It's All Comes Down to Cats

I have a confession to make. I don't actually like cats that much. So I've always been wary of the strange hold they have over the internet. LOLcats are one thing, but catblogging? Blech.

But I have finally realized that resistance is futile. That there is no problem to large or too rant-inducing that cannot be solved by cats.

Even this one.

That particular question seems to be on everyone's minds lately. And not just on the minds of a handful of idiots and the people who were unfortunate enough to stumble across such stupidity.

No, I even ran across it the other day while I was reading the sequel to Save the Cat!. Snyder's parting thoughts on Superhero movies was "why aren't there any movies about females superhero? C'mon, we can do better than that!"

(or something to that effect, I don't have the book in front of me.)

Snyder is smarter than he realizes, because he answered his own question earlier in the same chapter.

Snyder defines superhero movies in the original Save the Cat! as movies that have an "extraordinary person who finds himself in an ordinary world." (And yes, he uses "he", which explains why he couldn't see that he's already answered his own question.) The plot of such stories always revolves around being the misunderstood genius. In the sequel, he elaborates on that, clarifying that superhero stories are essentially stories about gods. More specifically, here in America, God/Jesus.

And everyone knows that God made Man in His image, not Hers.

This is in many ways one of the last impregnable assumptions about what makes men the default and women the Other in western (and I'm guessing most all) cultures. So I wonder if part of the reason why superhero movies about women always suck so very much is because people may be used to the idea - even like - women who kickass, but most are still comically uncomfortable comfortable with divinity as feminine. And so they sabotage their own great ideas without even meaning to. Because every time they are presented with the problem of who she is and where she came from and what she can do, they fall back on the kinds of things that are least likely to be godlike. Because a female hero is one thing, an all powerful Goddess is another.

Which makes the story and the character unsatisfying at best.

Take Claire, for example. She can not only regenerate, she's even crucified (which is why the scene works even though it's yet another sexual assault against a superheroine), but she not only remains anything but a leader of Heroes, taking charge of this often passive power results in her turning evil, if the hints of what's to come are any indication.

And this, I think, is the final proof needed for the argument that the whole root of the problem lies in culture's inability to accept a female Jesus - because anytime a superheroine accidentally gets powerful enough for the analogy to really work, her power threatens to destroy the whole world. And so she must be destroyed instead. It's like we're not just telling the Story of Christ, we are also retelling the story of the Church.

I think it's also why Wonder Woman works better (as a stand alone character) than any other female superhero, and we she is so timeless. Her divine origins are not only explicit, they are explained away. She is a Goddess rather than a god, but she is not of our world. Unlike Superman, she didn't even grow up here, among us. She may be a Christlike figure, but she isn't our Christlike figure. She remains in many ways, completely alien, and so doesn't directly challenge this particular argument culture makes about women being the Other.

They No Longer Spend Pitch Meetings Looking for the Button That Opens the Secret Trapdoor

You have no idea how much I wish I had a copy of the recording they did of the panel on Superhero Comics at the Festival.

Its not that I want to listen to it over and over again (it was funny, but not that funny) its that there were tons of hilarious quotes that I can't really quote 'cuz I'm not going to get them quite right. So as you read all the stuff below? Remember that it's being filtered through my crappy auditory memory. Take even the stuff in quotes with several teaspoonfuls of salt. Also, I make no claims to accuracy when it comes to the order in which things were discussed.

With that said, here goes:

The panel was kicked off with each creator being asked to describe how they got from Comics to Hollywood. Mignola and Niles had fairly similar stories. Someone fairly influential liked their comic and wanted it made into a movie. For Niles, it was Sam Raimi. For Mignola, it was Benecio Del Toro - not that Del Toro got things going, more that he kept them going and made sure that things went well. Both at this point and throughout the talk, both Niles and Mignola were very emphatic about having a powerful ally working on the project who was also a fan of the comic itself being essential to it being a decent movie that still resembled their work. Or something like that, anyway.

Loeb said that it went the opposite way for him. He had always loved comics, but started out in Hollywood instead (didn't think he could make a living at comics) and then one day DC called him up and asked him if he would like to write a comic for them.

