The Bechdel Test for Women in Movies
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- Category: Feminism & Sexuality
- Created on Sunday, 20 June 2010 04:17
- Written by YouTube
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Guest (Cecilia B.)
PermalinkGosh, it seems so simple, but in quickly scanning my movie collection, hardly any passed this test. The female characters of my favourite movies are far too often merely the women "belonging" to a more important male character. They have value only as extensions of the men. Many of the movies had no women at all. Pretty sad. I should have considered this before.
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It would be interesting to see how many radical or revolutionary films pass this test. I don't think Battle of Algiers does. Nor Burn!. Does Breaking With Old Ideas?
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Guest (Stephanie McMillan)
PermalinkThe only one I can think of, and I'm not sure of it either because it's been a while since I've seen it, is "The White Rose."
It would be interesting to ask this question of other narrative forms too, like novels, comics, TV programs. Of course it's not just the Hollywood film industry that's built on male supremacy, but the entire culture.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer passes!0 Like -
Guest (saoirse)
PermalinkHere's the full list of films posters shown during the video:
Dark Knight
District 9
Slumdog Millionaire
Terminator Salvation
GI Joe
Shrek
The Watchmen
Bourne Supremacy
Bourne Identity
Transformers
Bruno
Hackers
Ghost Busters
The Big Lebowski
Wall E
Wanted
Ocean's 12
Clerks
The 3 interchangable Pirates Movies
Austin Powers
Austin Powers: Spy who shagged
Austin Powers: Goldmember
MIB
Fight Club
5th Element
The Princess Bride
Hellboy 2
Milk
wedding Singer
Shawshank Redemption
Resovoir Dogs
Point Break
Quantum of Solace
Raiders
Aliens 3
Lord of the Rings
Lord of the Rings 2
Lord of the Rings 3
Ferris Buellers Day Off
The Truman Show
Dusk Til Dawn
Trainspotting
Mission Impossible
Braveheart
Toy Story
Gladiator
X men
X men 3
when harry met Sally
Back to the future 2
Back to the future 3
Tomb Raider
Pulp Fiction
Interview/Vampire
Seven
Home Alone
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Guest (saoirse)
PermalinkI am feeling uncertain about how to approach this discussion. I want to contribute something constructive and still formulating my thoughts. I will say I don't think this is a random list. I think each film was picked quite intentionally. They cover a large swath of popular "art" films, a few hollywood blockbusters and few straight up dramas.
A number of the films in the video have strong female protagonists and romance is not a central theme in the movie - Alien 3, Tomb Raider, X-men, Wanted, There are also some films here that may not belong - the later Bourne films have multiple female characters as do the Xmen movies and a couple of albeit minor scenes in Pulp Fiction cover all 3 criteria.
In the meantime more stats from the video:
3 Gore Verbinski Films
The 3 Pirates Movies
3 David Fincher Films
Seven
Fight Club
Alien 3
3 Tarantino Films
Pulp Fiction
Resovoir Dogs
Dusk Til Dawn
2 Danny Boyle
Trainspotting
Slumdog
2 John Hughes Films
Home Alone
Ferris Bueller
3 Jay Roach/3 Mike Myers
Austin Powers
Austin Powers
Austin Powers
3 Matt Damon films
Oceans 12
Bourne Identity
Bourne Supremacy
3 Angelina Jolie Films
Hackers
Tomb Raider
Wanted
2 Christian Bale Films
Dark Knight
Terminator Salvation0 Like -
Guest (Jessica)
PermalinkThere is a website that lists movies that do and don't pass this test--and there is discussion and debate over whether individual movies do or don't pass. I like that she explains that the point of the test is really to show the systemic exclusion of women's stories from Hollywood films and not about whether a particular movie is good or bad, or misogynist or feminist. For example, I just saw a very good and politically interesting movie called Sleep Dealers that I don't think passes this test at all, but I predicted Sex and the City 2 would pass this test (and it does according to the website, though I haven't seen it myself) and by all accounts it is a horrible movie. Check out the website if you are interested: http://bechdeltest.com/
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Guest (Tell No Lies)
PermalinkIndeed. The test certainly doesn't determine if a film is feminist or even good. But it sure does expose the breadth of the exclusion of women's experiences. Sleep Dealers is a great political movie, but the fact that it doesn't pass the Bechdel test says something not just about the dominant culture but also about radical oppositional culture.
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Guest (David_D)
PermalinkThis gets me thinking about something pretty different. As a gay man, I must admit that I live my social life in a very male-dominated sphere - there are very few females in it. Probably 95% of who I socially interact with are males. This all makes me think of RCP's previous analyses about allegedly "misogynist" male homosexuality.
But I do wonder, to what extent, the social outlook of straight men, as well, excludes females? Male-female relations may be, to many heterosexual men (and women) sexualized, seeming to preclude non-sexual friendships...
