What are you watching & reading? Will you do the Beshdel Test on it?

It's awful, dd watches it.

Sorry for the diversion.

I'm about to try New Girl - as far as I kow it's about one girl (who I may want to strangle for her kookiness) and a bunch of guys, so not very optimistic about it passing.

The men think they don't understand women.
The women think that they do understand men, and that men need training and telling what to do.

It's all very Mars&Venus, but I guess it has to be given how the magic works. Their entire world is based on "men and women are very different".

Watching: Revenge: no idea, everyone is insane

reading: Music for Torching: no one talks about anything, everyone is insane

No, I am finishing my re-read of the others first!

I'm not sure that Robert Jordan has a very high opinion of women, for all that his characters are "strong" they are all stubborn, convinced they know better than anyone else, unwilling to ever listen to advice from a man, and generally quite patronising towards men. Pretty much every single one of them.

With such a number of women he could at least have made them have different attitudes towards men.

Urgh that post didn't make much sense - I was trying to write two different sentences at once. Think the general gist is gettable though.

Have you read MoL yet Trills (I started a thread in Fiction :) )?
My thoughts on WoT though is that although the dragon reborn is male there are probably more powerful female characters than male - and they don't all fit neatly into gender stereotypes either.

With the number of characters in WoT it'd be really disappointing if they failed. I'm up to the penultimate book in my re-read! :o

The IT Crowd - I think every episode fails.

And I saw there was a Frasier thread on mumsnet yesterday, I think that would possibly fail every episode too.

Peppa Pig - pass.

Most episodes of Supernatural fail (I can think of a few that pass). But then I, ahem, don't really watch it for its portrayal of women...

Binge-watching The Vampire Diaries. The last few episodes have passed (the episodes have all merged into one in my head, so individual episodes may have failed). Bonnie and Elena talked about Bonnie's mum, Caroline and Abby (Bonnie's mum) talked about Bonnie, the mayor and the sheriff (both female) discussed an ongoing serial murder and I'm pretty sure there was a discussion between two of the girls about Rebecca. That said, it's not a particularly strong pass and probably not particularly feminist (but I still luffs it ).

Also re-watching series one of GOT. Scraped a pass in the first two episodes - both times for a brief conversation between Cersei and Catelyn regarding their children (male children in one of them, but not actually A Man).

Reading This Charming Man by Marian Keyes. Passes (several conversations where the narrator discusses clothes/fashion/her job with a couple of friends) but so far the narrator is falling to pieces because her boyfriend is marrying someone else, so all of her narration seems to come back to him. Really annoying writing style too, but I'm trying to stick with it because I normally love MK.

Also reading Clash of Kings (Game of Thrones book two). Fails so far. Quite a few named (and strong and interesting) female characters but they tend to be surrounded by men.

Mme Thenardier also talks to Eponine, I believe. And possibly to Cosette?

Was going to say easy pass, as I'm reading Susanna Clarke's The Ladies of Grace Adieu.

But flicking back, I think it only squeaks through. And then only because the women are talking about the OW rather than the man. There are exchanges about one being injured and her clothes damaged, but this has happened while searching for the OW. So not a glorious pass.

Film: just watched Django Unchained - massive fail! A woman barely spoke in the film

Book: reading Ian rankin's Rebus : Naming the dead - pass. Siobhan speaks to undercover female detective and her mum.

Tv: Borgen - pass

I'm really glad I came across this thread, I hadn't heard of that test. It is so simple but shows how almost every film fails the test.

I also saw Les Mis last week. Do you think that would pass? The scene at the beginning is the women workers kicking Fontaine out because she has a child.

Tortoise, I think there are quite a lot of books without even a "pass me the salt, thanks" "you're welcome" level of dialogue between two named women (though it's more unusual to have unnamed figures in books than in films which might make it a bit easier for books to pass)

Cheerful, it is talking about a man for any reason - if you are talking about politics and there are no female politicians being discussed, then that's an indication in itself. Which books fail the reverse Bechdel (no two men holding a conversation that's not about a woman)? Maybe "chick lit"?

I'm now pondering which Wimsey novels do pass. From memory:

Whose Body - fail
Clouds of Witness - fail? The Dowager and Mary are in a conversation but Parker and Wimsey are there and the conversation is mostly about a male suspect.
Bellona Club - fail, I think
Unnatural Death - pass, Miss Climpson and the niece (Wikipedia tells me the manuscript for this was called, "The Singular Tale of Three Spinsters")
Strong Poison - pass, Miss Climpson and the nurse.
Murder Must Advertise - pass? Two of the secretaries go out to tea but not sure if they only talk about the men at the office.
The Nine Tailors - fail
Five Red Herrings - fail.
Have His Carcase - fail? Harriet talks to the widow but I think it's all about the male characters.
Gaudy Night - pass. A lot. But doesn't fail the reverse test!
Busman's Honeymoon - pass, Harriet talks to various named female characters
Thrones, Dominations - pass, Harriet talks to Rosamund, and to Sylvia and Eiluned.

RM you might like this thread
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/feminist_book_club/1226130-The-first-feminist-mystery-novel-do-you-agree

I actually think GOT fails either way, though; usually it's one woman per 'place' - you know, they're all over the country - talking to a bunch of men about the king. Or it's (I'm only up to partway through book three) Sansa and Cersei/Margarey/various other women talking about who Sansa is going to marry. Maybe Dany talks to her handmaids about having a bath occasionally, but that's all I can think of.

When it comes to books, there has to be a proportion argument, surely? Books have a lot more talking in them than films, I can't imagine that many books manage to have NO scenes of dialogue where two women talk about something other than a man. You know, just to establish a scene or whatever.

Thinking about it my favourite film passes - the not terribly feminist Working Girl. Although there is a bit of an implied life triangle (although there is never an actual discussion between the female leads about it) the main thrust of the competition between them is business related. And at first it's made very clear tess thinks she's escaped macho corporate sexism by coming to work for Katherine, although she is quickly revealed in typical 80s business woman ball breaker mould.

Hmmm

I still like it though.

I'm reading wolf hall. So far a fail - Thomas Cromwell has had two conversations with women so far - one with his sister about his father and one with his wife about their son. No women have spoken to each other at all. I am only about 80 pages in though.