Before I continue, (1) Loeb is an awesome oral storyteller; I very much fear that my recap will fail to do any justice to his talent. (2) I'm sure there was more to this story than he let on. See #1

Loeb said "of course!" and "Can I write Superman?" "Um, we already have someone for that." "Batman" ditto and on down the line. Turns out they wanted him to do The Challengers. (and yeah, that story is even funnier in retrospect now that I'm more familiar with his resume)

The second question had to do with graphical nature of graphic novels and whether that made them easier to translate into film. All said yes. Having pictures helps studio people visualize what you are talking about, especially when those pictures closely resemble storyboards. Loeb (or Mignola?), mimicking execs internal diologue: "Oh, so you meant this really cool spaceship, not the pencil shaped thing that was in my head." Niles also mentions that, when originally pitching 30 Days, the studio people probably pictured scores of vampires running across the snow in Bela Lugosi capes.

The next question (I think) had to do with whether or not it's easier to pitch Superhero movies now than it used to be. Everyone's reply can be boiled down to "duh - you have seen the figures for the Spiderman movies, yes?" (I kept thinking, don't forget LoTR! It's success certainly helped as well. Geeks Unite!) Someone - Mignola or Loeb, I think - pointed out that time has helped as well, that it it's not just a single hit, but several successful movies, and people getting used to the idea of Superhero movies, untill finally Superhero movies are treated as just another genre rather than an unknown. (File this thought away, it will come up again later.)

They said that it was still hard to pitch comics as movies, especially if you aren't pitching one of the big names (Spiderman, Superman, Batman) but that "It used to be that they seemed to be looking for that secret button that open the trapdoor under you." Not anymore.

One of the other things that helped, obviously, has been the advances in cg. There was talk about how they used to say that movies would never replace comic creators, because there was stuff they could do that would just look dumb in movies. You could never get Spiderman to swing from a web and make it look real! Loeb: But then (?) and I went to the screening of Teminator 2 at Comicon. Beforehand, we weren't really sure what it was going to be like because Schwarzenegger actually had to talk in this one. We left the screening and I turned to him and said "we're screwed."

They still fuck everything up, though, apparently :) (shocker, I know) Niles talked about some guy who was working on 30 Days in the script stage. Nobody seemed to get why the Vampires were in Alaska. (wha?) So this one guy suggested that maybe Vampires were searching for a diamond that was buried underground in Alsaka. (wtf?) A diamond that would make them daywalkers! "He doesn't work there anymore. Not because of that, but I think he tried pitching the diamond idea for every movie." There was also mention of certain people wanting to call the Hellyboy sequel HB2 Instead. (why, exactly would one want to do that?)

This is where my memory gets a bit fuzzier, but the conversation at some point turned to DVD sales, what is still hard about pitching Superhero movies, and how much money movies actually need to make. The gist of that part of the conversation was: studio people don't pay enough attention to DVD sales because DVDs and movie production are different divisions, but it's getting better. They always want to change lots of things, some of which needs to change because comics are so much longer than movies, some of which is completely in opposition to the heart of the story, and some of which is necessary in order to appeal to a larger audience. "The truth is that even the best selling comics only have a fraction of the audience that movies need to make money." Or something like that.

I don't remember when or why, but the topic of what terms people prefer came up (ie, comics, graphic novel, etc.) and they all agreed "comics." Niles joked about Raimi referring to comics by some complicated term "graphical something or other." Someone (Loeb or Niles) made the amusing remark to a studio person that it was ok to call them comics, "graphic novels was the term we made up for you guys!"

It was also established that we were all "geeks." "You all know the difference between geeks and nerds, right? All of you in this room right now, you're all geeks, not nerds." (I beg to differ, but then I'm the idiot that didn't even know he worked on Heroes before he mentioned it, so I think he'd make an exception for me.)

At some point Loeb told several amusing stories about working in Hollywood:

The first movie he worked on was this low budget film called Teen Wolf (cheers from the crowd) While working on it, he'd tell people about it and mention who was in it and people would say. "Oh, that kid from Silver Spoons, right?" But then two things happened, Family Ties was moved to directly after The Cosby Show and Michael J. Fox was picked to be the star of a little movie called Back to the Future. heh.

That lead to the story about the movie thought he was going to be able to retire on: Firestorm. It was starring Howie Long. No reaction from the audience to that name, prompting Loeb to say that we obviously weren't football fans. That prompted some laughter. :) He explained who Howie Long was and that the great thing about Howie Long was that you knew he could talk. Anyway, things were going well and it was getting closer and closer to the release date, and then an Important Studio person broke the bad news. The studio had just finished making the most expensive movie ever made. And it was going to completely flop. Loeb knew he was telling the truth because people were literally packing up their offices in cardboard boxes and leaving. It was going to be that bad. So they needed to release a bunch of other movies at the same time to cover their losses. Firestorm was moved from fall to January. That's ok, Loeb thought, it should still be ok.

So, the flop? Was Titanic.

