The Bechdel Test

[rowyn]

I was just thinking about this rule -- that a work should '(1) have at least two women in it, (2) who talk to each other, (3) about something besides a man' -- and it just struck me that if you invert this rule to "have two men in it who talk to each other about something besides a woman", I am not sure if any of Jane Austen's books would pass.

Huh.

Comments

[alltoseek.livejournal.com]

No, prolly not. And if all the literature in the world were like Austen's, we'd live in a dull and deprived literary world.

The Bechdel test is for representation of female characters. It's not for quality. And it's only useful in that some ridiculously high percentage of media don't pass it. Especially movies, which is what that particular comic was referring to. Novels not nearly so bad, as even many male novelists write women, for some reason.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

What I find interesting about The Bechdel Test is that it's not an indicator of quality-- plenty of great literature fails (or in the case of Austen, fails the inverse). In a way, it's got a built in control-- whether the item of literature is or isn't any good doesn't alter what the BT tells you about the social phenomena it's designed to point out.

It's a brilliantly-conceived idea!

-The Gneech

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Let's see... My Little Pony has what, three male characters with speaking parts? And I don't think Spike, Discord, and Shining Armor ever talk to each other. It fails HARD.

[howardtayler.livejournal.com]

The significance of the Bechdel test lies in the fact that when men, who (arguably) think about sex all the time, write women, they tend to write those women as romantic interests, and when they write the female POV, that's often the focus. You'd think that we'd be able to consciously overcome this, but apparently it's more difficult than that.

So the Bechdel test is a quick measuring stick that allows us to check for that bias. Measure all the cinematic releases in a given year. Measure all the genre-fiction novels from a given publisher. Measure all the webcomics during a given century (hah!) and the Bechdel test shows the bias very clearly.

Use it to measure ONE work and it's not particularly helpful. Pass or fail is just an indication of whether or not the work exhibits the bias.

Sure, we need to be more aware of our biases, and we need to write better. A quick litmus test won't give us that.