Regarding the Bechdel test. [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Alias

2014-08-02, 09:51 AM

I'd never heard of the Bechdel test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test) until reading the commentary today on comic 959. I found the premise rather insightful, but it does bring up some amount of self doubt concerning a musical I'm working on and have been working with for three years. The test, for those unfamiliar

Does the work have
1) two women who
2) talk to each other about
3) something other than a man?

The play I'm working on, Stand Still, has four women (7 characters in total, so women actually outnumber men in the casting). And yes they talk to each other when the guys aren't on stage, which is most of it. The third part bothers me. The play is about domestic violence and drug use. Hence much of the conversation and action revolves around the marriage breaking apart. How strictly does that third line get drawn? As early as the first scene there is an exchange where Lisa is examining the Catherine (the protagonist) to check for a concussion. Obstensibly they are talking about the extent of injury and later conversation when Christine enters revolves around whether Catherine should go to the hospital. But does this fail the Bechdel test on context - it was Arthur (the antagonist) who caused the wound.

If I have to answer myself after reading the wiki entry and a couple articles on the test that the third part of the test might be better put as "something other than a romantic relationship with a man." That seems to be the spirit of the test. In that interpretation Stand Still is fine.

All the same I'm bothered. I must get the presentation of women right for the play to work, if for no other reason than they have three quarters of the lines.

LaZodiac

2014-08-02, 10:02 AM

Stand Still passes the Bechdel Test. The reading of the third rule to be "something other than a romantic relationship with a man" is correct, as at the time of the Test's creation that was basically all the ladies did, so it's an implied sort of thing. If I recall at least.

So yeah it would be accurate to append the Test to have it phrased like that.

Spiryt

2014-08-02, 10:09 AM

Stand Still passes the Bechdel Test. The reading of the third rule to be "something other than a romantic relationship with a man" is correct,.

Well, shouldn't it be stated that way then?

Would be less confusing, because with some interpretation of 'talking about men' it may indeed be bloody hard to pass in most cases.

Jormengand

2014-08-02, 10:15 AM

Well, shouldn't it be stated that way then?

Would be less confusing, because with some interpretation of 'talking about men' it may indeed be bloody hard to pass in most cases.

See, I always assumed that it was talking about men in any capacity, because if they're solely talking about men it's clear they're there to advance the men's stories and not their own.

LaZodiac

2014-08-02, 10:32 AM

See, I always assumed that it was talking about men in any capacity, because if they're solely talking about men it's clear they're there to advance the men's stories and not their own.

Yes but in the play as mentioned, the men are plot points to their advancing plot. They still spend basically the entire thing talking about them, but talking about them in relation to how their actions advanced their OWN plots. So it becomes one of those really finicky "okay so the test isn't perfect, so lets modify the test so that it accurately fits the intention" which in the cast of this test, means changing it so that "something other than a romantic relationship with a man" is the rule.

Rawhide

2014-08-02, 10:40 AM

tensai_oni

2014-08-02, 10:44 AM

All the same I'm bothered.

Don't.

Bechdel test is not some kind of a binary test of quality - if a medium passes it, it's good, if it fails it's bad. It doesn't indicate quality at all! There are works that fail it and are awesome and the opposite.

The test is more of a thought experiment to show off an underlying problem in media (and our culture as a whole) in general. Writing a work with the intent that it passes the test won't fix this problem or make the work progressive, it'll do just that: pass the test. It's tokenism.

If you're concerned about your female characters, make sure they are female characters and not just accessories for the male ones.

AtlanteanTroll

2014-08-02, 10:59 AM

Kalmageddon

2014-08-02, 10:59 AM

Alias

2014-08-02, 11:04 AM

See, I always assumed that it was talking about men in any capacity, because if they're solely talking about men it's clear they're there to advance the men's stories and not their own.

Couldn't the reverse be said to be true? The story is unambiguously Catherine's, though an argument can be made that I strayed too much and allowed her daughter Pamela to become the main character. Rough outline

Act I
The play starts in media res with a fight between Catherine and her husband Arthur, with Pamela seen fleeing. Catherine already has a head wound at the start. The two argue (song "Why Don't You) and then the confrontation turns physical again and Catherine is knocked out. At that moment her brother Ben shows up, sees what happens and proceeded to fell Arthur with a single punch. Pamela shows back up with her friend Lisa and brother Jeremy. Lisa (who's father was a paramedic) checks Catherine for a concussion (a serious treatment of the 'how many fingers' trope) while Ben hauls Arthur off to a motel to sleep off the whiskey. Christine, Catherine's mother, shows up, and treats the wound more thoroughly, and an argument breaks out over whether Catherine should leave Arthur. She refuses. Frustrated and upset one by one everyone leaves.

The next morning Ben returns to try to convince Catherine to leave, and she in turn tries to convince him why she should stay - that Arthur only started drinking recently because of an incident at work. Arthur shows up at the tail of their argument - now sober he is very apologetic but Ben will have nothing of it and warns him that he will seriously hurt him if he touches Catherine again. He leaves, Arthur reassures Catherine that he will change then he leaves. Pamela comes down from her room and reminds her mother of the fight the previous night, recalling exactly what happened since Catherine can't remember much of it from drinking and the concussion. She is still steadfast in her decision.

Three days later Jeremy is caught with a hand rolled cigarette at school. The teachers assume it was a joint, and Arthur belts Jeremy severely for the transgression while Catherine watches (and approves). They leave even as Pamela and Lisa gather in the living room to prepare a class presentation on the myth of Sisyphus, but the conversation moves the Pamela's despair and discomfort on how her father's behavior is changing. Jeremy comes down from his room with his things packed, running away. Lisa pursues him. He goes to a park where he intends to buy drugs and see exactly what he's being punished for. Lisa talks him down, they kiss, then a drive by shooting occurs aimed at the dealers nearby. Lisa is hit in the heart and dies in his arms.

Act II
Six months later Jeremy has descended into heavy drug use, blaming himself for Lisa's death. In the opening scene he is using, then Catherine, Ben and Christine enter to discover this. During the argument and scuffle Jeremy laments how he is mistreated and how Pamela is not - he's told their treatment would be equal if their behavior was. After he goes upstairs to sober up Catherine sends her mother and brother away.

That evening Pamela, Jeremy and Catherine are sitting at the dining room table waiting for Arthur to get home. Catherine has been drinking, angry that he's two hours late. Jeremy provokes her into a shouting match during which she reveals that the two of them have different dads and Arthur isn't Jeremy's dad, calling him a mistake, then leaving. Jeremy then argues with Pamela, saying its obvious Arthur's her dad and all the special treatment she gets that he doesn't is because of this. Rather than face him she leaves for her room.

The next morning Ben and Christine return to try to get Catherine to seek out help in dealing with her children. The conversation soon devolves into a shouting match about how bad a parent Christine was to the two of them. The stress is too much for her and she has a stroke.

Three days later Pamela returns from a trip she was forced to take with Arthur. She confronts Jeremy who is tripping. She tries to reach out to him through the abuse but finally gives up. He leaves for his room. Catherine arrives from the hospital, having been up most of 3 days alone in the ICU with her mother in a coma. She tells Pamela she's sorry for everything and will try to make it right. She returns to the hospital, and Pamela goes to her room. Jeremy hallucinates seeing Lisa, and she chides him for giving up and effectively dying. As he goes to sleep her actress narrates as Arthur comes onto the stage wordlessly, goes upstairs are molests his daughter. Catherine returns at the end of this, catches this in the act, draws his gun and has Pamela go to the car and she leaves, dropping the gun behind. Jeremy goes down to the living room after her and picks it up, confronts Arthur, shoots him, then shoots himself.

Catherine goes to her mother's home where Ben is staying and sends him back to get Jeremy and her purse. She refuses to tell him why, only that she knows for certain he'd kill Arthur if she told him and she doesn't want Ben to go to jail. She then promises Pamela that its done, she's never going back. Pamela isn't convinced, and in their discourse she yells angrily at her mother that she can't understand what she's going through, "You're own father never raped you." Catherine calmly replies "No, he did not. In my case it was my uncle. And on the day that my father found out, he took him out on a deer hunt, and shot his own brother with a .32 caliber rifle..." After this monologue the two reconcile and Ben returns, demanding to know what he just walked in on. He tells the two that he found Jeremy and Arthur dead. Catherine's reaction of horror and despair close out the play.

.... That's the first time I've actually outlined the thing. There are several minor details left out, but that's the nature of outlines. It's enough at least to get a grasp on the story's flow, if not whether it's any good.

Miriel

2014-08-02, 12:24 PM

The Bechdel test is better used as a quick way to assess a wide number of movies/plays/whatever and to point out structural problems in how fiction is produced. It shouldn't be used to judge any single play or movie.

Knaight

2014-08-02, 01:20 PM

Ifni

2014-08-02, 02:00 PM

I don't think changing it to "only about romantic relationships with a man" would be a good idea. As is, the test gets at a certain mindset where everyone in existence defaults to male, and so any character's everyday interactions are all with men, and anything that happens to them is caused by men - women are exceptions, isolated anomalies in a male world. Everyone is defined by their interactions with other people, and in that kind of scenario, women are defined only by their interactions with men. Where that's the problem, it doesn't actually make it better if those interactions are son/father/brother rather than romantic.

That said, I would say "Stand Still" passes anyway, from your description - if two women are talking about a concussion and administering medical treatment, it doesn't matter if the original cause of a concussion was a man.

(I interpret it as "the conversation must not be just about a man", not "in the entire conversation no men must be mentioned".)

That said... if all the female characters' problems are caused exclusively by men and that's all they ever talk about, yeah, I think that's kind of a problem in portrayal. Imagine if all your male characters ever talked about with each other was how their girlfriends/wives/mothers/daughters/the female school principal were being awful and what they might do about it, never about their work or their friends or sport or plans for the weekend. That'd be kind of a flat portrayal of their lives and relationships, wouldn't it?

It's worth noting that practically no works fail the reverse Bechdel, where you flip the genders. I think this is the best way to see that a lot of objections to it are misguided.

For example:

There's a series written by a female author I greatly respect where most of the books are written from the perspective of a male character (the reader is inside his head, although it's third-person not first-person), and you can make the common argument that you shouldn't expect books like this to pass the Bechdel test. (The later ones do; I think the early ones don't - e.g. the only conversation between two women in one of the first ones is where a young female character has just found out (a) she was a child of rape, and (b) the woman standing in front of her is her biological mother: the ensuing extremely-tense conversation is entirely about the rapist.)

Except... there's one early book that is written from the perspective of a female character. It's close third-person narration, we're basically sitting on her shoulder for the entire book. (And she is an awesome character.) And it passes reverse Bechdel but not Bechdel.

(She watches quietly while two guys have a tense conversation about loyalty and betrayal, while pointing guns at each other. She's the only female character in the book.)

There are books I love that fail the Bechdel test, and yes, I agree you can have books that fail it that are entirely fine on gender issues, and it's mostly the population-level rate of failure that's an issue. A few years ago I wouldn't have put the "mostly" there. But having read a lot of discussions on this...

Really, it's a pretty low bar to clear. I feel like a lot of the excuses people present for individual works failing it are kind of weak - if you look at books with female protagonists, it becomes pretty clear that it's not hard to write conversations to which the protagonist is a witness that are not about the protagonist or other members of their gender.

On "a story only about relationships wouldn't pass" - only if those relationships are entirely hetero. (So no friendships between people of the same gender, no gay or lesbian characters, no family relationships unless they involve two people of the opposite gender.) And can you imagine someone writing a story where the male characters literally do nothing other than have relationships with women? (No chatting about work or going out to the pub, no talking about sports or travel or anything else, no asking a guy at a shop which new game they'd recommend; if any of the male characters open their mouths, it must be to mention a woman. Unless they're talking to a woman, then they can talk about other things.)

If you can present an example of a story like this, please go ahead.

Knaight

2014-08-02, 02:43 PM

On "a story only about relationships wouldn't pass" - only if those relationships are entirely hetero. (So no friendships between people of the same gender, no gay or lesbian characters, no family relationships unless they involve two people of the opposite gender.) And can you imagine someone writing a story where the male characters literally do nothing other than have relationships with women? (No chatting about work or going out to the pub, no talking about sports or travel or anything else, no asking a guy at a shop which new game they'd recommend; if any of the male characters open their mouths, it must be to mention a woman. Unless they're talking to a woman, then they can talk about other things.)

If you can present an example of a story like this, please go ahead.

I'd expect a story only about relationships to pass just fine - at the very least, people in a relationship are likely to talk to their friends at some point for characterization's sake, and at least one of those conversations really ought to be passing the test. This is less likely in very short short stories and the like, and Stand Still is specifically about abusive relationships, wherein the subordination of one's identity to that of their abusive partners (which includes basically always bringing them up) is a depressingly common phenomenon, so it seems like a decent example.

At the individual work level, the really obvious examples are in historical fiction in culturally gendered spaces, with movies about a group of soldiers in a war being the most obvious example. It's clearly dependent on which war and which nation - for instance movies about the WWI and WWII Russian armies not passing the Bechdel test is pretty noticeable.

Asta Kask

2014-08-02, 02:53 PM

I think the point is that women in your play should have characterization and motivation of their own, and not only be about the need to get (or keep) a man.

Gwynfrid

2014-08-02, 03:21 PM

And can you imagine someone writing a story where the male characters literally do nothing other than have relationships with women? (No chatting about work or going out to the pub, no talking about sports or travel or anything else, no asking a guy at a shop which new game they'd recommend; if any of the male characters open their mouths, it must be to mention a woman. Unless they're talking to a woman, then they can talk about other things.)

If you can present an example of a story like this, please go ahead.

I have to resort to French classical works because I'm not nearly knowledgeable enough about English-speaking literature. I think Molière's L'école des femmes qualifies. Everything discussed in that play relates to a woman, what she wants to do, is allowed to do, or should do. I'm pretty sure it fails the reverse Bechdel test (it also fails the Bechdel test itself because men do the majority of the talking). It might not be well known in America, but it's not obscure: It's a key piece of 17th century France theater, touching on women's issues in a way that was very advanced for its time.

Ifni

2014-08-02, 04:18 PM

I'd expect a story only about relationships to pass just fine - at the very least, people in a relationship are likely to talk to their friends at some point for characterization's sake, and at least one of those conversations really ought to be passing the test.

Agreed. Just to clarify, I was referring to this comment:

The Bechdel Test is actually a horrible and pretty much completely useless test on its own. Twilight passes the test, and a story only about relationships wouldn't, regardless of its gender balance and treatment.

and arguing that this would not be true of most stories about relationships, and that it's actually pretty hard (at least in Western popular culture) to imagine an author or film-writer writing a story about relationships in which the male characters focus only on their relationships with women to the exclusion of everything else in their lives.

I will look at L'ecole des femmes, thanks Gwynfrid.

EDIT: Hmm. Pretty early on two of the male characters have a discussion about a recent name-change by one of them; his friend is ribbing him about it. Then there's a (slapstick?) bit between a male character and a male servant, where the male character keeps taking the servant's hat off and the servant keeps putting it back on, and eventually the master yells at the servant for speaking to him with his hat on. And then there's a conversation between Horace and Arnolphe where Arnolphe comments on how Horace has grown, and asks after how his father (an old friend) is doing... later on he asks about Horace's romantic relationships, yes, but as I said I interpret Bechdel to be "talk about something other than a man", not "if a man is mentioned at any point in an extended conversation the whole thing doesn't count".

(I'm working off the translation given here: http://archive.org/stream/playsofmolire05moliuoft/playsofmolire05moliuoft_djvu.txt - it has some issues with the character names, so sorry if I'm getting them wrong, or if I'm looking at the wrong play altogether.)

I think this does pass reverse Bechdel (and I'm only up to scene 6), and makes it pretty clear the male characters have same-gender friendships and lives unrelated to the women in the story. Yes, it's not the focus of the story, but that's sort of the point - this isn't a high bar for characterization, it's something so simple and basic we don't even notice it, when it's applied to men.

Asta Kask

2014-08-02, 04:22 PM

I think it would be dangerous if you altered the play to fit some sort of criterion other than what the play should, in your opinion, be like. There's nothing wrong with paying attention to e.g. feminist points while writing the play but unless the play is about feminism, these concerns should not be allowed to take over the play.

AtlanteanTroll

2014-08-02, 04:37 PM

It's not supposed to be an indicator of quality. It's a metric at the industry level. There are plenty of very good works that fail the Bechdel test, and that's not a problem with these works. What is a problem is when just about every work fails it.

...

Basically, I wouldn't say that the Bechdel test has issues. It gets applied poorly, but that's more that a lot of people have trouble with the concept of population level effects that aren't relevant at the individual level than anything else.

You're basically just saying what I already did, so ... thanks? :smallconfused:

Asta Kask

2014-08-02, 04:44 PM

Ifni

2014-08-02, 04:47 PM

The Bechdel test is just dumb all around because of the people who swear by it as an indicator of quality, and there are a good amount of people out there who do. A one woman play can't pass the Bechdel, and those are pretty in line with what Bechdel herself would have found empowering.

I don't think this is exactly what Knaight is saying, or at least your emphasis is pretty different - you're saying it's "just dumb all around", Knaight is saying it's a useful metric at the industry level.

The Bechdel test is not meant to be used as a feminist stamp-of-approval, no, or conversely as a sign that a particular work is clearly sexist. I agree with this - and I've come to think that failing the Bechdel test can often be a red flag for other gender issues in a given work*, which I think means I apply it more broadly than most other people in this thread. But you can have very sexist works that pass Bechdel and perfectly non-sexist works that don't; it's just an indicator. There's no perfect binary divide between sexist and non-sexist works (and if there was, the Bechdel test wouldn't be the right way to distinguish them, but that's sort of irrelevant as no such binary exists).

*On that note, Wikipedia has an interesting quote from Virginia Woolf that played into the original idea:

"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 [...]"

Yeah, not every work has to portray the relationships between women: there are cases where it's irrelevant to the story and characterization (immersive all-male environments), or where it's incompatible with the chosen format (soliloquies, single-person plays - although there you'd hope the relationships are indicated, even if not shown explicitly). But in any work where you do have female characters, if you're not portraying those relationships even as a side-note, I think you're doing them a disservice in terms of characterization. Or if they genuinely don't ever talk to other women about topics other than men, if they find it that hard to communicate with half the world's population... the question should be why not (maybe it reflects some deep insecurity? maybe it's a clue they're not neurotypical?), not why should they?

Whether the individual female characters are admirable or not is a separate question to whether they interact with other women, but the first doesn't mean the second is unimportant. (In many cases I do find portrayals of close friendships between unsympathetic female characters more "empowering"/impressive/feminist than a portrayal of a single Exceptional Woman who kicks ass and takes names but only seems to be able to talk to men.)

AtlanteanTroll

2014-08-02, 04:49 PM

Conversely, there are probably several "lesbian" porn films who would pass, and I don't think that's what Bechdel thinks is empowering...

Do you know who Bechdel is?

I don't think this is exactly what Knaight is saying, or at least your emphasis is pretty different - you're saying it's "just dumb all around", Knaight is saying it's a useful metric at the industry level.