His last story was about the call that got him working on Heroes. A Hollywood buddy of his called him and said he needed some advice. Loeb figured that he was buying a vineyard and retiring or something, 'cuz he couldn't think of what this person would need his advice for. So they met and it turns out that this buddy had the brilliant idea of doing a Superhero type show and needed to talk to someone who knew Superheros. They spent hours talking, with the guy pitching ideas and Loeb responding by saying, that sounds fantastic, but you can't do that, it's (insert name of character) Marvel/DC will sue you. Repeat for several hours.

That's it. that's all I remember. Recordings will be available in a few weeks, I might try and clean this up when they are released for sale.




Oh, wait.......you were wondering why I was left yelling (well, muttering, really) Wonder Woman.

Yeah, so, at some point near the end - it might have been during the questions - Loeb or Mignola made some comment about Superhero movies needing to appeal to non-comic readers in order to make money. Loeb added "like how do you get women to go see your Superhero movie?" (Or something like that anyway.) To which I muttered Wonder Woman! and started ranting in my headspace about how the arguments made earlier about Superhero movies and needing to let people get used to seeing them as just another kind of movie and not a fluke can just as easily be applied to movies with female action heroes.

Ditto for non-white (and non-kung-fu-asian) action heroes, as well, of course.

Personally, I still think Runaways would make a kickass movie. The ending is a disappointing in terms of racial diversity, but it's still a step in the right direction. (Especially if it does well enough to warrant sequels.) Plus, I think it would not only appeal to a larger audience, it would appeal to that teenage audience studios are so hung up on. Provided it's done right, of course. That's always the catch. But seriously, while the point about comic sales being only a fraction of what the movie needs is valid, better-selling is better than not-better-selling. And better-selling to a wider audience (ie, bookstore patrons, not just comic store patrons) has got to be huge plus as well. So here's to hoping Twilight is the insane success I think it will be, and to studios everywhere mining the YA lit for ideas.

LA Times Festival of Books Comics!

So....I went to the Festival of Books today, and it turned out that two of the three panels that I was able (and most wanted) to attend were on graphic novels. (Owing to the frustrating scheduling mentioned earlier.)

*********

The first was panel titled Comics: Superheroes of the Page & Screen and featured Jeph Loeb, Mike Mignola, and Steve Niles. Geoff Boucher moderated.

Loeb was hilarious, Mignola was pretty damn funny as well, and all three were entertaining and interesting. The overall conversation left me (internally) screaming "Wonder Woman!" But sadly, not in a good way.

Also sadly, no autographs as I was pretty ignorant of all their work beforehand and so wasn't prepared to go the the signing. More importantly, I had less than a half hour to get to the next panel, and UCLA is a freaking big campus.

**********

The second panel I went to was titled Tween Series Writing: Other Worlds and featured Cornelia Funke, Erin Hunter and Rick Riordan. Moderated by Sonja Bolle.

Funke is sweet and kick-ass smart, Hunter is sassy and funny as hell, and Riordan is just the kind of teacher you wished you had in middle school. Plus, there were tons of kids there, which was super-cool.

**********

The third panel was Reading Manga: A Japanese Phenomenon Comes to America, featuring Liza Coppola, Lillian M. Diaz Przybyl, and Frederik Schodt. Charles Solomon moderated.

This last was not quite as hilarity filled as the other two (although laughs were to be had, this is manga we're talking about), which may be due to it being made of reviewers and editors rather than writers. Or it could have been the heat. But it was still interesting and informative - if perhaps a bit basic at times, as anything involving manga (that isn't held at a con) must sadly still be.

Unfortunately, the manga fans were the ones pulling the stupid crap that comic fans gets stereotyped as doing (although, being manga fans, the "questions" centered around fanfic/art and scanlations.) I kept wanting to tell them to act their age, but the main problem did seem to be that they were.

*********

My most prized signature of the day was from multiple-Caldecott-winning-author and illustrator David Weisner, who signed my newly bought copy of Tuesday, possibly the first (mostly) wordless picture book I ever read. Since it was my love of wordless picture books (along with my love for the X-Men movies) that got me thinking maybe there was something to this whole comic book stuff, the day seemed more like "sequential art day" to me. :)

Oops! I forgot!

Also:

Angry Little Girl buttons!

Cute! Colorful! Angry!

And Lela's right, the bags did look kind of like bags of candy. Cute, colorful, angry candy.

hmmm...candy.....

Dear Heroes Writers

Didn't we do this already?

I mean, really, was there anything in tonight's episode that wasn't stolen from last year?

