Tricia is putting the finishing touches on her first novel, Wynde – a military science fiction with a fantastical twist that features heroines Vespa Wynde and Gemini Reed. She also writes about Star Wars for Random House’s science fiction and fantasy blog and Star Wars Insider magazine and is a contributor for Her Universe’s Year of the Fangirl. Tricia Barr took her understanding of brand management and marketing, mixed it with a love of genre storytelling, and added a dash of social media flare to create FANgirl Blog, where she discusses Star Wars, fandom, and strong female characters. That’s why it’s still most important for fans to encourage the entertainment industry to bring more women into the storytelling process. If you’re unclear about a female character, it’s worth asking others, especially informed women, their opinion. It does not make a movie automatically feminist. It is a pretty basic test for the representation of women, as is the Bechdel test. I think this is about as indicative of “feminism” (that is, minimally indicative, a pretty low bar) as the Bechdel test. The Mako Mori test is passed if the movie has: a) at least one female character b) who gets her own narrative arc c) that is not about supporting a man’s story. Romano suggests the Mako Mori test be used in conjunction, but as a storyteller and woman I caution against being afraid of failing to create an effective female character simply because she fails one or the other standard. ![]() The process is more a calculus than simple algebraic math. If we want all types of effective female characters, we cannot expect simple tests to define them. It creates a rigid one-dimensional framework for female characters the same way the Mary Sue Litmus Test does. There are eminent flaws in the Bechdel Test, too. Men and women write certain tropes simply because that is what they were raised on, and they aren’t self-aware enough to counteract the momentum. Yes, it’s frustrating that the thousands of nuances that seem to be easily understood about effective male characters seem to be easier for storytellers to create, but we’re digging out of a hole of learned behavior. I’ve addressed that previously, and I truly believe the meaning of strong that women are after is “effective” – a term that isn’t nearly as powerful as strong. The ones that are particularly relevant: 1. Popping over to the dictionary (courtesy of Microsoft Word’s Encarta feature), “strong” is flushed out by 25 different definitions. Specifically her concern is “that the majority of writers or readers are reading the term” strong to mean only physical strength, rather than other forms of toughness, much less the many other ways female characters can be well-written. Over at The Daily Dot, Aja Romano suggests a new Mako Mori test is a better alternative to the Bechdel test as a way “to change the conversation about what constitutes ‘strong women’ in film.” The term “strong female character” was a topic of discussion at the New Statesman this week as well, where Sophia MacDougall, who has advocated for better female characters, laments that the term even needs to be used. The whole article is worth the read, and like Jaffe I hope to see more movies of its kind. Pacific Rim is both of their stories, happening in concert with one another.Īdditionally, Jaffe discusses the movie’s lack of romantic plot, avoidance of catering to the male gaze, and the non-traditional family units. Raleigh may also have his own version of the monomyth narrative in play, but Mako is as much of a Campbellian hero as he is– which is often ignored and worth noting. Her test is the fight to protect Hong Kong from the dual-Kaiju attack, the final battle is the rift-closing mission, and her re-emergence into the world is through the escape pod. Her crossing of the threshold is her trial with “chasing the rabbit” on her test-run in the Jaeger– after that point she is Gipsy Danger’s pilot in truth, even despite the fraught circumstances of her first piloting attempt. Raleigh is her messenger, who calls Mako to action by encouraging her to pursue becoming a Jaeger pilot even against Marshall Stacker Pentecost’s (the ever-amazing Idris Elba) insistence. One of the notable elements is that the journey will not be alone, as often found in the Campbellian model, but rather includes a team. ![]() Priester and I have been charting the differences likely to be seen in a heroic journey arc for a female character. In our Heroine’s Journey series here at FANgirl, B.J. While Raleigh Beckett is the male lead, Jaffe points out that Mako “binds the rest of the characters in the story together” and that she is the one “who goes on a Campbellian heroic journey.” Over at TheMarySue, Brooke Jaffe posted an essay discussing how Pacific Rim smashed action-movie gender tropes with the character Mako Mori.
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