The Influence Of The Bechdel Test

After watching the film Stand By Me I decided to look into the way gender roles were represented and see if I felt as though male and female roles were equal during the film and how each sex was portrayed. One of the ways in which I decided to do this was to apply the rules of the Bechdel test, though during the course of the movie I found a number of different elements that displayed that women did not appear to be considered an important role for the film. We are shown a young boys journey through adolescence told by form of narration, thus giving us, the audience, an apparent view of the world through a 12 year old boys eyes. Throughout the film we are introduced to 3 adolescent boys, who enjoy their time smoking, playing cards, using bad language and causing trouble.

“Strides also have to be made for female nominees. Once again, women were shut out of the best director category and of the 10 nominated screenplays, “Hidden Figures” co-writer Allison Schroeder was the only woman nominated. And after all these years, a woman has yet to be nominated in the cinematography category.” Through the years movies had primarily been directed by male directors and many of the famous films and works of cinematography have been directed and produced by men, so when a talented director that happens to be a women is being snubbed from nomination that is going to be an area that I believe will be highlighted and touched upon in the

Two of the six movies addressed in my presentation have female writers: Mean Girls (Tina Fey) and Clueless (Amy Heckerling). All six of these movies are directed by men. This is troubling, because while there are women who could have input on how the story should be told, the plots and characters of young females are ultimately developed by grown men who have never lived though the teen years of a girl victimized by the cruelty of high school.

According to an article called, “How Horror Films Are Bringing More Gender Equality to Hollywood” it states that, “University of Southern California communications professor Stacy Smith, who researches depictions of gender and race in film and TV, found that of the 5,839 characters in the 129 top-grossing films released between 2006 and 2011, fewer than 30 percent were girls or women.” This explains that males still have a dominating place in movie character roles in this generation. In general male figures in the movie industry could be seen as the more ruling characters as they are more

The Bechdel test determines whether or not a television program or movie uses the presence of women appropriately and it serves as a helpful reminder to viewers that maybe the programs they’re watching don’t influence them in the appropriate way. Moreover, the exposure to these sources of entertainment that don’t pass the Bechdel test prove to be discriminatory towards women and to other minority groups. As represented by Anita Sarkeesian in the YouTube video “The Bechdel Test for Women in Movies”, many well-known films have not met all the criterias of the test and could therefore not be considered as a pass. To follow on the experiment that Anita Sarkeesian has done with films, I have tried the test with some television shows that I watch

To conclude, the two Bechdel Tests prove woman and coloured characters are poorly portrayed and clearly misrepresented in popular culture films. The Bechdel test is judged more thoroughly than just as a fail or a pass, it is something where people in society can easily recognize gender and racial discrimination. To add, I believe there is a link between what we view in media and what we view in society, and the representation of women and coloured people are designed to surround and idolize a dominant character, this character being a white male. In order to challenge viewers even more, I would want to add ability to the test, by asking, are there two or more characters with disabilities (should have names)? Do they talk to one another? And

Let’s use the superhero boom of big budget films as an example for the rest of Hollywood. Even with pushing out about three pictures a year on average since the turn of the millennium, there still has not been one directed by a woman. Ava DuVernay recently dropped out of Black Panther due to “creative differences”. Michelle MacLaren, known for her work on Breaking Bad, also did the same for

A tiny 5% of the directors that made films between 1994 and 2004 were women. In the top 500 films between 2007 and 2012, 30% of actresses in these films wore sexually revealing clothing while the statistic was only 7% with men. All of these numbers show just how under-represented and over-sexualised women are in the massively unjust film industry. Professor Martha Lauzen of San Diego University states, “90% of the time, the people who you pitch your idea to are male, and even though they might be very sympathetic, they do look at the world from a different perspective.” And so again we see the vicious cycle of women not being able to advance up the corporate ladder which leads to very little women reaching their way to the top. This makes it difficult for women to be understood when pitching their ideas to producers. This approach to women in the film industry is not only belittling to a whole gender but is also making women out to be incapable of creating high-quality films or starring in lead roles without becoming a sex

Throughout Hollywood women are facing the issue of gender within film production. At this time, only 25% of producers are female. In 2014, 33% of films had no

This is evident in how movies often reduce women to stereotypes, portraying them as two-dimensional characters and undeveloped female supporting characters, primarily created as accessories to male characters’ stories. What the Bechdel test does is highlight this, drawing attention to the gender disparity that exists in the majority of cinematic

A movie can be fun to watch, but there can be a lot to learn from each and every movie. Just by watching the movie and thinking critically while watching it, one can analyze various points of the movie which can be helpful to learn something from it. The movies have a great influence to every culture and there are different movies for different cultures. Among many points of the movie to analyze, there is a test called the Bechdel test which can be analyzed in any movie. It’s a simple test based on three criteria which are having at least two women character in the movie, who talk with each other, and talk about something besides a man.

Very few female directors have gotten credit for their work on films, even on great films. Their work is discredited, especially in the horror genre. The reason women have been shut

For example, you have the Bechdel test, in which they see if there are two female characters, do they talk to each other, and if they do, do they talk about something else then men/the man/main character (who is a man). Sadly, many movies fail this test, showing how we put down womens importance in roles, and it’s extremely weird to have a movie who aren’t representing how a typical population look like

It should be noted that the Bechdel test is a useful test in checking for gender bias in films. In fact, it was one of the very first tools that sparked dialogue between film critics and typical moviegoers and urged the film industry to recognize and solve gender diversity in films. (Minamore, 2017) However, despite its effectiveness

Women are a low percent of those behind the camera. “In 2014, a whopping 85 percent of films had no female directors, 80 percent had no female writers, and one-third lacked female producers, according to a San Diego State University study (Davidson). How can there be strong women characters if there are not that many women working behind the scenes? With the lack of women behind the camera, the roles women play are often degrading and sexist. Women are often portrayed in service jobs such as waitresses instead of in leadership roles. In the top 500 films from 2007-2012, 28.8 percent of women wore sexually revealing clothes while men only accounted for 7 percent (IndieWire). TV and movies teach girls from a young age that they are meant to be a wife or homemaker and not much else. It is hard to dream to be a doctor or a CEO of a big company if you do not see it when you turn on the TV. And it is not that women are not qualified to work behind the camera, they are just not given the chance. It is hard to change your portrayal in film and TV if you are not the one writing the characters or directing.