I Hate Commercials

(but I'm feeling better about Heroes this week.)

A few questions/observations for the people who are supposedly trying to get me to buy stuff.

Career Builder - So, only men have careers? Well, that thats hardly a convincing argument for me to to buy what you are selling. ps, when I have to fucking pause the damn commercial to be certain that there is indeed a woman or two in the background, you might as well have not have them in there. (Except for the sake of those actresses' careers.)

Ah, yes, Ritz - "We have women in our commercial. But they don't talk. The guy in the lab coat does."

30 Days of Night - Women are good for screaming. And being bait. And giving the camera soulful looks. And occasionally saying that stupid thing that you know is going to bite the person who said it in the ass later. (I don't know if the movie is actually like this, I just thought, considering recent denials and conventional wisdom that women don't go to the movies, that it was worth pointing out that this is how it's being sold.)

Subway - Women talk! About their looks.

iPhone - Dear Apple. I really love your products. I usually love your commercials. So I just have to ask: Do women not own iPhones? Because that's would be news to my mother.

NBC comedy - All our shows are about men. Except for 30 Rock. Which is Tina Fey's show. But look! A Baldwin!

ER - Wow! A woman! Who isn't just a mother but a doctor too! Yeah, I can't imagine why ensemble shows are popular among women.

Journeyman - Man saves woman. Hey, aren't I watching that show already?

As for Heroes

Bad things:

Micah.

Micah's bratty cousin.

Mr. I'm going to bully you into going out on a date with me. Claire letting him.

Stalker Dad. Keeping secrets again.

Crying "I'm helpless without a man" girl gets to add hopelessly naive to her resume.

Two grown men putting a little girl in danger.


Good things:

Micah's other cousin. She has a female friend! And she beats the guy who threatened her - and it wasn't with sexual assault.

And a big congrats to Heroes for handling the New Orleans bit much much better than I thought they would.

And hey! a girl talks to Claire with the intention of being nice!

Matt's (not) kid gets a mention. And hey! He didn't just spontaneously generate into this world

Crying "I'm helpless without a man" girl has an actual skill! It may not be a superpower, but it's useful.


Next week: Kristen Bell - yay!

It's a Man's World: Analysis

For the data, go here. The major bits:

Women are in about 65% of the scenes.
Men are in about 95% of the scenes.

65% of the scenes had more than one man.
15% of the scenes had more than one woman.

There are about 3 men for every woman and what's really interesting is that that stays constant for the number of male to female Heroes, despite there only being two regular female Heroes (Niki and Claire) compared to the eleven regular male Heroes (Peter, Hiro, Nathan, Matt, Micah, D.L., Isaac, Sylar, Mohinder*, Mr. Bennet*, the Haitian). So a lot of the female Heroes are not recurring and consequently are treated more like non-Heroes - their story is important only so far as it relates to our main cast, rather than in relation to the fundamental themes and overall plot. This is part of the same pattern that gives us only 2 male non-Heroes for every female non-Hero. It's not just that there are fewer women than men, it's that a greater percentage of women are more likely to be in non-recurring and/or minor roles. (edit: this also explains why Hayden is the one actor to appear in every episode so far. It would be interesting to see if that actually translates into more screen time and more lines....)

Keep in mind that these four episodes include the ones where Claire finds her birth mother and Niki is away from Micah and DL and talking to a female shrink. The two episodes in which these things happen are some of the few episodes where our two main female Heroes do a decent amount of talking to other women. And the average is still 65% versus 95%, 65% versus 15%.

I find the 2-3:1 ratio is interesting because I remember reading** that the 2 man to 1 woman ratio is where people begin perceiving that something is not only equal in terms of gender, but often they see it as biased in favor of women. Conscious or not, I find it interesting that gender ratios in Heroes tends to hover somewhere just above that 2/3 majority version of equality. And I find this interesting not because I think every show should have a gender ratio of 1 to 1, but because I get such fierce reactions when I complain that Heroes does a pretty poor job with women. I wonder if a lot of the difference in perception can be traced back to this. I'm no longer used to the two thirds version of equality, but a lot of people still are. Are they simply more flexible in terms of what they think gender equality means, or do they perceive that 2-3:1 ratio as being closer to 1:1?

What's interesting about all this is how deliberate and yet probably not completely conscious it is. You can see it not just in the math, but in the patterns of X's and O's from scene to scene. It's not just that there are so many more XX, XXO, and XXXO than OO and OOX, but that it will go back and forth. An XO will be followed by and XXO or an XXXO or even and XXX, but it will rarely be followed by another XO. It's not just that Niki and Claire have yet to talk (does Niki ever talk to a female Hero?) it's also that their scenes are rarely shown back to back. Or if they are, it's scenes in which Claire is talking to her father and the Haitian, rather than her friend or mother, or where Niki is talking to Micah and DL, not her female shrink.