The Bechdel test is not meant to be used as a feminist stamp-of-approval, no, or conversely as a sign that a particular work is clearly sexist. I agree with this - and I've come to think that failing the Bechdel test can often be a red flag for other gender issues in a given work, which I think means I apply it more broadly than most other people in this thread. But you can have very sexist works that pass Bechdel and perfectly non-sexist works that don't; it's just an indicator. There's no perfect binary divide between sexist and non-sexist works (and if there was, the Bechdel test wouldn't be the right way to distinguish them, but that's sort of irrelevant as no such binary exists).

It is dumb all around in it's generally applied usage. That is what I meant. Which I think is in line with what Knaight was saying. I did say in very hyperbolic terms though, and that can be ... misleading.

AtlanteanTroll

2014-08-02, 05:02 PM

It's already been mentioned but bears repeating, the Bechdel test is not a measure of whether any given work passes some arbitrary quality standard. It's supposed to be applied to mediums (or indeed cultures) as a whole. It's a thought experiment. It's an incredibly low bar to clear as far as female representation goes and yet the overwhelming majority of Hollywood movies (for example) would fail it. That tells you something about the culture producing those works as a whole, not any given work you might choose to apply it to.

Aye, but it is used to measure gender relations, and Twilight is still God awful at that.

Ifni

2014-08-02, 05:22 PM

Aye, but it is used to measure gender relations, and Twilight is still God awful at that.

Oh, yeah. Passing one possible test of how-you-treat-your-female-characters does not at all imply that you get a free pass on all other such questions. Like we've said, it's a low bar. Passing it shouldn't actually mean much - it's the common failure to clear even the low bar that is alarming.

Gwynfrid

2014-08-02, 06:31 PM

EDIT: Hmm. Pretty early on two of the male characters have a discussion about a recent name-change by one of them; his friend is ribbing him about it. Then there's a (slapstick?) bit between a male character and a male servant, where the male character keeps taking the servant's hat off and the servant keeps putting it back on, and eventually the master yells at the servant for speaking to him with his hat on. And then there's a conversation between Horace and Arnolphe where Arnolphe comments on how Horace has grown, and asks after how his father (an old friend) is doing... later on he asks about Horace's romantic relationships, yes, but as I said I interpret Bechdel to be "talk about something other than a man", not "if a man is mentioned at any point in an extended conversation the whole thing doesn't count".

I didn't count the exchange about Arnolphe's desire for a noble-sounding name because it's clearly a minor supporting point to his characterization (as well as a mechanical plot device). I skipped the slapstick scene with the servants because it's not a conversation between men, since one of the servants is a woman (if you cut the conversation in smaller segments, then, all right, at one point the woman servant is silent, but she's there, and in this kind on comedy you can be sure she isn't expressionless). As for the conversation between Arnolphe and Horace, there's a bit of character introduction at the beginning, but it quickly turns to the gist of it, with Arnolphe finding that the young man is successfully courting the very same woman he was hoping to keep for himself. If you go through the whole play I'm fairly sure you'll find that every discussion between men is about Agnès, the main female character, everything else being filler. (I don't seriously suggest you do... that translation looks OK but the garbled text formatting makes it a pretty unpleasant read; the chances that you enjoy the play for even a fraction of its value are near zero).

So, I see your point, but I think if you lower the bar this much, then there will be a lot more media to pass the test, as long as a there is at least one conversation between women. Basic character introduction or a mention of the weather will do.

That said, the fact that I was able to find one decent counter-example (in my opinion, at least) doesn't invalidate your broader point: The overwhelming majority of media and art is male-centric, and that test is a crude but enlightening way to point it out. I'm not questioning that.

I only mentioned L'école des femmes because your remark struck me as a fun challenge, not because I somehow view it as representative - it's really not.

Ifni

2014-08-02, 06:51 PM

So, I see your point, but I think if you lower the bar this much, then there will be a lot more media to pass the test, as long as a there is at least one conversation between women. Basic character introduction or a mention of the weather will do.

That is how I interpret it consistently - the conversation between women can include a man, so long as both women speak to each other and not just to the man; it can mention men, so long as they're not the entire focus of the conversation. I do count "two female characters have a conversation about how humid it's been recently" as a Bechdel pass (it serves the purpose of demonstrating that women exist in the world and talk to each other and this is not an exceptional thing).

(I do not count "Hi, I'm Siobhan" as a conversation 'cause it's one-sided, but if it goes from there to "Oh, really? My sister's name is Siobhan", "Yeah, I guess it was really popular in this town about thirty years back", I would count it as a pass. My threshold seems to be about two lines from each participant.)

Unfortunately, this actually doesn't seem to raise the pass rate much, in my experience :smallfrown: Yeah, the instances I mentioned are just little characterization side-notes, but female characters tend to not even get those. Like I said, at least as I read it, it's a very low bar.

I only mentioned L'école des femmes because your remark struck me as a fun challenge, not because I somehow view it as representative - it's really not.

Thanks for pointing it out! It looks like a fun play, even with the garbled typesetting. I did read through the first scene going, "Hey, now they're talking about how one of the guys likes mocking people, is this a reverse-Bechdel pass... oh, no, it's specifically mocking men whose wives cheat on them, that's still woman-centered". It was pretty neat not to get what I consider a clear, extended, reverse-Bechdel pass until Scene 6; most works pass it much more quickly. Only one other example like that is coming to mind, Glory Season by David Brin, sci-fi set on a planet where 90% of the population is female. (It does eventually pass reverse Bechdel; the male visitor-from-another-world talks to one of the local men. It passes Bechdel in the first scene, where twin sisters are talking to each other about their plans for the future.)

EDIT: And yeah, just to be clear, I'm not denying there are works that fail reverse Bechdel, of course there are. And L'ecole des femmes is definitely an interesting example of a work where the male characters are focused on relationships with a female character. But by my standard it passes reverse Bechdel, and no matter how you define the test, the male characters are shown to have friendships and interactions outside that focus (albeit more as side characterization than actual plot). That's a good thing: I'd like to see more of it for female characters, based on friendships and interactions with other women (and men too, just not exclusively men).

Rawhide

2014-08-02, 07:36 PM

It's already been mentioned but bears repeating, the Bechdel test is not a measure of whether any given work passes some arbitrary quality standard.

Err, yes? This is pretty much my point. It's a completely useless test to determine the quality of the treatment of women in a story when applied on its own to a single work (or even a limited number of works).

and arguing that this would not be true of most stories about relationships, and that it's actually pretty hard (at least in Western popular culture) to imagine an author or film-writer writing a story about relationships in which the male characters focus only on their relationships with women to the exclusion of everything else in their lives.

Men don't talk only about relationships, and neither do women, but the stories don't go into explicit detail of every moment of their lives, they focus on the important bits and skip the rest. I've seen stories where it's just about how two different groups react to the other group, it jumps back and forth quickly between each party with one saying something that is, for example, completely invalidated by the truth/different perspective immediately mentioned by the other party. I can't pin down any specific examples right now, only that I've seen this done more than a few times, and it's not hard to imagine a story that is solely about relationships and solely focuses on the discussions about the other party, for both the men and women in the story.

Asta Kask

2014-08-02, 09:28 PM

Do you know who Bechdel is?

A little. Do you know how real lesbians react to "lesbian" porn? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJvYprLDcRs) (Coarse language)

Ifni

2014-08-02, 09:40 PM

I can't pin down any specific examples right now, only that I've seen this done more than a few times, and it's not hard to imagine a story that is solely about relationships and solely focuses on the discussions about the other party, for both the men and women in the story.

If you think of an example, let me know, I'd be interested. In most of the possible examples that initially came to mind for me, there's some other plotline in which the male characters are involved. (It may be "win the race to impress the girl", but it still lends itself to interactions that are more about "win the race" than "impress the girl", and those interactions are usually with men.) I can definitely imagine a story where the plot is solely about relationships, but I don't think I've ever seen a male character who doesn't talk about anything else (or at least, only talks about non-relationship matters when talking with women, not when talking with men).

Mind you, I don't watch a lot of movies: there may be cases I'm missing, and in that case I'd be interested to know. I read a lot of books, which I guess tend to lend themselves to more in-depth character development, so the failures are more noticeable. I'm looking at you, epic fantasy novel on my couch that didn't manage to pass the Bechdel test in 722 pages.

Serpentine

2014-08-03, 12:21 AM

If the conversation in your play is about the injury, not about the man who caused it, then it probably passes. But, especially if the play is about interactions between men and women, it isn't compulsory that it passes it. Although considering how low the benchmark is (it can literally be a couple of sentences), it shouldn't be too hard to do so.

Stand Still passes the Bechdel Test. The reading of the third rule to be "something other than a romantic relationship with a man" is correct, as at the time of the Test's creation that was basically all the ladies did, so it's an implied sort of thing. If I recall at least.

So yeah it would be accurate to append the Test to have it phrased like that.I very much disagree with this. It's as much about women tending to just be mothers and sisters as it is about them being lovers. So no, it's just "about something other than a man", not specifically romantic.

It's not supposed to be an indicator of quality. It's a metric at the industry level. There are plenty of very good works that fail the Bechdel test, and that's not a problem with these works. What is a problem is when just about every work fails it.

To use a kind of bad analogy - take something like prices of goods. The price of wheat increasing at one store somewhere has a pretty negligible economic effect. It doesn't really say much of anything. The average price of wheat over a nation or even a large region increasing is a pretty good indicator of something being up. Take diseases - one person getting cancer provides essentially zero information regarding what causes cancer. A particular population getting disproportionately high cancer rates (e.g. smokers getting lots of lung cancer) can be pretty informative.

Basically, I wouldn't say that the Bechdel test has issues. It gets applied poorly, but that's more that a lot of people have trouble with the concept of population level effects that aren't relevant at the individual level than anything else.Yes, this. It can be nice if an individual movie passes it, and a little tick in its favour, but that's not what it's for, and anyone who says "this movie is good/bad because it passes/fails the test" is missing the point. It doesn't matter if one movie fails the test; it matters if almost all movies fail the test.
I'd compare it to the BMI: it can be a slightly useful guide as to whether an individual is a healthy weight, but generally only if they have a specific body type, and there's much better ways to assess that for the individual; what the BMI is for is assessing whole populations, not individuals, and most of the time making it the be-all and end-all of individual health estimation is horribly misusing it and likely to be misleading.

I'd love to see a graph charting the number of movies each year that pass the Bechdel Test. That'd be interesting.

Rawhide

2014-08-03, 12:51 AM

AtlanteanTroll

2014-08-03, 01:43 AM

A little. Do you know how real lesbians react to "lesbian" porn? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJvYprLDcRs) (Coarse language)

Actual lesbian porn for actual lesbians does exist. You did not specify.

Asta Kask

2014-08-03, 01:45 AM

Ok. Fair enough.

Although that was the point of the quotation marks.

Aedilred

2014-08-03, 10:12 AM

As far as "reverse Bechdel" goes, I'm pretty sure The Descent would fail it; I think there's only one male character in the film. I'm also wondering... depending on how you count trolls and animals, would Frozen pass? I guess there might be a couple of short scenes of interaction between Hans and some of the other courtiers, but from what I recall most of those were about the sisters.

Other than that I can't think of any film I've seen in the last couple of years that would fail it, and that's a lot of films (not just modern films; a lot of classics in there too).

Miriel

2014-08-03, 12:05 PM

Asta Kask

2014-08-03, 12:17 PM

Both the How to train your dragon movies fail the bechdel test. They're still awesome, though.

AtlanteanTroll

2014-08-03, 12:33 PM

I don't watch a lot of movies, but I've seen the Hobbit, and it failed.

Otherwise, video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH8JuizIXw8).

How the heck did the Hobbit fail the reverse Bechdel? :smallconfused:

Knaight

2014-08-03, 12:35 PM

I don't watch a lot of movies, but I've seen the Hobbit, and it failed.

Otherwise, video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH8JuizIXw8).

The original context was about the reverse Bechdel, and the Hobbit passes that the instant that Gandalf and Bilbo argue about going on an adventure. Frozen and The Descent were also mentioned, and I'm pretty sure Frozen passes as well, largely in conversations between Sven and Olaf, though it's one of the rare cases where it's really obvious that is passes the standard Bechdel and the reverse is less clear.

SowZ

2014-08-03, 12:47 PM

The Bechdel test is also worse when applied to some mediums. It works best in movies and TV, where POV shifts are easy and frequent. It works decently in plays, where we can jump from scene to scene without a clear POV. It works okay in multiple POV novels and comic books, as long as at least one of your main protagonists is female which should be true for most works. There are some stories where all of one gender is integral to the plot. It works very poorly for single POV novels or first person camera/follow X character films, (Cloverfield, Borat,) since a male POV means you aren't passing the dang thing short of the main character eavesdropping on two women.

So for, say, novels, it is better to just ask how many novels have POV characters that are women. And the answer is sadly too low, though it is more even in YA than adult and still much more even than the film industry, which isn't saying much. Then there's jerks like me on the periphery of both industries. /:

So, yeah, it has some usefulness but the usefulness definitely varies.

Miriel

2014-08-03, 12:50 PM

How the heck did the Hobbit fail the reverse Bechdel? :smallconfused:
My misreading... :smallannoyed: Full apologies.

Tengu_temp

2014-08-03, 02:04 PM

The Bechdel Test thread drinking game: each time someone writes a post about how the purpose of Bechdel Test is to showcase a specific trend in movies, not to create some sort of benchmark, take a shot!

It might sound like I'm making fun, but I'm really not. There are still way too many people who think the test is a mark of quality writing, or feminism, or whatever, and failing it automatically means a movie is bad or at least worse than it'd have been if it passed. Then you get **** like this. (http://www.dailydot.com/fandom/mako-mori-test-bechdel-pacific-rim/)

I wanted to love this movie so much. It wasn't Transformers-style "hot chick poses with car" crap, it had POC representation, it was multicultural and wasn't America saving the world, the main male lead treated the female lead with respect from the start (she didn't have to "win/earn it" or anything)... but a spectacular, face-to-floor fail on the Bechdel Test.

Freakin' seriously?

Asta Kask

2014-08-03, 02:41 PM

Aedilred

2014-08-03, 03:40 PM

How the heck did the Hobbit fail the reverse Bechdel? :smallconfused:

You could make the argument that - at least as far as the first Hobbit goes - there aren't any men in it at all (they're all dwarves, elves, goblins, hobbits, Gollums or wizards). Which would mean it failed both normal and reverse Bechdel.

Admittedly, that's a rubbish argument, and the first Hobbit was about three hours of solid sausage party with two minutes of Galadriel in the middle: it failed Bechdel about as hard as any film since Lawrence of Arabia.

Tengu_temp

2014-08-03, 03:48 PM

We call this the Tengu test.

What have I done.

Nerd-o-rama

2014-08-03, 03:58 PM

It might sound like I'm making fun, but I'm really not. There are still way too many people who think the test is a mark of quality writing, or feminism, or whatever, and failing it automatically means a movie is bad or at least worse than it'd have been if it passed. Then you get **** like this. (http://www.dailydot.com/fandom/mako-mori-test-bechdel-pacific-rim/)

Freakin' seriously?

To be fair, the movie could have used more interactions between Mako and anyone-who-isn't-Raleigh-or-Stacker.

Tengu_temp

2014-08-03, 04:03 PM

To be fair, the movie could have used more interactions between Mako and anyone-who-isn't-Raleigh-or-Stacker.

Indeed it could. And it could use more female characters in general (though the two it had were pretty awesome). But that's different from saying "I wanted to like it but it didn't pass the Bechdel Test, if it did I could say I like it without losing SJW cred".

Knaight

2014-08-03, 04:04 PM

I'd compare it to the BMI: it can be a slightly useful guide as to whether an individual is a healthy weight, but generally only if they have a specific body type, and there's much better ways to assess that for the individual; what the BMI is for is assessing whole populations, not individuals, and most of the time making it the be-all and end-all of individual health estimation is horribly misusing it and likely to be misleading.
I like the BMI comparison. There are cases where it breaks down horribly at the individual level (major athletes are routinely marked obese because they have lots of muscle, people with high bone densities and proportionally wide bones in comparison to their height can be dangerously underweight and end up in the "normal" category, etc.), it gets used at the individual level more than it probably should, and it does have some use at the population level.

Killer Angel

2014-08-03, 04:43 PM

The Bechdel Test is actually a horrible and pretty much completely useless test on its own. Twilight passes the test, and a story only about relationships wouldn't, regardless of its gender balance and treatment.

This is what can happen, when you give a scientific and sociological value on a worldwide scale, to a test presented in a comic strip, without actually reflecting on it.

Ifni

2014-08-03, 04:50 PM

It works very poorly for single POV novels or first person camera/follow X character films, (Cloverfield, Borat,) since a male POV means you aren't passing the dang thing short of the main character eavesdropping on two women.

The criterion doesn't require a conversation with no men present, at least as I read it. It just requires that two women are having a conversation that is not about a man.

Again, look at female-protagonist single-POV novels and ask if they pass the reverse Bechdel. They do, in general. It's not hard.

Some quick examples just from memory (mostly from single-POV novels with a female POV character, two from multi-POV novels but from sections written with a female POV):
-The female protagonist watches while a male officer confronts the subordinate who betrayed him (by trying to get him killed so he could take his job, it was nothing to do with women), and offers him a second chance.
-The female protagonist (a noblewoman) listens to her two male bodyguards discussing the likely tactics of the enemy troops they're pursuing.
-The female protagonist stands at the counter while her husband bargains over a car rental with the male clerk.
-The female POV character and two major male characters plan an espionage operation together.
-The female protagonist is saddling her own horse, while a male character lifts a little boy up into the saddle and banters with him.
-The female protagonist is at a party with one man, another man comes over and asks her date about his recent business venture.
-The female protagonist walks in on an argument between a male blacksmith and a male warrior, with the latter complaining about the cost of shoeing his warhorse.

And yes, these scenarios should still work just fine when you flip the genders. The gender-flipped versions just don't seem to happen much, in practice. (And yeah, part of this is just paucity of female characters overall.)

So for, say, novels, it is better to just ask how many novels have POV characters that are women.

Also a good question, but I don't feel that it gets at the question of relationships between women in the way the Bechdel test does.

Alias

2014-08-04, 08:41 AM

That said, I would say "Stand Still" passes anyway, from your description - if two women are talking about a concussion and administering medical treatment, it doesn't matter if the original cause of a concussion was a man.

(I interpret it as "the conversation must not be just about a man", not "in the entire conversation no men must be mentioned".)

That said... if all the female characters' problems are caused exclusively by men and that's all they ever talk about, yeah, I think that's kind of a problem in portrayal. Imagine if all your male characters ever talked about with each other was how their girlfriends/wives/mothers/daughters/the female school principal were being awful and what they might do about it, never about their work or their friends or sport or plans for the weekend. That'd be kind of a flat portrayal of their lives and relationships, wouldn't it?

