The Bechdel test, or otherwise known as "The Bechtel-Wallace Test’ measures the representation of women in fiction. It questions if there are more than two women in the movie that talk about something other than the male race within Film or TV. Oftenly, the addition that these woman must be named is added onto the test.
According to Wikipedia, " The test is named after the American cartoonist Alison Bechde in whose 1985 comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For the test first appeared. Bechdel credited the idea to her friend Liz Wallace and the writings of Virginia Woolf After the test became more widely discussed in the 2000s, a number of variants and tests inspired by it emerged."
Given a little background about this test, what do you think about it? Do you think it’s a good test? Would you ever try it? Share your thoughts and opinions on it below, I’m excited to see all of your thoughts!
I think the test can be very useful to apply to film and writing as it encourages writers to write more compelling female characters that aren’t just there to serve narrative arcs for men.Although the test is no guarantee of quality — or well-developed female characters . It also doesn’t mean that one a film passes the test it can suddenly become a feminist masterpiece as some might want to believe.
The ultimate teen garbage film Twilight , for example, passes (Bella Swan, talks briefly to her mother about moving to a new town) while Gravity which has a fierce, clever and interesting heroine, fails. Sometimes women’s conversations about men are feminist. Two women discussing being bullied at work by a man would make for a feminist drama – certainly preferable to a film in which two women briefly compared shoes but spent the rest of the time serving the narrative arcs of the men.
For some more examples of this here is an article that lists out movie blockbusters that don’t pass the Bechdel test yet are pretty feminist.
So to conclude yes the test is can be useful,but not passing or even passing the test doesn’t determine wether or not you have a good presentation of women in your story.
I think I wouldn’t necessarily use the test on my stories because most of the things I come up with would pass the test anyway.
The fact that we need a test for those kind of things is just sad.
I think it depends a lot on what kind of movie you have. There could be just one person in a story but it can still be a great feminist movie? The test is a good idea but it kind of reminds me of a list of things that should be in a story and people just tick it off and don’t spend another thought on it.
The Bechdel test is obviously flawed.Some movies surprisingly fail the test, even though the requirements of the test are pretty minimal. There are some cases where a movie obviously won’t succeed because of the inherent nature of the film, like a movie about someone stranded somewhere. However, the fact is that if there were some kind of reverse Bechdel test, tons of movies would pass it. The Bechdel test barely requires anything from a movie and far more movies should pass it than currently do. Although movies can still portray a feminist message while not passing the test, it clearly sends a message to all women when failing the test is common because women are implicitly unimportant and still only really matter in their capacity to talk about men in the films.