I just realized what passes the Bechdel test

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We’ve discussed the Bechdel test on this Board before – the “test” proposed by cartoonist Alison Bechdel that asks if the drama contains two women who speak to each other about something besides men or their relationships to men.

It’s a reasonable test for how close the drama in question is to treating the women in it as separate , important beings, rather than simply a way to provide information and insight into male characters. In an ideal world, a drama ought to place as much evidence and importance in its female characters as its male characters, and lots of them should pass this test. That an awful lot don’t shows that the drama is really revolving about the men in it, and women don’t really have agency. It’s surprising how many television shows, movies, plays, and other such little dramas fail the test. People get defensive about their favorites, or try to hunt up items that “pass” the test, or react in other ways. But the point is that, if all things really were equal, you wouldn’t have to go hunting for cases that pass the test. They’d be right out there in the open, and common.

We’ve dicussed this on the Board before.

What made me think of this now is a couple of things.

1.) The new drama Fire Island, which appears to be a gay take on a Jane Austen novel, does not pass the test, according to one writer. The exchange even got Bechdel herself to comment on it

2.) something I stumbled upon while re-reading Stephen King’s Danse Macabre. At one point he mentions the sexist Madison Avenue slang term “two Cs in a K”, referring to TV commercials. If you don’t know what that is, here’s TV Tropes on it:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TwoChicksInAKitchen

It suddenly occurred to me that the situation described by that gross phrase precisely describes something passing the Bechdel test. All those little 30- and 60-second TV dramas that are commercials feature two women discussing some problem or issue (to which the solution is the sponsor’s wonderful product), and NOT men or their relationship with men.

To be sure, sometimes the drama is leavened with a little discreet sex, and one woman confides that she’s worried the guy doesn’t find her attractive because of [problem to be solved by sponsor’s product here], but that’s not invariably the case. One woman might be concerned that her teeth and dingy. Or that she feels bloated. Or her dishes are all spot-stained. Or she can’t get her kid to eat beets. Or whatever.

So we have been treated to millions of these minor playlets where women discuss something besides men. Under our noses this whole time.

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I have not seen it, but I don’t know why one would expect a film about a group of young gay guys at the Fire Island Pines to feature women.

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There’s a ton of Late Night Cinemax movies that pass the Bechtel test because it’s two women talking to each other, mostly undressed.

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If Alison Bechdel were dead, this would have her rolling in her grave. Since she’s still alive, the rolling of her eyeballs will have to do.

Here’s a question.

Does the new Doctor Strange movie pass the Bechdel test? The only time I remember two women talking was when the Scarlet Witch was talking with herself. Did she and America ever have a scene talking together? Can we call the murder of Captains Carter and Marvel dialog? It’s kind of amazing that a movie with two female leads can even be discussed about failing the test.

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Pardon my ignorance, but does the Bechdel test require that the women be unrelated? After all, plenty of mothers and daughters quarrel in movies for reasons that have nothing to do with men.

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No they don’t have to be unrelated.

The point of the test is not “movies that pass the test are good and movies that fail the test are bad.” It’s just pointing out the fact how few movies pass it. And think of a “male Bechdel test” where to pass, you need to have two male characters talk to each other about something other than a female character. Far far more movies pass that test. Even traditional “chick flicks” probably pass that test.

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Yes, at the end. Also Captain Carter and Wanda. I think America Chavez and Christine Palmer also talk, but its about Doctor Strange.

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I’d say it would be very hard to find a movie that didn’t.

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Indeed. Its proper main thrust is to call attention to whether (plays, shows, movies, comics) have women represented, and do so as characters with lives and personalities. It makes no judgement as to merit of the work or whether passing the test is itself even relevant in each case

…and that last bit, come to think of it, IMO ties in with the “Two Gals in the Kitchen” ad trope: yes, it theoretically complies with “Bechdeling” in its barest oversimplified terms, but of course the counter to that is, that the ad scene is uncontextual, it floats in a vacuum, a universe that exists for all of thirty seconds. So it illustrates the insufficiency of applying Bechdelling itself in a vacuum, since it is the equivalent of just randomly “overhearing” a couple of unnamed female backgrounders talk about when is the Finkstein account’s report coming out, as just a convenient way to feed us some exposition… technically “compliant” in the loosest sense, but not significant.

