Measuring the Feminism in Movies: Bechdel and Other Tests
Have you heard of the Bechdel Test? It is a measurement of female representation in popular media, and is applied to see how well a movie depicts women. The Bechdel Test is simple (a little too simple, even). A movie passes the Bechdel Test if:
- It includes at least two women
- Said women should have at least one conversation
- Said conversation should be about something other than a man
Sounds very straightforward right. Well, time for some bubble bursting.
Plenty of movies disastrously fail this test. And nope, these aren’t just movies from the 1970s. Some of these are very recent. Avengers (you might have heard of that one), Arrival, Zero Dark Thirty and Gravity are just a few of the many, many examples out there.
Imagine how low the bar must be for a movie to not even have one scene with two women NOT talking about men. It’s a sad reality that at some point, this was used as a benchmark for “We’re not a sexist movie, because we pass the Bechdel test! Hurray hurray”. And yet, this is still the standard.
However, I want to point out something interesting here. There are some movies that have a great representation of women despite failing the Bechdel Test. Think Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, with Angelina Jolie playing the tough, adventurous title character, with some amazing action sequences. The same goes for the movie Salt (again, we love a good action-packed Jolie movie). In the movie Avatar, there are two brilliant female characters — Zoe Saldana who plays a Na’vi and is integral in the battle for Pandora and Sigourney Weaver, who plays a bold and respected scientist who spearheaded the Avatar program.
Well, to overcome the shortcomings of the Bechdel test, there are a lot of other cool tests created to highlight different aspects of media diversity. Here are a few of them:
The Mako Mori Test
A film passes this test if it:
- Includes one female character
- Said character her own narrative arc
- Said arc is not about supporting a man’s story
This test does a better job of capturing whether the movie has an impactful female character who either has a strong leading role, or at least significant character development.
The inspiring film that brought us this test, of course, is Pacific Rim, with its character Mako Mori, a super cool Japanese officer who follows her path, navigating her over-protective father. Other movies that pass this test are Avengers (with Black Widow adding crucial pieces of the story), and Gravity (with Sandra Bullock being the face of endurance and survival). Note that all three of these movies fail the Bechdel test, but still have amazing female leading or supporting characters.
The Sexy Lamp Test
Now this is a funny (and depressing) one. The test goes:
If you can take out a female character and replace her with a sexy lamp, without the story falling apart, then you fail!
Yes. That’s an actual test. And yes, surprisingly many movies fail this test. The intention of this test is to check the relevance of the female characters to the main story.
I can’t say that passing this test means anyone should win any awards. But to fail this test. I mean…
Some movies that notoriously fail the Sexy Lamp test are Skyfall (Severine doesn’t really do more than utter three lines that add any plot), Tranformers (no explanation needed here) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
The Racial Bechdel Test
This test is a variation of the Bechdel test, except instead of two women, it needs to characters of color having a conversation that is not about a white person.
Actor Dylan Marron even created a video series called Every Single Word, which has compilations of films featuring words spoken only by characters of colour. And (brace yourself), only five out of 34 compilations are longer than a minute.
The Tauriel Test
A movie passes this test if it has:
- At least one female character
- Said character is good at her job
The test, inspired by the character Captain Tauriel from the Hobbit movies, is intended to distinguish movies where the female characters are talented and unique in their skills. The rationale is that many women are portrayed at being incompetent at their jobs, while men are at least passable at what they do. Tauriel, for instance, is a kickass female character who inspires with her undeniable talent and is the kind of character you can watch and go — damn, I wish I could do that. Definitely need more female role models in movies.
The Willis Test
Originally applied to singers with lyrics from songs, this test has recently been applied to movies too. The Willis Test goes:
If you swap the genders of all the characters, would it still make sense or seem bizarre
This test has been used to identify stereotypes and gender bias in movies, where swapping roles would highlight essential gendered characters or actions.
Think of a movie like Pretty Woman, where Julia Roberts plays a prostitute who turns into “a real lady” after being hired by a rich entrepreneur to act like his significant other. Switching the genders in this romantic comedy would raise more than a few eyebrows. And what about Princess Diaries. Imagine a story about a young, impressionable boy who goes from “boy next door” to “charming prince” and eventually finds true love. The whole “dorky girl gets a makeover and gets dream boy” trope is so gendered that you rarely ever see the other way around.
The Willis test does a great job to expose the ridiculous gender bias often ignored in movies. Some of these tropes are normalised to a point that only by reversing the genders, we can even realise there’s something wrong.
For example, I remember when Captain Marvel came out, I had so many friends tell me that the whole “female lead superhero” was just a feminist propaganda. However, literally every other Marvel superhero movie had a lead male hero, and that’s apparently normal. And don’t get me started on how many seasons it took before we saw a female Doctor (in Doctor Who). And yet, there was backlash to the gender switch.
Expect More, A Lot More
Now, the question on your mind is probably — what’s the point of all this? So what if there are so many different ways to gauge representation in movies. Isn’t that something that film makers need to care about?
Well, absolutely it is. Film makers, directors, producers and authors should try really hard to ensure their work meets these standards, and can even use these tests to understand how effective they really are in representing women and other minority groups.
But more importantly, as viewers, it is super easy to get swept away by one-dimensional “woke-ness”. Seeing a seemingly cool leading lady may make us believe a movie is feministic in nature, when underneath that “strong female lead”, she doesn’t really affect the plot. Or there may be many women that are necessary to push the story forward, but none of them are really that good at anything. Or the movie may do an amazing job at female representation. But, it may have an almost fully white cast.
The point here isn’t to say that a movie is good or bad. The more important takeaway is that as consumers of content, we need to constantly ask for more. I want more powerful women in the movies. I want better diversity of roles for characters. I want to see more characters of colour have meaningful story arcs. We need to stop being content with tokenistic “feminist icons” or “diversity characters”. We should start judging movies by the effort their creators really put in to bring equality and representation. We need to raise our standards to expect more than just two women who can have a decent conversation. I think we can afford to set the bar just a tad bit higher, wouldn’t you agree?
