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The Bechdel Test

 

The rules now known as the Bechdel test first appeared in 1985 in Alison Bechdel's comic strip "Dykes To Watch Out For." In a strip titled "The Rule", two women, who resemble the future characters Mo and Ginger,[9] discuss seeing a film and the black woman explains that she only goes to a movie if it satisfies the following requirements:

  1. The movie has to have at least two women in it,

  2. who talk to each other,

  3. about something besides a man.[10][11][12]

The white woman acknowledges that the idea is pretty strict, but good. Not finding any films that meet their requirements, they go home together.[9]

Alison Bechdel*

(1960 - )

The test has also been referred to as the "Bechdel–Wallace test"[13] (which Bechdel herself prefers),[14] the "Bechdel rule",[15] "Bechdel's law",[16] or the "Mo Movie Measure".[12] Bechdel credited the idea for the test to a friend and karate training partner, Liz Wallace, whose name appears in the marquee of the strip.[17][18]  She later wrote that she was pretty certain that Wallace was inspired by Virginia Woolf's essay "A Room of One's Own."[1]

 

Originally meant as "a little lesbian joke in an alternative feminist newspaper", according to Bechdel,[19] the test moved into mainstream criticism in the 2010s and has been described as "the standard by which feminist critics judge television, movies, books, and other media."{20}

In 2013, an Internet newspaper described it as "almost a household phrase, common shorthand to capture whether a film is woman-friendly".[21] The failure of major Hollywood productions such as Pacific Rim (2013) to pass the test was addressed in depth in the media.[22] According to Neda Ulaby, the test still resonates because "it articulates something often missing in popular culture: not the number of women we see on screen, but the depth of their stories, and the range of their concerns."[17] It has also attracted academic interest from a computational analysis approach.[10]

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Several variants of the test have been proposed—for example, that the two women must be named characters,[24] or that there must be at least a total of 60 seconds of conversation.[25]

 

Pass and fail proportion

 

The website Bechdel test.com is a user-edited database of some 4,500 films classified by whether or not they pass the test, with the added requirement that the women must be named characters. As of April 2015, it listed 58% of these films as passing all three of the test's requirements, 10% as failing one, 22% as failing two, and 10% as failing all three.[33]

 

According to Mark Harris of Entertainment Weekly, if passing the test were mandatory, it would have jeopardized half of the 2009Academy Award for Best Picture nominees.[24] The news website Vocativ, when subjecting the top-grossing films of 2013 to the Bechdel test, concluded that roughly half of them passed (although some dubiously) and the other half failed.[34]

 

Writer Charles Stross noted that about half of the films that do pass the test only do so because the women talk about marriage or babies.[35] Works that fail the test include some that are mainly about or aimed at women, or which do feature prominent female characters. The television series Sex and the City highlights its own failure to pass the test by having one of the four female main characters ask: "How does it happen that four such smart women have nothing to talk about but boyfriends? It's like seventh grade with bank accounts!"[17]

 

Limitations and criticism

 

The Bechdel test only indicates whether women are present in a work of fiction to a certain degree. A work may pass the test and still contain sexist content, and a work with prominent female characters may fail the test.[15] A work may fail the test for reasons unrelated to gender bias, such as because its setting works against the inclusion of women (e.g., Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, set in a medieval monastery).[16] For these reasons, the Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin criticized the test as prizing "box-ticking and stat-hoarding over analysis and appreciation", and suggested that the underlying problem of the lack of well-drawn female characters in film ought to be a topic of discourse, rather than films failing or passing the Bechdel test.[37]  FiveThirtyEight's writer Walt Hickey noted that the test does not measure whether a film is a model of gender equality, and that passing it does not ensure the quality of writing, significance or depth of female roles—but, he wrote, "it's the best test on gender equity in film we have—and, perhaps more important ..., the only test we have data on".[36]

 

In an attempt at a quantitative analysis of works as to whether or not they pass the test, at least one researcher, Faith Lawrence, noted that the results depend on how rigorously the test is applied. One of the questions arising from its application is whether a reference to a man at any point within a conversation that also covers other topics invalidates the entire exchange. If not, the question remains how one defines the start and end of a conversation.[13]

 

Nina Power wrote that the test raises the questions of whether fiction has a duty to represent women (rather than to pursue whatever the creator's own agenda might be) and to be "realistic" in the representation of women. She also wrote that it remained to be determined how often real life passes the Bechdel test, and what the influence of fiction on that might be.[35]

 

* NOTE: Allison Bechdel in not a film theorist. Rather, her ideas of female representation in film is used to support a cinematic gender stance. Original article found on Wikipedia.

