Meaning, the Bechdel test.
The Bechdel test was “invented” in 1985, in a comic strip named Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel: The Rule (safe for work).
Short version:
[ol]
[li]The movie has to have at least two women in it[/li][li]Who talk to each other[/li][li]About something besides a man.[/li][/ol]
A popular addition to those rules, that I will suggest for this thread:
[ul]
[li]The women must be “named” characters (the characters in the movie have a name that the audience finds out during the course of the movie.)[/li][/ul]
And finally, if you could describe at least one of the Bechdel-test qualifying conversations in the movie, that would be great.
Are you able to name your top “Bechdel list” movie off the top of your head?
The one I came up with after a few minutes of thinking was Secrets and Lies. The conversation that stayed in my memory: an adopted woman meets her mother for the first time, and they have a conversation in a café upon their first meeting. The first meeting has several surprises in store for both of them.
ETA, I did that without looking at the list. I was going to say the Wizard of Oz (just trying to come up with something at that point) also, but I couldn’t think of a scene where they weren’t talking about the Wizard. However, I see it’s on the list, so I would have been okay.
Interesting. My favorite movies generally don’t pass the test. In fact, a lot of my favorite movies don’t even have any women in them (Sleuth, The Thing (1982), Flight of the Phoenix). Of those that do, most don’t have two women who talk to each other.
Of my favorites, I think Spartacus has a brief dialogue between the two women at the gladiator fight at Lentulus Bataiatus’. That’s about it. The Lion in Winter has at least one scene between Queen Eleanor and Alis. I notice that Spartacus is listed, but Lion in Winter isn’t listed on the Bechdel page cited above.
Spirited Away – the central character (Sen/Chihiro) is female, and spends a lot of time talking with other major female characters, e.g., Yubaba, Zeniba and Lin. They hardly ever talk about men, unless you count Chihiro’s father (who is a pig for most of the story) and Haku (who is really a river god).
What makes you think that Ms. Bechdel refuses to go see movies that fail the test? My understanding is that the rule exists to shine a spotlight on a cinematic blindspot our society has and not to be a metric by which we judge a movie’s worth as an artistic endeavor.
Yeah, I was going to mention Aliens, also, but I thought there was a conversation between Ripley and Vasquez. I might be mistaken, though.
And Giles reminds me that Princess Mononoke also passes the test.
Thinking about some more possibilities…
There’s probably a conversation between Hermione and McGonnagal in one of the Harry Potter movies.
There almost has to be something in the X-Men movies.
Was there any dialog between Sif and Natalie Portman’s character in Thor? I can’t remember, but if there was, it was probably about the giant animated suit of armor blasting the town, which I don’t think really qualifies as a “man”.
Elizabeth and Tia Dalma talk some in the second and third Pirates movie, I think…
Ooh, and all of the Narnia movies qualify, if we consider Susan and Lucy “women”.
Personally, I think the rule itself has a blindspot. The percentage of woman-centric movies that would fail the reverse test – a scene with two men who talk about something other than a woman – is probably the same as the percentage of movies that fail the original test.