The overall numbers are something that can be traced back to the initial decisions about the make-up of the main cast, for which it's easy to come up with excuses (although they are still often flimsy). But the pattern of X's and O's is rooted in decisions about pacing, which suggests that the ratio of men to women is very much about finding a gender balance that will please the audience, not just about focusing on the most interesting stories.

Since it's quite common to show two similar stories back to back for dramatic effect (Claire and Hiro come face to face with the parents in the same episodes) it's really interesting that we never even see the scenes that are 1:1 male:female back to back. You'd think that would be a nice dramatic effect, to show something like the interaction between first the Parkmans and then the Bennet parents in a way that highlights the similarities and differences.*** It's like the fact that the audience can't possibly be expected to care about more than one female character at a time trumps all else. And thus why all this bugs me so much: Heroes kicks ass, except when it doesn't because the writers/producers/directors make bad decisions that not only offend my feminist sensibilities, but result in bad storytelling as well. And then Heroes really sucks.

*For explanation as to why I count Bennet and Mohinder as Heroes, go to the first post on the topic. The Haitian counts a a regular because the question is not how much the actor gets paid, but if the character is recurring - and recurring as a Hero, like Micah and D.L. who are Heroes for the bulk of the season, but unlike Eden whom we lose not long after we learn of her Hero status.

**But (sigh) not where. Does anyone else remember this?

***Or maybe we do and I'm just forgetting because it doesn't happen the episodes I've measured?

More Fun Heroes Data: It's a Man's World

Again, x = male, o = female, uppercase = Hero, lowercase = non-Hero.

Because the point is also to compare the gender make-up on screen to the number of lines by gender, I included non-speaking parts in my scene counts.

People that are so far away that they are out of focus don't count, but people like guards at the prison hospital and the two ladies who walk by Micah on the street do. That's only true if there isn't a crowd though, the people in the street scenes between Peter and Invisible Man are too many to count, so there's a little innaccuracy there.

Keep in mind that I counted the montages as one scene, so several of the long lists at the end are from those, which means that my data for the number of scenes with more than one women/men in them is a bit of an overestimate.

"Fallout"

1: XO
2: Xo
3: XX
4: XXO
5: XO
6: XXXO
7: XX
8: XXo
9: X
10: XO
11: XXx
12: XXXOo
13: XO
14: XXO
15: XXO
16: Ox
17: XXx
18: Ox
19: XXO
20: XXXo
21: Ox
22: XX
23: XXx
24: XXO
25: XXx
26: XXO
27: XX
28: XXXXXXXXOOxo
29: XX

"Godsend"

1: Xxo
2: Oxx
3: XO
4: XXx
5: XXXxo
6: Xx
7: Xxoo
8: XXx
9: Xx
10: Xx
11: XXoo
12: Ox
13: Ox
14: Xx
15: Xxx
16: XXXxo
17: XO
18: XX
19: X
20: OOx
21: XXOxx
22: XX
23: Xo
24: XXXo
25: Xo
26: XXxo
27: XX
28: XXXXXXOOx

"The Fix"

1: XX
2: Oxx
3: Xo
4: XXx
5: Xxxx
6: XX
7: XX
8: XOx
9: Xo
10: Xxxxx
11: Oxo
12: XX
13: XO
14: XXxo
15: Ox
16: Xxxxo
17: Xo
18: Xxx
19: XXXXx
20: XX
21: Xo
22: OX
23: Xoo
24: OXx
25: Oxo
26: XX
27: Xxxx
28: OO
29: XXx

"Distractions"

1: XXxo
2: Oo
3: XX
4: Xo
5: Oxo
6: Xxxo
7: Oxxxxo
8: XXX
9: Xxxo
10: OOx
11: Xo
12: XXo
13: OOo
14: XXXo
15: Xo
16: OOx
17: o
18: XXXo
19: Xxxo
20: Oxxx
21: XX
22: XX
23: XX
24" Xxxxo
25: XO
26: Oxo
27: XO

Now for the percentages:

(if the spreadsheets are hard to read, you should be able to click on them to get a larger image)








Analysis here.