I don't consider this sexism, I consider this The Law of Conservation of Detail (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLawOfConservationOfDetail) in action. I have 3 hours to tell the story - while in my mind I know the hopes, dreams and likes of all the characters, I don't have time to display them. Stand Still is a story about domestic violence and ultimately all lines of the play tell the story of Catherine and how her abusive marriage comes to an end. Every conversation ultimately comes back to the need for her to escape. The whole play can be in some sense summed up in the very first spoken word on stage: "Run!" There are fleeting off topic moments for characterization reasons, but the play is honed to the focus of its topic, as most plays are. (Some authors can make meandering stories work. I'm not one of them).

The situation would be different if we where talking about a novel or about a play with a different topic. In the case of a novel, there is space for such indulgences. In the case of a different topic, if the play itself wasn't about relationships it would be odd and sexist if the women present only talked about relationships.

I think it would be dangerous if you altered the play to fit some sort of criterion other than what the play should, in your opinion, be like. There's nothing wrong with paying attention to e.g. feminist points while writing the play but unless the play is about feminism, these concerns should not be allowed to take over the play.

I would consider the play feminist, so yes it is crucial that these points be properly addressed. That said, when I came across the Bechdel test I was amused by it, but at no point was I ever considering making changes to the play to satisfy it, or anyone else's interpretation of it. Also, when I wrote the first post it had been a long time since I had sat down and read the play end to end without stopping. I did that over the weekend. It easily passes this low bar at several points, but as several people have pointed out, that's likely beside the point.

If the conversation in your play is about the injury, not about the man who caused it, then it probably passes. But, especially if the play is about interactions between men and women, it isn't compulsory that it passes it.

It is compulsory in that it sets up a later scene. Lisa demonstrates in the scene that she has an acute knowledge of first aid. It is mentioned later that her father was a paramedic, and she wants to be a doctor someday - but those lines might be missed if the audience doesn't pay attention. The reason it becomes important is she is shot in the heart, literally, at the close of the first act. As she stands there, bleeding out, she knows how long she has. She knows help can't arrive in time and the first scene we see her in, where she's giving first aid, makes it clear that she should know.

A good play (in my opinion) wastes nothing. Everything is there for a reason. There simply isn't time for superfluous bits.

Serpentine

2014-08-04, 09:09 AM

It is compulsory in that it sets up a later scene. Lisa demonstrates in the scene that she has an acute knowledge of first aid. It is mentioned later that her father was a paramedic, and she wants to be a doctor someday - but those lines might be missed if the audience doesn't pay attention. The reason it becomes important is she is shot in the heart, literally, at the close of the first act. As she stands there, bleeding out, she knows how long she has. She knows help can't arrive in time and the first scene we see her in, where she's giving first aid, makes it clear that she should know.

A good play (in my opinion) wastes nothing. Everything is there for a reason. There simply isn't time for superfluous bits.? I wasn't talking about the scene being compulsory, I meant passing the Bechdel Test isn't compulsory, especially if, as I said, the play is about the interactions between men and women.

Alias

2014-08-04, 09:37 AM

? I wasn't talking about the scene being compulsory, I meant passing the Bechdel Test isn't compulsory, especially if, as I said, the play is about the interactions between men and women.

Ah. I misunderstood.

But yeah, I don't see passing the test as compulsory. It's a 'nice to have' but not essential. Sexism is complicated - and as others in the thread have observed its possible to pass the Bechdel test and be horribly sexist. Indeed, I know a couple of blonde jokes which can pass the test since they chronicle interactions between blondes - but they are enormously sexist (or at least hair colorist).

Razanir

2014-08-04, 10:38 AM

Miriel

2014-08-04, 10:59 AM

The Bechdel test is rather horrible at what it does. A few examples:

*Game of Thrones. I would say it passes the Bechdel test. Yes, the first female-to-female conversations that come to mind involve men. But it's discussing the politics of the Iron Throne, so I'm willing to exempt it, believing that the spirit of the law is "a romantic or otherwise stereotypical conversation about men". However, I wouldn't exactly call it empowering, because it's in the usual pseudo-medieval setting.

*Doctor Who. I think we can all agree his companion tends to be a strong female character. But due to the revolving nature of its cast, and that most characters disappear after an episode, when was the last time two girls talked to each other? And about something other than the Doctor, at that.

*And last, but certainly not least, the much hated 50 Shades of Grey. I've never read them, but according to the internet, ALL THREE books pass the Bechdel Test.
(People playing the drinking game: Drink now.)

Have you actually read this thread? Because that's not what the Bechdel test does.

For instance, the Lord of the Ring and the Hobbit movies fail badly. But when you compare women in the movies to women in the books (http://lucreziacontarini.com/2013/12/20/women-in-tolkiens-universe/), you notice that all female characters except Goldberry and the insignificant Ioreth were kept, whereas male characters were cut by the dozen; that Arwen's role was vastly expanded in that she actually does things, and her love story with Aragorn does not involve Elrond's full control over her life; and that they cut Eowyn's fairly problematic "cure" in RotK. As far as The Hobbit goes, well, their were no women in the book, so the few moments of Galadriel and the invention of Tauriel are not unwelcome. So feministly speaking, it's a decent job at making movies out of the books, even though it fails.

What matters is not if movie X passes or fail. There are many interesting stories to be told that do not involve women. What does matter is that no one tells the important stories that do involve women, and that on an industry-level, a vast number of movies fail what is an extremely easy test.

Jormengand

2014-08-04, 11:09 AM

Archonic Energy

2014-08-04, 11:26 AM

I'd love to see a graph charting the number of movies each year that pass the Bechdel Test. That'd be interesting.

ask and ye shall receive:

2013 by box office income (http://www.slashfilm.com/wp/wp-content/images/Bechdel-2013-Box-Office.png)

Razanir

2014-08-04, 11:33 AM

What matters is not if movie X passes or fail. There are many interesting stories to be told that do not involve women. What does matter is that no one tells the important stories that do involve women, and that on an industry-level, a vast number of movies fail what is an extremely easy test.

Tell that to Sweden. They're actually using the Bechdel Test as an official rating. article (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/swedish-cinemas-bechdel-test-films-gender-bias)

I get that to most people, the Bechdel Test is not this binary test of if it's a good movie or not. But there are entire sites out there that seem to treat it that way. And that, plus movies like Gravity, are why I think the world need a better test for gender equality in movies. Of course females should be better represented. But, ironically, the test shouldn't be rigged toward movies with copious numbers of female characters.

If you're looking at trends, find a way to judge how powerful your female characters are. If you have very few characters, of course you fail. I could make a movie whose only character is a woman, and it would fail. But that movie should still be counted among movies that involve women. On the other hand, you get movies like 50 Shades of Grey included in your statistic that by no means deserve to be.

Finally, I present Les Misérables as an interesting example. It should be included in this statistic of movies that involve women. But it only has a single scene with multiple named women conversing- Mme. Thénardier yelling at Cosette. And that doesn't really count as a conversation.

So sure. Give a statistic of movies that feature women. But find a better test. Gravity should be included and 50 Shades shouldn't. That's the flaw I was trying to point out.

Morty

2014-08-04, 11:44 AM

Razanir

2014-08-04, 11:54 AM

You still seem to be under the misaprehension that the Bechdel test is some sort of mark of feminist credentials. It's not. The point of it is that it's an incredibly low bar to clear and yet the vast majority of mainstream western movies don't pass it (though that's starting to change). Think about what that says about the culture that produces those movies, not what it says about any given movie. Gravity doesn't pass? Fine. No problem. That's not a mark against Gravity. 50 Shades of Grey does pass. Ok, that's not a mark in its favour.

And I'm saying that the bar should allow movies like Gravity to pass. You can have an entire genre of one-person shows, and none of them will pass. Similarly, you can have an entire genre of movies that degrade everyone involved and have a lot of it pass. (As Dumbing Of Age pointed out, lesbian porn is practically guaranteed to pass)

Jormengand

2014-08-04, 12:00 PM

The Bechdel test is an example of people missing the forest for the trees. It's an interesting thought exercise that draws light to the gender dynamics in pop culture, and its portrayal of women. But then people started taking it too seriously. Which is depressingly common.

Yep. Females are under-represented in films: news at 11. But the Bechdel test is a really flimsy way of showing that, because it was never intended to be used. I mean, it was made up as a joke, by a webcomic author - how long until we start using the Burlew test, based on a joke he made in OOTS? Come on, guys.

Tengu_temp

2014-08-04, 12:27 PM

Let's say it simply, because it seems some people still have trouble understanding it:

Passing the Bechdel Test doesn't make a movie better or more feminist.
Failing the Bechdel Test doesn't make a movie worse or less feminist.
People who say otherwise do not understand the purpose of the Bechdel Test.

/takes a shot

Razanir

2014-08-04, 12:31 PM

Why? Serious question, not being facetious. It doesn't matter if Gravity, or any other individual movie, happens to pass or not.

The goal of the test, I think we can agree, is to measure the inclusion of women in Hollywood. However, the Bechdel Test, in my opinion, underestimates the number. So I think the test should be modified to prevent movies from being unjustly excluded.

Second question, how? Again, I'm not being facetious. The reason the Bechdel test works to an extent is that it's a simple, casual thought experiment. It's easy and unambiguos as to whether a movie passes or not. If you want a test that actually evaluates the diversity and inclusivity credentials of a given movie it's going to be much more ambiguous and difficult to define.

I propose 5 clauses to partially rectify it.

The Gravity clause: Movies with only 2 characters take an alternate test. 1) Is there at least 1 woman? 2) Does she get a substantial amount of screen time?

The one-woman show clause: Movies with a single character pass, as long as said character is female.

The Harry Potter clause: Series can take the test as a unit. (Named as such, because only 1 Harry Potter movie passes)

The Doctor Who clause (Alternatively, the Chosen One clause): It's fine if your female characters talk about a man if a similar conversation is had by other people. So for instance, two women can talk about the Doctor being secretive or about Harry's duties as the chosen one.

The porn clause: Porn fails the test. No one needs that staining the list of media that passes.

Kalmageddon

2014-08-04, 12:40 PM

sktarq

2014-08-04, 12:54 PM

/takes a shot

*pours a dozen more, because you'll need them*

Razanir

2014-08-04, 12:56 PM

No, I don't agree. The goal of the test is to offer an extremely quick, easy, casual thought experiment to demonstrate the lack of inclusion of women in Hollywood by providing an incredibly low bar to clear and noting that most movies still don't clear it. It's not supposed to be a "measure" of anything. It's not really much more than a "hey, have you ever noticed that...?" conversation starter.

But it still seems unfairly biased. Ways a movie can fail:
*Too small of a cast.
*Being a romance, so ALL of the conversations involve love interests. (Also fails the Reverse Bechdel Test)
*All the conversations briefly mention a man, whether romantic in nature or not.

So I would at least propose addenda to pass small casts and allow non-romantically oriented conversations and/or conversations that only briefly mention a man.

Or even something like giving an honorary passing grade to movies that pass the Mako Mori Test:
1) At least 1 female character
2) Who gets her own narrative
3) That is not about supporting a man's story.

Aedilred

2014-08-04, 12:57 PM

The Bechdel test is rather horrible at what it does. A few examples:

*Game of Thrones. I would say it passes the Bechdel test. Yes, the first female-to-female conversations that come to mind involve men. But it's discussing the politics of the Iron Throne, so I'm willing to exempt it, believing that the spirit of the law is "a romantic or otherwise stereotypical conversation about men". However, I wouldn't exactly call it empowering, because it's in the usual pseudo-medieval setting.

*Doctor Who. I think we can all agree his companion tends to be a strong female character. But due to the revolving nature of its cast, and that most characters disappear after an episode, when was the last time two girls talked to each other? And about something other than the Doctor, at that.

*And last, but certainly not least, the much hated 50 Shades of Grey. I've never read them, but according to the internet, ALL THREE books pass the Bechdel Test.

EDIT: No, one more example. Gravity. It fails because there are only 2 characters on screen in the entire movie, and only one is female. (Going off the Wikipedia cast list)
TV series are kind of a different kettle of fish because a conversation between female characters becomes much more likely simply by dint of quantity of footage and number of characters. Even a relatively short series (by American standards) like Rome still has the thick end of twenty hours of screen time, five times as much as even the very longest films, and a much larger cast. You can still use the test if you like, but it's a much lower bar to clear - although it depends, I guess: would you judge it by episode, by season, or by the entire run? Judging by the whole run, Game of Thrones and Doctor Who (post-2005) definitely pass. Who actually passes in the first episode, with interaction between Rose and her mother.

TV also tends to have a much narrower demographic target, which means a lot of the institutionalised problems of Hollywood are, if not absent, at least less apparent. Lots of shows are made primarily for women. Of course, a lot of shows are made primarily for men, as well, but they tend to be pretty unapologetic and open about that, whereas films are ostensibly for mass-market consumption and should really be trying to appeal to both sexes equally.

But it still seems unfairly biased. Ways a movie can fail:
*Too small of a cast.
*Being a romance, so ALL of the conversations involve love interests. (Also fails the Reverse Bechdel Test)
*All the conversations briefly mention a man, whether romantic in nature or not.
I still think you're missing the point of the test. It's not a scientific principle; it's a rule of thumb to be used to raise awareness of depiction of women in cinema. That's all it is.

Kalmageddon

2014-08-04, 01:03 PM

But it still seems unfairly biased. Ways a movie can fail:
*Too small of a cast.
*Being a romance, so ALL of the conversations involve love interests. (Also fails the Reverse Bechdel Test)
*All the conversations briefly mention a man, whether romantic in nature or not.

So I would at least propose addenda to pass small casts and allow non-romantically oriented conversations and/or conversations that only briefly mention a man.

Or even something like giving an honorary passing grade to movies that pass the Mako Mori Test:
1) At least 1 female character
2) Who gets her own narrative
3) That is not about supporting a man's story.

You are missing the point of the test. It's not supposed to be reliable, it's meant to be thought provoking by making you reflect upon the role of women in movies. Nobody is supposed to seriously conform to it in order to be regarded as progressive, it's not important.
What's important about the test is the immediate reaction it causes the first time you hear about it. Which is "wow, I guess that if so many movies fail such a simple and basic test, women are underrepresented in this media!"

Razanir

2014-08-04, 01:15 PM

You are missing the point of the test. It's not supposed to be reliable, it's meant to be thought provoking by making you reflect upon the role of women in movies. Nobody is supposed to seriously conform to it in order to be regarded as progressive, it's not important.
What's important about the test is the immediate reaction it causes the first time you hear about it. Which is "wow, I guess that if so many movies fail such a simple and basic test, women are underrepresented in this media!"

But I didn't have that reaction. And don't try to tell me that it's because I'm male and thus have always been represented. When people actually do take it seriously (and that includes, actually, my first exposure to the test), it's easy to realize "Hey, this test is kinda meaningless."

Miriel

2014-08-04, 01:22 PM

One more time. We're gonna celebrate, oh yeah, all right don't stop the dancing.

Nobody cares (or should care) about whether some movie passes or not.

Great movies can fail it. Horrible movies can pass it. It's not the point.

Razanir, I wonder to whom you are talking. The people who argue in favour of the Bechdel test all say that it's not an indicator of quality or of feminism or of anything except perhaps the presence of women in movies. We have said several times that it does not matter if any given movie passes. It's a basic test that can be used broadly and relatively objectively to all movies. Even in the Swedish thing, that was the point: the director notes "that the rating doesn't say anything about the quality of the film". It's fairly clear that the intent is to show that vast numbers of movies fail a fairly easy test of women's inclusion, not that Gravity is a bad movie.

What is meaningful is the broad pattern, not the individual instances. For example, a movie about a boy's/men's sports team is likely to revolve around men, and it's perfectly normal and acceptable that any given movie of that sort wouldn't pass the Bechdel test. What is not normal, however, is that I remember a great number of movies about boy's/men's sports team, and none about women's/girl's sports, except cheerleader movies. It's the pattern that matters, not each movies.

You seem most interested in allowing Gravity to pass. It's really, really not the point. Most of my favorite movies fail. My stack of war movies all fail, except perhaps Battle of Britain (I'd have to check). The Tolkien movies all fail, same with Star Wars, at least the first two Monty Python movies (not sure about Meaning of Life, ), etc. I think the only passing movies in my favorites would be Lola Rennt and Kill Bill. Does it mean all these movies are anti-feminist, or mysogynistic, or something else? No. Do I like any of them less because of that? No.

Razanir

2014-08-04, 01:28 PM

Gravity was just an example.

I just think that if you're going to make a thought experiment, that it should be a bit more honest. Which can even be as simple as also recognizing movies that come close to passing. Such as those where even if there aren't any conversations not about men, there at least aren't any about men as love interests. Or recognizing movies with bountiful female characters.

Jormengand

2014-08-04, 01:28 PM

Imagine a culture where most stories are centred around only 3-4 heroes. Males and females are equally represented, yet most films fail the Bechdel and "Reverse Bechdel" tests.

Just because one film fails, just because a hundred films fail, it doesn't matter. The Bechdel test is not, and was never meant to be, an indicator of quality, whether of one film or all films.

Yep. Females are under-represented in films: news at 11. But the Bechdel test is a really flimsy way of showing that, because it was never intended to be used. I mean, it was made up as a joke, by a webcomic author - how long until we start using the Burlew test, based on a joke he made in OOTS? Come on, guys.
You can have an entire genre of one-person shows, and none of them will pass. Similarly, you can have an entire genre of movies that degrade everyone involved and have a lot of it pass. (As Dumbing Of Age pointed out, lesbian porn is practically guaranteed to pass)

Isn't it funny how none of these really good points have been addressed, except for one which was handwaved for an insufficiently explained reason?

Look, we get that it's not meant to be applied to any single film, but when you can have entire genres, or even entire cultures, where it clearly doesn't work, then something's gone wrong.

Kalmageddon

2014-08-04, 01:28 PM

But I didn't have that reaction. And don't try to tell me that it's because I'm male and thus have always been represented. When people actually do take it seriously (and that includes, actually, my first exposure to the test), it's easy to realize "Hey, this test is kinda meaningless."

Who cares if you didn't? :smallconfused:
The test is already well known, your lack of approval won't make a difference.
And of course some people won't care about it, or react the same way. We're not robots, you can't predict with perfect accuarcy how people are going to behave.

Also, what Caroline said. I like Gravity too, so who cares what kind of test it passes and how legit the test is? It won't make any difference to me or to anyone that liked it.

Jormengand

2014-08-04, 01:34 PM

If there's an entire culture wherein no movies that involve women talking to each other get made then you're right, something's wrong. I'm just not sure it's the test that's wrong.

You know, if you go back up two posts above yours, you will see an example of:

- A culture where nothing passes the Bechdel test and that's okay.
- A genre where nothing passes the Bechdel test and that's okay.
- A genre where everything passes the Bechdel test but that's not okay.

The Bechdel test falls flat on its face in all three situations.

Jormengand

2014-08-04, 01:46 PM

1) That hypothetical culture is not our culture.
2) That genre is not prevalent enough to skew the overall results to that degree.
3) I agree, porn is often (though not universally) problematic. It doesn't tend to get released in mainstrem cinemas for the most part and serves a fundamentally different cultural purpose. The Bechdel test isn't about porn.