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Sources

 

  1.  Bechdel, Allison. "Testy". Alison Bechdel blog. Posted November 8, 2013.

  2. Jump up^ "Alison Bechdel Would Like You to Call It the "Bechdel–Wallace Test," ThankYouVeryMuch". 25 August 2015. Retrieved26 August 2015.

  3. Jump up^ "Bechdel-Test: Frauen spielen keine Rolle". Kurier. 8 August 2012. Retrieved 19 August 2012.

  4. Jump up^ Woolf, Virginia. Thomas, Stephen, ed. "A Room of One's Own: Chapter 5". The University of Adelaide Library. University of Adelaide Press. Retrieved 24 December 2012.

  5. Jump up^ Bleakley, A.; Jamieson, P. E.; Romer, D. (2012). "Trends of Sexual and Violent Content by Gender in Top-Grossing U.S. Films, 1950–2006". Journal of Adolescent Health 51 (1): 73–79.doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2012.02.006. PMID 22727080.

  6. Jump up^ Sakoui, Anousha; Magnusson, Niklas (22 September 2014)."'Hunger Games' success masks stubborn gender gap in Hollywood". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 22 September 2014. With reference to: Smith, Stacy L.; Pieper, Katherine. "Gender Bias Without Borders: An Investigation of Female Characters in Popular Films Across 11 Countries". See Jane. Retrieved 16 April 2016.

  7. Jump up^ Smith, Stacy L.; Choueiti, Marc; Pieper, Katherine; Gillig, Traci; Lee, Carmen; Dylan, DeLuca. "Inequality in 700 Popular Films: Examining Portrayals of Gender, Race, & LGBT Status from 2007 to 2014". USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Retrieved 6 August 2015.

  8. Jump up^ Swanson, Ana (12 April 2016). "The problem with almost all movies". The Washington Post. With reference to: Anderson, Hanah; Daniels, Matt. "The Largest Analysis of Film Dialogue by Gender, Ever". Polygraph.

  9. ^ Jump up to:a b Martindale, Kathleen (1997). Un/Popular Culture: Lesbian Writing After the Sex Wars. Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press. p. 69. ISBN 0791432890.

  10. Jump up^ Bechdel, Allison. Dykes to Watch Out For. Firebrand Books (October 1, 1986). ISBN 978-0932379177

  11. Jump up^ "The Rule" comic page posted on Alison Bechdel's online photostream

  12. ^ Jump up to:a b Alisonbechdel.blogspot.com

  13. ^ Jump up to:a b Lawrence, Faith (June 2011). "SPARQLing Conversation: Automating The Bechdel–Wallace Test" (PDF). Paper presented at the Narrative and Hypertext Workshop, Hypertext 2011. Retrieved26 July 2012.

  14. Jump up^ On the Fresh Air program on NPR on August 17, 2015, in response to a question from host Terry Gross, Bechdel said she would prefer the test be referred to as the Bechdel–Wallace Test.

  15. ^ Jump up to:a b Wilson, Sarah (28 June 2012). "Bechdel Rule still applies to portrayal of women in films". The Oklahoma Daily.

  16. ^ Jump up to:a b Stross, Charles (28 July 2008). "Bechdel's Law". Charlie's Diary. Retrieved 26 July 2012.

  17. ^ Jump up to:a b c d NPR Ulaby, Neda "The 'Bechdel Rule,' Defining Pop-Culture Character". September 2, 2008.

  18. Jump up^ Friend, Tad (11 April 2011). "Funny Like a Guy: Anna Faris and Hollywood's woman problem". The New Yorker (Condé Nast): 55. Retrieved 2011-09-17.

  19. Jump up^ Morlan, Kinsee (23 July 2014). "Comic-Con vs. the Bechdel Test". San Diego City Beat. Retrieved 15 August 2014.

  20. Jump up^ Steiger, Kay (2011). "No Clean Slate: Unshakeable race and gender politics in The Walking Dead". In Lowder, James. Triumph of The Walking Dead. BenBella Books. p. 104.ISBN 9781936661138. Retrieved 2014-04-20.

  21. Jump up^ Romano, Aja (18 August 2013). "The Mako Mori Test: 'Pacific Rim' inspires a Bechdel Test alternative". The Daily Dot. Retrieved15 September 2013.

