The Mako Mori Test The big deal about Mako Mori is that she isn't there as an adjunct to any male characters. Her storyline is her own. It's pretty badass.

 

In discussing female representation in movies, the Bechdel Test remains the standard by which we measure things. It’s such a low bar — having two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man — and yet it remains a barrier that many movies fail to cross, even now. Last year, all of the top three highest-grossing movies passed the Bechdel test, and all three had female leads, but things get worse as we round out the top ten.

It is possible, however, for a movie to pass the Bechdel Test and still be a woeful example of female representation: the Twilight movie series, for example, pass Bechdel, but still centre a toxic relationship. Conversely, it is possible for a film to fail Bechdel but still have constructive, strong female characters. One such film to consider is recent Golden Globe-winning director Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 homage to Japanese pop culture, Pacific Rim.

Pacific Rim is about the last-stand battles for the future of humanity between giant mechs (jaegers) and giant Godzilla-esque sea monsters (kaiju). Set in Hong Kong, the multicultural team of mech-operators is led by Idris Elba and one of the protagonists is a Japanese woman, trope-namer Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi). The only other female characters have only a handful of lines between them and none of them are in a scene shared with another woman, so that’s a massive Bechdel fail, an oft-cited criticism. However, one of the primary relationships in the film is the father-daughter dynamic between Elba and Kikuchi, so in terms of POC representation, we’re going strong.

But the big deal about Mako Mori is that she isn’t there as an adjunct to any male characters. Her storyline is her own, based on her own ambition to become a jaeger pilot due to losing her family in a kaiju attack as a child. She works with the male characters, but she’s no one’s love interest, she’s not objectified and she has her own hero’s journey. It’s pretty badass.

It was in discussions of Pacific Rim, which was widely embraced in ‘fandom’ circles, that Tumblr user chaila first proposed the Mako Mori test:

Let’s propose the Mako Mori test, to live alongside 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.

Mako Mori is a character informed by her Japanese heritage rather than being a caricature of it, who has a strong personal motivation and a powerful relationship with another POC in the movie. However, not only does Mori not speak with another woman, she doesn’t say much in general. In her scenes with brash, talkative male figures, she’s a stolid, often-silent presence. And there were many speaking characters in Pacific Rim who could have been made women without changing the plot. It’s definitely progress, though, to create such a strong female character and to have her be a person of color.

Other movies that have passed the Mako Mori test include: The Craft, Brave, Mulan, The Color Purple, Sister Act, Miss Sloane, Wonder Woman, The Love Witch, Carol.

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