1) Duh, that's why it's a hypothetical. My point is that the Bechdel test doesn't work, because if we use it on the hypothetical culture we see it fall on its face. Suppose humanity takes on the culture of small-casted films and a lot of them fail the Bechdel test. What does that say about the culture? Absolutely nothing. What do we think it says about the culture? That it's EvilBadWrong and we should change it.
2) Yes, but what if it was?
3) No, of course. The Bechdel test is only about genres which fail it often enough but not too much that you can hide the fact that it doesn't work.

Jormengand

2014-08-04, 01:58 PM

Again, to clarify. The Bechdel test is not a means of evaluating the worthiness of any and all fiction that might ever conceivably exist. It was never meant to do so. That is not its purpose. Its purpose is to serve as a commentary on the modern Hollywood movie industry. Trying to claim the entire exercise invalid by constructing elaborate hypothetical scenarios is very drastically missing the point.

But if it can't serve as commentary on films in general, it can't serve as commentary on the current status quo. If it can't tell us what a good society would look like, because it pings a good society as a bad one (clearly, the good society is wearing Xykon's crown), and it can't tell us what a bad society would look like, as it could ping a far worse society as a far better society.

For the Bechdel test to say anything about our society, we have to be able to say:

Lots of stuff in our society fails the Bechdel test.
If lots of stuff in a society fails the Bechdel test, that society is EvilBadWrong.
Therefore our society is EvilBadWrong.

If you take out the second line, you are left with a non sequitur. You can say "Look at all these films which fail the test" and I can say "So what? You can't prove anything unless you can show that that means something."

Aedilred

2014-08-04, 02:04 PM

Where has "EvilBadWrong" come from all of a sudden?

Edit: What Liffguard said.

Mx.Silver

2014-08-04, 02:09 PM

3) No, of course. The Bechdel test is only about genres which fail it often enough but not too much that you can hide the fact that it doesn't work.

Porn isn't really a narrative medium. Most concepts designed around narrative mediums don't work very well when applied to other things so 'it doesn't work in porn' is a bit of a non-argument. Take the 'show don't tell' rule of good writing, for example. Most porn flicks follow that rule very well, but that doesn't invalidate it as a good rule of writing quality.

In regards to your culture point, besides the issue of hypothetical constructs as applied to pragmatic considerations, your problem there is that you aren't paying any attention to why it wouldn't work in those circumstances. Specifically being that it doesn't take into consideration the overall disparity between portrayals of men and the portrayals of women, which you seem to consider the more important underlying. You need to at least bring up that reasoning, because your point only works if everyone already accepts it and it generally isn't a good idea to leave that crucial a premise tacit.

Knaight

2014-08-04, 02:14 PM

Imagine a culture where most stories are centred around only 3-4 heroes. Males and females are equally represented, yet most films fail the Bechdel and "Reverse Bechdel" tests.
Nonsense. Even if there are no side characters, with 3 heroes talking among themselves the stories are nearly guaranteed to pass at least one of the tests*. With 4 there's a decent chance of passing both.

*It depends on the level of portrayal of nonbinary characters, if everyone is either female or male and there's a decent amount of dialogue passing one test is nearly guaranteed.

Jormengand

2014-08-04, 02:16 PM

I think this is where we're missing each other. The Bechdel test is a jumping-off point, not a conclusion. It is not saying "any society in which most movies fail this test is a bad society." What it's saying is "most movies in our society fail this very simple, very easy test. I wonder why that is?"

But...

That's a really clunky way of trying to find out anything. Okay, we've been wondering why that is, we know why that is, can we move on and stop talking about the Bechdel test now? I think we've officially jumped off the jumping-off point, we don't need to keep swimming back to it and jumping back off again.

Jormengand

2014-08-04, 02:35 PM

Who's "we?" Portrayal of women in media remains a pertinent issue. Not everyone has heard of the Bechdel test. It's a useful example of consciousness-raising that can be used for people new to the discussion.

But it doesn't mean anything, and it confuses people as to what it means (Oh, it's not meant to test individual films, it's meant to evaluate all films... oh, did I say it was meant to evaluate all films? Silly me, I meant it was to get people thinking about all films).

It's causing far more harm than good, however noble Bechdel's intentions.

Jormengand

2014-08-04, 02:53 PM

It's worth keeping around because it's simple, unambiguous and illustrative.

I'm sorry, but I have no idea how you can read the contents of this thread, or any other thread about the Bechdel test, and say that with a straight face.

SowZ

2014-08-04, 02:56 PM

But it doesn't mean anything, and it confuses people as to what it means (Oh, it's not meant to test individual films, it's meant to evaluate all films... oh, did I say it was meant to evaluate all films? Silly me, I meant it was to get people thinking about all films).

It's causing far more harm than good, however noble Bechdel's intentions.

It's a fairly salient point, and most people who take about it in an interview setting do mention movies in general. When people here, "You know half the movies in Hollywood? Not only do they not feature a female main character, but they don't even have two female characters talk to each other about anything other than a man." That's such an in your face point that people can't really ignore it. And as much as you may argue it is just a random coincidental fact, it is a cultural problem. Even if some movies not passing it is fine.

Jormengand

2014-08-04, 02:59 PM

it is a cultural problem.

Really? Because some people are saying you shouldn't be using it to make judgments about all films, but it's instead a "Jumping-off point" not a conclusion.

If the right honourable members for the opposition could at least be consistent about what they believe, maybe I would understand your points better.

SowZ

2014-08-04, 03:10 PM

Really? Because some people are saying you shouldn't be using it to make judgments about all films, but it's instead a "Jumping-off point" not a conclusion.

If the right honourable members for the opposition could at least be consistent about what they believe, maybe I would understand your points better.

It's like most things in statistics. It isn't very useful for examining individuals, but is useful looking at populations. That one movie doesn't pass the Bechdel test isn't a point of judgement, it may have been a specific type of movie where it is man centric and that is fine. Most movies aren't going to have a good excuse, but let's not look at that. Let's stick on Hollywood as a whole. That the large majority of Hollywood movies have a man for the main character, (in fact, producers will demand screenwriters rewrite movies with female protagonists. In the original Twister draft, there was no Bill. There was no divorce plot. There was just Helen Hunt leading a band of storm chasers.) is bad enough. But half of Hollywood movies don't even have two women talk to each other. The message could not be clearer. Men are more entertaining than women, therefore more interesting. And before you say I am jumping to conclusions, that is an attitude internalized by a very, very large number of both men and women across the country. (and world,) even if they don't realize it.

The criterion doesn't require a conversation with no men present, at least as I read it. It just requires that two women are having a conversation that is not about a man.

Again, look at female-protagonist single-POV novels and ask if they pass the reverse Bechdel. They do, in general. It's not hard.

Some quick examples just from memory (mostly from single-POV novels with a female POV character, two from multi-POV novels but from sections written with a female POV):
-The female protagonist watches while a male officer confronts the subordinate who betrayed him (by trying to get him killed so he could take his job, it was nothing to do with women), and offers him a second chance.
-The female protagonist (a noblewoman) listens to her two male bodyguards discussing the likely tactics of the enemy troops they're pursuing.
-The female protagonist stands at the counter while her husband bargains over a car rental with the male clerk.
-The female POV character and two major male characters plan an espionage operation together.
-The female protagonist is saddling her own horse, while a male character lifts a little boy up into the saddle and banters with him.
-The female protagonist is at a party with one man, another man comes over and asks her date about his recent business venture.
-The female protagonist walks in on an argument between a male blacksmith and a male warrior, with the latter complaining about the cost of shoeing his warhorse.

And yes, these scenarios should still work just fine when you flip the genders. The gender-flipped versions just don't seem to happen much, in practice. (And yeah, part of this is just paucity of female characters overall.)

Also a good question, but I don't feel that it gets at the question of relationships between women in the way the Bechdel test does.

The vast majority of your examples have the main character present, and if the main character participates in the conversation, it isn't going to pass the Bechdel test. That character might not be the quiet type. A three way conversation with two women and one man doesn't pass the test, the reverse is also true. And for many of those examples, as an author, I wouldn't write out the conversation. It's likely not plot worthy enough or interesting enough, though it might be in the right scenario or right kind of movie, of course. (I would of been happy to watch the cast of Big Lebowski barter over a stick of gum for five minutes, for example.) Anyway, mentioning that the character is witnessing a conversation isn't enough. Sort of staying quiet or eavesdropping, the male POV novel has a harder time passing the Bechdel test than a film. Of course, they have more room to do it so could easily throw in a meaningless exchange somewhere he accidentally overhears just to pass the test. But I know I don't put in things I know I could cut. So I think it is more fair to talk about representation in novels than how many pass the Bechdel test. As for the reverse Bechdel, I imagine my novel passes it but not very easily. I'll check and get back to you.

Jormengand

2014-08-04, 03:14 PM

It's like most things in statistics. It isn't very useful for examining individuals, but is useful looking at populations.

Yes, but when I addressed that argument, Liffguard started talking about how it was really something different.

Can the advocates of the Bechdel test please get their ducks in a row and decide whether it's an interesting tidbit, a jumping off point into something different, or a conclusion in and of itself?

Razanir

2014-08-04, 03:22 PM

Knaight

2014-08-04, 03:59 PM

Can the advocates of the Bechdel test please get their ducks in a row and decide whether it's an interesting tidbit, a jumping off point into something different, or a conclusion in and of itself?

There are more than two points of view on the subject, asking that everyone that isn't you hold the same one is unreasonable. I'd consider the test a reasonable way to draw conclusions about movies as a whole, based on the existing cultural knowledge of the rarity of films involving a one person cast or even a very small group cast. The genre case doesn't even seem all that strong to me, as the emergence of genres that only involve members of one gender - such as lots of history - are often based on sex segregated societies and that much of historical fiction on said societies focuses exclusively on the activities of one sex is indicative of a problem in and of itself. I'd also consider it more than reasonable for the vast majority of TV series, which tend to run long and have lots and lots of dialogue. Short stories? That gets it more into tidbit areas.

Jormengand

2014-08-04, 04:06 PM

There are more than two points of view on the subject, asking that everyone that isn't you hold the same one is unreasonable. I'd consider the test a reasonable way to draw conclusions about movies as a whole, based on the existing cultural knowledge of the rarity of films involving a one person cast or even a very small group cast. The genre case doesn't even seem all that strong to me, as the emergence of genres that only involve members of one gender - such as lots of history - are often based on sex segregated societies and that much of historical fiction on said societies focuses exclusively on the activities of one sex is indicative of a problem in and of itself. I'd also consider it more than reasonable for the vast majority of TV series, which tend to run long and have lots and lots of dialogue. Short stories? That gets it more into tidbit areas.

Right, okay. But the Bechdel test can't both be a conclusion per se and not be a conclusion per se. You're entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts, and all. It's simply not possible that you're all correct. You're just helping prove my point that the Bechdel test is doing more to confuse people than it is to help the situation in any way.

In any case, if the Bechdel test can't speak for one film, I don't see how it possibly thinks it's going to go around speaking for all films.

Razanir

2014-08-04, 04:39 PM

The genre case doesn't even seem all that strong to me, as the emergence of genres that only involve members of one gender - such as lots of history - are often based on sex segregated societies and that much of historical fiction on said societies focuses exclusively on the activities of one sex is indicative of a problem in and of itself.

Why is that a problem, though? Historical societies were more more segregated sexually than modern society. And since the interesting bits of history are the wars and battles, because of that segregation, anything set it history is naturally going to have a hard time passing the Bechdel Test. But that's not indicative of a gender problem in modern society. That's just a long-term effect of the sexism in historical societies.

Knaight

2014-08-04, 04:43 PM

Right, okay. But the Bechdel test can't both be a conclusion per se and not be a conclusion per se. You're entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts, and all. It's simply not possible that you're all correct. You're just helping prove my point that the Bechdel test is doing more to confuse people than it is to help the situation in any way.
No, it's not possible that we're all correct. That would be why there are disagreements between us. It also doesn't prove your point - the test is useless for particularly advanced discussion, but the basic level has such questions as "is there even a gender imbalance in movies" debated, and it's a pretty decisive piece of evidence there.

In any case, if the Bechdel test can't speak for one film, I don't see how it possibly thinks it's going to go around speaking for all films.
There are a whole bunch of tools that are really useful at a population level and absolutely useless at an individual level. Take the entire field of chemistry - essentially nothing in it predicts the result of an individual collision between molecules. A whole bunch predicts the behavior of gigantic groups of molecules (and even a small scale experiment will generally involve 10^20 molecules or more). Take epidemiology - the "does this person smoke" test doesn't necessarily tell you if a particular person has lung cancer. Some smokers never develop it, some non-smokers do. At a population level, the "does this person smoke" test gives some pretty strong evidence that smoking is a major risk factor for lung cancer.

The Bechdel test is the same way. Plenty of deeply sexist movies pass, and plenty of totally OK movies don't. That doesn't mean it's useless at the population level, where a "population" is a particular industry. It's also specific to certain populations, which is really common for basically any test. The "does this person smoke" test is applied to people, and while there is ample reason to believe that tobacco smoke inhalation is dangerous to a number of animals, it's obviously pointless for single celled organisms. Going back to a chemistry example, phenolphthalein is a useful acid base indicator in an aqueous environment, trying to use it in something that happens in diethyl ether would just be stupid. Similarly, the Bechdel test doesn't necessarily transfer well to other mediums - short stories, pornography, small cast plays, etc.

Why is that a problem, though? Historical societies were more more segregated sexually than modern society. And since the interesting bits of history are the wars and battles, because of that segregation, anything set it history is naturally going to have a hard time passing the Bechdel Test. But that's not indicative of a gender problem in modern society. That's just a long-term effect of the sexism in historical societies.
Our culture generally finding the wars and battles the only interesting parts seems like a pretty glaring cultural flaw to me. Historical societal developments are interesting, there's plenty of conflict other than just warfare, and yet we basically only get war movies.

Miriel

2014-08-04, 04:45 PM

In any case, if the Bechdel test can't speak for one film, I don't see how it possibly thinks it's going to go around speaking for all films.
It shows a pattern, which is that movies tend not to include significant woman characters, which should be surprising considering that half of people are women.

In the same way, if I were to list all the CEOs or whatever of Fortune 500 companies and notice that they are men in a vast majority, this shows a pattern: men tend to hold senior direction posts. This does not mean that Bob Smith of Major Company ltd. should be fired on account of equality, or that it's not normal for Jack Jones to lead Manly Stuff inc., and so on, but it does show a global pattern on a much larger scale.

You can do the same exercise with politicians, etc.

Tengu_temp

2014-08-04, 04:50 PM

In any case, if the Bechdel test can't speak for one film, I don't see how it possibly thinks it's going to go around speaking for all films.

Just like any good test, the Bechdel test is one you perform on a large group. Its purpose is to show a trend. Let's give an example:

You see a black man on the bus, and nobody sits next to him. Does that necessarily mean something? Maybe, but probably not.
But, if you observe hundreds of black men on the bus over several weeks, and almost every time nobody sits next to them, then the situation starts to look a little different.

You might say you don't see any possible pattern here, but that's being obtuse on purpose.

Jormengand

2014-08-04, 04:50 PM

It shows a pattern, which is that movies tend not to include significant woman characters, which should be surprising considering that half of people are women.

No, it doesn't show that pattern. What it shows is that very few films have two women who speak to each other about something other than a man. Like I said:

But if it can't serve as commentary on films in general, it can't serve as commentary on the current status quo. If it can't tell us what a good society would look like, because it pings a good society as a bad one (clearly, the good society is wearing Xykon's crown), and it can't tell us what a bad society would look like, as it could ping a far worse society as a far better society.

For the Bechdel test to say anything about our society, we have to be able to say:

Lots of stuff in our society fails the Bechdel test.
If lots of stuff in a society fails the Bechdel test, that society is EvilBadWrong.
Therefore our society is EvilBadWrong.

If you take out the second line, you are left with a non sequitur. You can say "Look at all these films which fail the test" and I can say "So what? You can't prove anything unless you can show that that means something."

Miriel

2014-08-04, 05:08 PM

No, it doesn't show that pattern. What it shows is that very few films have two women who speak to each other about something other than a man. Like I said:
Well, yes, and that's the point. The only potential difference between what you say and what I say is that I believe that the lack of women in movies is systemic, not accidental.

The quote was totally unrelated to what I said, so I don't see your point.

Jormengand

2014-08-04, 05:18 PM

Well, yes, and that's the point. The only potential difference between what you say and what I say is that I believe that the lack of women in movies is systemic, not accidental.

The quote was totally unrelated to what I said, so I don't see your point.

My quote was entirely related to what you said. If you can't show that a lack of women in films means anything beyond just that, then the Bechdel test is completely useless.

Miriel

2014-08-04, 05:34 PM

My quote was entirely related to what you said. If you can't show that a lack of women in films means anything beyond just that, then the Bechdel test is completely useless.
And I'm saying it's entirely enough, because it's the purpose of the test in the first place. It is not there to pass moral judgement on anything or on anyone. Using your logic, much of science is useless, because tests don't tell everything by themselves and must always be interpreted by the human observer.

Is the Bechdel test capable of proving that there is a lack of women in film? You seem to say yes on that. Now that that's settled, we can discuss why it is that we have this situation or what , or even pass moral judgements if we so desire. But the test by itself doesn't do that.

If you read a science paper or something, you will notice that they will create an instrument (i.e. the Bechdel test) to discover something ("Are women included in Hollywood movies?"), use it, collect the results, then talk about what they mean. The results are more or less undisputable ("few movies pass the Bechdel test"), and if the instrument is suited to the task (which it is, in this case), some conclusions may be reached based on them ("there is a lack of women in film"). But the further implications are all up to discussion.

Razanir

2014-08-04, 05:47 PM

Take epidemiology - the "does this person smoke" test doesn't necessarily tell you if a particular person has lung cancer. Some smokers never develop it, some non-smokers do. At a population level, the "does this person smoke" test gives some pretty strong evidence that smoking is a major risk factor for lung cancer.

Right. But let's draw an analogy between this and movies. The Bechdel test would be like a test for a disease that misses a lot of cases in a certain subpopulation, say, gingers, and that consistently identifies a different disease as the one it's testing for. That doesn't sound like a very reliable test.

Jormengand

2014-08-04, 05:51 PM

And I'm saying it's entirely enough, because it's the purpose of the test in the first place. It is not there to pass moral judgement on anything or on anyone. Using your logic, much of science is useless, because tests don't tell everything by themselves and must always be interpreted by the human observer.

Is the Bechdel test capable of proving that there is a lack of women in film? You seem to say yes on that. Now that that's settled, we can discuss why it is that we have this situation or what , or even pass moral judgements if we so desire. But the test by itself doesn't do that.

But...

"Lack" is a charged word, and you're using it as though it wasn't. The test proves the denotations, that there are not many women. It does not prove the connotations, that there are not enough women. You're saying we can prove that there is a lack (denotation) of women, and then proceeding as though you had proven there was a lack (connotation) of women. If we just wanted to prove there was a lack (denotation) of women, there are far better ways to do it (count the damn women). If you want to prove there's a lack (connotation) of women, then you're going to have to up your game.

