and Okoye of course is the general (but also Nakia's friend and colleague). They not only interact with T'Challa and the other men in the film, but also with *each other* independently of the male characters.
In contrast, the women in Aquaman are either related to the main character by blood, or his political ally/love interest. Both Atlanna and Mera are fully realised characters with their own motives and generally are portrayed positively... but they are also cut off from both each other (apart from one brief scene) as well as other women in the movie's universe.
Jumping on to Ant-Man and the Wasp, while the mother-daughter connection of Hope and Janet is there and drives much of the plot, Scott's daughter Cassie, his ex-wife Maggie and of course the antagonist, Ghost, also feature in the story... and unlike in Aquaman, the women actually interact with each other, although not to the same extent as in Black Panther.
The isolation of women continues in the Venom, where the women who do appear on screen are well-drawn (Anne is allowed to have visible wrinkles - much like Hope and Janet!) and not only slim and white, here, too, they don't really interact with each other. They have no reason to. Each woman in Venom exists in her own sphere, which do not interact with each other (does the poor doomed Dr. Skirth even speak to Mrs. Chen, the shopkeeper? She must've interacted with Eddie's homeless friend Maria, but we never see any of it because exploring their connection is not important to the story), unless it is through Eddie/Venom.
Coming finally to Bumblebee, another movie where the down-on-her-luck protagonist finds a friend from Space, here we have the mother-daughter connection between Charlie and Sally, the Decepticon villain Shatter (played by Angela Bassett herself!), and three mean girls who bully Charlie. In contrast with Venom and Aquaman, there is much more interaction between the women... but in the end, while Charlie has found a friend, she is still cut off from a wider network of other women, her mother being the only other positive female connection. This in contrast - again - with Black Panther, where the women constantly interact with each other even within the context of a man's story, each with her own place in the society.
Going further back, you can see the same thing happening even in Wonder Woman, where the main character exists in a world occupied solely by women, and then literally enters the "World of Men" where her only female connection is cut short when she goes to war with a group of men (and after which Wonder Woman reappears in... another team consisting only of men).
Now, I liked all of these films. A lot! They all had great female characters! The women were complex! They were good and evil and sad and happy and disappointed and old and literal children! But it's kind of telling that Black Panther is the only one to show multiple positive relationships between women that are treated important in their own right, like they truly are a part of the society and a part of the story instead of just visitors and guest stars. Bumblebee is a great movie and I loved the way they showed the mother-daughter relationshp (and that they let Charlie be a gross little gremlin of a teenager, that was amazing), but while I understand that the isolation caused by her grief was a big part of the story, I wish they'd at least shown that she'd had female friends once that she pushed away, instead of reducing her interactions with other women outside the family into petty hostility (or outright murder, in Shatter's case).
There's been some talk online about it being time to retire the Bechdel test. Considering the above, I disagree. We still need movies where at least two named women talk about a subject that isn't a man, because in the real world, women know each other and interact with each other. They aren't just visitor's in the "Men's World". Black Panther has set a standard for women in fictional countries... but really, all filmmakers should take note on how it deals with women, and especially the fact that women have relationships with EACH OTHER. There's no need to isolate every single woman from every single other woman in a given movie. Even in a superhero action movie.
(Finally, I'm strongly of the opinion Mean Girl #1 Tina in Bumblebee has a Big Queer Crush on Charlie, but because she's in denial or hasn't realised and/or admitted her feelings to herself yet, she reacts by getting angry at Charlie and being super mean, completely unnecessarily. Sure, her boyfriend Roy speaks to Charlie, so you could interpret Tina's hostility as seeing Charlie as a threat, but Roy's just a trophy. Tina isn't paying attention to Roy. The person she's watching all the time is Charlie.)