  22. ^ Jump up to:a b McGuinness, Ross (18 July 2013). "The Bechdel test and why Hollywood is a man's, man's, man's world". Metro. Retrieved15 September 2013.

  23. Jump up^ Bechdel test academic paper.

  24. ^ Jump up to:a b Harris, Mark (6 August 2010). "I Am Woman. Hear Me... Please!". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 26 July 2012.

  25. Jump up^ "The Oscars and the Bechdel Test". Feminist Frequency. February 15, 2012. Retrieved 2013-11-08.

  26. Jump up^ "Swedish cinemas take aim at gender bias with Bechdel test rating". The Guardian. Associated Press. November 6, 2013. Retrieved 2013-11-08.

  27. Jump up^ "Gender equality within Eurimages: current situation and scope for evolution". European Women's Audiovisual Network. Retrieved6 August 2015.

  28. Jump up^ Gray, Kishonna (2014). Race, Gender, and Deviance in Xbox Live: Theoretical Perspectives from the Virtual Margins. Routledge. p. 28. ISBN 1317521803.

  29. Jump up^ Anthropy, Anna (2012). Rise of the videogame zinesters: How freaks, normals, amateurs, artists, dreamers, dropouts, queers, housewives, and people like you are taking back an art form(Seven Stories Press 1st ed.). Seven Stories Press.ISBN 9781609803735. Retrieved 2014-04-20.

  30. Jump up^ Agnello, Anthony John (July 2012). "Something other than a man: 15 games that pass the Bechdel Test". Gameological. Retrieved26 July 2012.

  31. Jump up^ Zalben, Alex (22 February 2012). "Witchblade/Red Sonja #1Passes The Bechdel Test". MTV Geek!. Retrieved 26 July 2012.

  32. Jump up^ "Does your show pass the Bechdel test? | Opinion | The Stage".The Stage. Retrieved 2016-02-05.

  33. Jump up^ "Statistics". bechdeltest.com. Retrieved 13 November 2013.

  34. ^ Jump up to:a b Sharma, Versha; Sender, Hanna (2 January 2014). "Hollywood Movies With Strong Female Roles Make More Money". Vocativ. Retrieved 2 January 2014.

  35. ^ Jump up to:a b Power, Nina (2009). One-dimensional woman. Zero Books. pp. 39 et seq. ISBN 1846942411. Retrieved 2014-04-20.

  36. ^ Jump up to:a b Hickey, Walt (1 April 2014). "The Dollar-And-Cents Case Against Hollywood's Exclusion of Women". FiveThirtyEight.

  37. Jump up^ Collin, Robbie (15 November 2013). "Bechdel test is damaging to the way we think about film". The Telegraph. Retrieved15 November 2013.

  38. Jump up^ Laurie Voss [seldo] (27 Feb 2015). "Does your project pass the Bechdel test? To pass, a function written by a woman dev must call a function written by another woman dev." (Tweet).

  39. Jump up^ Williams, Lauren C. (March 19, 2015), There's Now A Bechdel Test For The Tech World, ThinkProgress

  40. Jump up^ Kolakowski, Nick (Mar 24, 2015), A Bechdel Test for Tech?,Dice.com

  41. Jump up^ Elaine Kamlley; Melody Kramer (March 17, 2015). "Does 18F Pass the Bechdel Test for Tech?".

  42. Jump up^ Brainard, Curtis (22 March 2013). "'The Finkbeiner Test' Seven rules to avoid gratuitous gender profiles of female scientists".Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved 31 March 2013.

  43. Jump up^ "GLAAD introduces 'Studio Responsibility Index', report on LGBT images in films released by 'Big Six' studios". GLAAD. August 20, 2013. Retrieved August 24, 2013.

  44. Jump up^ John, Arit (21 August 2013). "Beyond the Bechdel Test: Two (New) Ways of Looking at Movies". The Atlantic. Retrieved15 September 2013.

  45. Jump up^ Hudson, Laura (March 19, 2012). "Kelly Sue Deconnick on the Evolution of Carol Danvers to Captain Marvel [Interview]". Comics Alliance. Retrieved April 27, 2015.

  46. Jump up^ Helvie, Forrest (November 21, 2013). "The Bechdel Test and a Sexy Lamp". Sequart Organization. Retrieved April 27, 2015.

  47. Jump up^ Snow, Georgia (30 November 2015). "Theatre gets its own Bechdel Test". The Stage. Retrieved 6 December 2015.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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