SowZ

2014-08-04, 06:12 PM

Why is that a problem, though? Historical societies were more more segregated sexually than modern society. And since the interesting bits of history are the wars and battles, because of that segregation, anything set it history is naturally going to have a hard time passing the Bechdel Test. But that's not indicative of a gender problem in modern society. That's just a long-term effect of the sexism in historical societies.

There's tons of really interesting stuff going on behind the scenes in history that have women, but in any case no one is arguing war movies need to all pass the Bechdel test. Most movies aren't historical, anyways.

But is it even useful for populations? It says nothing about the quality of the movies. What does it matter that women get more represented, if some of those movies do nothing to help them? How would you feel about other tests if they resulted in a lot of false positives?

Is that wrong, though? What if you have a majority of female characters, but they all live in different parts of the world or in different time periods, and thus never meet? Or, on a similar note, what if every conversation they have involves a man, despite none of those conversations being romantic?

Look, as I said, there are going to be movies that don't pass the test and it is fine. You keep arguing that individual movies can fail it and it is fine and you are right. But that women in general are not represented outside of their relation to a man is definitely a problem. Hollywood clearly believes men are more interesting than women and despite what some people argue, media does impace

And the reason people call it a 'jumping off point' is because your first argument. Yes, a movie can pass the Bechdel test and still be sexist. But your examples on how a movie could fail the test and be fine are specific. Most movies have no good reason for failing other than they gave everyone important a penis.

Right, okay. But the Bechdel test can't both be a conclusion per se and not be a conclusion per se. You're entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts, and all. It's simply not possible that you're all correct. You're just helping prove my point that the Bechdel test is doing more to confuse people than it is to help the situation in any way.

In any case, if the Bechdel test can't speak for one film, I don't see how it possibly thinks it's going to go around speaking for all films.

Okay, here's an example of something that doesn't matter on an individual level but is useful on a large scale.

Let's say Wal-Mart hires one white person. Okay, it doesn't matter. Now let's say that Wal-Mart only ever hired white people 100% of the time. That is a problem. Your claim that if it can't apply to one film it can't apply to all is very fallacious.

sktarq

2014-08-04, 06:22 PM

You're saying we can prove that there is a lack (denotation) of women, and then proceeding as though you had proven there was a lack (connotation) of women. If we just wanted to prove there was a lack (denotation) of women, there are far better ways to do it (count the damn women). If you want to prove there's a lack (connotation) of women, then you're going to have to up your game.

And if you want a measure of the films that treat female characters on an equal par with males ones. Things get subjective. The Bectel was a measurement that would include token females and females in movies who act solely as romantic McGuffins. Now that's a non very directly measurable as it is rather subjective. So objective measures must be created. The Bectel test uses the idea that 1) in a decently sized cast there would be enough female parts to talk to each other and 2) avoiding the conversations in which a off screen male character is actually the focus. Admittedly that is a very rough approximation and thus it has limited scientific value and applicability, however it does have the upside of giving a value that is useful giving an overall measurement of women's involvement in a broad selections of films. Also the Bectel pass rate is probably a more useful figure for many people than if a given film passes. So what group of films (usually the wide release films from the big 6 Hollywood studios) is a very important as it can give a very rough idea of how that media collection is involving female characters. Now it is by no means perfect and makes huge assumptions. These tools have major problems but still can be useful. Like Value At Risk models for a bank-a broad spectrum term that is pretty good as showing where risk is building but if used alone as a standard greatly incentivizes low probability high damage risk concentration...making it horrible for insurance and as 2008 proves investment banks too. So the Bechtel makes passable first glace at the culture that produced the films. So it has uses in looking at a culture, well film making subcultures not necessarily the culture the filmmakers serve, and as a first pass is a decent place to start a conversation of general subjects of women in film but nothing specific where other measures would be needed (but those measures having the downsides of other limits such as subjectivity).

Ifni

2014-08-04, 06:39 PM

It's like most things in statistics. It isn't very useful for examining individuals, but is useful looking at populations. That one movie doesn't pass the Bechdel test isn't a point of judgement, it may have been a specific type of movie where it is man centric and that is fine. Most movies aren't going to have a good excuse, but let's not look at that. Let's stick on Hollywood as a whole. That the large majority of Hollywood movies have a man for the main character, (in fact, producers will demand screenwriters rewrite movies with female protagonists. In the original Twister draft, there was no Bill. There was no divorce plot. There was just Helen Hunt leading a band of storm chasers.) is bad enough. But half of Hollywood movies don't even have two women talk to each other. The message could not be clearer. Men are more entertaining than women, therefore more interesting. And before you say I am jumping to conclusions, that is an attitude internalized by a very, very large number of both men and women across the country. (and world,) even if they don't realize it.

I agree with all this. Well said.

The vast majority of your examples have the main character present

Yes, that was my point when I said "The criterion doesn't require a conversation with no men present, at least as I read it. It just requires that two women are having a conversation that is not about a man." I was illustrating this point in the gender-swapped case. There are many examples of men having conversations which are not about women, while a woman is present.

I agree that conversations in single-POV novels tend to require that the main character be present and conscious. I do not agree that this makes it near-impossible for them to pass the Bechdel test, because I do not think that having a man present and conscious makes it near-impossible for women to talk about anything other than men.

and if the main character participates in the conversation, it isn't going to pass the Bechdel test.

"Two women have a conversation" is not the same as "two women have a conversation with nobody else present". "Two women have a conversation which is not about a man" is not the same as "two women have a conversation in which no man is mentioned or allowed to participate". In both cases, I take the test to mean the former, not the latter. (See below - I interpret the test maximally generously, because I think this makes it a cleaner test. Sadly, this does not greatly increase the pass rate.)

That character might not be the quiet type.

True. But I just came up with a bunch of instances where female protagonists weren't talking because they were doing something else, or because it was a tense situation where their intervention was only likely to make things worse, or because the men were talking about something with which they were unfamiliar, or because they walked into an ongoing conversation, etc. (And this was not an exhaustive list. It took about ten seconds of thinking about books I've read with female protagonists.) If male protagonists unavoidably make any conversation between women all about themselves, which seems to be the only case in which a male character's POV means a novel CANNOT pass the Bechdel test... well, maybe that tells us something, too.

A three way conversation with two women and one man doesn't pass the test, the reverse is also true.

That is not how I interpret the test, provided the women actually converse with each other. (It doesn't count if they only talk to the man and ignore each other, and yes, I have seen this done.) There are two women and they're having a conversation, that's a pass, it's okay if they're including a guy in their conversation.

I try to be generous, to make the bar as low as possible and consider pretty much any ambiguous situation to be a pass (my standard is pretty much "was there an exchange between two women, consisting of at least two lines from each woman, that didn't focus on men"?) - it makes it a cleaner test. Unfortunately, it doesn't increase the pass rate very much - most single-person male-POV novels I've read don't pass the Bechdel test even by this standard.

And for many of those examples, as an author, I wouldn't write out the conversation. It's likely not plot worthy enough or interesting enough, though it might be in the right scenario or right kind of movie, of course. (I would of been happy to watch the cast of Big Lebowski barter over a stick of gum for five minutes, for example.)

You wouldn't have written the climactic showdown between the main love interest and the guy who betrayed him, the foreshadowing of the scene in which the enemy troops showed up unexpectedly and kidnapped the main character, the couple trying hurriedly to arrange a getaway car with the bad guys hot on their trail, the scene where the spies plan how to steal the secret plans, the moment as a child prince says goodbye to his foster-parents before being given into the care of a trusted ally, and the provocation for the protagonist to get into a fight and consequently into Trouble With The Law?

Well, okay.

(About half my examples were from Lois McMaster Bujold, who is an amazing author with four Hugos to her name. She writes good female POV characters.)

It's true if your novel has hardly any conversations it'll be hard to pass the Bechdel test, but that seems like a much smaller group of novels than "single male POV novels", which is the case I was addressing.

In most cases these conversations were a paragraph or two. Some ran over a couple of pages. The typical books I read are several hundred pages, and I expect a significant fraction of that to be dialogue.

Anyway, mentioning that the character is witnessing a conversation isn't enough. Sort of staying quiet or eavesdropping, the male POV novel has a harder time passing the Bechdel test than a film. Of course, they have more room to do it so could easily throw in a meaningless exchange somewhere he accidentally overhears just to pass the test. But I know I don't put in things I know I could cut. So I think it is more fair to talk about representation in novels than how many pass the Bechdel test. As for the reverse Bechdel, I imagine my novel passes it but not very easily. I'll check and get back to you.

It'd be interesting to see a novel that neither passes Bechdel nor reverse Bechdel by my (generous) interpretation: it would pretty much require the protagonist to talk to no one and listen to no one throughout the story. I can imagine that being the case for a story about a castaway or mountain climber or someone else who deliberately or otherwise eschews all human contact. It's hard to see it happening in other cases.

@Jormengand:

"Lack" is a charged word, and you're using it as though it wasn't. The test proves the denotations, that there are not many women. It does not prove the connotations, that there are not enough women. You're saying we can prove that there is a lack (denotation) of women, and then proceeding as though you had proven there was a lack (connotation) of women. If we just wanted to prove there was a lack (denotation) of women, there are far better ways to do it (count the damn women). If you want to prove there's a lack (connotation) of women, then you're going to have to up your game.

... so if you're fine with the first point, but not with the inference, your argument is that women are underrepresented in film and novels relative to their share of the population, but that's completely okay?

Yeah, if you're aware of other people's marginalization, you're just happy about it, then there's not much point making factual arguments. That's a question of ethics.

SowZ

2014-08-04, 06:54 PM

I agree with all this. Well said.

Yes, that was my point when I said "The criterion doesn't require a conversation with no men present, at least as I read it. It just requires that two women are having a conversation that is not about a man." I was illustrating this point in the gender-swapped case. There are many examples of men having conversations which are not about women, while a woman is present.

I agree that conversations in single-POV novels tend to require that the main character be present and conscious. I do not agree that this makes it near-impossible for them to pass the Bechdel test, because I do not think that having a man present and conscious makes it near-impossible for women to talk about anything other than men.

"Two women have a conversation" is not the same as "two women have a conversation with nobody else present". "Two women have a conversation which is not about a man" is not the same as "two women have a conversation in which no man is mentioned or allowed to participate". In both cases, I take the test to mean the former, not the latter. (See below - I interpret the test maximally generously, because I think this makes it a cleaner test. Sadly, this does not greatly increase the pass rate.)

True. But I just came up with a bunch of instances where female protagonists weren't talking because they were doing something else, or because it was a tense situation where their intervention was only likely to make things worse, or because the men were talking about something with which they were unfamiliar, or because they walked into an ongoing conversation, etc. (And this was not an exhaustive list. It took about ten seconds of thinking about books I've read with female protagonists.) If male protagonists unavoidably make any conversation between women all about themselves, which seems to be the only case in which a male character's POV means a novel CANNOT pass the Bechdel test... well, maybe that tells us something, too.

That is not how I interpret the test, provided the women actually converse with each other. (It doesn't count if they only talk to the man and ignore each other, and yes, I have seen this done.) There are two women and they're having a conversation, that's a pass, it's okay if they're including a guy in their conversation.

I try to be generous, to make the bar as low as possible and consider pretty much any ambiguous situation to be a pass (my standard is pretty much "was there an exchange between two women, consisting of at least two lines from each woman, that didn't focus on men"?) - it makes it a cleaner test. Unfortunately, it doesn't increase the pass rate very much - most single-person male-POV novels I've read don't pass the Bechdel test even by this standard.

You wouldn't have written the climactic showdown between the main love interest and the guy who betrayed him, the foreshadowing of the scene in which the enemy troops showed up unexpectedly and kidnapped the main character, the couple trying hurriedly to arrange a getaway car with the bad guys hot on their trail, the scene where the spies plan how to steal the secret plans, the moment as a child prince says goodbye to his foster-parents before being given into the care of a trusted ally, and the provocation for the protagonist to get into a fight and consequently into Trouble With The Law?

Well, okay.

(About half my examples were from Lois McMaster Bujold, who is an amazing author with four Hugos to her name. She writes good female POV characters.)

It's true if your novel has hardly any conversations it'll be hard to pass the Bechdel test, but that seems like a much smaller group of novels than "single male POV novels", which is the case I was addressing.

In most cases these conversations were a paragraph or two. Some ran over a couple of pages. The typical books I read are several hundred pages, and I expect a significant fraction of that to be dialogue.

It'd be interesting to see a novel that neither passes Bechdel nor reverse Bechdel by my (generous) interpretation: it would pretty much require the protagonist to talk to no one and listen to no one throughout the story. I can imagine that being the case for a story about a castaway or mountain climber or someone else who deliberately or otherwise eschews all human contact. It's hard to see it happening in other cases.

@Jormengand:

... so if you're fine with the first point, but not with the inference, your argument is that women are underrepresented in film and novels relative to their share of the population, but that's completely okay?

Yeah, if you're aware of other people's marginalization, you're just happy about it, then there's not much point making factual arguments. That's a question of ethics.

I write out dialogue, but if the main character is not paying attention and doing something else I'm more likely to just say that the protagonists husband engaged the dealer guy. If she isn't paying attention, I'll focus on what my protagonist is doing. That's what I meant.

If your definition of Bechdel allows for a three way conversation with two women, I agree with you, it should be really easy for even most male POV novel to pass the test. I generally interpreted it as a female only discussion, but if you are more generous than yes, basically all mediums can pass it pretty easily if there is a decent sized, not all male cast.

Gwynfrid

2014-08-04, 08:11 PM

Right, okay. But the Bechdel test can't both be a conclusion per se and not be a conclusion per se. You're entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts, and all. It's simply not possible that you're all correct. You're just helping prove my point that the Bechdel test is doing more to confuse people than it is to help the situation in any way.

As a guy who's learnt of the existence of the Bechdel test on this forum a few days ago, I'll venture an opinion, although, like Knaight's, it won't be especially representative of anybody else's. I think the test is useful as an rough indicator (not a measurement) of how well movies, novels, etc depict or represent the real world regarding gender. It is very rough, because it is simplistic, and it's no more than a vague indication, since the bar is set so low. It is only useful as a stat for a population of movies/plays/etc, not for any individual work. Finally, it only tells us something if the results are skewed negative: Since a great many movies are failing, it tells us that representation in Hollywood is very, very poor, again because the bar is very low. If most movies were passing, it would tell us nothing about women representation. In that case, a new test, with a higher bar, would serve better. It doesn't seem we're there yet.

In any case, if the Bechdel test can't speak for one film, I don't see how it possibly thinks it's going to go around speaking for all films.
On that one, I fully agree with Knaight's analogy with chemistry. It is relevant in more ways than one. In chemistry, interactions between two individual molecules don't matter. Only reactions between very large numbers of molecules have an interesting, measurable effect. In the case of the Bechdel test, only the reaction (or lack thereof) of the public at large to Hollywood in general may eventually have a societal impact, not the opinion of an individual on a single movie.

Our culture generally finding the wars and battles the only interesting parts seems like a pretty glaring cultural flaw to me. Historical societal developments are interesting, there's plenty of conflict other than just warfare, and yet we basically only get war movies.

Not quite one topic, but: Not true. Well, maybe it's true in Hollywood, but in other places, movies with a historical setting aren't only about war.

But...

"Lack" is a charged word, and you're using it as though it wasn't. The test proves the denotations, that there are not many women. It does not prove the connotations, that there are not enough women. You're saying we can prove that there is a lack (denotation) of women, and then proceeding as though you had proven there was a lack (connotation) of women. If we just wanted to prove there was a lack (denotation) of women, there are far better ways to do it (count the damn women). If you want to prove there's a lack (connotation) of women, then you're going to have to up your game.

Connotations cannot be proven. They're opinions, nothing more. What the indicator proves is lack of representation for women as people who talk among themselves about things other than men. This connotes, in my opinion, a vision of the world by the movie industry, which implies that decision makers either don't like to watch women playing a role independently of men, or they believe the audience doesn't (which is at least a bad).

Miriel

2014-08-04, 09:16 PM

But...

"Lack" is a charged word, and you're using it as though it wasn't. The test proves the denotations, that there are not many women. It does not prove the connotations, that there are not enough women. You're saying we can prove that there is a lack (denotation) of women, and then proceeding as though you had proven there was a lack (connotation) of women. If we just wanted to prove there was a lack (denotation) of women, there are far better ways to do it (count the damn women). If you want to prove there's a lack (connotation) of women, then you're going to have to up your game.
Don't blame me, I was actually using your phrase: "If you can't show that a lack of women in films means anything beyond just that" -- which I understood to mean that for you, the test did show a "lack", but it doesn't say anything else by itself. I used the same word in exactly the same phrase with exactly the same meaning. Twice. So yeah.

Here, I'm working with the assumption that you and I believe that men and women should be represented equally by the film industry in general (though not necessarily in any given movie). In a world where half the population is female, it's relatively easy to infer that "not many women/many men" is an imbalance. If you think that having a glaring imbalance is fine, then great for you. That's up to discussion. But even then, whatever your opinion may be about women's representation, it still says nothing against the test. The test shows the imbalance, not what it means or what should be done about it.

SowZ

2014-08-04, 09:30 PM

But...

"Lack" is a charged word, and you're using it as though it wasn't. The test proves the denotations, that there are not many women. It does not prove the connotations, that there are not enough women. You're saying we can prove that there is a lack (denotation) of women, and then proceeding as though you had proven there was a lack (connotation) of women. If we just wanted to prove there was a lack (denotation) of women, there are far better ways to do it (count the damn women). If you want to prove there's a lack (connotation) of women, then you're going to have to up your game.

You're using the Bechdel test wrong, then. It's like measuring something with your thumb. Good enough for quick and dirty purposes, but a carpenter needs a tape measure, and an engineer needs computers to do measurements/calculations. The Bechdel test just gives a very rough idea of the issue. If you want to take about the actual cultural problems on a deep level, you have to measure more accurately. If you want to talk about solutions, you really have to dissect the issue. But the Bechdel test isn't about that. It's about making a point quickly that will hopefully inspire some thought so the person who had the test explained to them will actually delve deeper. Because any amount of fair research will confirm the general purpose behind the test. Which is to give a super simple metric to evaluate a film's representation of women because you aren't going to get the average person to, while watching a movie, be deeply analytical of the feminist values inside that film. You might get them to look for a female on female dialogue, though.

What you are doing is basically arguing that there is no reason or usefulness to measure stuff with your thumb because it is inaccurate.

Dragonus45

2014-08-04, 09:44 PM

Jormengand

2014-08-05, 07:58 AM

Tengu_temp

2014-08-05, 08:26 AM

I like how anyone who dares say that the holy test is wrong immediately gets dog-piled. :smallsigh:

People dog-pile them because they're wrong. Don't try to paint your ignorance as being a non-conformist rebel who dares to go against the common trend, please.

Jormengand

2014-08-05, 08:30 AM

People dog-pile them because they're wrong. Don't try to paint your ignorance as being a non-conformist rebel who dares to go against the common trend, please.

But what if I'm right?

You're not allowing for the possibility that anyone other than you actually has a valid opinion. You're not asking the question "What if I'm wrong?" And if you never ask that question, you're never going to find out anything new. If you just assume that other people are "Ignorant" or "Don't understand" and that your position is infallible, then you are both very rude and very wrong.

