Thank you to those who showed up to my drawing workshop on how to sketch faces with pen. Here are some screenshots. The objective of this workshop was to go past the reflexe to erase your drawing so using a pen would remove that option and relieve you from that stress. Also it’s always good to recommend with new tools.
If you want to join the following workshops, please become a member of my meetup group: https://www.meetup.com/bangkok-drawing-meetup/
Hello everyone welcome to ART IS podcast, this is Boris, cartoonist, teacher and podcaster, you can follow me on instagram @comicxbyboris to enjoy my original comic strips which i’ll be posting on a daily basis.
I was thinking about goodness. You know, how to be a good human being. You might have heard a lot of people say that things like religion, culture, national identity, to name a few, put barriers between us. But if we remove all that, what I would call the layers of programming, what will there be left of humans?
It might sound scary but for some reason I am hopeful that humans will be able to cohabit. Also, I tend to dream about some sort of minimum level of virtue that we all should have in us.
You have probably thought about it too. Have you ever asked yourself, why can’t everyone have the same standards as me when it comes to acceptance and tolerance?
On the surface level it seems that global standards can solve all the problems but you have to consider the point that by within the intent of imposing a global standard lay the traces of a possible tyrannical.system. We have the LAW, but even the laws are constantly being debated.
The push and pull, the flexibility and most importantly diversity of ideas were and are important for civilized society. We have to accept to sit and have relationships with people whose opinions differ from yours.
Why? Well because we live together and most problems you might face were created by individuals , groups of individuals, systems, organizations and so on, and we need each other to overcome our own mistakes and due to the complexity we need a diverse number of perspectives to get a better grasp of what is in front of us.
We might never figure out the right configuration but that tuning, that dance we do, is crucial.
I have read a quote from Dave Chappelle, my favorite stand up comedian of all time which delivers this idea in spades:
The thing is, you will disagree with people you care about and that shouldn’t make you dislike them. And people with whom you disagree with, are not your enemies by default.
I am guilty of this myself but we all want what “ha ha !” revelation moment where you paralyse the person you are discussing with and make them realize something that is more in line with your own line of thinking. I believe the outcome of a productive discussion, should come from a willingness to figure things out together like a win-win relationship.
Ultimately I believe that every feeling you feel, good or bad, has a place in this universe, the courage is to be able to reflect on them, process them and of course if these feelings are causing you some discomfort, maybe even suffering, you have to talk.
Talk with your friends, your neighbors, your parents, your partners, your teachers, your mentors, etc.
I believe we are all connected. From a romantic perspective, as my hero author Grant Morrison says: a single cell split to give birth to humanity. I somehow feel THAT single cell is in each and every one of us.
Also think about the moments when you connected with a fictional.character in a book or movie and cried when the character cried.
Maybe sometimes you have said something hurtful to your partner and seeing their face wither into sadness, made you feel it too (which is why face to face communication is important right?).
All this to say, when you hate somebody, ask yourself if you really hate that person or maybe you hate the part of yourself that likes that person. They’ve done something wrong and it scares you that you might be able to do the same one day.
So don’t be scared to take some time to think, if you don’t have people to talk to at that particular moment, write or record a podcast because that’s what I’m doing.
Bonne journée.
As a cartoonist who loves stories, whether it’s novels, comic books, or movies I am always looking for ways to improve myself when it comes to writing.
I have this idea about a team of female protagonists which I am in the process of writing. I looked around on the Internet for cliches to avoid and the Bechdel test, something I wanted to learn more about was mentioned more than once whether it was in podcasts, articles and forums.
So I wanted to find out for myself what it is and hopefully learn something that would help my writing. However when I noticed how a satirical comment from a prolific cartoonist was turned into under the guise of people who critique ART but who have never themselves created any ART, I had to say something.
The test is named after the American cartoonist Alison Bechdel who suggested a way to check whether a film shows women as equal to men, by asking if it includes:
Alison Bechdel was inspired by an essay by writer Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own” in which she noted that she rarely saw “women represented as friends” in works of fiction. Instead, women were shown only “in their relation to men.”
I wanted to talk about this test because it is referenced in several discussions as a good indicator whether women are shown as equals to men. I don’t know about that because the test is flawed.
OK before we go any further some of you may say, but who cares? Why are people so worried about representation. Actually I have another post about representation coming soon but I am at first glance sympathetic to the cause. Because for me stories are not just stories. Movies are a representation of reality, a representation of society. I understand the frustration in finding that not being able to give everyone a place in MOVIE REALITY is like not being able to figure out their place in OUR REALITY. But we have to keep in mind that the way ART is created and enjoyed is very subjective.
Having said that I have found articles which give a financial argument in support of this test showing that the movies released as recent as 2016 who pass the test on average make more money internationally than the movies that don’t. This is an interesting point to which I will come back in a moment.