A Little More Background on the Heroes Project

(warning: includes spoilers for Eureka and Heroes)

My brother and I got into a fight the last time we saw each other - and it was over Heroes. After several years of getting along really well, we're now back to fighting again, and it tends to be over the same general things. Generally, he's always right and I'm either taking things to personally or not seeing the big picture or making snap judgments.

Which is kind of ironic, because the fight started when I said that I had tried to watch the first episode, but couldn't stand it and turned it off. And that nothing I'd heard since had changed my mind. All of which he seemed to find personally offensive because how dare I question the obvious awesomeness of the coolest show ever. He couldn't possibly be that wrong about it; I must be. My obviously better understanding about what I like was completely irrelevant to the discussion. I am stupid for not giving it another try just because he says it's cool. How dare I trust someone else's review over his.

Now, I'd always meant to try Heroes again when it came out on dvd and I could fast forward through the annoying parts if need be. I had been looking forward to the premiere last September and part of my great annoyance was due to great disappointment that it wasn't what I had hoped for. So when it came out on dvd, I did so, hoping that it did, indeed, get better.

Yes, and NO.

I was trying to figure out why it felt like such a big NO to me the other day as I was watching Eureka, a show that is arguably not anywhere near as good as Heroes and yet makes me want to throw things at the TV much less often. This particular Eureka episode did make me want to throw things at the screen, and it was when I realized why that I realized why Heroes can. get. so. damn. annoying.

Eureka is exceptionally formulaic: "Mystery arises. Sheriff is on the case. The Sheriff points the finger at Global Dynamics. Global Dynamics says that's not possible. Sheriff proves otherwise. Global Dynamics solves the problem." I like it partly because despite causing all sorts of ruckus, GD rarely comes off as the bad guys. The Government, especially the Military, does - but scientists are never to blame. At least not any more than they deserve the praise for saving us from their mad colleagues - and giving us insanely cool gadgets. Plus, the Sheriff may not be a genius, but he solves the case through a good mix of objective observation and creative thinking, like any good scientist. Besides, how can you not love a show that includes some sort of "[blank] of Death" in every episode. Especially when Carter goes out of his way to call it that.

Why can't you people just *say* 'ice funnel of death'?

It's also full of smart and powerful women. Zoe, the Sheriff's daughter, is smart and hardworking. The head of GD is (now) a woman. Lots of the scientists (both good and bad) are women. The deputy is a woman. And everyone - Jack, Zoe, Nathan, Henry, Fargo, Allison, and Jo - has to work together at some point. And I do mean everyone. One of the nicest recent developments has been the alliance between Zoe and Jo in an effort to thwart Carter's authority. Even the death of Henry's long lost love doesn't feel like a WiR, because it wasn't done to hurt him, but to stop her work, and because the most visible person to blame at the moment is another woman.

Unfortunately, the most annoying recent development has been Allison oddly falling victim to the Evita Effect. For some reason, Nathan didn't leave after being fired at the end of last year. I hate love triangles, but whatever. Even weirder and more worrying, Allison has been leaning on him more and more as the season progresses. To the point that, during the it-seemed-to me-very-out-of-character-episode-in-which-she-withholds-information-that-could-help-Jack-solve-the-case, she and Nathan are arguing about whether to turn off the Sleep Machine of Death (the death part only being suspected at that point) and, instead of arguing about whether they are going to turn it off, they are arguing about whether he is going to turn it off. Did I mention that the Sleep Machine of Death is in her house? Yeah, whatever.

I don't always like Allison, but I rarely hate her. I hated her in this episode. She wasn't vulnerable; she was weak to the point of avoiding responsibility. She wasn't a desperate mother making a desperate choice, she was a desperate mother letting other people make bad choices for her. (Gee, remind you of anyone?) Go away fake Allison, I want my head of GD back.

The thing is, Eureka rarely does shit like this simply because if they started doing shit like this all the time to all their female characters, you'd notice because the writers would have ended up destroying half the cast. The main cast too, not just the regular guest stars. That's how Heroes and the like get away with the shit they do. Sara/Eden, whatever, is a regular guest star, you expect her to go away eventually. Simone was so one dimensional, it's amazing she managed to not fall over like a domino in the first episode. And sadly enough, they can get away with what they've made of Niki for the same reason every word she utters makes me want to send stink bombs to the writers - because it's so damn cliche. If you know a cliche is a cliche, you see it for the crap writing it is. But if you see a cliche as The Truth, you think people who complain about it are delusional. And the more common a cliche is, the more likely it is that people will see it as The Truth.

