Orphan Black and the Reverse Bechdel Test

[swan_tower]

I promise one of these days I’ll post about something other than Voyage of the Basilisk or TV. :-P It’s just that right now, I can’t say much about either of the books I’m revising (because spoilers), and I have limited brain for anything else.

So let’s talk about TV! Again!

My husband and I have started watching season two of Orphan Black, finally. For those who aren’t familiar with it, the show follows a group of young female clones (in the modern world) who are finding out where they came from and what’s going on around them.

To begin with: can I say how much the main actress, Tatiana Maslany, impresses me? Not only does she play all the clones (and we’re talking more than half a dozen characters, here), but she differentiates them beautifully. Not just the obvious things like accent and clothing changes, but body language and so forth — and then there are the times when she’s playing one of the clones pretending to be a different clone, and that performance, too, is distinct. Maslany playing Sarah pretending to be Allison does not look the same as Maslany playing Allison. It’s a remarkable achievement.

My praise is not just an idle side note. It’s critical that she be able to pull that off, because the vast majority of the show’s weight rests on her shoulders. She’s playing literally half of the major characters, for crying out loud! Virtually all of the protagonists, and some of the major villains as well!

There’s something else that struck me while watching the first season, and it has to do with the way Maslany carries the show. In a nice reversal of what we so often see on TV, the male characters are almost completely defined by their relationships to the women.

Sarah’s brother. Sarah’s ex. Beth’s boyfriend. Beth’s partner. Allison’s husband. One of the big male antagonists is a scientist deeply involved with the clone project; his entire raison d’etre is this group of women. And because a lot of those men exist in separate spheres (the individual lives of the clones), they don’t talk to one another. When those spheres start colliding? It’s because of the women, and that’s what they end up talking about. It’s entirely possible the show up until this point has failed the Reverse Bechdel Test. Everything that’s going on is mediated by the clones and their stories; they are the engines driving the plots, the forces other characters respond to.

But at no point do I feel like the show is doing that just to hammer home a point. It’s simply a matter of: these clones are the story; they are women. Therefore, this is a story about women.

It is, in short, exactly the kind of structure I would expect if the story had been about a group of male clones. Just gender-swapped.

(When it comes to hammering home a point, though: my god, how often have we seen Felix’s ass? I find it kind of hilarious that most of the nudity so far has been male, and something like 50% of that has been Felix, with another 30% being Felix’s lovers.)

Anyway, we’re very much enjoying S2 so far. I’m cautiously optimistic about the Evil Science Organization metaplot; that sort of thing is often where SF/F shows fall down for me, but this one is doing okay, at least for the moment. And I love the clones: the range they show, the odd quirks and the way their strengths and weaknesses combine. I would drop-kick Allison out a window if I had to deal with her in person — but she’s a fantastic character, and has vastly more depth than you think when you first meet her. And Helena, oh my god. Ten pounds of Mentally Unstable in a five-pound sack. (Not without good reason.) The other characters, too: Mrs. S is becoming fascinatingly complex, and I’m rooting for Art to figure things out. (And is it wrong of me that I’m trying to remember whether Felix is bi instead of gay, because I’m starting to hope he’ll hook up with Allison? I mean, he came to her musical.)

No spoilers, please: I’m only three episodes into the second season, i.e. well behind. But it’s rock-solid so far.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[gelsey.livejournal.com]

Mmm I obviously need to watch this

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

It's really well done. Good balance of metaplot and character-driven stuff.

[ladybird97.livejournal.com]

Love this show SO MUCH. I honestly think the reason Maslany hasn't been nominated for an Emmy yet is that people can't tell that the clones are all played by the same person. What impressed me most - in addition to the awesomeness that you point out, that Maslany playing Sarah pretending to be Allison looks distinctly different from Maslany playing Allison - is that all of the clones cry differently. That has to be incredibly hard to do.