Gwynfrid

2014-08-05, 08:36 AM

A single person may turn out to the right against the conventional wisdom, or to bring something new to the table that nobody else had thought of before. That happens all the time and that's how society (or politics, science, art etc) advances.

In this case, I read your argument, Jormengand, and the arguments of others. I found yours to be less clear and less convincing than others. That doesn't mean you're wrong, it just means we disagree. Still, it may also mean I haven't given enough thought to your point. May I ask what it is exactly that you suggest as a replacement for the Bechdel test?

Nerd-o-rama

2014-08-05, 08:47 AM

But what if I'm right?

You're not.

In fact, I'm pretty sure you're trolling, in the denotative meaning of saying something provocative specifically to elicit responses. You're also making a bad faith argument in regards to the Bechdel Test itself because you are purporting that the test presents as fact, either explicitly or implicitly, things that it does not in fact represent as fact.

The Bechdel test is a set of criteria to apply to a work of fiction. How anyone interprets the results of the rubric is entirely up to them.

Jormengand

2014-08-05, 08:50 AM

May I ask what it is exactly that you suggest as a replacement for the Bechdel test?

Common sense.

Of course women are underrepresented in media. We know that. We can compare the screen time, talking time, what they're talking about, we can measure whatever and it would still be better than the inglorious clusterflub formerly known as the Bechdel test, but all that the Bechdel test tells us is something we already know. It's like burden of proof - if we want to say there's a flying teapot in space, we need to prove it because it's not current consensus, but if we want to say that the Earth exists, we don't need to go through extensive tests to prove that it's not an illusion because the currently held fact is that it does exist. We don't need to prove women are underrepresented because that's blindingly obvious.

Here are a few basic problems with it:

- It's confusing, and that confusion causes it to be misapplied, such as (not going to read back, was it Swedish?) cinemas using it as a those-who-fail-need-not-apply measure.
- It's confusing, and that conclusion makes it hard to apply correctly - we have one person in this thread who think's it's a jumping-off point, another who thinks it's a per se conclusion about one film, another who thinks it's a per se conclusion about all films in any society, another who thinks it's a per se conclusion about all films but only in this society, others who think it allows us to reach a different conclusion about at least two different ones of those things... no-one actually agrees on what it's for, and all of those things are incompatible with each other, so most of them must be wrong. So most people in this thread are using it wrong, which is why I told everyone to get their ducks in a row and decide among themselves what they were trying to use it for before trying to tell me what to use it for..
- It seems, by at least one person's measure, to require that we already know what the conclusion is going to be before we can show that the conclusion is true. So the Bechdel test only tells us what our society looks like because we already know what our society looks like. This is because...
- It only works on our, specific society. It doesn't work on certain genres in that society. It only works in a specific set of circumstances and so its use is once again limited to things where we already know the answer.

Miriel

2014-08-05, 09:13 AM

Common sense.

Of course women are underrepresented in media. We know that. We can compare the screen time, talking time, what they're talking about, we can measure whatever and it would still be better than the inglorious clusterflub formerly known as the Bechdel test, but all that the Bechdel test tells us is something we already know. It's like burden of proof - if we want to say there's a flying teapot in space, we need to prove it because it's not current consensus, but if we want to say that the Earth exists, we don't need to go through extensive tests to prove that it's not an illusion because the currently held fact is that it does exist. We don't need to prove women are underrepresented because that's blindingly obvious.
To you maybe. Not everyone thinks it's so obvious, or that the extent of that imbalance is obvious. To many people, it's an eye-opener (cf. the Sweden thing).

Screen time is difficult to measure, same with talking time, and so on. The Bechdel test is much easier to apply. You don't need a stopwatch, for a start, and in many cases, you can conclude that a movie has failed just by checking up imdb.

- It's confusing, and that confusion causes it to be misapplied, such as (not going to read back, was it Swedish?) cinemas using it as a those-who-fail-need-not-apply measure.

That's not what they did. As I mentioned already, the director notes "that the rating doesn't say anything about the quality of the film".

- It's confusing, and that conclusion makes it hard to apply correctly - we have one person in this thread who think's it's a jumping-off point, another who thinks it's a per se conclusion about one film, another who thinks it's a per se conclusion about all films in any society, another who thinks it's a per se conclusion about all films but only in this society, others who think it allows us to reach a different conclusion about at least two different ones of those things... no-one actually agrees on what it's for, and all of those things are incompatible with each other, so most of them must be wrong. So most people in this thread are using it wrong, which is why I told everyone to get their ducks in a row and decide among themselves what they were trying to use it for before trying to tell me what to use it for..

Here, you are taking out of context quotes that present the same position in a slightly different light for the purpose of answering you and others. If you really read what we say, you would have noticed that we all agree on the basics: The Bechdel test is a useful metric for observing gender imbalance in the movie industry, though it says nothing about any given film by itself.

- It only works on our, specific society. It doesn't work on certain genres in that society. It only works in a specific set of circumstances and so its use is once again limited to things where we already know the answer.
1) It doesn't work on genres, it works on an industry as a whole. It's perfectly obvious to me that classic war movies like The Longest Day or A Bridge too Far or Das Boot will fail, for reasons that are understandable. What is significant, however, is that there are many genres that are understably male-only, and extremely few that focus only on women, just as for movies in general.
2) It intends to comment only on our society, so the other criticism is invalid. We do many things to discover stuff about us that wouldn't work on other societies. Are you saying that the whole field of history is wrong because its methods don't work on societies that didn't/don't use writing? Because it would be the same logic.

Jormengand

2014-08-05, 09:29 AM

To you maybe. Not everyone thinks it's so obvious, or that the extent of that imbalance is obvious. To many people, it's an eye-opener (cf. the Sweden thing).

Screen time is difficult to measure, same with talking time, and so on. The Bechdel test is much easier to apply. You don't need a stopwatch, for a start, and in many cases, you can conclude that a movie has failed just by checking up imdb.
It's obvious, and the Bechdel test is in my experience more likely to elicit a "So what?" than an epiphany about gender representation.

That's not what they did. As I mentioned already, the director notes "that the rating doesn't say anything about the quality of the film".
Yes, but you're not allowed to use the Bechdel test on one film, are you? :smallamused:

Here, you are taking out of context quotes that present the same position in a slightly different light for the purpose of answering you and others.
No, I'm not.

If you really read what we say, you would have noticed that we all agree on the basics: The Bechdel test is a useful metric for observing gender imbalance in the movie industry, though it says nothing about any given film by itself.
Yes, but you're also saying completely different things WITHIN those basics - some of you are saying it's a per se conclusion, some of you are saying it isn't, and therefore some of you are wrong. Stop trying to dodge your way around that.

1) It doesn't work on genres, it works on an industry as a whole. It's perfectly obvious to me that classic war movies like The Longest Day or A Bridge too Far or Das Boot will fail, for reasons that are understandable. What is significant, however, is that there are many genres that are understably male-only, and extremely few that focus only on women, just as for movies in general.
2) It intends to comment only on our society, so the other criticism is invalid. We do many things to discover stuff about us that wouldn't work on other societies. Are you saying that the whole field of history is wrong because its methods don't work on societies that didn't/don't use writing? Because it would be the same logic.
1) No, it says things about the industry as a whole minus the genres it doesn't work on.
2) Like I said, it only tells you things about our society because we already know those selfsame things about our society. When the antecedent is also the conclusion, you know something's gone wrong.

SowZ

2014-08-05, 11:29 AM

I like how anyone who dares say that the holy test is wrong immediately gets dog-piled. :smallsigh:

Yes, I know it says that women are marginalised. But there are many better, simpler ways to show that which don't cause the massive amount of confusion that the Bechdel test does.

People have given you reasoned arguments, and painting yourself out as a victim is a lazy way to invalidate those arguments without having to counter them. As is, "What if you're wrong?" That's lazy, too, and you can use either argument to back up any point. Traditionally, these arguments are used by someone running out of actual things to say.

Miriel

2014-08-05, 11:34 AM

It's obvious, and the Bechdel test is in my experience more likely to elicit a "So what?" than an epiphany about gender representation.
Well, that's your experience, not mine, nor that of many other people.

Yes, but you're not allowed to use the Bechdel test on one film, are you? :smallamused:
The point of what they are doing is to show to people that most of the movies they would watch don't pass the test -- that hey! that film doesn't pass, and that one doesn't either, and that movie I saw last week didn't, maybe there is something going on. Because some people still need their epiphany.

Yes, but you're also saying completely different things WITHIN those basics - some of you are saying it's a per se conclusion, some of you are saying it isn't, and therefore some of you are wrong. Stop trying to dodge your way around that.
In different contexts, about different things.

I don't remember not agreeing, at least on some level, with what the pro-Bechdel people here said.

1) No, it says things about the industry as a whole minus the genres it doesn't work on.
2) Like I said, it only tells you things about our society because we already know those selfsame things about our society. When the antecedent is also the conclusion, you know something's gone wrong.
1) Did you read what I said? I said that the fact that many genres are men-only while few are women-only should be construed as significant.
2) It provides a way of measuring what you already know, or even to falsify what you thought you knew. If, in some years from now, most movies were to pass the Bechdel test, it would mean that something has changed in how women are represented in the film industry.

super dark33

2014-08-05, 11:34 AM

SowZ

2014-08-05, 11:36 AM

The Bechdel test is nothing but a tap on the back and a lolipop for a movie that does its certein thing.

Problem is you dont see "Schwartzneger's test" or "Ebert test" to be other taps on the back and lolipops so it stands out, thus gets discussed more.

No, it isn't, you've entirely missed the point.

It's obvious, and the Bechdel test is in my experience more likely to elicit a "So what?" than an epiphany about gender representation.

Yes, but you're not allowed to use the Bechdel test on one film, are you? :smallamused:

No, I'm not.

Yes, but you're also saying completely different things WITHIN those basics - some of you are saying it's a per se conclusion, some of you are saying it isn't, and therefore some of you are wrong. Stop trying to dodge your way around that.

1) No, it says things about the industry as a whole minus the genres it doesn't work on.
2) Like I said, it only tells you things about our society because we already know those selfsame things about our society. When the antecedent is also the conclusion, you know something's gone wrong.

Your whole assessment that if it can't be used on one film, how can it be used on all is nonsense. Take a statistics class or something and you'll realize many, many things are useful on entire populations but useless on individuals.

Kalmageddon

2014-08-05, 11:45 AM

It's obvious, and the Bechdel test is in my experience more likely to elicit a "So what?" than an epiphany about gender representation.

It's obvious to you.
To many other people, myself included, that's not the case. I didn't really relfected upon that particular subject until I randomly came across the test while browsing. I can personally say that the test did make think about gender representation in movies.
Do I consider the Bechdel test the holy grail of tests and thought provoking exercises? No, of course not. It's as basic and as superficial as you can get.
But here's the thing: to me, it did exactly what it was supposed to do. And I can only assume that if the test is so popular it's because it did the same to a lot of people.

What, exactly, do you find wrong about this?

Jormengand

2014-08-05, 11:47 AM

People have given you reasoned arguments, and painting yourself out as a victim is a lazy way to invalidate those arguments without having to counter them. As is, "What if you're wrong?" That's lazy, too, and you can use either argument to back up any point. Traditionally, these arguments are used by someone running out of actual things to say.

People have ignored my arguments and called me ignorant and a troll. Those are marks of people with no actual arguments. Correctly noting that everyone seems to have a vested interest in the Bechdel test being correct, and hasn't seemed to give any thought to the idea that it isn't, doesn't mean I have no arguments. I think it means that everyone is pre-assuming that it's a good thing.

Well, that's your experience, not mine, nor that of many other people.
You say "Many other people" as though that somehow proved anything. In fact, what I see is many other people completely mis-applying it.

The point of what they are doing is to show to people that most of the movies they would watch don't pass the test -- that hey! that film doesn't pass, and that one doesn't either, and that movie I saw last week didn't, maybe there is something going on. Because some people still need their epiphany.
Yes, and they're trying to rate individual films based on it, which is why what they're doing is incorrect.

In different contexts, about different things.
Uh, no. Show that these people are talking about different contexts and different things, because they're clearly not. Some people say the Bechdel test is a per se conclusion, some people say it isn't, they can't both be right.

I don't remember not agreeing, at least on some level, with what the pro-Bechdel people here said.
Yes, well I also agree with you that the test exists, therefore I agree with you on some level. You need to start agreeing on all levels about what the test actually does before I can start taking you all seriously. So go on: work out between you what it actually means, come to an agreement on all levels, and then maybe I'll agree that the pro-Bechdel team are actually all correct.

1) Did you read what I said?
Yes.

I said that the fact that many genres are men-only while few are women-only should be construed as significant.
But the Bechdel test doesn't show that. What does show that is looking at a genre and then looking to see whether or not it has any men, or any women.

2) It provides a way of measuring what you already know, or even to falsify what you thought you knew. If, in some years from now, most movies were to pass the Bechdel test, it would mean that something has changed in how women are represented in the film industry.

By your own admission, no it wouldn't. It only works because our culture doesn't produce a lot of films with small casts, or doesn't produce tons of films where women talk a lot about how terrible they are for being women (yes, that's unlikely, but you get the idea). It only measures what we already know in a culture we're already in.

No, it isn't, you've entirely missed the point.

Exactly.

That is exactly what is wrong with the Bechdel test. Too many people miss the point and use it for the wrong thing, don't understand is, and do something which ends up having negative consequences for their thought processes.

SowZ

2014-08-05, 12:02 PM

People have ignored my arguments and called me ignorant and a troll. Those are marks of people with no actual arguments. Correctly noting that everyone seems to have a vested interest in the Bechdel test being correct, and hasn't seemed to give any thought to the idea that it isn't, doesn't mean I have no arguments. I think it means that everyone is pre-assuming that it's a good thing.

You say "Many other people" as though that somehow proved anything. In fact, what I see is many other people completely mis-applying it.

Yes, and they're trying to rate individual films based on it, which is why what they're doing is incorrect.

Uh, no. Show that these people are talking about different contexts and different things, because they're clearly not. Some people say the Bechdel test is a per se conclusion, some people say it isn't, they can't both be right.

Yes, well I also agree with you that the test exists, therefore I agree with you on some level. You need to start agreeing on all levels about what the test actually does before I can start taking you all seriously. So go on: work out between you what it actually means, come to an agreement on all levels, and then maybe I'll agree that the pro-Bechdel team are actually all correct.

Yes.

But the Bechdel test doesn't show that. What does show that is looking at a genre and then looking to see whether or not it has any men, or any women.

By your own admission, no it wouldn't. It only works because our culture doesn't produce a lot of films with small casts, or doesn't produce tons of films where women talk a lot about how terrible they are for being women (yes, that's unlikely, but you get the idea). It only measures what we already know in a culture we're already in.

Exactly.

That is exactly what is wrong with the Bechdel test. Too many people miss the point and use it for the wrong thing, don't understand is, and do something which ends up having negative consequences for their thought processes.

Yes, the people who have called you ignorant or a troll are showing signs that they've run out things to say. Maybe they haven't. Maybe you haven't. But portraying yourself as a victim to invalidate arguments without addressing them or others resorting to name calling are both signs of resorting to something less than rational out of frustration. That others are doing it doesn't mean you should. And even if people misunderstand the test and argue against it, the test did its job. It's getting the issue of female representation talked about. Even with you, it did its job by pushing the issue of female representation to the forefront. Which is all it wants to do. Whether it does that through clarity or debate doesn't matter as much. I bet people involved in or lurking in this thread have been thinking about female representation in media, at least in the backs of their minds.

Kittenwolf

2014-08-05, 12:05 PM

The Bechdel test certainly isn't a be all and end all of equality, or anything like that, movies with excellent gender representation can fail it, and ones with horrendously bad representation can pass it.

The main thing about the Bechdel test is that it is an exceptionally low bar that most films still fail. I mean "Two women talk about something other than a man". That's it. The point of the test is to go "Here is something so utterly utterly basic at gender representation, and yet most films will still fail"

Jormengand

2014-08-05, 12:09 PM

Yes, the people who have called you ignorant or a troll are showing signs that they've run out things to say. Maybe they haven't. Maybe you haven't. But portraying yourself as a victim to invalidate arguments without addressing them or others resorting to name calling are both signs of resorting to something less than rational out of frustration.

I didn't "Portray myself as a victim". You can read between my lines all you like, but nothing is written there. My point was how I found everyone's anger that I should suggest it didn't work ridiculous, not that you should have sympathy for me. Strangely, I didn't expect any. It's what happens when you go against commonly held beliefs: it's not going to make you popular, but no-one has any cause to go on the defensive. By pre-supposing that the Bechdel test is correct, instead of doing what one should do in a debate and attempting to find the truth, you're attempting to make everyone believe X, regardless of whether X is actually true or not.

I suggest everyone in this debate follows the Law of Objectives, which states: “The purpose of the debate is to find the truth. While it is useful to have two formal sides of a debate so that each has a specific designation of which arguments it is their job to make, and which it is their job to refute, the objective is to prove who is correct, not to prove that you are correct.”

Gwynfrid

2014-08-05, 12:23 PM

I didn't "Portray myself as a victim". You can read between my lines all you like, but nothing is written there. My point was how I found everyone's anger that I should suggest it didn't work ridiculous, not that you should have sympathy for me.

I'm afraid that when you found everyone's anger, you were reading between everybody's lines. Looking at this thread, I didn't perceive much anger directed towards you. As for me, responding to you (and disagreeing), I certainly didn't feel any annoyance, even less anger. I apologize if my words gave that impression, even very slightly.

On the subject itself, I think I've said everything I wanted to say.

sktarq

2014-08-05, 12:37 PM

It's obvious, and the Bechdel test is in my experience more likely to elicit a "So what?" than an epiphany about gender representation.

One issue with this. in 1985 when the test was created people didn't talk about this stuff anywhere near as much as they do now. Thus the power of highly simple that measures something everyone can quickly understand had more value than it does now as a conversation starter. Yes gender-studies and film-studies already talked about it but the concept of looking for this kind of thing in general was rather thin on the ground. Unfortunately nobody has come up with anything since that seems to capture women importance to the movie as independent characters in as simple a way that has caught on. And even those who know about the gender inequality in theory often find it surprising the scale implied by the Bechtel test numbers. It is a highly flawed test but nothing has come along that seems any less controversial leaving Bechtel with a kind of Founders Advantage. You're welcome to try and build a better mousetrap.

SowZ

2014-08-05, 12:51 PM

I didn't "Portray myself as a victim". You can read between my lines all you like, but nothing is written there. My point was how I found everyone's anger that I should suggest it didn't work ridiculous, not that you should have sympathy for me. Strangely, I didn't expect any. It's what happens when you go against commonly held beliefs: it's not going to make you popular, but no-one has any cause to go on the defensive. By pre-supposing that the Bechdel test is correct, instead of doing what one should do in a debate and attempting to find the truth, you're attempting to make everyone believe X, regardless of whether X is actually true or not.

I suggest everyone in this debate follows the Law of Objectives, which states: “The purpose of the debate is to find the truth. While it is useful to have two formal sides of a debate so that each has a specific designation of which arguments it is their job to make, and which it is their job to refute, the objective is to prove who is correct, not to prove that you are correct.”