But, how do I explain this to guys like my brother? Is it possible to? Maybe, maybe not. But, unfortunately, logical arguments alone aren't going to cut it. Even those require trying my shoes on for a while, and he's not going to willingly do that. Unfortunately, it has to be pretty dramatic for him to include the empathy the logical arguments require. Otherwise, I'm just being overly sensitive.

I was watching another episode of Heroes not long after the Sleep Machine of Death episode, and it occurred to me that there were a lot of women with speaking parts on Heroes - but that they all tended to be Andos rather than Hiros. Ando minuses, quite often, because a lot of them are only there for a single story line. (I think this was about the time I was watching the Charlie storyline.) In fact, there, seemed to almost be a pattern. It was like the writers had been hit by the clue-by-four often enough that they would notice when women were completely absent for too long, but they were still so clueless that they couldn't see (or didn't care) that the women had so little substance that they were little more than window dressing to make them feel like they were being all "post-feminist" and shit.

So I thought about this, this, this, and this, and if I wondered if there wouldn't be a way to measure it. And if the measuring would be as stark as this.

Thus the recent project. Which has now been revised per comments and questions and instead of keeping track of whom talks to whom, keeps track of how many men and women - and Heroes and non-Heroes - have speaking parts and how many lines they have, and to whom. And no, it won't be exhaustive, because I'm just doing it as I watch season 1 again before season 2 starts. Hopefully it will be interesting, however.

I do have one last question for anyone that has made it this far, though, does Niki talking to herself count as a conversation or a monologue?

(By the by, one odd thing I've noticed in doing this, there aren't a whole lot of conversations that include more than two people at a time. It's really weird to go from Angel season 4 to Ando watching while Hiro and Isaac talk and then back to Eureka's staple Carter and several scientists arguing all at once. It shouldn't be as easy to do this as it is. I wonder if the season 2 will be different in that respect now that more connections have been made between Heroes.)

Because I'm a Numbers Kind of Person

So, I have a lot to say about Heroes, but for now I'm just going to give you some raw stats, inspired by the Mo Movie Measure/Bechdel Test

(because I'm that much of a dork) I kept track of the number of conversations between different characters throughout some early episodes. The raw data is below, use the following as a key:

O - female hero

o - female character with name (Non-Hero)

X - male Hero

x - male character with name (Non-Hero)

A note about classifications/terms before we get going: The idea is to separate main characters and supporting characters. Since the title of the show is Heroes, all Heroes are main characters, most Non-Heroes are supporting. Ando may have more lines than Sylar, but the story is ultimately about Sylar and the other Heroes, not Ando. For this same reason, the Man With the Glasses counts as a Hero even though he isn't one at all because we know his actions are fundamental to the overall plot (not just Claire's) even before we know who he is.

Several Eventual Heroes were classified as Non-Heroes because they are not yet known as Heroes. We may guess that there's more going on than we know for sure, but until we know for sure, they count as Non-Heroes because their story-lines are really all about the Heroes in their lives.

Conversation means that the two people must either both speak or interact. The Haitian has yet to speak, but he interacts in ways that require a response and his obvious Hero status makes him more than just a tool even if he has yet to act like more than a tool. Niki never talks to Hiro and Ando, though, although we know it's her on the other side of the door. Likewise, in one scene Claire's mother calls her, but Claire doesn't respond to her.

Conversations that include more than one person got counted more than once. For example, when Peter and Isaac are talking, and then Peter also talks to Hiro on the phone, who is talking to Ando as well - that's four conversations. If the Non-Hero isn't named by the end of the episode, they weren't counted for that episode, even if they get a name in later episodes. (ie, Linderman's rep doesn't have a name when she talks to Niki, but she does when she talks to Nathan.) I also kept record of when Heros had a scene by themselves, such as Claire waking up in the morgue. Scenes that lasted over episodes were counted twice only if significantly more time was added to the scene. Again, such as Claire waking up in the morgue.

I used just "men and women" instead of men and boys and women and girls" for brevity. Characters that don't have names don't get counted at all, because their role is closer to that of a prop. Such as all of Nathan's aides, who exist just to as window dressing to show that he really is running for something. Tina counts as a name (no matter how much I dislike her), Mother-in-Law or Police Officer or Coach or High Roller doesn't. (Although I think I may have accidentally counted a few of those, so feel free to correct my counts as needed.)



