Movies Passing the Bechdel Test for Sexism Earned More in 2013

[RolandOfGilead]

Why the hell is Captain Phillips even on the list? It's based on real life events. Were there women on that Somali pirate crew? Cause I'm willing to bet money that there weren't.

 

[Thaluikhain]

that test is terrible and the way the test used is even more terrible. Any test that remotely says "fast and the furious" does anything other than objectify and demean women is just wrong. fail at so many levels.

Excepting, of course, it doesn't say anything about women being objectified or demeaned or not, even remotely.

it's test for sexism. it should be able to capture the most obvious forms of sexism. otherwise, what's the point?

As explained many times in this thread already, it's to point out how male dominated movies as a whole are, not to examine any individual movie. Implied is a comparison to doing the same test with genders reversed, and seeing how big the difference is.

 

[Hawkeye21]

I am pretty sure that all lesbian porn/erotic films ever made would pass Bechdal Test. Does this mean that its more profitable to make lesbian porn? Does this mean that lesbian porn films are not objectifying women, and all modern films should strive to be more like lesbian porn? Boy, I sure hope so.

 

[Uhura]

it's test for sexism. it should be able to capture the most obvious forms of sexism. otherwise, what's the point?

It's not a test for sexism. The title of the article is misleading.

Why the hell is Captain Phillips even on the list? It's based on real life events. Were there women on that Somali pirate crew? Cause I'm willing to bet money that there weren't.

Why wouldn't it be on the list? Captain Phillips is on the fail side of the list because it didn't feature two female characters who talked about something other than a man.

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm sorry but do you actually have anything to contribute to the conversation or are you just content to show how smart you are by pointing out a technicality. No the test (if you even want to call it that because the criteria are crap) is not specifically a measure of if a piece of fiction is sexist or not but that is CLEARLY what it is getting at, looking at gender portrayal?

It's not a technicality. movies that pass can be sexist. Movies that fail can be feminist. Since both of these are true, it has little to do with addressing sexism.

Not necessarily.

If it contradicts the standard logic, regardless of how, I maintain it is significant.

So what is it then if not a (admittedly extremely rough) test for sexism. Or at least a simple test that gives you a general picture for whether of not it is written with some kind of female viewpoint.

It's a rule of thumb, you couldn't make a uncontroversial test for whether a film is sexist or not (or homophobic or racist)

It's a "rule of thumb" regarding women's presence in media, which doesn't necessarily deal with the strength of their portrayal. As such, it's not feminist, it's a point of an overall trend media, but not really one regarding feminism. And perhaps you couldn't make an uncontroversial test for feminism, but that doesn't mean that this is intended to be one.

Further, I would say that the reason one can't have a non-controversial test for sexism is that the minute the word "sexism" comes up, you get people screaming. It's impossible to have a cogent discussion on the matter.

But again, it's only weird to you that a misogynist movie would pass because you're asserting it must be a test for sexism or feminism or whatever (I'm losing track of the various claims in this thread) when it clearly doesn't strive for that. If it did, the rules would be different. Sexist movies wouldn't pass so frequently. Twilight wouldn't pass. It wouldn't require a single conversation, for that matter.

The Bechdel Test will always fail as a sexism test and if you claim it is one, you're misrepresenting it. Pure and simple.

 

[Therumancer]

The thing is, what is the relevance of posting these stats? No Hollywood producer is going to so naive as to believe CERTAIN movies were successful simply because they had two female characters who talked to each other for a certain amount of time on something other than the topic of a man.

Have we reached a point where we stop judging a film based on it's cinematic merits and moreso on whether it has a completely equal, Captain Planet-esque cast? Because that's also starting to creep into video games.

Well even "Captain Planet" gets criticism because of the kid who got stuck with "The Power Of Heart", not to mention accusations of reverse bigotry aimed at the US given the portrayal of the white-American character as being the idiot/foil of the group so often.

Basically political correctness needs to die, things like the Bechnel test always struck me as being jokes. The point is kind of made with say "The Hobbit: Desolation Of Smaug" because they made the politically correct gesture of putting in an extraneous female character just to have one, and then of course as it points out this very politically correct gesture lead to it failing another test of political correctness.