The "I'm being dog-piled!" is pretty obvious, but whatever. You are assuming people haven't already thought out their opinions, and given the test equal thought to you. Assuming that people are accepting it because they are supposed to or because it is popular. That is not an actual argument, or a compelling reason to agree with you.

Yora

2014-08-05, 12:55 PM

In what way is it a flawed test? It is not used as an indicator for anything, or at least shouldn't.
The test measures what the test measures.

Is the light on? Is the box empty? Are there two women who talk about something other than their relationship to a man?

The answer can be yes or no, and that's it. If that means anything or not isn't in any way part of the test. That would be a totally different question.
I think it's a fun idea to ask the question about works in which the answer should be clear, given the subject of the work. When the actual answer is the opposite, then it gets interesting to lool closer why that is.
As a creator, it could also be useful to ask it about your own work. If the result suprises you, then you might sight back and have some thought if it is just coincidence, or if you maybe kind of let overly narrow conceptions of role models influence you. It could be taken as an incentive if maybe the women in your work are just added for eye candy, or if you ended up giving all the important parts to men, even though there is no reason for it. And sometimes it becomes very obvious that it isn't anything like that and that it's not inappropriate for the subject matter. In a play about women discussing their relationships with men, it really is no surprise. In a story about soldiers in a war zone with no meaningful interaction with civilians, it also isn't anything unusual.
The old Star Wars movies all turn out negative, which probably doesn't suprise anyone. But the new Star Wars movies do as well, and I don't see how that results from the subject of the movies. There's a huge cast of characters, and plenty of women in the background, but only one female character who does or say anything. And that would be good reason for some thought.

Miriel

2014-08-05, 02:00 PM

Uh, no. Show that these people are talking about different contexts and different things, because they're clearly not. Some people say the Bechdel test is a per se conclusion, some people say it isn't, they can't both be right.
Show that we disagree first.

And before that, what do you even mean by per se conclusion? It's not an obvious expression in itself.

Yes.

But the Bechdel test doesn't show that. What does show that is looking at a genre and then looking to see whether or not it has any men, or any women.

It does not look at a genre. It looks at an industry.

By your own admission, no it wouldn't. It only works because our culture doesn't produce a lot of films with small casts, or doesn't produce tons of films where women talk a lot about how terrible they are for being women (yes, that's unlikely, but you get the idea). It only measures what we already know in a culture we're already in.
Well, if we started to make a vast majority of small cast movies or something, that would be a change in the film industry. If our film industry produced only movies with small casts (which it doesn't), then this instrument would be less useful, but it so happens that we do.

If we want to get sciency once again, the Bechdel is created to (in)validate a hypothesis, that is, that women are underrepresented. And using the test, we can arrive empirically at the conclusion that they are. But using the same test, it is entirely possible that this hypothesis be falsified, at least partly. What, you think scientists don't already know the results they're supposed to get? They do. They get surprised sometimes, because the results are not always exactly what you could expect -- and in the case of the Bechdel test, I am surprised at how much movies don't include women.

The Bechdel test is not the Platonic idea of how we should account for gender equality. Sure, we can use other measure, but this one is simple and effective for what it wants to achieve.

That is exactly what is wrong with the Bechdel test. Too many people miss the point and use it for the wrong thing, don't understand is, and do something which ends up having negative consequences for their thought processes.
If you miss the point, don't blame the test.

Razanir

2014-08-05, 03:45 PM

May I ask what it is exactly that you suggest as a replacement for the Bechdel test?

I think the concept of the Bechdel test is fine. However, I think it overstates the problem. I would advocate adding exceptions for movies with 2 or fewer characters (as long as at least 1 character is female), and conversations that either involve men in addition to 2+ women and/or mention important men in a non-romantic context. (Such as allowing Pam and Erin to talk about Michael Scott) And possibly exception for romances. Those are all about interactions between the genders, so they naturally have a harder time meeting the third criterion.

SowZ

2014-08-05, 03:52 PM

sktarq

2014-08-05, 03:55 PM

In what way is it a flawed test? It is not used as an indicator for anything, or at least shouldn't.
The test measures what the test measures.

Because it is only good for a first look. It in and of itself is a poor indicator of how women are being treated in a work or collection of works, or media culture. Which really is what people are trying to measure but being subjective is hard to come up with uncontroversial numbers for. When it is used as a starting point the direction things go is a pretty limited field of inquiry.

It does not look at a genre. It looks at an industry.
It looks at whatever collection of media a given person feeds into it. Feed in a genre and you get the results for a genre. Feed in the output of on an industry group and get the result for that group of films. It isn't automatic. It is process applied by people, you can choose groups of imputs to effect the desired outputs.

Killer Angel

2014-08-05, 04:15 PM

It shows a pattern, which is that movies tend not to include significant woman characters, which should be surprising considering that half of people are women.

Sadly, too many times the BT isn't used to evaluate a pattern (which it does in a debatable way), but to evaluate the "quality" of single movies.

Miriel

2014-08-05, 04:52 PM

It looks at whatever collection of media a given person feeds into it. Feed in a genre and you get the results for a genre. Feed in the output of on an industry group and get the result for that group of films. It isn't automatic. It is process applied by people, you can choose groups of imputs to effect the desired outputs.
Sure. But read that in context. This answered Jor, who seems to have said that if you analyze Hollywood movies as a whole, it won't work with certain genres. This is not true. What I meant was that if you analyze all media in a given category, it is significant that all items from many subcategories fail the test, and that they shouldn't be excluded from the overall analysis.

Sadly, too many times the BT isn't used to evaluate a pattern (which it does in a debatable way), but to evaluate the "quality" of single movies.
As far as I can tell, everyone in the thread who argues in favour of the test is opposed to that, so it's sort of empty. Also, I don't remember seeing anyone using the Bechdel test to judge quality/inclusiveness of a single movie, all by itself, except when other arguments were given to judge quality/inclusiveness (e.g. "Movie X is bad and not inclusive for reasons A, B and C. It doesn't even pass the Bechdel test.")

Gwynfrid

2014-08-05, 05:01 PM

A relevant article here (http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/08/05/no_female_marvel_superhero_but_sony_weighs_a_femal e_spiderman_and_female.html). Note it's not even about passing the Bechdel test: It's about having any female lead characters, arguably an even lower bar.

Killer Angel

2014-08-05, 05:19 PM

Also, I don't remember seeing anyone using the Bechdel test to judge quality/inclusiveness of a single movie, all by itself, except when other arguments were given to judge quality/inclusiveness (e.g. "Movie X is bad and not inclusive for reasons A, B and C. It doesn't even pass the Bechdel test.")

Not in this thread, but AFAIK, there are cinemas in sweden that, on posters outside theatres, tell audiences if the films they screen passed the Bechdel test. This is pretty much a label on single movies, without entering in other considerations about the films.

Plus, in the first pages, Tengu_temp linked an article with various comments on Pacific Rim.
When a comment is "I wanted to love this movie so much. It wasn't Transformers-style hot chick poses with car crap, it had POC representation, it was multicultural and wasn't America saving the world, the main male lead treated the female lead with respect from the start (she didn't have to win/earn it or anything)... but a spectacular, face-to-floor fail on the Bechdel Test.", then it means that there are people that use the test as an instrument to measure the quality of a movie.

Reddish Mage

2014-08-05, 05:52 PM

SowZ

2014-08-05, 08:45 PM

I've been scanning this discussion and all I see is that basically everyone sees the Bechdel test good as a supposedly low bar for movies in general, that is surprisingly hard to pass. Some however, are constantly bringing up that off-site there is plenty of places that use the test for other reasons. I originally thought these latter playgrounders were basically trolling but a quick look at internet sites and the origins of the test itself does suggest it is a standard by which to judge individual movies.

Then it's evolved. And yeah, there is some room for talking about the Bechdel test on individual movies if A. there's no good reason not to pass it and B. the rest of the movie already treats females as ancillary to males, and not passing the Bechdel is just icing on the cake.

If the film is already failing on a feminist level, not passing Bechdel is just another thing to point out. If the film does represent women well, or is in a setting where women aren't really applicable, Bechdel doesn't work. Regardless, applying it to individual films isn't its primary function. At least, not anymore.

Let's use twister as an example. Bill, a guy with a vanilla name, (named after the actor,) who is also a very boring character in his own right is inexplicably the lead character even though all the important plot beats fall on Jo, (due to executive meddling.) Jo, (Helen Hunt,) is a fairly interesting and strong female character and I like her. Except all her struggles and personal demons? The movie over and over again presents them as something she must overcome not for herself, but because if she doesn't some other woman is going to steal her man! That's the point behind the movie. Helen Hunt needs to grow as a person otherwise her husband is going to leave her for another woman. Bill, this 'great' guy, basically presents her with this ultimatum.

This is highlighted by the fact that every conversation she has with another woman, (which there's several,) is either adversarial over a man, or a female mentor saying, "Don't you know you'll never be complete without Bill? Go get Bill! What do you have to change about you to get Bill?"

In this instance, passing Bechdel would have softened this theme a little bit, or at the very least down-played it. Not passing Bechdel, instead, emphasized the sexist themes. So yeah, sometimes Bechdel is relevant to an individual movie. Sometimes it isn't. But that isn't saying much, since any individual movie is going to have things that would have made it better or worse. Bechdel would have made Twister better, (or at least easier to swallow,) but only marginally. It still wouldn't have changed the real, underlying problems. So it's always of very limited usefulness on an individual movie. It is much more useful applied to populations, but there you go.

(For posterities sake, it isn't the screenwriter's fault with Twister. It is largely the producers fault.)

Taet

2014-08-05, 11:03 PM

This thread fails the Bechdel test all over. That is. Normal. For here. The other forums are better. The other forums have something to talk about that is not men.

The goal of the test, I think we can agree, is to measure the inclusion of women in Hollywood. However, the Bechdel Test, in my opinion, underestimates the number. So I think the test should be modified to prevent movies from being unjustly excluded.

I propose 5 clauses to partially rectify it.

The Gravity clause: Movies with only 2 characters take an alternate test. 1) Is there at least 1 woman? 2) Does she get a substantial amount of screen time?

The one-woman show clause: Movies with a single character pass, as long as said character is female.

The Harry Potter clause: Series can take the test as a unit. (Named as such, because only 1 Harry Potter movie passes)

The Doctor Who clause (Alternatively, the Chosen One clause): It's fine if your female characters talk about a man if a similar conversation is had by other people. So for instance, two women can talk about the Doctor being secretive or about Harry's duties as the chosen one.

The porn clause: Porn fails the test. No one needs that staining the list of media that passes.

I like four of these but take out the Chosen One clause. That just means a boring movie about people talking about one other special person is Ok and for me it is not. :smallyuk:

Put in the Feminism Clause. Women talking about how men are keeping them down do not pass. Women talking about making their own lives better passes.

Zrak

2014-08-06, 03:21 AM

I think the concept of the Bechdel test is fine. However, I think it overstates the problem. I would advocate adding exceptions for movies with 2 or fewer characters (as long as at least 1 character is female), and conversations that either involve men in addition to 2+ women and/or mention important men in a non-romantic context. (Such as allowing Pam and Erin to talk about Michael Scott) And possibly exception for romances. Those are all about interactions between the genders, so they naturally have a harder time meeting the third criterion.

I think you're misinterpreting the test, slightly, or at least the objection people raise based on its results; the objection is to women only talking about men, if two women speak to each other at all. Imagine if Pam and Erin only talked about the male characters and they never mentioned Phyllis, or Angela, or Pam's interest in art, or anything else that wasn't a male leads; talking about Michael, sometimes, instead of Jim, wouldn't make it any less weird.

Also, romances aren't necessarily about interactions "between the genders," seeing as two women or two men or three women or me and my reflection can easily have a romance. Moreover, most romantic comedies will pass a version of the test with the genders reversed; two (named?) male characters will have a conversation that is not about a woman.

Personally, I think the main use of the test is as a beginning for an inquiry. By now it's basically taken as a given that women are underrepresented in media by anyone who will ever accept it, but it's also generally taken as a given that this is because of (the) patriarchy, which is a perfectly reasonable but generally unhelpful explanation. The advantage of the Bechdel test is that, rather than say that women are underrepresented, it presents a very concrete, generic type of scene which is underrepresented. Unlike the responses to merely stating that women are underrepresented, though, people give a staggering variety of reasons as to why movies might not have a scene of two women talking about something besides a man. I think examining and considering those reasons is a lot more productive than basically saying "Women are underrepresented, the patriarchy did it." Sometimes, it's just kind of a fluke, like in movies that only have one or two characters, but other times I think the "reason" the movie fails the test is more instructive than the fact that it does. Rather than saying "The test is stupid because it doesn't work on all these movies in settings where women wouldn't be present," why not ask "Why are there so many movies in settings where women wouldn't be present?"

Aedilred

2014-08-06, 06:38 AM

I like four of these but take out the Chosen One clause. That just means a boring movie about people talking about one other special person is Ok and for me it is not. :smallyuk:
I feel like the Chosen One clause almost entirely misses the point of the test, in fact. "A conversation between two women about a man can count as a conversation not about a man if the plot revolves entirely around that man". Hmm.

The other thing to note about the Bechdel test as written is that it's objective. Putting in clauses like "substantial amount of screen time" add a degree of subjectivity which don't help. What counts as a substantial amount of screen time; is it relative to the running time of the film or absolute? What counts as "screen time" anyway?

And even looking at Gravity, the film which has been consistently raised in objection to the test, while the main character is obviously female and is on screen for pretty much the entire film, the rest of the cast is almost entirely male. George Clooney is a man. Mission control is a man. The ISS captain is a man. The guy on the radio is a man. The third astronaut is a man. I think there might have been another female astronaut who only appeared briefly with no speaking part after being killed? That's it.

When I first heard about the test, a couple of years back, my reaction was something along the lines of "yeah, right, that's ridiculously easy to pass, what are the complaints about, there must be loads of, er, huh. Wow." Which is basically all the test is designed to do. The conclusions you can draw from that, the reasons you provide for why that is, and so on, that's all outside the parameters of the test and essentially up to you.

Razanir

2014-08-06, 08:21 AM

I think you're misinterpreting the test, slightly, or at least the objection people raise based on its results; the objection is to women only talking about men, if two women speak to each other at all. Imagine if Pam and Erin only talked about the male characters and they never mentioned Phyllis, or Angela, or Pam's interest in art, or anything else that wasn't a male leads; talking about Michael, sometimes, instead of Jim, wouldn't make it any less weird.

Except the test is defined vaguely. If every single conversation was about Pam's art, but also involved Michael or Jim, some would argue it fails. My point was just that mentioning a man shouldn't automatically condemn an otherwise fine conversation.

tomandtish

2014-08-06, 09:44 AM

Frozen_Feet

2014-08-06, 10:46 AM

In what way is it a flawed test? It is not used as an indicator for anything, or at least shouldn't.
The test measures what the test measures.

A measure that doesn't indicate anything is useless. That is the problem with Bechdel test; it doesn't tell much anything about a singular work. On an industry level, it can indicate a dearth of female characters or a dearth of female on-screen interaction, but can't say much about the female characters or interaction that have been portrayed.

The Bechdel test would only be useful if used as part of a larger battery of tests, some of which should be aimed for exploring why there's dearth of female characters or interaction, and others which should focus on exploring the quality of female characters in works that fail to pass Bechdel test. That's by and large not how the Bechdel test is used, though. It's mostly used as a stand-alone pass-or-fail criteria.

Sure, people talk about the underlying phenomena leading to such wide-scale failing of the Bechdel test, and they do criticize other facets of treatment of women in cinema, but I've yet to see a coherent analysis where review of those other facets would be similarly codified, let alone combined for useful results. So far, Bechdel seems to be the only such test to have gained enough popular attention, which means analyzers and critics either end up overrelying on it, or abandon it when they realize it alone is useless.

Reddish Mage

2014-08-06, 10:54 AM

Personally, I think the main use of the test is as a beginning for an inquiry. By now it's basically taken as a given that women are underrepresented in media by anyone who will ever accept it, but it's also generally taken as a given that this is because of (the) patriarchy, which is a perfectly reasonable but generally unhelpful explanation. The advantage of the Bechdel test is that, rather than say that women are underrepresented, it presents a very concrete, generic type of scene which is underrepresented.

It really isn't about how you "personally" think of the test, but how others actually take it. At least, some agree with your picture: http://io9.com/why-the-bechdel-test-is-more-important-than-you-realize-1586135613

Then it's evolved. And yeah, there is some room for talking about the Bechdel test on individual movies if A. there's no good reason not to pass it and B. the rest of the movie already treats females as ancillary to males, and not passing the Bechdel is just icing on the cake.

If the film is already failing on a feminist level, not passing Bechdel is just another thing to point out. If the film does represent women well, or is in a setting where women aren't really applicable, Bechdel doesn't work. Regardless, applying it to individual films isn't its primary function. At least, not anymore.

But others disagree and claim the test is used to apply to individual films: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10450463/Bechdel-test-is-damaging-to-the-way-we-think-about-film.html

The critic is off-base in recruiting Bechdel as a critic of her own test, the link to Bechdel's blog (http://dykestowatchoutfor.com/testy) shows that, in fact, she personally supports both the test and the Swedish effort to use it to rate individual movies, her main problem with the test is, that it is just such an obvious a low-bar for a movie to pass that there really should be no debate about it. This blogpost suggests Bechdel and the Swedish art-houses are, in fact, using it on individual movies.

I'm not convinced with this critic that Bechdel is a conservation stopper, or that the movies he watched that were "false negatives" are really false ("Gravity" places the female protagonist in a exclusively male world, "Fill the Void" takes place in a rather clearly defined patriarchy where all the action is directed by men). If the whole idea of the test is that movies (and other media) is that they should show at least a minimal degree of female representation, characterization, and a suggestion that the world is not male centered, then clearly these movies fail.

Passing the Bechdel test, I don't see anyplace this has been trumpeted as a great achievement or even why anyone think it should.

Failing it on the other hand...the idea is that, if an individual movie fails the Bechdel test, it has failed to meet a very low bar for female inclusion and agency and non-male centricity. Is there a reason to believe that instead this is actually a high bar for a movie? That some movies that fail the Bechdel test are really actually very inclusive and non-male centric? Or do are we just saying that we all like some movies that fail the test?

Zrak

2014-08-06, 12:43 PM

Except the test is defined vaguely. If every single conversation was about Pam's art, but also involved Michael or Jim, some would argue it fails. My point was just that mentioning a man shouldn't automatically condemn an otherwise fine conversation.

That isn't what you said, though. What you said was that a conversation should be considered to pass the Bechdel Test if it is about a man so long as it isn't about a romantic relationship with a man. That is totally different than saying the offhand mention of a man should cause a movie to fail the test. I don't think the former is a good addition to the test, for the reasons I said, but I think the latter is assumed more often than not.

I also wouldn't really say the test is vague so much as syntactical ambiguity is unavoidable. Adding qualifiers like "Conversation that isn't primarily about a man" and "substantial amount of screen time" don't make things any less vague, since they are as open to (mis)interpretation as the original test. Criticizing the test as "vague" is basically arguing that it's made out of language.

