Is the Bechdel Test Useful?

[Mise]

I think a lot of the more prominent film critics happen to be men, for some reason, so I guess there's that factor too.

It still baffles me that a supposedly liberal bastion like Hollywood can be so anti-feminist.

 

[History_Buff]

I think it's a just a difference between personal opinion, and moneyed interest. I don't doubt most of these producers think female actors are as talented as men, but the point remains that they keep turning out of the same sort of movie, and they keep making money.

One doesn't fix that which is not broken.

My favourite film fails both the Bechdel test and the reverse Bechdel test.

On the topic of the reverse-Bechdel, I think that actually offers the best context in which to view the Bechdel test, sticking to the aggregate.

If one were to look at the rate of failure of the Bechdel test (say, in movies from 2012), and then compare it to the rate of failure of the reverse-Bechdel, it's probably something like 60%:10%, which is striking.

 

[TomYo689]

I am thoroughly amused by the fact that this test exists

 

[Traitorfish]

Why's that?

 

[Cutlass]

I think a lot of the more prominent film critics happen to be men, for some reason, so I guess there's that factor too.

It still baffles me that a supposedly liberal bastion like Hollywood can be so anti-feminist.

The mistake you make here is in thinking that Hollywood is a liberal bastion when it happens to actually be a capitalist bastion where many of the most prominent public faces happen to be liberal. But ultimately money rules, and conservative values, particularly in the form of the MPAA, are stronger than liberal ones.

 

[emzie]

Considering Twilight films nominally past the test, I'm skeptical of its power.

 

[Lillefix]

Considering Twilight films nominally past the test, I'm skeptical of its power.

As has been said before, it's not so much which movies pass the test, it's which movies don't pass it. And looking at the top 250 imdb movies...it doesn't look good tbh.

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah, there are big qualifiers on the Bechdale Test. The test applied to one movie, by itself, doesn't mean anything at all; it's merely a yardstick that can point someone in one direction or another when commenting upon the movie. However, I think the more interesting point is whether or not the output of Hollywood, in the aggregate, passes the test or not. Which is something I get into a little below.

You bring up an interesting case w/ A Few Good Men. Yes, Galloway was a full, well-rounded character and it is great that there was a woman character with as much depth as her. However, that raises the question of why that doesn't happen more often. Take Zed, Rip Torn's character from Men in Black. He's as well rounded and as thought out as any other minor supporting role. Setting aside, for the moment, that Rip Torn is a totally awesome actor who needs to be in more movies, why wasn't Zed a woman? Is there any bona fide reason Zed needs to be a man?

Zed's opposite number over in MI6 is M, James Bond's boss. The Bond movies have recently had Judi Dench as M. Now, there isn't any good reason why a woman shouldn't play a super spy's boss, but it is striking that Dench played the role simply because she is a woman. Third wave feminist critiques of portrayals of women in popular culture suggest that it shouldn't be a real shocker that a woman is in a major role of authority within a movie. That should happen just sort of automatically as women become the equals of men, but the Bechdale Test shows that this simply isn't happening.

So, yeah, A Few Good Men is a problem not because it doesn't have a strong female role, but because it doesn't have enough. Why wasn't the judge, for example, a woman? (Other than the fact that the original Sorkin play only had Galloway, that is)

I don't know. I don't think it's a good idea to artificially swap the gender of certain roles just to enforce some kind of "balance". I think the judge, to use your example, is male because Sorkin envisioned a male judge when writing the script (the fact that it's a military judge may also have played a role). That doesn't mean he was sexist when creating that character, and imo making a character female just to have one extra female character can be counterproductive as well.

As is the case with Zed in Men in Black, society still associates certain character archetypes with certain genders. We haven't moved past that point and probably never will, and movies should be allowed to acknowledge that. And Zed is kind of the grumpy no-nonsense boss who has to play the straight man to all the weird alien antics around him - I can see how this fits a male role better. Of course they could have subverted this expectation by filling it with a female character, but that would've had a different effect, and films should be allowed to play their tropes straight if they want to (and to be fair to the MiB movies, in the third one, Zed's successor is indeed a woman). The same could be true about the judge in A Few Good Men: Sorkin thought that this particular character would work better as a male.

For Judi Dench as M in the recent Bond movies, was her appearance intended to be shocking? Maybe it's because I'm not too familiar with the franchise to have any particular expectation, but to me she wasn't shocking. I didn't bat an eye at the fact that Bond's boss was a woman, at least. But even if it was, I don't understand the criticism of the surprise of her appearance, even if it was played up. Actually I think shaking up gender expectations in this way is the best way to leave them behind.

So in conclusion, I think it's more important to make sure that the female characters that are naturally part of a script are well-rounded characters and don't just fill narrative roles like "damsel in distress" or "love interest" or whatever, than to insert additional female characters to assert gender equality with some form of narrative affirmative action.

 

[Mise]

Re Leoreth's last post, I agree that it's more important to make sure female characters aren't stereotypes, but I also agree with BvBPL, that an easy way to do this is simply to flip a well-crafted male character and make it female instead. I don't see why it is wrong to do that at all.