To be honest when you get down to it people need to understand that not all stories benefit from diversity or need to have different genders/races/etc... involved to tell them properly. "The Hobbit" was a pretty straightforward quest story that has a decent beginning, middle, and end, along with it's own metaphors and messages (arguably) with the cast it has which tends to be entirely male... and pretty much not even human (except for some supporting characters), it happens to work for that story. In comparison there are animes and such with entirely Japanese female casts which would not benefit if you started throwing in men (or greater male roles) or started shoehorning in non-Japanese or whatever for the sake of diversity. People just need to grow up basically and stop looking to create boogie men where there aren't any.

However, as I've said before, as popular as they are for the moment, I very much doubt the current Tolkien movies will truly stand the test of time, especially the "Hobbit" ones. The reason being that Peter Jackson is all wrong for the material involving Dwarves, and has shown himself being incapable of doing action scenes involving them, failing to capture the essence of characters like Gimli in the process. Truthfully I felt having a couple of elves show up to do all the action stuff for the movie was bad all on it's own, when what Peter Jackson should have been doing was elaborating on the fight scenes by having the Dwarves do more of their own fighting (even if they typically lose) without turning it into a waterborne three stooges routine. Despite his defeats Thorin and Gloin in particular are supposed to be awesome fighters. Later Gimli (son of Gloin) is supposed to be so dangerous that he has a contest with Legolas about who can kill more orcs and comes close to winning "except for that last one who wore an iron collar and notched my axe" as Gimli put it. They both had like 90+ kills if I remember.

Ah well, enough ranting, I have to get off the message boards for a while. RL calls. :/

 

[cikame]

So, you could have a totally sexist movie but as long as the female characters don't talk about men or their pursuit of them the test won't register it, seems like a dumb test to me, but also... what's wrong with love or attraction, isn't talking about or pursuing attractive people normal for either sex?

Where i work there's a girl who won't stop talking about how much she loves a certain football player, and my mum has a thing for young Steven Seagal, so is it sexism or is it an accurate portrayal of women?

 

[Product Placement]

Boy that thing keeps popping up. I first heard about the Bechdel test in the Dumbing of Age webcoming, where a Female Studies teacher brought it up. It felt like such a weird and arbitrary way to judge movies that my chauvinistic male mind immediately dismissed it as some sort of weird joke to make fun of Female Studies.

Not long after, I found out that a cinema chain in Sweden were gonna do special Bechdel exclusivity screenings and BAM it's a hot topic.

Personally, I find that it's a too random of a test to warrant such a rich discussion. It even started off as a joke from the get go. This comic page [http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-O56cKn5oCwA/UfBZUnBTlJI/AAAAAAAAANM/xaaXo6VG_sw/s1600/the-bechdel-test.jpg] is what started it all and it served more as a joke about how this dyke (not my word; that's how she's described in the comic) can't really see that many movies because they don't fit her very strict requirements. And she would be denying herself from almost entire genre worth of films. For example, in general, romantic comedies are already at a disadvantage, since they revolve around relationships and ultimately discussions about the other sex. However, if the movie featured a lesbian couple and it revolved around some relationship issue, where they spend almost the entire film talking about each other, it would pass the test. No such luck if the movie is about homosexual men, of course.

You can't use this to measure up whether the film is progressive towards women. The rules are too arbitrary. It's not good enough if two females pop up in a film to discuss something that involves a male character, ANY male character. It doesn't matter if we're talking about a husband, son, brother, male boss, male underling, their success or failings, affection or disliking; none of this counts. It can be something of great and significant substance or be some complete meaningless drivel, like comparing shopping lists and it will pass the test. If a movie features stereotypical frat party girls and there's a scene where they meet up to schedule a underwear party and discuss why Susan is a skanky ho, it has passed with flying colors. Hell, I could make a film where I could send a special kind of fuck you to the test, by writing it so it would fail if not for a single scene where two females start talking about how silly the Bechdel test is.

Look, I get what the point of the test was; there are too many movies around that focus too much on male characters. Many films are about a male protagonists and most topics of dialog usually revolve around the protagonist; it's his job on the line, he has to prove his innocence or go to jail, he's met the love of his life and needs to win her heart, etc. If you want better female presence in a film, aim for more female protagonists.