As a cartoonist myself who admires my peers. I think Alison Bechdel did what any artist who has something to say does, I feel that this method as been twisted to be used as a tool to evaluate film in general. SHE doesn’t even follow it seriously. (go watch her interview in Late Night with Seth Meyers show)
I believe that she did what most good artists do, she said “HEY HAVE YOU NOTICED…?” with her art.
I finally get to the part where I am going to put forward my arguments against not only this test but any test to evaluate the quality of art. Talking about the limitations of the Bechdel test is not a new idea, it’s just my version of the idea.
The first rule is to have at least two women with names. This is a very reasonable and to be completely honest in a webcomic series I published I put three women and they don’t interact with each other so needless to say this is therapeutic for me, and makes me study my own degree of misogyny.
However, there is a reason for it, because most movies are written by men. I will propose a solution for this at the end don’t worry, but the solution is not to fill the cast with women who feel out of place in the whole story. I hate to do this but since these are my arguments I will take another example. It’s like saying Japanese people are racists. If you look at their history you might understand why they have been closed to other cultures, the solution is not to flood their country with people from other cultures, they will feel out of place by THEY, I mean the foreigners and the Japanese people.
The second rule is that they know each other, or at least talk to each other. I don’t know about you but as a straight man I have rarely been in a place where I actually witnessed two women talk to each other as if I wasn’t there, we all talk together about a topic. I don’t sit there and eaves drop on what they are saying. It’s usually me and another friend or in a large group of people. So when I actually sit and write as a man I tend to simplify and put the events through my subjective lenses.
As mentioned earlier movies are a representation of real life even if it takes place in a distant future. For the third rule, I know it’s not the only topic but are you telling me that two women who are friends never talk about men in their lives? And from a story writing point of view If the protagonist is mostly male and as protagonist by definitions his decisions drive the plot forward the scenes you would want to show would be the consequences of his decisions so other characters whether they are male of female would react, comment on what the male protagonist does.
To give an example, to see whether the opposite is true, when we take a movie like GONE GIRL, based on the novel written by Gillian Flynn who also wrote the screenplay for the movie. Since Amy, the character played by Rosamund Pike is the protagonist the story revolves around her so the men are shown in relationship with her, and when they meet and talk like when Ben Affleck’s character talks to one of her ex-boyfriends they talk about Amy. That doesn’t mean that men are not shown as equals in that movie, the movie is serving a story not a character.
Now let’s talk about the financial argument in favor of such tests: Yes movies which pass the test earn more than the ones that don’t but there is no proof of connection between the movie passing the test and the additional amount of money it makes. Otherwise executives who are always looking for formulas to follow because movie business is business after all would screen the scripts and require scenes that would allow the movie to pass the test before green lighting the projects.
By the way while I was talking you might have seen scenes from movies with GREEN OR RED Bs you might have seen that the following movies have surprisingly passed the test:
Weird science 1985
American Pie 2 (2001)
How to lose a guy in 10 days (2003)
Scary movie (2000)
Conan the barbarian
Snakes on a plane
However, here are some movies that don’t pass the Bechdel test:
The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman to win the oscar for best director doesn’t pass the Bechdel test.
ORLANDO fails the Bechdel test, a movie based on the novel by Virginia Woolf who inspired the test in the first place.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? from 1966 doesn’t pass the test either.
This happens because you can build scenes in a movie which allow you to pass the test but then the overall movie might not move us forward in solving the problem which we will talk about.
Here are some more movies that failed the test:
Gravity
Girl with the dragon tattoo
Pacific Rim
Run lola run
Lord of the Rings trilogy
Moonlight
A quiet place
Clearly, the test is not an indicator of the quality of the movie.
How good are movies which pass the Bechdel Test?
Check out the link above, the movies that failed the test have higher rating than the ones that did . Again the same point could be made here, the aspect of the movie that made the movie fail the test is not what made the movie better in the eyes of critics.
The other point which can be pointed out is that, YES women go watch the movies, but it’s not only women who go watch the movie. And this test gives importance to the role women play in movies, if we do that then we also need to come up with tests for all the people who are not represented in most movies. This again will only create frustration to the future creators and force filmmakers to try to please a larger crowd instead of just saying what they want to.
I propose that we should ask ourselves, what is the problem we are trying to solve?
WOMEN ARE ALWAYS SHOWN FROM THE MALE PERSPECTIVE.
As I mentioned earlier since most movies are written by men, they are writing about the things they have felt during a particular period of time. So to change this, the perspective from which the stories are told need to be diverse rather than the gender of the characters. Characters in a works of fiction should represent ideas. We understand stories because we communicate through stories. They have to inspire empathy so the point of the story is to make you feel what the character feels regardless of their gender, ethnicity and so on.