"One Giant Leap"

total conversations: 38

OO: none

XX: 8

OX: 1

Oo: 3

Xx: 4

Ox: 5

Xo: 13

oo: none

xx: 1

ox: 1

O: 1

X: 2

o: none

x: none

Total conversations with women: 23

Total conversations without women: 15

Total conversations with men: 25

Total conversations without men: 4

Total conversations with female Heroes: 10

Total conversations without female Heroes: 29

Total conversations with male Heroes: 33

Total conversations without male Heroes: 11



"Collision"

total conversations 39

OO: none

XX: 14

OX: 4

Oo: 3

Xx: 1

Ox: 5

Xo: 7

oo: none

xx: none

ox: none

O: 3

X: 2

o: none

x: none

Total conversations with women: 22

Total conversations without women: 17

Total conversations with men: 33

Total conversations without men: 6

Total conversations with female Heroes: 15

Total conversations without female Heroes: 24

Total conversations with male Heroes: 28

Total conversations without male Heroes: 11


"Hiros"

31 total conversations

OO: none

XX: 13

OX: 2

Oo: 3

Xx: 2

Ox: 4

Xo: 5

oo: none

xx: none

ox: none

O: none

X: 2

o: none

x: none

Total conversations with women: 14

Total conversations without women: 17

Total conversations with men: 28

Total conversations without men: 3

Total conversations with female Heroes: 9

Total conversations without female Heroes: 22

Total conversations with male Heroes: 24

Total conversations without male Heroes: 7



Just to highlight what I think often gets missed in the blur of debating storylines:

There are on average (based on these three episodes) only about 4 conversations per episode that don't include men but about 16 conversations that don't include women. Out of 36 total. And that's before we start talking about topic of conversation, length, etc. The really scary thing is I strongly suspect that's better than average, especially considering the genre and medium.

Let me repeat, only one tenth of the conversations are without men, but nearly half of the conversations didn't include any women at all.

How can that not be shocking? I had to keep checking my basic addition to make sure it was right.

There are never more conversations with female Heroes than there are without them.

There are never fewer conversations with male Heroes than there are without them.

We aren't talking about a small difference, but an average of twice as many conversations without female Heroes as with, and three times as many conversation with male Heroes as without. While women overall are slightly better represented, that means that a significant number of the conversations that women participate in are not even about them.* After all, did we ever learn anything about Simone at all before she died, except the ways in which she was related to the Heroes?

When the numbers are as stark as they are, how can people question how this affects what women and girls believe they are capable of doing? For a show whose hook ultimately lies in it's ability to inspire us dream about being a Hero ourselves (made explicitly clear in the scene where the little boy in the cape watches Peter try to fly) lack of diversity is a huge drawback. I find Niki's storyline insanely annoying from start to finish. It bugs me even more than it should because the fact that she is only one of two female Heroes to choose from means that there are fewer female characters written in ways to make us identify with them.

And can you honestly say that the men of this world would not notice if those numbers reversed? That they would still argue that we should identify with only with characteristics, never with gender? In my experience, they tend to label such stories "chick" lit/movies, etc. even before knowing what it's about.

I love Heroes, but I hate it too. I didn't do this just to complain about it, but to figure out why I such a great show annoys me so often. This is one of the reasons: I don't exist for half the conversations and only half of those are actually about me. It would be one thing if this were Numbers (which I strongly suspect does better when it comes to women overall) but it's not, it's an ensemble show, not a show about two brothers. There's no thematic reason for it to be the way it is; the only reason is sexism.



*Do not try to argue - for example - that the (early) scenes with Nathan and Peter's Mom are about her rather than them. Nathan makes it pretty clear that it's all about him and, as I said before, the name of the show implies that he's at least half right.


update

Just to clarify. The idea of this project was to try to quantity the quality of characters, not the quantity (which is pretty obvious). Thus, when I talk about conversation not including men/women, that doesn't mean that men/women are not in that scene, or even that they don't have named, speaking part in that scene. Claire and her parents talking gets counted as Oo, OX, and Xo. So a lot of the conversations that only include men/women, really include the other as well. However, when there are so few interactions between female characters, and most of the conversations include male main characters in some way, it's not a giant leap to realize that there does end up being a lot of scenes where women are completely absent (the four way phone conversation or some of the Nathan/Peter scenes) and not many where men are completely absent. Most Oo conversations actually at some point included at least one man - usually a named, speaking part. Claire and her mother talking in the first episode make a notable exception that isn't counted here.

Mostly, I did this in response to the fact that it seems obvious to me that the creators/writers were actually trying to to not exclude women, but weren't completely getting that adding secondary female characters that converse with male main characters doesn't even come close to cutting it. Especially when they they can't seem to imagine women existing without men. At least not together, anyway. Women get a lot of screen time, but they are rarely the focus of the plot and even when they are they have to share the focus with men more then men have to share it with them.