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Reverted good faith edits by NJM (talk): Source does not say this SONG passes the Bechdel test (for FILMS). (TW)
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Undid revision 649336678 by SummerPhD (talk) please consult the linked wikipedia article (specifically, the second paragraph of the synopsis describing two women talking about a third woman)
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== Limitations and criticism ==
== 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.<ref name="ok">{{cite news|url=http://www.oudaily.com/l_and_a/arts_and_entertainment/column-bechdel-rule-still-applies-to-portrayal-of-women-in/article_d3dc6a7d-8fcb-589c-885a-649fe33db5e1.html |first=Sarah |last=Wilson |date=28 June 2012 |publisher=The Oklahoma Daily |title=Bechdel Rule still applies to portrayal of women in films}}</ref> 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 (film)|The Name of the Rose]]'', set in a medieval monastery).<ref name="antipope">{{cite web|last=Stross|first=Charles|title=Bechdel's Law|url=http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2008/07/bechdels_law.html|work=Charlie's Diary|date=28 July 2008|authorlink=Charles Stross|accessdate=26 July 2012}}</ref> For these reasons, the ''[[The Daily Telegraph|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.<ref>{{cite news|last=Collin|first=Robbie|title=Bechdel test is damaging to the way we think about film|url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10450463/Bechdel-test-is-damaging-to-the-way-we-think-about-film.html|accessdate=15 November 2013|newspaper=The Telegraph|date=15 November 2013}}</ref> ''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".<ref name="538 2014" />
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 (for example, [[Baby Got Back]]<ref>{{cite web|url=https://play.google.com/music/preview/T2ncfkwf2leegiodz2fljvklx2m?lyrics=1|publisher=Google|accessdate=February 28, 2015|title=Baby Got Back lyrics|quote=Oh, my, God. Becky, look at her butt It is so big, she looks like One of those rap guys' girlfriends. But, ya know, who understands those rap guys? They only talk to her, because, She looks like a total prostitute, 'kay? I mean, her butt, is just so big I can't believe it's just so round, it's like out there I mean gross, look She's just so, black|}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Collins|first=Patricia|title=Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=feOSAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA129&ots=OYnp1XBUg-&pg=PA129#v=onepage&q&f=false|year=2004|publisher=Routledge|publication-place=New York|page=129}}</ref> by [[Sir Mix-a-Lot]]), and a work with prominent female characters may fail the test.<ref name="ok">{{cite news|url=http://www.oudaily.com/l_and_a/arts_and_entertainment/column-bechdel-rule-still-applies-to-portrayal-of-women-in/article_d3dc6a7d-8fcb-589c-885a-649fe33db5e1.html |first=Sarah |last=Wilson |date=28 June 2012 |publisher=The Oklahoma Daily |title=Bechdel Rule still applies to portrayal of women in films}}</ref> 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 (film)|The Name of the Rose]]'', set in a medieval monastery).<ref name="antipope">{{cite web|last=Stross|first=Charles|title=Bechdel's Law|url=http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2008/07/bechdels_law.html|work=Charlie's Diary|date=28 July 2008|authorlink=Charles Stross|accessdate=26 July 2012}}</ref> For these reasons, the ''[[The Daily Telegraph|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.<ref>{{cite news|last=Collin|first=Robbie|title=Bechdel test is damaging to the way we think about film|url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10450463/Bechdel-test-is-damaging-to-the-way-we-think-about-film.html|accessdate=15 November 2013|newspaper=The Telegraph|date=15 November 2013}}</ref> ''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".<ref name="538 2014" />


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.<ref name="sparqling">{{cite web|last=Lawrence|first=Faith|title=SPARQLing Conversation: Automating The Bechdel-Wallace Test|url=http://nht.ecs.soton.ac.uk/2011/papers/12-flawrence.pdf|date=June 2011|work=Paper presented at the Narrative and Hypertext Workshop, Hypertext 2011|accessdate=26 July 2012}}</ref>
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.<ref name="sparqling">{{cite web|last=Lawrence|first=Faith|title=SPARQLing Conversation: Automating The Bechdel-Wallace Test|url=http://nht.ecs.soton.ac.uk/2011/papers/12-flawrence.pdf|date=June 2011|work=Paper presented at the Narrative and Hypertext Workshop, Hypertext 2011|accessdate=26 July 2012}}</ref>

Revision as of 06:03, 1 March 2015

A character in Dykes to Watch Out For explains the rules that later came to be known as the Bechdel test (1985)

The Bechdel test asks if a work of fiction 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.

Originally conceived for evaluating films, the Bechdel test is now used as an indicator of gender bias in all forms of fiction. Almost half of all contemporary films fail the test, and critics have noted that the test is most informative when applied in the aggregate, because individual works may pass or fail the test for reasons unrelated to sexism.

