Your new post is loading...
"The Bechdel test only scratches the surface of getting more women into meaningful roles in films, writes Stefan Solomon.
Four cinemas in Sweden recently pledged to rate films based on whether they pass what is known as the “Bechdel test,” a means of evaluating gender bias in film, named after American graphic artist Alison Bechdel. Only films that pass the test will be given an “A rating”.
The rules for the test, modelled on a comic strip from 1985 (see above), are as follows:
The film has to have at least two women in it.
The two women must talk to each other.
They must talk about something besides a man.
While it might not seem too hard to meet these criteria, at the time of writing, only around half of the 4,537 films surveyed in this online database obey all three of the rules. [...]
The major issue with the Bechdel test is that it only demands small modifications to the narrative events in the movies we watch, and doesn’t ask for any deep, structural changes. Ultimately, the test ends up telling us that the content of a film is more important than its form; that is to say, we are being told that what is most important about women on screen is simply what they do, not how they are shown to do it.
We need to start thinking more deeply about how films are shot and edited, and what those choices do to make us think differently about women in cinema. [...]"
