The Bechdel Test - Fun for the Whole Family at the Movies

If you've never heard of the Bechdel Test, an idea popularized by Alison Bechdel's comic Dykes to Watch Out For, in a 1985 strip called "The Rule", let me lay it out for you. The Bechdel Test is a (fairly low) bar set for movies (and, if you want, TV shows) in which to pass the test a piece of media must have at least two named female characters who speak to each other about something other than a man. Sounds like a lot of movies should pass that, right? Seems simple enough. Yet many movies fail to even reach this low bar.

The comic that started it all.

Let's take a look at the movies nominated for Best Picture in the Oscars this year:

American Hustle: passes, but just barely. Jennifer Lawrence's character and Amy Adam's character speak once, almost exclusively about Christian Bale's character, and only at the very end change the subject enough to count as a pass.

We could have had it all, rolling in misogyny.

Captain Phillips: fails. It contains more than one female character, but they don't speak to each other.

Dallas Buyers Club: passes. However, a huge issue with this movie that has to do with misogyny (specifically transmisogyny or misogyny against transwomen) is that Jared Leto was cast in a role that should have gone to an actual tranwoman, not a cisman (a person assigned male at birth who continues to identify as male). However, it passes.

Laverne Cox as Rayon would have made me pay to see Dallas Buyers Club.

Gravity: fails. However, there are only really two characters in the movie.

Her: fails. Has two female characters, but they only speak to each other about a man. If you do not consider the OS voiced by Scarlett Johansson to be a female character then the official verdict would be "has two female characters, but they do not speak".

Nebraska: passes, but just barely again. Contains a few sentences of gossip between two female characters - the rest of the movie focuses on the relationships between males.

Philomena: passes.

12 Years a Slave: passes.

The Wolf of Wall Street: passes, again just barely. The movie focuses on the males, leaving the female characters who are present to remain mostly objects.

I would personally love to watch a movie that was entirely this scene.

Perhaps it's just me, but in the year 2014 this is a disappointing spread. While six out of the nine movies pass, most pass due to a few throw-away lines of dialogue - if you have to argue something like "oh no wait this female character talked to a waitress who was wearing a nametag while ordering dinner so technically it passes" then you know there's probably a problem with the portrayal of females in Hollywood. These movies, considered the best of the best from the year, focus heavily on men, full stop. In fact, in a study done bythe Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film of the 100 highestgrossing films in 2013 Females accounted for only 15% of protagonists (as compared to females accounting for 50% of the population of the world - funny how that works).

I'd like to see more movies that feature female characters having strong relationships with other female characters. Leave the male characters as objects for once. How about an action movie with an all-female cast save for the token male? I'd pay the ridiculous price for a movie ticket to see that.