Out of all of these films, Black Panther is the only one where women deal with each other as a part of a greater context beyond family - Ramonda and Shuri are mother and daughter, but Shuri is an inventor and engineer in her own right, Nakia is a government agent and important enough in her own tribal group to be invited to the ritual combat to establish T'Challa's rule in addition to being his love interest, and Okoye of course is the general (but also Nakia's friend and colleague). They not only interact with T'Challa and the other men in the film, but also with *each other* independently of the male characters.
In contrast, the women in Aquaman are either related to the main character by blood, or his political ally/love interest. Both Atlanna and Mera are fully realised characters with their own motives and generally are portrayed positively... but they are also cut off from both each other (apart from one brief scene) as well as other women in the movie's universe.
Jumping on to Ant-Man and the Wasp, while the mother-daughter connection of Hope and Janet is there and drives much of the plot, Scott's daughter Cassie, his ex-wife Maggie and of course the antagonist, Ghost, also feature in the story... and unlike in Aquaman, the women actually interact with each other, although not to the same extent as in Black Panther.
The isolation of women continues in the Venom, where the women who do appear on screen are well-drawn (Anne is allowed to have visible wrinkles - much like Hope and Janet!) and not only slim and white, here, too, they don't really interact with each other. They have no reason to. Each woman in Venom exists in her own sphere, which do not interact with each other (does the poor doomed Dr. Skirth even speak to Mrs. Chen, the shopkeeper? She must've interacted with Eddie's homeless friend Maria, but we never see any of it because exploring their connection is not important to the story), unless it is through Eddie/Venom.
Coming finally to Bumblebee, another movie where the down-on-her-luck protagonist finds a friend from Space, here we have the mother-daughter connection between Charlie and Sally, the Decepticon villain Shatter (played by Angela Bassett herself!), and three mean girls who bully Charlie. In contrast with Venom and Aquaman, there is much more interaction between the women... but in the end, while Charlie has found a friend, she is still cut off from a wider network of other women, her mother being the only other positive female connection. This in contrast - again - with Black Panther, where the women constantly interact with each other even within the context of a man's story, each with her own place in the society.
Going further back, you can see the same thing happening even in Wonder Woman, where the main character exists in a world occupied solely by women, and then literally enters the "World of Men" where her only female connection is cut short when she goes to war with a group of men (and after which Wonder Woman reappears in... another team consisting only of men).
Now, I liked all of these films. A lot! They all had great female characters! The women were complex! They were good and evil and sad and happy and disappointed and old and literal children! But it's kind of telling that Black Panther is the only one to show multiple positive relationships between women that are treated important in their own right, like they truly are a part of the society and a part of the story instead of just visitors and guest stars. Bumblebee is a great movie and I loved the way they showed the mother-daughter relationshp (and that they let Charlie be a gross little gremlin of a teenager, that was amazing), but while I understand that the isolation caused by her grief was a big part of the story, I wish they'd at least shown that she'd had female friends once that she pushed away, instead of reducing her interactions with other women outside the family into petty hostility (or outright murder, in Shatter's case).
There's been some talk online about it being time to retire the Bechdel test. Considering the above, I disagree. We still need movies where at least two named women talk about a subject that isn't a man, because in the real world, women know each other and interact with each other. They aren't just visitor's in the "Men's World". Black Panther has set a standard for women in fictional countries... but really, all filmmakers should take note on how it deals with women, and especially the fact that women have relationships with EACH OTHER. There's no need to isolate every single woman from every single other woman in a given movie. Even in a superhero action movie.
(Finally, I'm strongly of the opinion Mean Girl #1 Tina in Bumblebee has a Big Queer Crush on Charlie, but because she's in denial or hasn't realised and/or admitted her feelings to herself yet, she reacts by getting angry at Charlie and being super mean, completely unnecessarily. Sure, her boyfriend Roy speaks to Charlie, so you could interpret Tina's hostility as seeing Charlie as a threat, but Roy's just a trophy. Tina isn't paying attention to Roy. The person she's watching all the time is Charlie.)
