beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I have been watching MacGyver. It's... well, it's quite a lot rubbish, really. I like the Solve It With Science sections, but humans do not work like this, it's annoying.

Weirdest is the way they ration roles for women. There is one woman per episode. ( Read more... )

... yet I'm getting ever more defensive purely inside my own head about why I keep watching stuff that doesn't meet my minimum standards on women and ethnicity.



I was thinking how on earth the numbers can skew so badly. I give up on the Smurfette stuff, the single woman in the Man Story, it is a depth of no sense I cannot figure.

I was thinking though about Tosh and Gwen. Different shows, Tosh in Torchwood, Gwen in Merlin. I can see how you end up with one woman of colour in a season. ( Read more... )

That math only works one episode at a time though.

If you count the main cast once and only once, you get to the end of the season and realise you've got 1/42 women of colour, 2%, because they were always the same one.

So even if people are paying attention to the maths, there has to be someone with the grand view, the whole season view, before this problem is apparent. ( Read more... )



I have no grand conclusions. Just that a lot of TV needs marking Could Do Better.
And it should be really simple to fix, if someone is paying attention.


Numbers:
http://beccaelizabeth.dreamwidth.org/tag/counting
http://beccaelizabeth.livejournal.com/1747350.html
http://such-heights.dreamwidth.org/238121.html
http://dsudis.livejournal.com/496173.html
http://characterscount.pbworks.com/w/page/15546210/FrontPage

I have a preliminary character count on Doctor Who season 1
http://beccaelizabeth.dreamwidth.org/2376832.html
I need to watch it again to make sure all characters are speaking characters and I identified them correctly.
Also to do the Bechdel count and the death count.

I've been making up rules as I go along, especially about aliens and computer voices, who are clearly actors and characters but not necessarily women or characters of color. Blue not being the sort of color I'm interested in. This especially confuses things in episodes with very many different aliens all talking. Like the very second episode ever. I think that one will remain confusing no matter how I set the rules. Cassandra all on her own gives the boundaries a kicking.

Also I wouldn't usually count computers when looking into the representation of women on TV, but, a whole lot of computer voices are feminine. Does that matter? Well if I don't write it down somewhere I'll not notice if there's a pattern, if women are over represented in the computer voice department. But if I do write it down, do I count it in the total characters, or the total women? No, because there's no human woman there. I wish to count human women. But even if I do keep count of computer voices, where do I figure Dalek and Cyberman voices? Do they count as computers too? Do Daleks and Cybermen have gender, even when you know who they were before they turned into Daleks and/or Cybermen? I have decided no, and am not going to count them.

The limitations on this counting thing are readily apparent.

I've written all the characters down on a notepad so I can change the rules and recount later if I want.
But SF is, for obvious reasons, a bugger to count.

In case people think the gender of the cast is a spoiler, ( Read more... )

I'm not getting into anything beyond the counting, but the count is annoying.
And I don't suspect the writers or makers or anyone involved in it to have thought as far as counting in the first place.

I've only got the first 3 eps transcribed so I can't count 4 or 5. Also even when I've got an accurate list of speaking characters I won't be able to count 5. I'm not watching that again.

But I'm going to count people in the first 3 days. I go through the transcript, copy all the names of speaking people, label them best as I can see (currently from memory), and then add people up. I can't count the children, they are Many and Varied.
( Read more... )


So it works out at about 41-44% women and 15% people of color for these three episodes.
Which is... actually vaguely embarassing since I vaguely felt there were A Lot Of Women, and we're still not up to half.
But for the show is doing better.

Very roughly. Still need to check.
Need the names and categories for people in day 4 and 5.

This is a first draft and I shouldn't draw conclusions from it.


I haven't figured out Bechdel pass/fail yet. Two named women, yes. Who talk to each other, yes, but is it about a man or in a group including men? Have to check. Think y and y.

That requires brain and reading or watching tho. And I've done a bunch of that for right now.

also I should be asleep by now.

http://dsudis.livejournal.com/496173.html
counting women and people of color in Stargate SG1 season 1

if this turns into a meme and everyone takes a season we'll end up with huge heaps of shiny data :-)