...
In any event, these movies are reflecting the old line about men being the active agents in the world, taking care of business, etc., while women are mainly seeking love. Even the "chick flicks," with all their female-female conversation, orbit around "romance." Movies by Quentin Tarentino, while not exactly "progressive," do portray women as active agents in society affecting the world around them.0 Like -
Guest (saoirse)
Permalinkhey David, you raise some interesting questions. I think early gay male and lesbian culture and movements both rejected hetero friendships and relationships. There was a need to spread our wings as it were and there was some male supremacist attitudes embodied in this approach.
Its an interesting time to discuss the Bechdel test as women's dollars make up a niche that Hollywood is desperately going after. The Twilight films, Sex in the City are seen as high performing women's movies and rom coms starting Roberts, Heigel still represent box office gold in a summer movie season that has been overall a fabulous disaster. Still where are this generations Jane Fondas, Gena Rowlands, Meryl Streep and Faye Dunaways? All mainstream hollywood actresses that were box office gold or at least silver in the 70s and 80s. Today the box office is dominated by remakes and action/fantasy genre pics the later of which, for the most part exclude women.
Leaving aside whether the the last 4 Tarantino films are progressive, KIll BIll 1 and 2, Death Proof and Inglorious Basterds were all explicitly written to have strong female protagonists. Death Proof was written after he read Carol Clover's Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.0 Like -
My guess is that this "Bechdel Test" is not mainly to be taken as sole grounds for evaluation <em>individual</em> movies -- but as an overall way of driving homef how women and their lives are marginalized in the culture as a whole. And how women are routinely portrayed as little more than "love interest" to men (who are commonly the main actors, movers and shakers).
certainly radical and progressive movies are not necessarily any better at this than the mainstream culture -- just look at Spartacus (one of the most radical and even communist movies) made... its portrayal of women-as-housefrau is indistinguishable from the mainstream girdle-and-babies role assigned women (generally) in the post WW2 culture. For all its radicalism, and pro-revolution messages, the film treats the struggle of slave women as a fight for a normal love life and family (when it deals with them at all).
I think we should mainly judge a piece of art by its impact on society (not mainly by artistic and political standards erected independently of that). This means that we will probably judge as positive many works that have major flaws -- including the kinds of problems highlighted by this revealing simple test.
Avatar was savaged (by some) because they posited that the autonomous self-organization of oppressed people was a key dividing line -- so the prominent role played by a white U.S. soldier in the resistance was an example of colonialism (not of radical desertion, defeatism, or heroic rejection of the role of oppressor.)
By the way, the works of Margarethe von Trotta (one of my favorites) is a great example of a body of work that stands well on the Bechdel test (which is actually a pretty low standard).
My favorite is <a href="/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_and_Juliane" rel="nofollow">her film</a> "Two Sisters" (also called "Die bleierne Zeit" and "Marianne and Juliane"). It deals with a pair of sisters who take different political roads -- one becoming an editor of a feminist MS magazine-type journal and the other joining the Red Army Faction.
Also it strikes me that subject matter comes into it:
Yol is a communist film about prisoners in turkey. It succeeds in raising sharp and shocking insights into the situation of women in rural turkey... but not in a form that would satisfy Bechdel. And (by its very structure) it follows male prisoners as they scatter through the Turkish landscape and society. The women who emerge as characters are isolated from each other (one is even imprisoned by her family)...
If we were to discuss a way of <em>evaluating</em> films <em>overall</em> -- and writing reviews of them, and discussing their social meaning and impact -- we would not (could not) do so by establishing the Bechdel test as one of a series of such tests, and then running the work of art through that checklist.
And if socialist society operated that way, it would be incapable of producing real art. And the degree to which various left groups and socialist societies <em>had</em> such mechanical standards -- and they often do (though rarely with the depiction of women being an important focus) -- the art was often terrible, even when it was well-intentioned.
At the same time, it was a huge breakthrough, when (in China's cultural revolution) artists started to produce works like "Red Detatchment of Women"or "White Haired Girl" -- that put women on center stage (both literally and figuratively) and carried out very radical changes in their depiction and movement (revolutionizing the dance moves carried out by women in opera and ballet, for example).0 Like -
Guest (jp)
Permalink"Casablanca" has always struck me because, while a great movie in many ways, Rick's "problems of two people/hill of beans" speech to Ilsa near the end does not seem to recognize its own irony - that Ilsa, in fact, understood this long before Rick, and in fact all her actions prior to reuniting with Rick were so motivated. Or am I missing something? I don't think the joke was supposed to be on Rick.
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Guest (observer)
PermalinkA great film that more than meets this test is "Three Women," unfortunately seldom seen these days. "Bound" is interesting with respect to this test.
What about films like Single White Female or The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, where there are two strong female characters, but one is the psychopathic opponent of the other?0 Like
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