I always enjoy Pat Hynes’s columns. They make excellent points, needed in our world today, and get my own thoughts going.
A woman in a writer’s forum claimed that it was impossible for a man to write a good, accurate, female character. That led to a challenge, by a man in the group, to the women, to write about themselves as a man might write about them. (Did you follow that?) Some were funny, others sad. Funny: “Her breasts entered the room before her.” Sad: “No man would write a character like me.”
It got me interested in the way men and women portrayed each other in fiction, and might provide some insights into discussions that would be useful in Pat Hynes’s proposed educational programs.
We stumbled across an excellent British detective series, Scott and Bailey (Prime, BritBox, AppleTV or Roku). Like all detective shows, it has detectives solving problems while dealing with their management and their personal problems. Except this one is written, directed, and starred in by women. There are some striking differences between it and the rest of the genre.
First, there’s very little gun play, fighting, chase scenes, etc. Scott and Bailey solve crimes using a combination of their ability to observe human nature and their intelligence in reasoning about those observations. These lead to the arrest of suspects. When the culprits are arrested, there is little physical violence other than routine police work rounding up suspects.
Then, in the interrogation room Scott and Bailey use their psychological insights to break the evildoers down. No one in the interrogation room ever decides to jump up and punch someone.
The side stories about the women’s relationships with the men in their lives are illustrative as well. These intelligent women just make dumb choices about men. And the men? They are shallow caricatures. I was offended! There’s more to us than that! Could it be that’s how women feel about female characters in movies?
(If you haven’t heard about it, search “Bechdel test” for insights into how women are portrayed in film.)
It’s interesting to note that the last episode of the last season we watched was directed by a man. It ended with a long chase and fight scene involving guns, very out of character with the rest of the show.
I listened to an audio tape of Girl on a Train by Paula Hawkins and was taken with the differences in the way her characters thought and acted as opposed to how I, or some man, might have portrayed them.
Her characters are subtle and complex. You get to read the fine details of their observations of what is happening around them. That seems different from how a man, or at least I, might write the situation. (Note that the movie captures very little of this, only the book tells what’s going on in the character’s hearts and heads. Could it be it’s a failure of the visual media to be able to capture this sort of insight?)
One scene in particular, I thought, might provide a key insight into some of our gender miscommunications. A main character was walking through the police station to meet with the detective to discuss the case. As she walks through she’s thinking of the upcoming discussion and notes the effect her choice of dress has on the men she passes by.
Do you see what’s strange, to me, a man? I don’t know about other men, but that scene struck all sorts of cognitive dissonance in me. If I were writing a female character, I could easily write a woman who was all business ready to talk to the detective. I’ve known many women to use as role models. And if I were to write a flirtatious female, well maybe I could do that as well.
But to have both of those vibes going at the same time …
Do you see what I’m driving at? I can see the serious business. I can see the flirty behavior. But to have them both happening in the woman’s mind, at the same time? I would never have thought to create a scene like that.
Maybe this is the root of a lot of the problems between men and women? Women easily carrying multiple thoughts/feelings and men only able to pick up on one at a time?
Dennis Merritt lives in Shelburne Falls.