The Bechdel test, also known as the Bechdel–Wallace test, is a measure of the representation of women in fiction. It asks whether a work features:
at least two women
who talk to each other
about something other than a man.
The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added.
The test essentially measures whether a story provides character development to its female characters or simply uses them as props—if it includes them at all.
The Bechdel test first appeared in 1985 in Allison Bechdel’s comic Dykes to Watch Out For, where a woman remarks that she only watches films that meet her criteria for female representation.
It is astonishing the number of popular movies that can't pass this simple test. It demonstrates how little women's complex and interesting lives are underrepresented or nonexistent in the film industry.
To be fair, failing the test does not mean that any given film lacks merit. Gravity fails despite a compelling and nuanced lead performance by Sandra Bullock (the film only has two on-screen actors, and the other is George Clooney); so does Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, despite the central roles of Hermione Granger, Ginny Weasley, and many other strong female characters.
Nor does passing the test mean a film is particularly worth two hours of your life.
The point of the Bechdel test, however, is not whether a particular film passes or fails, but providing an opportunity for understanding the larger media context—and asking why it’s so hard to find movies that allow just two women to interact.
The Bechdel Test became popular because it was a handy gauge of how often the movies revolve around men and leave female characters to be the foil. (In a narrative, a foil is a character who contrasts with the protagonist, in order to better highlight or differentiate certain qualities of the protagonist.)
It has historically been used to show how filmmakers—a profession in which men vastly outnumber women—have told stories from their own perspectives and left women out (similar tests could easily be made to show disparities in racial or sexual diversity).
Consider the reverse. Imagine how hard it would be to avoid a scene in which two named men chat about something other than women … virtually every movie and TV show contains multiple, developed, relevant male characters who have some part in advancing the story.
That might not seem like such a big deal, but little boys and girls watch these movies on constant repeat, and learn a lot from them. And one of the things that kids might take away is that most of the people doing anything useful or entertaining in these films are male.
People may think that audiences do not want to hear what female characters say. It goes back to the old canard that “stories about women are for women, and stories about men are universal”. However, that is more of a fallacy.
The audience responds to developed characters. Thus, if you have an irrelevant, poorly-developed character feeling out of sync with the plot, the audience would fail to connect with that character. It does not matter whether the person is male or female. If movies were to present male characters to be irrelevant to the plot, the audience would conclude that male characters had nothing relevant. They would become movie props whose purpose was to advance the movie’s aesthetics rather than add to the plot.
From a broader cultural context: the more aware we as an audience are of the test, the more likely creators are to apply it to their own work.
Questions for you:
Name a mainstream hit movie that would fail this test.
Name a mainstream hit movie that would pass this test.
Name a mainstream hit movie that would fail the Reverse Bechdel Test (at-least two men who talk to each other about something other than a woman).
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