The Bechdel test ( BEK -d? L ) asks whether a work of a fictional feature of at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that two women should be named is sometimes added.
About half of all films meet these requirements, according to user-edited data base and media industry press. This test is used as an indicator for women's active presence in film and other fiction, and to draw attention to gender inequalities in fiction.
Also known as the Bechdel-Wallace test , it is named after the American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, in which comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For , the test first appeared, in 1985. Bechdel praised the idea was to a friend, Liz Wallace, and to the writings of Virginia Woolf. After the test became more widely discussed in 2000, a number of variants and tests inspired by it have been introduced.
Video Bechdel test
History
Gender overview in popular fiction
In his 1929 essay His Own One Space, Virginia Woolf observed the time lector what the Bechdel test would test in the latest fiction:
All these relationships between women, I think, quickly recall the gallery of a good fictitious woman, too simple.... And I try to remember any case as long as I read where two women are represented as friends.... They are now and then mother and daughter. But almost without exception they are shown in relation to men. It is strange to think that all the great fictional ladies are, until the day of Jane Austen, not only seen by the other sex, but only seen in relation to the other sex. And how small a woman's life is...
In the film, the study of gender depictions in 855 of the most financially successful US films from 1950 to 2006 shows that on average there are two male characters for each female character, a ratio that remains stable over time. Female characters are depicted engaging in sex twice as often as male characters, and their proportion of scenes with explicit sexual content increases over time. Violence increases over time in male and female characters alike.
According to a 2014 study by the Davis Geena Institute on Gender in Media, in 120 films made worldwide from 2010 to 2013, only 31% of the characters mentioned are female, and 23% of films have female protagonists or protagonists. 7% of directors are women. Another study that looked at 700 best-selling films from 2007 to 2014 found that only 30% of the characters who spoke were female. In screen analysis in 2016 of 2005 commercial films, Hanah Anderson and Matt Daniels found that in 82% of movies, men have two of the top three speaking roles, while a woman has the most dialogue in just 22% of the film.
Bechdel test
The rule now known as the Bechdel test first appeared in 1985 in the comic strip of Alison Bechdel Dykes To Watch Out For . In a strip titled "The Rule", two women, who resemble the future character of Mo and Ginger, discuss seeing the movie and a woman explains that she only goes to the movies if it meets the following requirements:
- The movie must have at least two women in it,
- who talk to each other,
- about something other than men.
Another woman admits that the idea is pretty tight, but good. Not finding a movie that qualifies them, they go home together.
This test is also referred to as the "Bechdel-Wallace test" (who prefers Bechdel himself), "Bechdel rules", "Bechdel's law", or "Mo Movie Size". Bechdel praised the idea for the test to a friend and karate training partner, Liz Wallace, whose name appears on the marquee of the strip. He later wrote that he was pretty sure that Wallace was inspired by Virginia Woolf's essay A Room of One's Own.
Originally intended as a "small lesbian joke in an alternative feminist newspaper," Bechdel argued, the test shifted to mainstream criticism in 2010 and has been described as "a standard that feminist critics judge television, film, books and other media. ". In 2013, an Internet newspaper described it as "almost a household phrase, a common abbreviation to capture whether the film was female-friendly". The major failures of Hollywood production such as Pacific Rim (2013) to pass the test are discussed in depth in the media.
According to Neda Ulaby, this test resonates because "articulating something that is often lost in popular culture: not the number of women we see on screen, but the depth of their story, and their concerns." Dean Spade and Craig Willse described the test as "a commentary on how media representation enforces dangerous gender norms" by describing women's relationships with men more than other relationships, and women's lives only as important as they relate to men.
Several test variants have been proposed - for example, that both women must be named characters, or at least there should be a total of 60 seconds of conversation. This test also attracts academic interest from computational analysis approach.
Used by critics and movie bodies
In 2013, four Swedish cinemas and the Scandinavian cable television channel Viasat Film incorporated the Bechdel test into some of their ratings, a move supported by the Swedish Film Institute.