The test is named after the American cartoonist Alison Bechdel (/ˈbɛkdəl/ BEK-dəl). In 1985, she had a character in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For voice the idea, which she attributed to a friend, Liz Wallace. It is also known as the Bechdel/Wallace test,[1] the Bechdel rule,[2] Bechdel's law,[3] or the Mo Movie Measure.[4]

History

In her 1929 essay A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf observed about the literature of her time what the Bechdel test would later highlight in more recent fiction:[5]

All these relationships between women, I thought, rapidly recalling the splendid gallery of fictitious women, are too simple. [...] And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends. [...] They are now and then mothers and daughters. But almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men. It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman’s life is that [...][6]

In film, a study of gender portrayals in 855 of the most financially successful U.S. films from 1950 to 2006 showed that there were, on average, two male characters for each female character, a ratio that remained stable over time. Female characters were portrayed as being involved in sex twice as often as male characters, and their proportion of scenes with explicit sexual content increased over time. Violence increased over time in male and female characters alike.[7]

According to a 2014 study by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, in 120 films made worldwide from 2010 to 2013, only 31% of named characters were female, and 23% of the films had a female protagonist or co-protagonist. 7% of directors are women.[8]

The Bechdel test

What is now known as the Bechdel test was introduced in Alison Bechdel's comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. In a 1985 strip titled "The Rule",[9][10] an unnamed female character says that she only watches a movie if it satisfies the following requirements:[4]

  1. It has to have at least two women in it,
  2. who talk to each other,
  3. about something besides a man.[10][11]

Bechdel credited the idea for the test to a friend and karate training partner, Liz Wallace.[11][12] She later wrote that she was pretty certain that Wallace was inspired by Virginia Woolf's essay A Room of One's Own, reproduced in part above.[13]

Originally meant as "a little lesbian joke in an alternative feminist newspaper", according to Bechdel,[14] 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".[15] By 2013, an Internet newspaper described it as "almost a household phrase, common shorthand to capture whether a film is woman-friendly",[16] and the failure of major Hollywood productions such as Pacific Rim (2013) to pass it was addressed in depth in the media.[17] 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."[11]

In 2013, four Swedish cinemas and the Scandinavian cable television channel Viasat Film incorporated the Bechdel test into some of their ratings, a move supported by the Swedish Film Institute.[18]

Several variants of the test have been proposed—for example, that the two women must be named characters,[19] or that there must be at least a total of 60 seconds of conversation.[20]

Application

Pass and fail proportions

The website bechdeltest.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 November 2013, it listed 56% of these films as passing all three of the test's requirements, 11% as failing one (the women's conversations are about men), 23% as failing two (the women do not talk to each other), and 10% as failing all three (there are not two named female characters).[21]

According to Mark Harris of Entertainment Weekly, if passing the test were mandatory, it would have jeopardized half of the 2009 Academy Award for Best Picture nominees.[19] 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.[22]

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.[23] 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!"[11]

In addition to films, the test has been applied to other media such as video games[24][25] and comics.[26]

Financial aspects

Vocativ's authors also found that the films that passed the test earned a total of $4.22 billion in the United States, while those that failed earned $2.66 billion in total, leading them to conclude that a way for Hollywood to make more money might be to "put more women onscreen."[22] A 2014 study by FiveThirtyEight based on data about 1,615 films released from 1990 to 2013 concluded that the median budget of films that passed the test was 35% lower than that of the others. It found that the films that passed the test had about a 37% higher return on investment (ROI) in the United States, and the same ROI internationally, compared to films that did not pass the test.[27]

Explanations

Explanations that have been offered as to why many films fail the Bechdel test include the relative lack of gender diversity among scriptwriters[11] and other movie professionals: in 2012, only one in six of the directors, writers, and producers behind the 100 most commercially successful movies in the United States were women.[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 (for example, Baby Got Back[28][29] by Sir Mix-a-Lot), and a work with prominent female characters may fail the test.[2] 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).[3] 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.[30] 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".[27]

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.[1]

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.[23]

Derived tests

The Bechdel test has inspired others to formulate gender-related criteria for evaluating works of fiction or nonfiction.

Russo test

In 2013, the American lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) media organization GLAAD introduced the "Vito Russo Test", intended to analyze the representation of LGBT characters in films. Inspired by the Bechdel test and named after film historian Vito Russo, it encompasses three criteria:[31][32]

  1. The film contains a character that is identifiably lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender.
  2. The character must not be solely or predominantly defined by their sexual orientation or gender identity.
  3. The character must be tied into the plot in such a way that their removal would have a significant effect.

Finkbeiner test

Main article: Finkbeiner test

The Bechdel test also inspired the Finkbeiner test, a checklist to help journalists avoid gender bias in articles about women in science.[33]