The lack of decent female characters is a problem in itself, and can easily be solved, just by flipping male characters into female characters. We all agree that those characters are just as good when they are female as when they are male, so nobody loses out -- everybody wins. Where's the problem?

 

[Leoreth]

I just have the fear that it will feel forced. I guess it depends on the circumstances, though. Making half of the crew of a Navy destroyer female is more blatantly forced than doing the same with, say, the opposing attorney in a courtroom drama.

 

[History_Buff]

The lack of decent female characters is a problem in itself, and can easily be solved, just by flipping male characters into female characters. We all agree that those characters are just as good when they are female as when they are male, so nobody loses out -- everybody wins. Where's the problem?

What if you create a homosexual relationship?! What then!?

 

[TomYo689]

Why is this topic a problem that needs to be addressed?

 

[Leoreth]

I think this topic is great, so it is definitely not a problem that needs to be addressed

 

[TomYo689]

I mean like the media stance or whatever lol not this thread

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah, so ... gender equality in general, or gender equality in movies, or the Bechdel test as an indicator for gender equality in particular?

 

[bombshoo]

What if you create a homosexual relationship?! What then!?

Actually doing a version of this test for homosexuals would be quite interesting. Since not many movies have homosexuals, let's just only use movies that do. With that in mind. How many of these movies.

1) Have two or more (named) homosexual characters
2) Who talk to each other
3) About something other than being gay.

 

[Goodfella]

Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction both pass.

Actually doing a version of this test for homosexuals would be quite interesting. Since not many movies have homosexuals, let's just only use movies that do. With that in mind. How many of these movies.

1) Have two or more (named) homosexual characters
2) Who talk to each other
3) About something other than being gay.

But homosexuals make up somewhere around 5% of the population (from what I've read) so this version of the test wouldn't really tell us anything. Women make up 50% of the whole world.

 

[bombshoo]

Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction both pass.



But homosexuals make up somewhere around 5% of the population (from what I've read) so this version of the test wouldn't really tell us anything. Women make up 50% of the whole world.

That's why I restricted it to movies that already have gay characters, but I suppose it might be better to simply ask how many movies have a homosexual character that talks about anything other than their sexual orientation.

 

[_random_]

I just have the fear that it will feel forced. I guess it depends on the circumstances, though. Making half of the crew of a Navy destroyer female is more blatantly forced than doing the same with, say, the opposing attorney in a courtroom drama.

Yeah, I think there might be some legitimate reasons for a film not to pass the test, if the premise is such that women really wouldn't have much role to play in the story. War movies, especially period ones, would be the most obvious example of this.

Still, you'd expect a lot more movies passing than actually do.

 

[GoodGame]

Got into a debate about the Bechdel Test with my girlfriend recently.

The Bechdel Test, for those of you unaware, is as follows:

A movie passes the Bechdel Test if:
1.) It has two or more named women in it,
2.) Who talk to each other,
3.) About something other than a man.

(Note that it says "women" not "female." Whether or not you want to make a big deal out of that is up to you. You might claim that Finding Nemo doesn't pass because there aren't any women in it as nearly all the characters are anthropomorphic talking fish, not men and women. Or you might think that's pedantic.)

(Also note that having one conversation about something other than a man probably allows for passing the test even if every other conversation is about a man.)

A movie can pass all three tests or just one or two. Only about 53% of the movies recorded on bechdaletest.com meet all three criteria, which is striking because the bar is set so low.

So, do you think the Bechdel Test is a useful yardstick for discussing gender portrayals in movies? It seems totally bizarre that women make up half of the population but are often sidelined in popular media. The fact that so few movies pass this elemental test demonstrates this sidelining.

Note that there are plenty of movies that pass the test that don't necessarily make any sort of feminist statements or great strides towards gender equality, with Alien being a prime example. Equally, there are no doubt movies that make a strong case for equality in gender portrayals that don't pass the test, although none come immediately to mind. As such, the Bechdel Test is less a litmus test and more a yardstick that helps to frame the conversation.

Source.

Ripley non-verbally telling off the Queen is something other than a discussion about men-problems. LOL. Strong female roles:----lead a clan of xenomorphs, or attempt to annihilate one.

Thelma and Louise: Pass!

Inception: probably Fail

Lord of the Rings: Fail I find LoTR failing the most interesting because as this says, there are several strong women figures, including the defiant "but I am no man"scene.

Why it fails the test:

Despite having three strong female characters in Arwen, Eowyn, and Galadriel, they’re all in completely different parts of Middle Earth and they never even meet, much less talk to each other. Seriously, in the entire 10-hour trilogy, no two female characters ever actually speak to each other. Considering the fact that the entire population of New Zealand is in these movies, it kinda seems statistically impossible

http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/fe...s-that-surprisingly-fail-the-bechdel-test.php

So what about a movie in which everyone is a warrior, and about 50% of the warriors are female. They don't take much time out for chick flick talk. Is that really a fail? Or does it reflect an agenda to the Bechdel test---that discourse is critical in a movie for it to defy gender?

But apparently Starship Troopers passes the Bechdel test.