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Unless you count those 30-second movies that the OP mentions.

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Isn’t it true that the Bechdel test also requires both female characters to be named? Thus eliminating random background characters–and also random women in commercials, I should think.

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Of course, “two chicks in the kitchen” is still usually sexist, though for different reasons. The problem for which the Miracle Product is the solution is always, invariably, a “domestic” problem, involving cooking, cleaning, and/or childrearing. You’ll never see the two ladies sipping tea and discussing their poor gas mileage, or how often their lawn need to be mowed, or other stereotypically “male” issues.

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I can’t find a reference to that criterion.
ETA: Apologies, I missed it on Wikipedia - including that criterion is described as a “variant”.

This website has tested a lot of recent movies. It’s impossible to know if it’s an unbiased sample, but it looks like about 70% pass.

https://bechdeltest.com/

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The three parts of the test are 1) two named female characters 2) that talk to each other 3) about something other than a man. And now that it is a “thing” I think recent movies might be making an effort to pass, since it is a fairly simple test.

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It wasn’t included as such in its first “official” appearance.

That at least one of the parties of the conversation be a “named character” seems to be something that later commenters accrued to it trying to address the mentioned pitfall.

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The Bechdel test is probably a good example of a test that’s good at a population level but horrible at the individual level.

It’s like with the BMI, you get “obese” from people with a high fat percentage in their body but also from bodybuilders, who have been able to pack on an uncommon level of muscle.

Consider if you took a bunch of random across film scripts and simply inverted the gender of all the characters. Do that across the industry and nearly every movie will pass the Bechdel test. You’ll have incapable men falling instantly in love with the egotistical, insulting female hero, a black woman as a friend who’s afraid of everything but comes in to save the day at the end, etc.

I don’t know that you will have created a bunch of gender equal films by any stretch of the imagination, it would really just draw attention to the inertia of accepted scripting and how neither gender is really presented in any genuine way, in film.

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Moderator Warning

As @Chronos told you in a previous mod note, this is not Penthouse Forums. This is an official warning for bringing unnecessary sexualization into threads and for failure to follow moderator instructions.

This behavior needs to stop.

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It is worth pointing out, as always whenever this comes up, that the Bechdel Test was not originally proposed as a test proper and is not appropriately considered as such, where a movie etc. that passes is good and a movie etc. that fails is bad.

It was a passing observation in a comic strip which caught people’s attention and has accrued a semi-official status since this origin, including various attempts to formalize it, counter to the intentions of its named creator.

At best, it is a loose rule of thumb, a starting point for thinking about how imbalanced mainstream storytelling really is, but only a starting point, not an end in and of itself.

There are many other valuable criteria worth considering. For example, Geena Davis has a gender studies institute which notes, among many other observations, that crowd scenes in movies are perceived by the audience to be gender balanced when men outnumber women two to one; where the crowd is precisely half and half, the audience perceives the women as dominating the group.

So please don’t make the mistake of thinking of the Bechdel Test as a hard and fast formal scientific rule. It’s not. It’s interesting and worthwhile, but it’s also limited and squishy (which is the point of noting the commercial playlets as “passing,” I think).

As you were.

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All this talk about “two chicks in a kitchen” makes me think Two Broke Girls would pass the test.
Sure they have conversations about men and there are certainly individual episodes or even season-long arcs about men. However, overall the show is about the two female leads and their financial well-being (or lack thereof) and many conversations between them focus on them, their ability to generate income at a shitty job, pay rent in a shitty apartment, even care for a fully grown horse that somehow lives in the apartment’s courtyard.
Even their relationships with men are generally a b-plot with the driving force being about pursuing Max’s dream of opening a cupcake shop.

In fact, the show even closes out each episode by displaying on the screen how much money they have between them at that point. That is, if there’s one final thing they want to really rub in your face as the episode ends, it’s not a cliffhanger about if their boyfriend will propose next week or if their brother will co-sign a car lease, but rather, it’s how close they are to their current financial goal, be it swinging rent or upfront costs to start a business.

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