Mako Mori test

The Mako Mori test is named after the female protagonist (and only female character of note) of the 2013 movie Pacific Rim, which fails the Bechdel test. To reflect what they considered the merits of the story in terms of gender, fans proposed the following test as an alternative: "The Mako Mori test is passed if the movie has: a) at least one female character; b) who gets her own narrative arc; c) that is not about supporting a man’s story."[34][35]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Lawrence, Faith (June 2011). "SPARQLing Conversation: Automating The Bechdel-Wallace Test" (PDF). Paper presented at the Narrative and Hypertext Workshop, Hypertext 2011. Retrieved 26 July 2012.
  2. ^ a b Wilson, Sarah (28 June 2012). "Bechdel Rule still applies to portrayal of women in films". The Oklahoma Daily.
  3. ^ a b Stross, Charles (28 July 2008). "Bechdel's Law". Charlie's Diary. Retrieved 26 July 2012.
  4. ^ a b Although the test is sometimes referred to as the "Mo Movie Measure", the character who articulates it, is not Bechdel's character Mo. The episode in which it appears predates the development of the strip's ongoing cast.
  5. ^ "Bechdel-Test: Frauen spielen keine Rolle". Kurier. 8 August 2012. Retrieved 19 August 2012.
  6. ^ 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.
  7. ^ Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2012.02.006, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi=10.1016/j.jadohealth.2012.02.006 instead.
  8. ^ Sakoui, Anousha; Magnusson, Niklas (22 September 2014). "'Hunger Games' success masks stubborn gender gap in Hollywood". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 22 September 2014.
  9. ^ Bechdel, Alison. "The Rule". Retrieved 26 July 2012.
  10. ^ a b "The Rule". DTWOF: The Blog. 16 August 2005. Retrieved 2011-11-09.
  11. ^ a b c d e Ulaby, Neda (2008-09-02). "The 'Bechdel Rule,' Defining Pop-Culture Character". All Things Considered. National Public Radio. Retrieved 2012-07-26.
  12. ^ 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.
  13. ^ Bechdel, Alison (8 November 2013). "Testy". Dykes to Watch Out For. Retrieved 15 November 2013.
  14. ^ Morlan, Kinsee (23 July 2014). "Comic-Con vs. the Bechdel Test". San Diego City Beat. Retrieved 15 August 2014.
  15. ^ Steiger, Kay (2011). "No Clean Slate: Unshakeable race and gender politics in The Walking Dead". In Lowder, James (ed.). Triumph of The Walking Dead. BenBella Books. p. 104. ISBN 9781936661138. Retrieved 2014-04-20.
  16. ^ Romano, Aja (18 August 2013). "The Mako Mori Test: 'Pacific Rim' inspires a Bechdel Test alternative". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 15 September 2013.
  17. ^ a b McGuinness, Ross (18 July 2013). "The Bechdel test and why Hollywood is a man's, man's, man's world". Metro. Retrieved 15 September 2013.
  18. ^ "Swedish cinemas take aim at gender bias with Bechdel test rating". The Guardian. Associated Press. November 6, 2013. Retrieved 2013-11-08.
  19. ^ a b Harris, Mark (6 August 2010). "I Am Woman. Hear Me... Please!". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 26 July 2012.
  20. ^ "The Oscars and the Bechdel Test". Feminist Frequency. February 15, 2012. Retrieved 2013-11-08.
  21. ^ "Statistics". bechdeltest.com. Retrieved 13 November 2013.
  22. ^ a b Sharma, Versha; Sender, Hanna (2 January 2014). "Hollywood Movies With Strong Female Roles Make More Money". Vocativ. Retrieved 2 January 2014.
  23. ^ a b Power, Nina (2009). One-dimensional woman. Zero Books. pp. 39 et seq. ISBN 1846942411. Retrieved 2014-04-20.
  24. ^ 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.
  25. ^ Agnello, Anthony John (July 2012). "Something other than a man: 15 games that pass the Bechdel Test". Gameological. Retrieved 26 July 2012.
  26. ^ Zalben, Alex (22 February 2012). "Witchblade/Red Sonja #1 Passes The Bechdel Test". MTV Geek!. Retrieved 26 July 2012.
  27. ^ a b Hickey, Walt (1 April 2014). "The Dollar-And-Cents Case Against Hollywood's Exclusion of Women". FiveThirtyEight.
  28. ^ "Baby Got Back lyrics". Google. Retrieved February 28, 2015. Oh, my, God. Becky, look at her butt It is so big, she looks like One of those rap guys' girlfriends. But, ya know, who understands those rap guys? They only talk to her, because, She looks like a total prostitute, 'kay? I mean, her butt, is just so big I can't believe it's just so round, it's like out there I mean gross, look She's just so, black {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  29. ^ Collins, Patricia (2004). Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. New York: Routledge. p. 129.
  30. ^ Collin, Robbie (15 November 2013). "Bechdel test is damaging to the way we think about film". The Telegraph. Retrieved 15 November 2013.
  31. ^ "GLAAD introduces 'Studio Responsibility Index', report on LGBT images in films released by 'Big Six' studios". GLAAD. August 20, 2013. Retrieved August 24, 2013.
  32. ^ John, Arit (21 August 2013). "Beyond the Bechdel Test: Two (New) Ways of Looking at Movies". The Atlantic. Retrieved 15 September 2013.
  33. ^ 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.
  34. ^ Peterson, Price (2013-08-21). "Beyond the Bechdel Test: Two (New) Ways of Looking at Movies". The Wire. Retrieved 2014-08-15.
  35. ^ Klee, Miles (2013-08-18). "The Mako Mori Test: 'Pacific Rim' inspires a Bechdel Test alternative". Dailydot.com. Retrieved 2014-08-15.

Further reading

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