It really isn't about how you "personally" think of the test, but how others actually take it.
It's none of my concern if people want to use a perfectly valid tool for something useless and stupid. People use the word "literally" wrong all the time, that's no reason to stop using it.

But others disagree and claim the test is used to apply to individual films: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10450463/Bechdel-test-is-damaging-to-the-way-we-think-about-film.html
I think the most important part of this article is that it's a chain of "art-house" cinemas. I'm sure this is neither their first nor last unsound but theoretically hip promotion. I don't think the art director of a chain of art-hourse cinemas is exactly the voice of any generation of the end-all-be-all of film criticism.

I'm not convinced with this critic that Bechdel is a conservation stopper, or that the movies he watched that were "false negatives" are really false ("Gravity" places the female protagonist in a exclusively male world, "Fill the Void" takes place in a rather clearly defined patriarchy where all the action is directed by men). If the whole idea of the test is that movies (and other media) is that they should show at least a minimal degree of female representation, characterization, and a suggestion that the world is not male centered, then clearly these movies fail.
I think you're misunderstanding the terminology, here: the term "false negative" refers to any movie the critic likes that fails the test. :smallwink:

Also, the ubiquity of the Gravity example infuriates me not even really so much for any reasons to do with the Bechdel test or its results, but because the endless parade of people claiming the movie only had two characters is grating. It had, like, seven characters: the two main astronauts, two other astronauts from their ship, mission control, the fisherman, and the captain of the ISS.

Reddish Mage

2014-08-06, 01:36 PM

It's none of my concern if people want to use a perfectly valid tool for something useless and stupid. People use the word "literally" wrong all the time, that's no reason to stop using it.

I think the most important part of this article is that it's a chain of "art-house" cinemas. I'm sure this is neither their first nor last unsound but theoretically hip promotion. I don't think the art director of a chain of art-hourse cinemas is exactly the voice of any generation of the end-all-be-all of film criticism.

In this case, Bechdel herself is included, from what she says on her blog, despite being quoted for having ambivalent feelings about the test (cause it is so obvious She doesn't want to debate this!). And yes, rating is a form of censorship, because ratings are a signal to the industry as to how to market a movie and to consumers as to whether they wish to see a movie (or let their children see it). It's why Deadpool won't be made into a film (http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2014/08/deadpool-movie-doomed-fail.html).

I think you're misunderstanding the terminology, here: the term "false negative" refers to any movie the critic likes that fails the test. :smallwink:

Also, the ubiquity of the Gravity example infuriates me not even really so much for any reasons to do with the Bechdel test or its results, but because the endless parade of people claiming the movie only had two characters is grating. It had, like, seven characters: the two main astronauts, two other astronauts from their ship, mission control, the fisherman, and the captain of the ISS.

Lol. Yes, Gravity is a movie about a protagonist out of her pond in a strange environment (that happens to be all-male) and she has to find the courage that came naturally to the others to survive.

Zrak

2014-08-06, 03:32 PM

Knaight

2014-08-06, 03:41 PM

Razanir

2014-08-06, 04:00 PM

If you look at the original comic that eventually started everything (it is even available on the wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_Test)), they reference Alien as the last movie one of them was able to see that passed it. In the conversation they are talking about (Ripley/Lambert), Brett is mentioned but the conversation is about the alien. So the original rules don't seem to have a problem with a man being mentioned. He just can't be the subject of the conversation.

That isn't what you said, though. What you said was that a conversation should be considered to pass the Bechdel Test if it is about a man so long as it isn't about a romantic relationship with a man. That is totally different than saying the offhand mention of a man should cause a movie to fail the test. I don't think the former is a good addition to the test, for the reasons I said, but I think the latter is assumed more often than not.

Well part of the problem is that we already have differing views on this as-is. The original test implicitly implies conversations mentioning men are fine. And yet you'll have sites and people who advocate completely testosterone-free conversations.

Anima

2014-08-06, 04:20 PM

Well part of the problem is that we already have differing views on this as-is. The original test implicitly implies conversations mentioning men are fine. And yet you'll have sites and people who advocate completely testosterone-free conversations.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png
Adding another version of the test will surely solve that problem once and for all.

Reddish Mage

2014-08-06, 07:19 PM

I feel like you're quoting my post, but responding to someone else's. I didn't say anything about rating as a form of censorship, I made fun of the idea of an art-house cinema chain. "Could I get my Bergman supersized?" "Sure, but it's only one dollar to upgrade to a full Herzog."

Pardon, the one bit about the ratings by the art house amounting to a form of censorship is response to Bechdel (whose blog post mentioned that as the sort of "ridiculous accusations" she had to defend against when she spoke to the media). Also, the origin cartoon had the girlfriend saying she didn't watch movies that didn't meet the test. All of this is a suggestion that the test is meant as a metric to measure individual movies, and it is a reason to pick or not pick individual movies.

You speak of personal feelings about its "main use" which is not clearly whether you are saying how it should be used or how it is actually used. I'm saying the conversational starting point is about how the test is actually used by people in real practice,

It is also about good uses vs. Bad uses. In which case a majority here seem to think it is somehow good to use as a bellwether and bad as a rating of individual movies. However, outside the forums there is some pretty prominent voices on the otherside.

Reddish Mage

2014-08-06, 07:25 PM

Well part of the problem is that we already have differing views on this as-is. The original test implicitly implies conversations mentioning men are fine. And yet you'll have sites and people who advocate completely testosterone-free conversations.

The original comic is printed in full here (http://io9.com/why-the-bechdel-test-is-more-important-than-you-realize-1586135613) and I've linked to Bechdel's blog, and the Bechdel test site and several other news sources. All have the language "talking about something besides a man." In Alien they do mention a man in the one conversation, but he isn't the subject of the conversation.

Zrak

2014-08-06, 11:55 PM

Pardon, the one bit about the ratings by the art house amounting to a form of censorship is response to Bechdel (whose blog post mentioned that as the sort of "ridiculous accusations" she had to defend against when she spoke to the media). Also, the origin cartoon had the girlfriend saying she didn't watch movies that didn't meet the test. All of this is a suggestion that the test is meant as a metric to measure individual movies, and it is a reason to pick or not pick individual movies.

You speak of personal feelings about its "main use" which is not clearly whether you are saying how it should be used or how it is actually used. I'm saying the conversational starting point is about how the test is actually used by people in real practice,

It is also about good uses vs. Bad uses. In which case a majority here seem to think it is somehow good to use as a bellwether and bad as a rating of individual movies. However, outside the forums there is some pretty prominent voices on the otherside.

I think that is the main thing for which the test is useful. I can't really speak to the main purpose for which it is used with any degree of authority. I don't really see the relevance of Bechdel's authorial intent.

Reddish Mage

2014-08-07, 12:29 PM

I think that is the main thing for which the test is useful. I can't really speak to the main purpose for which it is used with any degree of authority. I don't really see the relevance of Bechdel's authorial intent.

I think the main purpose for which it is used is for endless discussion about the quality of the test and the meaning behind Hollywood movies failing it on the internet :smallyuk:

Asta Kask

2014-08-10, 04:57 AM

Well part of the problem is that we already have differing views on this as-is. The original test implicitly implies conversations mentioning men are fine. And yet you'll have sites and people who advocate completely testosterone-free conversations.

Most people have testosterone, although most women have less than most men. :smalltongue:

Also, how do you know if a movie fails the test if you don't watch it? Yeah, you could ask but what if your friends are as principled as you are. This isn't like "I refuse to watch Michael Bay's movies", where a quick visit to IMDB can tell you if the man's involved or not. Here you actually have to watch the movie and think.

No, I don't think the test is valid, mainly because I can't see what its purpose is. It's supposed to be an indicator of... what now?

Aedilred

2014-08-10, 05:10 AM

No, I don't think the test is valid, mainly because I can't see what its purpose is. It's supposed to be an indicator of... what now?
Of representation of women as autonomous beings in cinema.

Asta Kask

2014-08-10, 05:31 AM

I think it has low validity for that. Maybe it would be better to ask stuff like - if the women are removed from the movie, or replaced wih lamps, would the movie change? Are the women driving the plot of the movie, in whole or part?

Something like the Mako Mori Test (http://www.dailydot.com/fandom/mako-mori-test-bechdel-pacific-rim/).

a) at least one female character;
b) who gets her own narrative arc;
c) that is not about supporting a man’s story

Mx.Silver

2014-08-10, 07:15 AM

And yes, rating is a form of censorship, because ratings are a signal to the industry as to how to market a movie and to consumers as to whether they wish to see a movie (or let their children see it). It's why Deadpool won't be made into a film (http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2014/08/deadpool-movie-doomed-fail.html).

This is not censorship. Not unless you think 'censorship' means 'not being financially supportive of a film', which it doesn't because that is utterly absurd. Under this criteria reviews are censorship because they might influence whether or not people see a film.
The Deadpool film is not being censored, it's not being made because the people who would have to actually put the money into the project to get it made do not consider it a secure enough investment. The film is not being suppressed because of its content being deemed dangerous or subversive.

Reddish Mage

2014-08-10, 07:50 AM

The point of the "Mako Mori Test" is that its actually a whole lot easier to find movies that pass it. There's a lot of action movies with female leads who never actually share a conversation with another woman the entire film (Gravity, Lara Croft, even certain later Alien movies...). I find the term "narrative arc" to be quite difficult to figure out.

I see the Bechdel test draws hatred when certain movies such as Pacific Rim or Fill the Void fail it, when certain women see it as an inspiration to women.

Reddish Mage

2014-08-10, 08:06 AM

This is not censorship. Not unless you think 'censorship' means 'not being financially supportive of a film', which it doesn't because that is utterly absurd.

The rating regime is certainly censoring of films such as Deadpool in that the reason they won't get off the ground is that certain depictions of violence are deemed unsuitable for certain audiences. While Deadpool never got made in the first place (which I would say is much worse), plenty of other films are toned down after the fact simply to get a certain rating.

Kill Bill had the big scene in Vol 1 put in black and white and removed quite a bit of blood simply because they thought this would prevent the censor placing a NC-17 rating on the film. Movies rated above R are not marketable to a wide audience, theaters cannot allow minors into the film, and most mainstream distributers won't distribute the movie. As pointed out by "This Film is Not Yet Rated" (but also clear if you watch foreign movies) the MPAA tend to give foreign movies ratings far above what they deserve because they understand that ratings are a quick way to block a movie.

Asta Kask

2014-08-10, 02:23 PM

The problem is that criteria such as "not supporting a man's story" or "if they were removed would the movie change" are more difficult to objectively apply. The strength of the Bechdel test is that it's generally pretty unambiguous as to whether or not a movie passes. You can argue about what that means, but the actual results themselves are hard to argue with.

You lose something in inter-rater reliability, that is true, but on the other hand the test is actually valid.

Secondly, the low bar of the Bechdel test is kind of the point. Women don't even have to be major characters with their own arcs to pass it. Hell, two unnamed extras having a five second conversation about the weather would be enough to pass it. And yet most movies still don't pass. That's f***ed up.

Having two completely unnecessary characters talk about something irrelevant may be good for the Bechdel test, but it's bad filmmaking. Everything in a movie should serve the story, move it forward in some way. Also, if the Bechdel is this easy to pass then that says even more about its validity. Passing it means nothing, and as the Moko Mari test shows, failing it also means very little.

Jormengand

2014-08-10, 02:27 PM

You lose something in inter-rater reliability, that is true, but on the other hand the test is actually valid.

Having two completely unnecessary characters talk about something irrelevant may be good for the Bechdel test, but it's bad filmmaking. Everything in a movie should serve the story, move it forward in some way. Also, if the Bechdel is this easy to pass then that says even more about its validity. Passing it means nothing, and as the Moko Mari test shows, failing it also means very little.

Asta, you just don't understand the test. In fact, I think you're probably trolling.

Zrak

2014-08-11, 02:50 AM

But this is still problematic in and of itself. One of the criticisms levelled at Hollywood movies, beyond a simple dearth of female characters with agency, is that characters are all assumed to be men unless there's a specific reason for them not to be. So, to take Gravity as an example, yes it has a main female protagonist with agency and goals, but every other character is male.
I'm pretty sure the captain of the ship they're on is female, but I don't know if she talks or does anything or just kinda dies. Maybe even offscreen, I'm no sure. So, I mean, the point basically stands, I guess I just feel like if I'm going to be pedantic about the number of characters in Gravity, I may as well go all the way, you know?

You lose something in inter-rater reliability, that is true, but on the other hand the test is actually valid.
I'd say inter-rater reliability is more important if the results of the test are not presumed to lead to a certain conclusion, but instead to necessitate certain questions; if failing the test just means we should ask why a movie (or many movies) failed, rather than assuming that failing the test necessarily means a certain thing, it's perfectly valid as it is and the inter-rater reliability is paramount.

Having two completely unnecessary characters talk about something irrelevant may be good for the Bechdel test, but it's bad filmmaking.

I think the idea is not so much that two completely unnecessary characters should talk about something irrelevant, but that women should be relevant characters and something besides men should be relevant to the plot. I mean, sure, the irrelevant characters would "pass" the test, but that's only really a problem if the test is supposed to measure the inclusion of female interaction and also if every scene advanced the plot in some way. I think that's asking a lot of a perfunctory checklist. I mean, you're basically saying it should do the work of two perfunctory checklists.

Also (since this post is brought to you by P for Pedantry) a lot of movies would be pretty bad (and really short) if everything moved the story forward in some way. Consider "No jokes, all plot" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--udJ1yAhME), surgically removing all those silly "jokes" that get in the way of crucial, crucial storytelling for our viewing, uh, pleasure?

Asta Kask

2014-08-11, 06:51 AM

Ok, serve the plot may be too narrow. Serve the purpose of the film. I don't think the purpose of a film should be to pass the Bechdel test - at least I don't think I would watch that movie.

Anyway, regarding your point on women should be relevant and important characters... I agree. That's what the Moko Mari test is about. I was responding to Liffguard saying "Hell, two unnamed extras having a five second conversation about the weather would be enough to pass it." Your beef about that is with him, not me.

Aedilred

2014-08-11, 08:14 AM

Ok, serve the plot may be too narrow. Serve the purpose of the film. I don't think the purpose of a film should be to pass the Bechdel test - at least I don't think I would watch that movie.

I don't think anyone, with the possible exception of complete nutters, has ever claimed the purpose of a film should be to pass the Bechdel test. Nor should scenes be inserted just for the sake of passing it. It's descriptive, not prescriptive.

Asta Kask

2014-08-11, 08:25 AM

I don't think anyone, with the possible exception of complete nutters, has ever claimed the purpose of a film should be to pass the Bechdel test. Nor should scenes be inserted just for the sake of passing it. It's descriptive, not prescriptive.

Good. Then we return to the subject of validity and inter-rater reliability. I've designed tests for clinical use, and in my experience a weakness in validity is more serious - and more difficult to address - than a weakness in reliability.

Jay R

2014-08-11, 12:49 PM

The Bechdel test is an attempt to address an overly simplistic approach to literature by substituting an equal but opposite overly simplistic approach to literature.

Treat your characters like people, not caricatures, and write the scenes that tell your story.

Asta Kask

2014-08-11, 01:29 PM

And make your stories in such a way that there can be at least two women in them.

Zrak

2014-08-11, 08:10 PM

Good. Then we return to the subject of validity and inter-rater reliability. I've designed tests for clinical use, and in my experience a weakness in validity is more serious - and more difficult to address - than a weakness in reliability.

Again, I think this returns to the information the test is supposed to provide. As I said, I think inter-rater reliability is more useful if the test is not presumed to lead to a conclusion, but to necessitate asking a question. I think it's fair to say that, if a movie features no female interaction that is not centered around a man, it's worth asking why. All the Bechdel test does is tell us which movies do not feature this kind of female interaction; it doesn't say why they do not or what that absence means. Rather than saying the test is invalid, I would say presuming its results mean a certain thing about a film is an invalid use of the perfectly valid and often useful test.

In general, I'd say it's not a worse test than the Mako Mori test, it's a different test which is ideally used for a different purpose. For instance, using the tests in conjunction could provide interesting results of critical value to the broader question of gender representation than either test in isolation.

Reddish Mage

2014-08-12, 01:31 PM

When we talk about the validity of these tests its important to keep in mind what these tests are supposed to measure and how.

First, it is clear that passing the test doesn't mean the movie deserves a medal or even that it is feminist, friendly to woman, or even that the movie isn't some sort of chauvinistic misogynist fantasy. After all, all it says is that at some point two women talk about anything except a man...on it's face that doesn't appear to mean much.

There is a suggestion present in Bechtel's comic that a movie that fails this test should be boycotted ("I won't watch a movie unless..."). Alternatively, a movie that fails this test should be shamed for it or be considered unfriendly to woman. The playgrounders here, and many others don't like this idea.

The test can also be taken to simply measure whether a movie, for whatever reason, simply doesn't display a woman having her own relationships, independent agency, and development through other women and apart from the involvement of men. I think that is, in itself, interesting and a springboard for asking "why?"

The Mako Mori test is specifically designed as an alternative to Bechtel because it sees the test as a bad measurement of the former, and wants to suggest that the presence of independent character development for a woman is the benchmark.

I don't see a problem with an all-man film (though I'd like to see more women in film in general), so I don't agree with boycotting or shaming films that fail the Bechtel test. However, I don't see what Mako Mori adds as a measure of anything of substance: "yes, there's a woman in this film, and she's important, not a lamp-post!"

gom jabbarwocky

2014-08-27, 09:02 PM

Again, I think this returns to the information the test is supposed to provide. As I said, I think inter-rater reliability is more useful if the test is not presumed to lead to a conclusion, but to necessitate asking a question. I think it's fair to say that, if a movie features no female interaction that is not centered around a man, it's worth asking why. All the Bechdel test does is tell us which movies do not feature this kind of female interaction; it doesn't say why they do not or what that absence means. Rather than saying the test is invalid, I would say presuming its results mean a certain thing about a film is an invalid use of the perfectly valid and often useful test.

In general, I'd say it's not a worse test than the Mako Mori test, it's a different test which is ideally used for a different purpose. For instance, using the tests in conjunction could provide interesting results of critical value to the broader question of gender representation than either test in isolation.

I think the issue with criticizing the Bechdel Test for being invalid is that it's an objective tool used to measure something subjective. The Mako Mori Test exists to fill a perceived gap in the original test, but the error there is that the the Bechdel Test was turned from a joke (the original comic is still funny, if you ask me) into a serious academic tool. It isn't, and I hope most serious film critics know that. It is a casual tool which serves as a great starting point for a dialogue on the presence (or lack thereof) of feminine perspectives in film. The confusion results when people see it isn't a quantitative equation and thus poo-poo it, when the larger issue is that it is inherently absurd to try and judge a work of art (which, by its nature, is about conveying information non-discursively) on a quantitative basis.

Film and literature criticism isn't a science. Especially since the "Death of the Author" thing, there aren't a lot of arguments you can make about a piece without a dozen other people will take you to town on. So we'll take whatever tools we can get, and the Bechdel Test, for what it's worth, is better than most.