The Chan Test

The Chan Test

 

One of the problems I have with much of contemporary literature and popular culture can be summed up in four words: The young characters stink.  They’re boring, one-dimensional, and have no agency of their own.  They’re peripheral to the plot and aren’t allowed valid emotions, other than to back up the life choices of the adults in their lives.  I was disgusted by the ending of a famous novel, where a young boy sees one parent cheating, and is totally fine with it because based on no hard information whatsoever, he assumes they’re in love, and the kid tacitly supports the dissolution of his family because the parents are pursuing their own happiness, and one parent’s total abandonment of the family produces no signs of distress from the boy.

 

This is not how real children think.  A real child would feel betrayed, frustrated, and furious, even if he couldn’t find the words to express his emotions.  This is lazy, shoddy writing, created to create the result the author wanted at the expense of psychological truth.  It’s part of a silly trend, where children have no part to play in the plot other than to validate their parents’ questionable decisions or to be briefly adorable.

 

Much has been made of the Beschdel Test, which judges the way that women are written in a creative work by asking if two women have a conversation with each other that is not about a man.  The Chan Test asks how children are treated in a creative work by asking: “Would there be any real difference to the work if the kid were replaced with a cute puppy?”  If the answer is “yes,” the work passes the Chan Test.  Think about it.  In how many TV shows, movies, and books could the child be replaced with a little dog with no serious changes to the plot?  Many of, say, Roald Dahl’s books, like Matilda, Danny the Champion of the World, and The BFG feature a strong young character who is instrumental to driving the plot or righting a wrong.  Many prominent movies, TV shows, and books fail the Chan Test miserably.

 

I’ve tried to address this in my own writings, and in these recent reviews for The Strand of Big Little Lies Season 2 and Hellfire, I talk about works and how they connect to the Chan Test.  

 

Can you think of any recent examples that pass or fail the Chan Test?

 

 

–Chris Chan

 

 

Chris Chan’s first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” was released on August 27^th from MX Publishing, and is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there).  It is also available in a Kindle edition.