In 2014, European cinema funds Eurimages incorporated the Bechdel test into the submission mechanism as part of efforts to collect information on gender equality in its projects. This requires "Bechdel analysis of the script that will be provided by the script reader".
Maps Bechdel test
Apps
In addition to movies, Bechdel tests have been applied to other media such as video games and comics. In the theater, British actor Beth Watson launched the "Bechdel Theater" campaign in 2015 aimed at highlighting the test drama.
Skip and fail proportion
The bechdeltest.com website is a user-edited database of about 6,500 films classified by whether they pass the test, with additional requirements that women should be named characters. In April 2015, it registered 58% of these films as passing all three test requirements, 10% as a failed one, 22% for two failed, and 10% for failing third.
According to Mark Harris of Entertainment Weekly, if passing the test is mandatory, it would endanger half of the 2009 Academy Award for Best Film nomination. The news website Vocativ , when subjugating the best-selling films of 2013 to the Bechdel test, concluded that roughly half of them graduated (though some doubted) and the other half failed.
Writer Charles Stross notes that about half of the films that do pass the test just do it because the women talk about marriage or baby. Jobs that fail tests include some that are primarily about or aimed at women, or that feature prominent female characters. The Sex and the City television series highlights his own failure to pass an exam by asking one of the four main female characters to ask: "How can it happen that four such intelligent women have nothing to talk about but a girlfriend" It's like seventh grade with a bank account! "
Financial aspects
Vocativ ' s authors also found that the films that passed the test earned a total of $ 4.22 billion in the United States, while those who failed to earn a total of $ 2.66 billion, led them to conclude that the way for Hollywood to make more money is to "put more women on screen." A study of 2014 by FiveThirtyEight based on data from about 1,615 films released from 1990 to 2013 concludes that the average budget of film passing the test is 35% lower than that of other films. It was found that films that passed the test had about 37% higher return on investment (ROI) in the United States, and the same ROI internationally, compared to films that did not pass the test.
Description
The explanations have been offered as to why many Bechdel failed film tests include a lack of relative gender diversity among screenwriters and other film professionals, also called "celluloid ceilings": In 2012, only one of six directors, writers and producers behind 100 the most commercially successful film in the United States is a woman.
Writing in the National Review by 2017, film critic Kyle Smith suggested that the reason for Bechdel's test results was that "Hollywood movies are about people outside the community - police, criminals, superheroes tend to be male, and such films are more often made by men because the "female film idea", especially about relationships by Smith, "is not commercial enough for Hollywood studios." He considers the Bechdel test to be as meaningless with tests that ask if the film contains cowboys Smith article provokes strong criticism Alessandra Maldonado and Liz Bourke write that Smith is wrong to argue that female writers do not write books that produce "big movie ideas", citing JK Rowling, Margaret Atwood and Nnedi Okorafor, among others, is a counter example.
Limitations
The Bechdel test only shows whether women are in a work of fiction to some degree. A work may pass the test and still contain sexist content, and a work with prominent female characters may fail the exam. A work may fail the test for reasons unrelated to gender bias, such as because its arrangement works against women's inclusion (eg, Umberto Eco Rose Names , arranged in medieval monasteries). What is considered a character or as a conversation is not defined (eg, Sir Mix-a-Lot song "Baby Got Back" has been described as passing the Bechdel test, because it begins with the audio of a valley girl who says "oh my God, Becky, look at her ass ") and working with very few of them will often fail the exam automatically.
In the effort of quantitative analysis of the work whether they pass the test, at least one researcher, Faith Lawrence, noted that the result depends on how rigorously the test is applied. One of the questions that arises from its application is whether the reference to a man at a point in a conversation that also covers other topics undo the entire exchange. Otherwise, the question remains how one defines the beginning and end of the conversation.
Criticism
In response to the increasing ubiquity in film criticism, the Bechdel test has been criticized for not taking into account the quality of the work he tested (the bad films may pass, and the good ones fail), or as "the evil plot to make all movies fit the feminine dogma". According to Andi Zeisler, this criticism indicates the problem that the use of the test "has risen far beyond its original intentions, in which Bechdel and Wallace declare it merely as a way of showing rote, the plot of normative plot without thought from mainstream film, these days pass. somehow becoming synonymous with 'being feminist', it was never meant to be a measure of feminism, but a cultural barometer. "Zeisler notes that the false assumption that a work that passes the test is" feminist "can lead to the" game system " adding enough female characters and dialogue to pass the exam, while continuing to reject the substantial representation of women beyond the formula plot.
