Bechdel Test Thread

[TrilllianAstra]

I thought having a thread for "I just watched this and it passed/failed and I thought..." would be good to encourage me to think of the Bechdel test when watching TV/films or reading books. I wonbe watching/reading anything on purpose for the thread, just thought I would apply it to whatever I happened to be watching or reading.

The test doesn't necessarily say that a film is feminist/antifeminist, but it is interesting.

Rules reminder:
Are there at least two women (some versions say "two women with names")
Who have a conversation
About something other than a man?

Feel free to join in :)

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind passes the first two points of the test. That's it.

Fight Club, is complex. It either fails completely, or borderline passes the test. Depends on if you include Chloe's addressing the audience as her talking to another woman (Terry and Marla are in the audience) about her cancer. But then, Terry and Chloe are only in the film for literally one scene.

I'm reading the Morganville Vampires books (someone on here recommended them) and they pass. Claire has conversations with Eve and with Amelie (and sometimes with Monica) that are often about other subjects. I'm not sure if conversations about vampies in general count as "conversation about men", they're conversations about large groups of people, some of whom are men.

Source Code = fail.

Only two women, they don't have a conversation.

A while back I saw an Australian film called Jindabyne that passed the test.

It also did a reasonable job of depicting how privilege (both male and white privilege, as well as a combination of those two) functions: how those who have got it can be utterly unaware that they've got it, and fail to even see that the way they're treating others assumes that those others don't need to be treated like actual human people - while those on the receiving end of privileged individuals' behaviour can be only too aware of the less-than-human status they're being accorded.

I did think the ending was far too saccharine and undid some of the good work of the rest of the movie. Would still recommend, though.

Ok im trying to think of some but no, its not happening.

Sex and the City - pass?

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.

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

Just read Coraline and it passes.

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

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

Wrong thread here cindy?

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.

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

Hardly ever rude
Even to knobends

:O

Love it

"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.

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)

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.

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).

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!