As a modern day feminist, I try not to go see movies that don’t portray women well, as a way to use my money to try to change the look of females in films. So like many others, I tend to use the notorious Bechdel Test as a way to decide what movies to see and what not to see. The only problem is that this test doesn’t really prove much in the way of well-written female characters.
For anyone who doesn’t know, the Bechdel Test asks three simple questions of movies to judge them. One, are there two named female characters? Two, do these female characters have a conversation? Three, is this conversation about something other than men? This is the simple metric that the Bechdel Test judges movies on, which seems like it would be relatively easy to complete but out of the top 25 grossing movies in 2016, only 13 pass the test, one fails to meet the last point, nine only meet the first part, and two fail to meet any of the criteria at all (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/bechdel-test-2016-movies-passed-failed-952944). This test points out that there is a problem in the amount of women in movies and the amount of screen time they get.
But does a Bechdel Test pass mean that a movie portrays women well, and does a fail mean it doesn’t? Can one make an argument that Sausage Party portrays women well while Deadpool doesn’t? The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test, but it does include some of the most kick-ass women in film (Also the iconic I am no man scene, which is one of my favorite scenes ever).
American Pie 2 technically passes based on a conversation about clothes, and Anchorman squeaks by with a pass based on a conversation about a cat fashion show. Princess Leia exists in a world that doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test, but Remember the Titans passes based on a conversation between the two coaches daughters, neither of whom are very important characters in the plot of the movie. So what does a Bechdel pass really mean?
All a movie passing the Bechdel Test can tell you is that it gives screentime to women characters. This is why some people have flocked to different test to judge the feminist cred of movies. One is the Mako Mori test, judging whether there is a female character with her own story arc that isn’t about supporting a man. The sexy lamp test asks whether a female character can be removed and replaced by a sexy lamp without it changing the story. The Furiosa test is simple, does this movie make misogynists angry? There are plenty of other ways people have come up with to judge the women in our movies.
The problem with the Bechdel Test is that it was never meant to be a judgment of the feminism of movies. It was a joke made in a 1985 trying to point out the lack of women in movies. Somehow people turned this test into the most important thing for a movie to pass, and while having female characters talk to each other about something besides men is important, it’s also important that they be important characters with say in the narrative and their own stories. No simple test can accurately judge every aspect of female representation in movies, and we shouldn’t try to make one do that. The Bechdel Test is great for what it is, but it isn’t the only mark of a feminist film and we should stop pretending it is.