Does Your Favorite Movie Pass the Test?

A few weeks ago, I read a blogger's movie review which mentioned the "Bechdel test." I had never heard of this test before, but once I learned what it was, it changed the way I look at film and television as a woman. The Bechdel Test is an informal test popularized by a comic by Alison Bechdel. You can see the original strip here. Basically, a media text passes the Bechdel test if it meets the following criteria:

1. It has to have at least two women in it,
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something besides a man.

This didn't seem like it should be a hard test to pass. After all, the total female population in the U.S. is slightly higher than the male population, at least as of last year, and most people have several women that they consider important parts of their lives (mothers, sisters, daughters, significant others, bosses, co-workers, friends, enemies, etc.). Surely it must take at least two female characters to tell most stories. Surely the women in these stories would have more to talk about than just members of the opposite sex. As I thought through my list of favorite movies, however, I saw just how many of the films I love failed this simple test. Out of my top three favorite movies (Speed Racer, The Life Aquatic, and The Ring), only one of them passed (The Ring), and it was the only one with a female protagonist.

Since I learned of the Test, my husband and I have analyzed every movie, TV show episode, and video game we've experienced together to see whether or not it passes, and the results have been really thought-provoking. A small website has even developed around the test, with a list of movies and their Bechdel grade, detailing which aspects of the test they pass and fail. It's easy to go through the list and only take notice of the films that didn't pass, while a large number of them actually did pass. But to see so many films with the red stop sign symbol, meaning there were less than two women in the film, is extremely disheartening.

So the big question is why. Why are women so underrepresented in movies? Why are women often only utilized to promote male characters in movies? We make up half of the country's population, we go see movies, we love to see characters that we can relate to, and we certainly don't just talk about men all the time. Why is the female protagonist so rare, and the significant female supporting character nearly as rare?

The Bechdel Test website links to an article with one explanation: Jennifer Kesler explains in her article for The Hathor Legacy that her professors and peers in film school criticized many of her screenplays for their abundance of female characters having conversations about subjects other than men. Their reasoning? “The audience doesn’t want to listen to a bunch of women talking about whatever it is women talk about," Jessica recounts, regardless of the fact that these conversations in her screenplays served to advance the plot. Jessica goes on to argue that this teaching is terribly outdated and is not applicable to the modern generation of movie-goers, who are taught that women are equals. "We had a whole generation too young to remember why we needed second wave feminism, for cryin’ out loud, and here we were adhering to rules from the 1950s."

So next time you watch a movie or television show, think about what you just saw and how it represented women. Give it the Bechdel Test, and if it fails, think about how you, as a consumer, can express your dissatisfaction to the studio. Consider telling your friends, male and female, that this media text doesn't pass such a simple test (perhaps influencing their decision to watch it or not), adding the text to the list on the Bechdel Test website, or "voting" with your dollars should the opportunity to see the program again or buy the DVD arise.