Funny enough, I don't mind the test that much, but it's more the discussion that bugs me. Of course, I'm not helping by weighing my own opinion on it, thus contributing to the discussion. But when a news title about how movies with "Strong Female Roles" are making more money, based on the Bechdel test of all things and this is flagged as a victory for feminism, I stop to pause. Sure, call me a man for that but I just don't like it when that damn joke of a test is used like that. And why is it that there's well over a billion dollars worth of a gross income that is labeled "talk about something other than a man, although dubious"? What so dubious about the dialogs in question? Did they pass the test or not? Why was Gravity ignored? Just because it only has two roles in the entire film and one of it was male? It still failed the test. There's no clarifications about how many roles have to be in the film before it can count. Are these attempts to make the good look better and the bad look worse?

Feel free to disagree with me, but I think there's too much discussion about a stupid thing that's irrelevant to proper measurements of strong female presence is movies. At any case, I'm not gonna lose sleep over this.

I have plenty of other things to do that for me.

 

[Brian Tams]

Pacific Rim, Captain Phillips, and The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug all failed, which really tells me all I need to know about this test.

Correlation =/= Causation, people.

 

[the_unseen]

Here's the things I don't get about the test:

1.What counts as talking to each other? A line plus response doesn't count (presumably, otherwise the hobbit would pass), a few lines? an entire scene?

2. What counts as a woman/man? does a hermaphrodite count? What about a biological male identifying as a female or vice-versa? what about something like a hive-mind, made of separate consciousnesses of both males and females? I mean if you want to get REALLY technical then two women taking about twins causes the test to pass because they are talking about MEN, not A MAN.

In short, a test about the exploitation of females that lets lesbian porn pass isn't a very good one.

 

[Thaluikhain]

In short, a test about the exploitation of females that lets lesbian porn pass isn't a very good one.

Excepting, as pointed out many times already, it's not about the exploitation of women. It's about filmd being male dominated.

So where's the similar thing for transexuals then?

You can modify the test for any group you like. The fact that the original is about women specifically doesn't make it transphobic.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

It smells a bit like sensationalism to call the test the "test for sexism". As we see in Pacific Rim, movies that do not pass the test are not necessarily sexist. It's suppose to act as a way to see the trend of female representation in movies, nothing more.

 

[Dragonbums]

So, you could have a totally sexist movie but as long as the female characters don't talk about men or their pursuit of them the test won't register it, seems like a dumb test to me,

The whole point of the test is to show off trends that female actors have in a movie. It was even stated in the original comic in which the test came from.

It's humoring that you have so many people claiming that it's a test for sexism and/or exploitation of women. The only thing "dumb" about the whole thing is that a test with such a stupidly easy criteria still has a fuck ton of movies failing it.

but also... what's wrong with love or attraction, isn't talking about or pursuing attractive people normal for either sex?

There is nothing wrong with that. However, let me ask you, how many times do you only talk to your same sex friends about a woman/man that interests you? How often does that take up the majority of your conversations? For most people that would probably be around 10-30%.
In movies, almost every single time a female talks to another female, it's always about how they love this man, or pursuing this man, or how to get this mans' attention, or telling the other female to back off on said man. Hardly do they ever talk about something about anything else. Like most women- and to extension people in general talk about. Making the perception that this is the only thing women talk about- is men.

Where i work there's a girl who won't stop talking about how much she loves a certain football player, and my mum has a thing for young Steven Seagal, so is it sexism or is it an accurate portrayal of women?

So you have a test field of a total of two women- your mom, and some co-worker at your job, and your honestly going to tell me that they are a representative of what women like to talk about in conversations?

 

[Schadrach]

I like how Gravity broke the Bechdel test.

Gravity didn't break the Bechdel test, it just failed it while a bunch of the folks who like to treat the Bechdel test as something actually meaningful really like it and wish it didn't fail the Bechdel test, so they decided to pretend that it didn't. Because they like the idea behind the Bechdel test, but not the actual results of same (a lot of the same folks really hate that Sucker Punch passes, for example).

 

[VodkaKnight]

I don't see the point.
The ability to measure sexism by how many women are in a film is ridiculous, given that it's the representation of women in films that matters.
Don't misunderstand me. Women being in films is good. But you cannot judge a film by how it does on a test that only tests how many women are in it.
Films can be good or bad, but that doesn't depend on the amount of women there are in it.