Similarly, the critic of the film Telegraph Robbie Collin disapproved of this test as "box proving and stockpiling statistics on analysis and rewards", and suggested that the underlying problem of lack of a well-drawn female character. in the film should be a topic of discourse, rather than individual films that fail or pass the Bechdel test. The author of FiveThirtyEight ' Walt Hickey notes that the test does not measure whether one of the films is a gender equality model, and that passing through it does not guarantee the writing quality, significance or depth of the female role - he wrote, "this is the best test of gender equality in the movies we have - and, perhaps more importantly..., the only test we have data on".
Nina Power writes that the test raises the question of whether fiction has an obligation to represent women (rather than pursuing whatever the agenda of its own creator) and to be "realistic" in the representation of women. He also writes that it remains to be determined how often real life passes through Bechdel's tests, and what the effects of fiction have on them.
Test
The Bechdel test has inspired others, especially critics and feminist and antirascist enthusiasts, to formulate criteria for evaluating works of fiction, partly because of the limitations of the Bechdel test. In an interview conducted by FiveThirtyEight, women in the film and television industry have proposed many other tests that include more women, better stories, behind-the-scenes women, and more diversity.
The test of gender and fiction
The Mako Mori test, formulated by Tumblr users "Chaila" and named the only significant female character of Pacific Rim, asks whether a female character has a narrative that is not about supporting a male story. Comic writer Kelly Sue DeConnick proposed a "sexy light test": "If you can substitute your female character with sexy lights and the story is basically still working, maybe you need another concept."
The "Sphinx test" by the London Sphinx theater company asks about the interaction of women with other characters, as well as how female characters stand out in action, how proactive rather than reactive they are, and whether they are stereotyped. It was conceived to "encourage creators to think about how to write more and better roles for women", in reaction to research showing that only 37% of theater roles are written for women by 2014.
Test about characteristics other than gender
Sexuality
"Vito Russo test" made by the LGBT test organization GLAAD for LGBT character representation in the movie. He asks: Does the film contain identifiable characters as LGBT, and are not solely or predominantly determined by their sexual orientation or gender identity, and tied into the plot in such a way that their displacement will have a significant effect?
Colored people
A test filed by TV critic Eric Deggans asked whether a film that is not about race has at least two non-white characters in the main character, and also, the author Nikesh Shukla proposes a test of whether there are two main characters who are those of color, which talking to each other without mentioning their race.
New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis suggested in January 2016 the "DuVernay Tests", asking whether "African-Americans and other minorities have been fully aware of life rather than serving as scenes in white stories." It aims to show the lack of colored people in Hollywood movies, through their importance to certain films or the lack of haphazard links to white actors.
Nadia Latif and Leila Latif of The Guardian suggested a series of five questions:
- Are there two colored characters named?
- Do they have a dialogue?
- Are they not romantically involved with each other?
- Do they have a dialog that does not entertain or support white characters?
- Is one of them definitely not magic?
A simplified version by Nikesh Shukla, already proposed in 2013, asks whether "two ethnic minorities talk to each other for more than five minutes about something other than race."
Test about nonfiction
The Bechdel test also inspired a gender-related test for nonfiction. Laurie Voss, CTO npm, proposed the Bechdel test for the software. The source code passes this test if it contains a function written by a female developer who calls a function written by a different female developer. Press notices are interested after US government agencies 18F analyze their own software in accordance with this metric.
The Bechdel test also inspired the Finkbeiner test, a checklist to help journalists avoid gender bias in articles about women in science.
References
External links
- Bechdeltest.com , user edited movie database
- Women in Movies , analytics tools for data from bechdeltest.com
- Bechdel Testing Comics blog
- Bechdel Gamer Blog
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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