Enjoy the rest of the second season! There's a lot of good stuff in there :)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I hadn't noticed that about the crying! Now I'll keep an eye out for it.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

The thing that cracks me up about the nudity is the meta-humour of filming the clones as if they were different actresses with different expressed preferences on the matter; it's like the way there are episodes in season 1 riffing on "how you structure a plot when one of your leads is unavailable that week" for one of the clones.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

There's all kinds of fun to be had in the setup. :-)

[sillylilly-bird.livejournal.com]

I haven't started S2 yet, but I agree with you completely about Maslany.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I'm especially floored that I've never heard of her before.

[sillylilly-bird.livejournal.com]

I know! She's SO good that it is surprising that this is her first breakout role. Her IMDB is extensive and I've seen her in other things.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1137209/?ref_=nv_sr_1

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Looks like the only thing of hers I've seen before this is Eastern Promises, and she was only doing voice-work for that.

[sillylilly-bird.livejournal.com]

I've also watched Alphas, but it was a guest role. She is Canadian and most of her TV work seems to be north of the border and that explains a lot of why we wouldn't have seen her in much. But damn. She's amazing.

[calico-reaction.livejournal.com]

I adore this show SO MUCH. When you wrap up season two (and it may be safe to read this article anyway, but I don't want to assume so bookmark it for later), read this NY Times article about Maslany. OMG. There's so much in here I love, so much I applaud. I would kill to have drinks with this woman.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/magazine/the-many-faces-of-tatiana-maslany.html?smid=tw-nytmag&_r=1

[(Anonymous)]

I've watched the entire series so far and simultaneously done both the Bechdel test and the reverse Bechdel test for each episode. I thought you'd like to hear the results.

Every single episode passes the Bechdel test. The first season has one episode that passes the reverse Bechdel test and the second season has three. Each season has ten episodes so the pass rate is 20%. The first two seasons have a total of 12 scenes that pass the reverse Bechdel test. Eight of those scenes and one of those episodes only pass the reverse Bechdel test because of a certain character in the 8th episode of season 2. I counted him as male but I'm not sure if it's in the spirit of the test to do so.

The third season has had three episodes so far, each of which passes the Bechdel test and one of which passes the reverse Bechdel test. There are three reverse Bechdel scenes. There are quite a few new male major characters in a major role in this season (you'll know what I mean) so I expected there would be more.

I suspect passing the Bechdel test has more to do with the proportion of female characters in general or the proportion of women in the main cast in particular than with their relationships with women or men. A large part of the reason Orphan Black does so badly on the reverse Bechdel test is that Maslany is in almost every scene and plays half the main cast. I think you could explain the generally surprisingly low Bechdel pass rate in movies and TV shows largely with just the fact that most protagonists are male and the proportion of female characters is typically maybe 30-40 percent. For instance, if there were five major characters, two of whom are women, and it was completely random who talked to whom, 10% of their one-on-one conversations would be between women, 30% between men and 60% between a woman and a man. And that's ignoring mixed-sex group conversations which I usually count as fails for both tests.

To test the above idea, I did both tests for each episode of Sanctuary, a TV show with a female protagonist and with slightly more male than female characters. Most scenes failed both tests because they were between a man or a woman or were mixed-sex group conversations. Many times, it was difficult to decide whether to count something as a pass or a fail. Out of a total of 59 episodes, 2 failed both, 7 or 8 passed RB and failed B, 5 or 6 passed B and failed RB and 43-45 (about three fourths) passed both. I admit that these results are probably partially due to whether characters are defined by their relationship to someone of the opposite sex.

I've also watched some episodes of TV shows that focus tightly on a single character and imagined that the character was the opposite sex. The usual pattern in those cases is that the episode passes only one of the tests depending on the main character's sex. This definitely supports the idea that Bechdel fails are largely caused by the generally lower proportion and importance of female characters rather than women being defined by their relationships to men.

I think it's important to do the reverse Bechdel test too, at least in cases where there appears to be even a slight possibility that the test is failed (stories focused on women, there's a large proportion of female characters, stories with very few characters of both sexes etc). That's because we need to know the baseline for comparison and not just look at the proportion of Bechdel passes. Also, the reverse Bechdel test can help explain why the pass rate for the Bechdel test is surprisingly low; we can look at TV episodes or movies that pass B and fail RB and see what they're like compared to things that pass RB and fail B.