THAT DAY

I pondered the Bechdel test today. You know it? A story passes the test if two women have a serious conversation not about men. But half or more of all fiction, film & TV flunks that simple test--women only talk about guys, or never have serious talks. Or talk at all. Or exist.

One webtroll defended The Name Of The Rose: "The writer's not sexist--it's in a monastery!" Hmm. Seems to me, the point of the Bechdel test is not to judge how or why a story lacks women with lives including more than men. If mute, shallow, stupid or sex-crazed women make a tale flunk, why not banished women?

THAT EVENING

I watch three episodes of 30 Rock, Tina Fey's comic look backstage at Saturday Night Live. Funny as hell, but I notice Tina fails the Bechdel test--hardly ever talks with other women, since the place is wall-to-wall guys to start with, and if she does, she just whines about boyfriends!

And do the guys take women seriously? Never. Overgrown boys. Comedians do cultivate immaturity, it's almost a job requirement, but still...

THAT NIGHT

A mystical monastery in Tibet, formerly male-only, has decided to open its doors to women. Two old friends are the first women to reach the advanced level--they're ready to learn levitation! The elders designate two young monks with shaved heads, who recently mastered flying themselves, as tutors.

Funny--the new flight cadets look like Tina Fey and Jane Krakowski from 30 Rock. Their hair is long and styled, not buzzcut like the brethren, and they're not in monk's robes but clingy little satin gowns. More like prom night than monastic... or flight-school.

Tina and Jane hike up a green mountain--gowned and blowdried--to meet the young fliers, their tutors. Find them in the air, unreachable--demonstrating levitation, but not descending to really teach! Do the boys fear hands-on instruction will turn TOO hands-on, will degrade their mystic purity?

Oooh, they'll get sex cooties!

Jane just leans on a crag, waiting for the guys to get over their snit fit and come down to earth.

But Tina Fey's impatient. She climbs up a crag, trying to reach them--or embarrass them. Awkward to rock-climb in a dress, but it's stretchy--if it flashes some thigh as she plays mountain goat, fine, let 'em get a good look at their great fear.

They've mastered flying? Well, Tina Fey's mastered dorky-sexy-funny. Try singing THAT emotional chord!

At the summit, still yards below them, Tina finds a stone needle too round slender & fluted to be natural. Badly eroded glyphs carved in its sides (Mayan? Egyptian? Too time-blurred to tell) make it clear this thing is ancient.

Tina starts climbing, hopelessly I suspect, but she's gained confidence--she made it this far up in the Himalayas, and those snotty guys may not show her HOW to fly... but just by hovering they prove you CAN do the impossible.

So Tina tries to shimmy up the stone lingam like a mystical poledancer, while the boys gawk from the sky.

More thigh.

More sky.

More boy-monks giving her the eye.

Only Tina Fey could have written this!

Uh-oh. Crash! Another column toppled. Jane, below her, got bored and tried climbing too; and her column fell! Tina rushes down to her friend. Jane's trapped and crushed under the column. She whispers just two glyphs, and tragically dies.

Oh. Did I forget to mention that in this mystical world all speech is rendered in hieroglyphs? A bit more rounded than Egyptian, more Mayan; one per syllable. The glyphs appear in speech balloons with a heavy oval outline, like an old Egyptian cartouche.

So Tina sees not hears Jane's last words--the name of the pharaoh whose obelisk has killed her. We see the glyphs, know from their complexity they're a name, but don't know how to read them. Frustrating!

And... does it pass the Bechdel test?

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Monastery: as in Name of the Rose. But this one admits girls to the boys' club. And note that the elders okayed flight training for Tina & Jane. It's the young men afraid of getting girl cooties. Is the dream right? Is sexism really a disease of insecure young men? Jung found youth more gender-rigid; older adults gravitated toward the center. If so, that torpedoes the comforting belief that "Time will fix sexism as patriarchs die off". If young men are the heart of misogyny, we may be stuck forever.
• Nervous young monks, capable of magic but scared of women: literal! Years ago I went to a party welcoming Tibetan throat-singing monks to California. They could sing in three voices at once, but the young ones sitting next to enthusiastic tattooed New Age California girls looked overwhelmed (were they mystic temptresses from another dimension, or what?) Oh well, lots of us get stupid around anyone cute--Tina Fey's character, archetypally so.
• Fey: a triple pun. I doubt this caused my dream, but I bet her name shaped it.
  • Fey: Tina is fey--meaning perversely reckless. At least as Liz Lemon on 30 Rock.
  • Fée: Tina is dressed glamorously and is trying to fly--like a French fée, a "fairy".
  • Fei: Wrote the dream in my shorthand. I use Chinese characters when they're shorter than English--for Tina's name I used the character fei, "fly".
• Gowns, hair: on 30 Rock, Tina Fey pictured meeting her ex-boyfriend--dressed, staged, fan blowing her hair. "Oh, he'll regret being a jerk when he sees how sexy I am now!" A hilariously thorough, deliberate Bechdel failure.
• Mountaintop columns topple: echoes a major dream of mine from 2000, Spiritual Tests. In it I met Jesus in South India--knocking down stone columns in the mountains! I suspected that dream was about Ammaji, that saint from South India who hugs everyone (even me once). Why echo this years later? Well, my sister Miriel, an Amma devotee, needs knee surgery soon and her medical insurance is balking. Friends suggested to me "If she loses coverage, she can fly to South India and get surgery in Ammaji's hospital; good cheap care."
• Pass or fail the Bechdel test? two women talk, it's serious, we know Jane speaks a name to another woman, but... of a woman (pass) or man (fail)? We can't read the glyphs. Bechdel status indeterminable! Like the status of Schroedinger's notorious cat, both dead and alive.
• ACTION: pass on the medical suggestion to Miriel [AFTERNOTE: her insurance paid, she had the surgery here. No need to fly to India.]
• ACTION: pass on a writing tip to Tina Fey: "Want women to soar past the Cootie Ceiling? Give 'em real conversations in your scripts." Radical, I know...

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