The Bechdel test asks whether a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added.And here's NRO's Kyle Smith:
In the past few years, the Bechdel Test has begun popping up casually in reviews like a feminist Good Housekeeping Seal of approval. Take this appreciation last month of the 1992 film A League of Their Own, published by Katie Baker on the site The Ringer: “It is, in my possibly blinded by love but also correct opinion, one of the best sports movies there is. And it is an honest ode to women and sisters and friendships, with a story that breezes through the Bechdel test by the end of the opening scene.” Hey, and you know what? Tom Selleck’s Matthew Quigley appears almost immediately in Quigley Down Under. Hurrah, this film breezes through the Cowboy Test by the end of the opening scene! Neither of these two tests gives you any hint as to the worth of a film, and furthermore neither of them tells you anything about a film’s general feminist wokeness. It doesn’t even tell you whether the film is entirely about a woman.
A couple of observations:
•You know why the "Cowboy Test" is ridiculous? Because there have been a million fricking movies about cowboys. We actually have no need of further cowboy movies — though, admittedly, I'd watch one if a good one came along — because just about every permutation of the genre has been exhausted. The Bechdel test was invented, meanwhile, because such female-centric moments were relatively rare.
•Smith is right that the Bechdel test doesn't tell you about the worth of a film or its feminist bona fides. Nobody makes those claims for it! (Check the video above for confirmation of this.) Instead, the underlying question is this: Does this movie contain a single moment that's not all about the guys in it? It is the very minimum a movie can do, in other words, to put a female perspective onscreen.
• Which means that the Bechdel test doesn't do much to constrain movie art: The art itself is pretty constrained — the movie business has increasingly been designed to appeal to and arouse the passions of teenage boys. To the degree female characters are designed to appeal to this demographic, it's not often with their agency apart from men in mind.
The Bechdel test was created because movies are so dude-oriented that getting such a moment was unexpected, to be noted.
Smith says the Bechdel test is irrelevant because women don't make the kinds of movies that reap big box office. "Have a wander through the sci-fi and fantasy section of your local bookstore: How many of these books’ authors are female? Yet these are where the big movie ideas come from. If a woman wants the next Lord of the Rings–style franchise to pass the Bechdel Test, then a woman should come up with a story with as much earning potential as J. R. R. Tolkien’s."
Which is ... stupid. Tell the makers and viewers of Wonder Woman that they don't like sci-fi adventure. For the love of god, tell my nerdy-ass wife — but give me a head start out of the room.
Hollywood discovers that there's an audience for women-centric movies every couple of years, then promptly forgets it. Using that amnesia to justify the ongoing omission of women and women's perspectives from our films isn't just dumb — it's clearly leaving a lot of money on the table.
Smart conservatives, you'd think, might embrace the Bechdel test for this reason if for nothing else: It just might help them make a ton of cash from an underserved audience.
Cross-posted from SixOh6.
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