Of course, that’s probably largely because of the existence of the test itself. Hollywood has, for the most part, responded, not by making movies more actually equitable, but by putting an item in their checklist “Include Bechdel scene”.
And even still, with as easy as that is, a third of movies still fail.
That’s interesting. When i was shopping nursery schools, i visited one, and as i observed “circle time” i thought it was mostly boys. So i counted, and it was exactly 50/50. But the boys had so dominated the conversation that i had barely noticed the girls.
When I saw this topic on the boards I was a bit taken aback. Mainly, because I’m wondering why do people get into a huff when it relates to Asians? On this very board way back when, someone started a thread about how Disney doesn’t represent women enough and cited the (then recent) Up movie. [I know, it’s was already an unhinged take… but UP!?!]
Anyway, I pointed out that UP has an Asian male central character, which is by far more under-represented in movies than women.
So here we are again with Asian Men in the extremely rare principal role (roles even) on screen and someone just can’t let that shine (not directed at OP).
The movie is good. Gay Movies tend to be garbage with iffy to downright bad acting. This one delights.
Moved to cafe society, as this is mostly about movies and other stories.
This is a thread about how women are represented in movies/TV. What does that have to do with how often Asian men get lead roles in movies?
Also, what do you mean by “here we are again with Asian Men”, no one was discussing them.
What do the quality of acting in ‘gay movies’ have to do with anything being discussed here?
What movie are you referring to as being good/delightful? Up?
Was this reply meant for a different thread or am I just missing the connection?
Because the OP references the movie Fire Island and the Bechdel Test. The whole premise is intimately related to representation and yet, when Asian men finally get some representation, it twists into a weird feminist thing. Again.
Fire Island (referenced in the original post) is a good movie. A refreshingly good gay movie. It’s streaming on… something. Go see it. It’s good.
I think the comment was on-topic, if the broader topic is “representation in movies”. And I think that’s a legit expansion of the OP.
Nobody said that Fire Island was bad. Its relevance to this thread is that it’s one of many examples of movies that don’t pass the Bechdel test. Which isn’t necessarily a problem, for any given individual movie.
To be accurate shouldn’t two women who speak to each other about something besides men or their relationship to men be divided by two men who speak to each other about something besides women or their relationship to women?
I also read an article that mentioned the video for Baby Got Back also passes the Bechdel test.
No, because you can’t divide by zero, and that’s the approximate number of films that would fail a “reverse Bechdel.”
I agree that the number would be small, but it’s unreasonable to think there are not relationship stories where the entire point of the story is discussing the opposite sex.
Anybody got any good examples of mainstream movies that would fail a “reverse Bechdel” test—i.e. that contain no scenes of two men talking to each other about something besides women?
I’d look for movies that were made from books written from distinctly female points of view, like Little Women or The Help or one of Jane Austen’s novels; but I haven’t seen any of these movies.
That’s not what the Bechdel test is about.
All Is Lost. There’s exactly one conversation (well, attempted conversation) between two men…and it’s about a boat called the “Virginia Jean.”
Right. Once you are capable of saying, “oh dang, a whole lot of media lacks meaningful female representation,” you are done with the Bechdel test. It has absolutely no value beyond that point. And I don’t mean that in a negative way - it’s a very important thing to understand.
What you choose to do with that understanding is outside the bounds of the comic strip.
Gravity, maybe? There’s one conversation between the pilot and Houston, but IIRC, the implied topic was an ex-girlfriend (or at least hookup) the pilot had had.
Or, ooh, Fantasia! The only words are the “Ave Maria” section, which is about a woman.
I thought for a bit that Hidden Figures might work, since we mostly see the male characters when they’re talking to or about one of the female leads, but there’s a conversation between Webb, Harrison, and Stafford about the weaponization of rockets, and one between Harrison and the Senate committee about the loss of Grissom’s capsule, and probably a couple of others.
I thought the conversation had to be at least sixty seconds long (or some other time limit) so the discourse at the beginning of BGB, meaningful as it was, would not qualify.
This is correct—but the original comic showed a character who claimed she would only go to movies that pass the test.
Sure, to set up the punchline. It was a comic strip that happened to be making a very good point, but it was still a comic strip.
