Bechdel Test Thread

I watched "The Tourist" last night. Big fail. I think that Angelina Jolie is the only female character in it.

mushypeas The latest Batman game sparked a lot of talk after someone made a blog post about the sexism. Don't miss the follow-up post, although the 'Hulk speaking' gimmick gets tiring quickly.

Hang on - on my way home I realised that I missed one character out. Talia is another female character, sort-of a love interest for Batman and a go-between for the "big bad". She has a bunch of nifty female bodyguard ninja types but she only talks to them about Batman...

Just sticking my head in out of curiosity - I've heard of this test before and think it's pretty interesting.

I've got what is quite an odd one - the Batman Arkham City computer game which I've been playing recently. I think it just passed. It's clearly not a "feminist game" since the target audience is pretty thoroughly male; the male characters are mostly bulked up and overtly macho while the female ones are scantily clad and not adverse to using their sexuality to get what they want.

Aside from some passing technically named female characters like female medical staff that as Batman you rescue from hostage situations then discard and move on, the three named female characters are Harley Quinn (scantily clad in biker-chic clothes, everything she does is motivated by the Joker), Poison Ivy (even more scantily clad, green and plant-obsessed, hardly appears in this game) and Catwoman. Now she does have more clothing on but it's very very tight for someone clambering around on rooftops and it gets shredded up a bit as the game goes on. Plus her extremely hip-swaying walk and the fact that when you play as her you can make her sneak around by crawling on all fours probably indicates where her appeal is aimed... She does kick ass and saves Batman's bacon in the storyline, but there is a lot of cheesecake factor at play.

The one Bechdel Test beating moment is where Poison Ivy and Catwoman talk about Catwoman not watering some flowers Ivy gave her, then Catwoman going and breaking into a vault to make up for it. It's not much in the scheme of things!

watched 'In Her Shoes' the other night. Passed, actually don't think there were any conversations between 2 men.

the help passed by a mile (obviously!)

and interestingly the main plot cut out (and i would think probably filmed but then removed based on the bits that remain) is skeeter's romance.

as an aside - has mary steenburgen made a deal with the devil??? she looked FABULOUS in the film and i couldn't work out the actress playing the character till her name appeared in the credits, and even then i had to think about it!

I don't think we need exemptions - failing doesn't mean a film is antifeminist and passing doesn't mean a film is feminist, it's just an interesting thing to note.

Films set on WWII submarines are to the Bechdel test what bodybuilders are to BMI - outliers that do not invalidate the test because the point of the test is to look at populations rather than individuals. (individuals may be healthy while being in a "wrong" category, but if 50% of the country is overweight or obese it's unlikely that they are all bodybuilders).

hmm, what about tv/films where there's a woman in a typical male environment? I'm thinking about The IT Crowd. There's only one woman, but it both uses & abuses stereotypes, and she's the most sane character in there, with most of the men looking pretty stupid compared to her.

ok, the rom-com I can Never Be Your Woman passes the test, and does challenge some sterotypes, I actually quite like it.

Isn't the point of the Bechdel test to look at the numbers of films that do/don't pass, to give an idea of the scale of the problem.

I also think that movies with less than 5 named characters should be exempt, and ones in a setting such as WWII sub. They should be added to the general 'body count' though as they show just how often films are made by men, about men, for men.

So don't give a good WW2 movie a hard time cos of its bias, but DO give the movie industry a bollocking as they don't often do female equivalents (e.g. Made in Dagenham)

"Quite often (Luther, Dexter) the boss of the maverick detective is a woman. What's that about? Always in the wrong and they should have just let the maverick get on with it."

House is like that too. I think it's because the woman boss represents the Political Correctness that today's maverick man must fight against.

Just rewatched High School Musical (sooo cheesy!) after years and was interested that whilst passing test it contains spectacularly annoying trope of Ryan (Sharpay's brother) as being emasculated, effeminate and dumb because he is the underling to his Alpha Bitch sister. The only time he becomes likeable/ fanciable is when he rebels against his sister's authority in HSM 2

It made me think of Shrek 2 where the Prince Charming is portrayed in a similar hair-flicking way who is mollycoddled by his bossy mother.

So, the moral is, if you are a real man you must rebel against female authority or be regarded as a sissy.

Hardly ever rude
Even to knobends

:O

Love it

That's a shame, it sounds funny, and I really liked Delusions of Gender.

I watched Children of Men last week and I think that the pregnant girl and the midwife had a conversation about her pregnancy. But I'm not 100% sure that they managed to have a whole conversation without whatshisname. It is a very first-person kind of film though, we only see what he sees.

Wrong thread here cindy?

Amazing Grace passes with flying colours and is very funny too.

Just read MmeGuillotine's book on Marie Antoinette and it passes (she had lots of sisters).

Just read Coraline and it passes.

Just watched Country Strong which most definitely passes as Gwyneth Paltrow and Leighton Meester have plural conversations re. childhood and career ambitions.

Plus it has Garret Hedlund in it

Depends on the episode I think. Anything with 4 (?) seasons of 22 episodes would have to be doing pretty badly to fail in its entirety, so my rules say that TV shows should be taken episode-by-episode.

Sex and the City - pass?