Just saying that one person’s perspective is always different from your own is also a lack of imagination, rather the opposite stance should be adopted which means regardless of the person portrayed on the screen if you say to yourself “I am open to what that person has to say”, regardless of where they come from, THAT would bring us together. If you feel that your voice is not heard on your beloved art form, try to create your version of it, that’s how innovation happens. Create so much and so many things with so much enthusiasm that people can’t ignore you.
CONCLUSION
Everything starts with acceptance, accept that there is a problem, but the problem is not that there should be more women on the screen, the problem is, there needs to more creative writers who can create compelling characters to make us think and feel like someone we are not.
Well the first rule of ART is there shouldn’t be any rules, although this formula allows us to look back on film inventory and make assessments, this doesn’t help the future creations.
Giving someone a test is also giving them the shortcuts. I mean, Executives must love tests like this and then when they see that one film works that passes a criteria, they will flood the market with other films that fit that criteria until people are sick of it.
As a guy who is trying to publish comic books I read a lot of articles about writing compelling, complex female characters and almost all the articles said the same thing: WRITE A GOOD CHARACTER regardless of their gender.
Like I said I understand that women must have seen only the male perspectives on the screen, but it’s not enough to say having more women on the screen will solve problems or having more scenes with women will solve the problem.
If you feel there is a void in world, if you feel that something is missing in terms of creation, and you can make it, MAKE IT.
So tests like the Bechdel test are not enough or am I stupid?
I am watching the “explained” series on Netflix, they cover a wide variety of topics. I highly recommend it. After watching the episode on political correctness, the ideas I had on the subject have been stirred. It’s not clear where the line is drawn because as it refers to complex ideas.
But if you are yourself faced with what feels like a cosmic idea, the best you can do is start to form an opinion, and start from somewhere, otherwise you have to intellectually recoil in your corner afraid to be called a social pervert, a deviant, racist or anything you are scared of.
I was thinking about stereotypes projected on ethnic groups. Since I read THE ENIGMA OF REASON by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber in which they argue that humans not only have opinions about ideas they have but also on ideas that they think others have. This apparently from an evolutionary perspective allows us to place others in our social environment.
To come back to the stereotypes, when it comes to assumptions about Indians (I have to start somewhere to make a point), I have seen people make fun of Indians using negative stereotypes like how Indians smell like Curry and Indians themselves display pride as they refer to the positive stereotypes like the high number of doctors in USA. The point I am trying to make is that they are both stereotypes.
I am a teacher and cartoonist now, but I used to feel bad in a way when I would go to a meetup event and before I can finish saying what my job is, the person in front of me would guess it for me:
-Hey I work in the Automotive Industry…
-Are you an engineer?
No, I work in Purchasing, I am a Buyer (I was)
This happens to a lot of people, my colleagues who are also living in Bangkok with a teacher’s salary also get projected on them the image that if they are Caucasian, they must have a lot of money. You can argue that my colleagues and myself might have more than the average Thai person but still we are far away from a person working in a executive job.
So let me experiment an idea with the following statement: Every adult human being no matter what their background is, wants to be considered as a person first. This I believe is a good start to develop your curiosity about people.
This links to one of my previous posts, I want the authors to be given the full range to express their honest feelings so that humanity in their work of art connects with the people just because they are people not because they belong or are assigned to a specific group.
So if you are offended by this post or by a bad assumption you have heard around you or about you, take a moment to think again about the way you feel. Maybe you feel proud about good assumptions that confirm your self image.
Bonne journée.
Hey here is something that never happens to me. When I’m watching a show like Breaking Bad, I don’t say to myself : “Wow, this is so good, I wish there was an Indian character to represent me in the show.”
I respect representation as long as it comes from the author, or the auteur depending on whether they have an original vision or not. I’ve heard arguments especially for popular intellectual properties that if there is no representation then the show runner, the writers, the director, the creator, etc, must be racist.
Let’s say there was an Indian antagonist, a brutal bad guy, should I be offended that the representation is wrong?
I firmly believe that we should let the people tell good stories. I’ll enjoy good honest stories because it will reflect the human experience accurately without any required filters. And since I happen to be human, so I can relate.
But forcefully inserting characters just to show you are progressive makes me cringe.
OK let’s say representation becomes a requirement for the creative work, for storytelling, how would the creators know what they define as representation is objectively correct or is proportionate to the actual real human population of the world?
And if the studio starts conducting surveys to dictate what characters the author should and shouldn’t use in a story, it stops being true characters, and start becoming ingredients in a product, NOT a work of ART.
Seth Godin beautifully said that ART is what Humans make, well if the ART is flawed, doesn’t it make it more HUMAN?
I’ve said it before I’ll say it again ART is all about how people feel when they create it and how they feel when they enjoy it. If you want real representation I vote for representation of creators, not artificial extracts included in a Art made into a commodity.
If you are fighting for representation, STOP FIGHTING, START CREATING. Create so much and so creatively that they can’t ignore your voice.
Bonne journée.
SKETCHMAN BORIS 