The Bechdel Test

[Guru Coyote]

This is a fun (an also important) metric to apply to any work of fiction (movie, book, and our own writings)

The Bechdel Test:
1. Is there more than one character in the movie that is female who has lines?
2. And do these women talk to each other at any point in the movie?
3. And is their conversation about something other than the guy that they both like?

For some background and further thought provocation, watch this TED talk:

Colin Stokes: How movies teach manhood | Video on TED.com

Maybe it's time to renew the good old Hero's Journey... The above test can be passed by a story that follows it, I am sure.

 

[Ireth]

Heh. My stories definitely pass, especially for point 3; I only have one actual love triangle in all of my novels and roleplays, and it's two guys competing for the same girl. There is one scene where a girl teases her older sister about having to "steal her man", but that's only because they and the man in question are performing in a play, and the sisters' characters are romantic rivals for the man's character. In reality the younger sister has no interest in the man, mainly because he's too old for her.

As for my other female characters, the main ones are a young woman and her stepmother. They talk to each other regularly, and it is only sometimes about men (and not romantic rivals, either. They're both happily taken).

 

[Feo Takahari]

Did a count of every story I've completed. I have:

2 stories that pass Bechdel and Reverse Bechdel
4 that pass only Bechdel
6 that pass only Reverse Bechdel
5 that pass neither (minimalism, whoo!)
2 that I don't know what to do with (this is what happens when you mess with gender identity!)

I have a tendency towards the "two guys and a girl" format, but I also write two girls and a guy sometimes. (And in case it isn't obvious, I tend not to have many extras.)

 

[Guru Coyote]

Feo, can you outline the Reverse Bechdel?

Also, I think this test was intended mostly for the movies, as in Hollywood...

 

[Guru Coyote]

Heh. My stories definitely pass, especially for point 3;
...

Ireth, I wonder if a young boy/man would be able to identify/relate to the protagonist of your stories?
That was the context in which the Test came up in the TED talk... "We need different kinds of stories for our sons..."

 

[Ireth]

Ireth, I wonder if a young boy/man would be able to identify/relate to the protagonist of your stories?
That was the context in which the Test came up in the TED talk... "We need different kinds of stories for our sons..."

Well, the main story I mentioned is actually a text-based RP between a female friend and me, so it's not really targeted at anyone but ourselves. It's just such a huge, ongoing project that I treat it like a novel. Let's see how my actual NIPs hold up:

Winter's Queen: 2 major female characters, both with lines; a few conversations between them; most conversations about a man (in this case the villain, who is character 2's brother and trying to marry character 1), but no romantic rivalry exists

Summer's Pawn: 2 major female characters, both with lines; conversation between them is assumed (character 2 hasn't fully entered the story at this point, so it's hard to say); no romantic rivalry exists

Low Road: Only one very significant female character, who does not interact with any of the minor ones.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Feo, can you outline the Reverse Bechdel?

Two men talk to each other about something other than a woman or women. (To be clear, the third rule of the regular Bechdel is just "about something other than a man or men"--there's no specification of romance.) Anyways, most of my stories that fail the reverse Bechdel have only one man, although one has two men who never meet.

P.S. There's also Deggan's Rule, which just requires two non-white characters in a show that's not about race. (They don't have to talk to each other for this test, although it does specify they have to be human.) I've only got two stories that clearly pass this, although I've got several with racially ambiguous characters.

 

[Alex97]

I think fantasy and fiction in general has come a long way from these sorts of stereotypes. Films, probably less so.

I'd like to think that the females in my story exist for more than just admiring the male protagonist.

 

[Darkblade]

P.S. There's also Deggan's Rule, which just requires two non-white characters in a show that's not about race. (They don't have to talk to each other for this test, although it does specify they have to be human.) I've only got two stories that clearly pass this, although I've got several with racially ambiguous characters.

Generally in Fantasy you won't pass this test due to how comparatively isolated the races were in pre-industrial/colonial times where most fantasy takes place. Steampunk, Urban Fantasy and assorted other sub-genres not nearly as much but Tolkien and Howard-esque fantasy worlds will usually fail.

 

[Alex97]

Generally in Fantasy you won't pass this test due to how comparatively isolated the races were in pre-industrial/colonial times where most fantasy takes place. Steampunk, Urban Fantasy and assorted other sub-genres not nearly as much but Tolkien and Howard-esque fantasy worlds will usually fail.

Agreed, although large ports with a significant amount of trade could be an exception. Or cities like Constantinople/Byzantium which sat between the east and west.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Generally in Fantasy you won't pass this test due to how comparatively isolated the races were in pre-industrial/colonial times where most fantasy takes place. Steampunk, Urban Fantasy and assorted other sub-genres not nearly as much but Tolkien and Howard-esque fantasy worlds will usually fail.

The rule's "non-white", not "non-dominant race". One of my stories primarily stars the agrarian descendents of desert nomads, with the skin tone you'd expect from former desert dwellers. (It's up in the air whether the local equivalent of orcs count as white--if not, the only pure white character is a pseudo-Irish villain from over the seas.)

 

[Penpilot]

Paraphrasing something I read somewhere. One important thing to add is that the Bechdel Test doesn't measure the quality of a story, nor does it measure whether the story is feminist or not. It is simply a tool to see if females are represented and contribute to the plot in a meaningful way. A story can have feminist undertones and still fail, and likewise be misogynistic yet pass.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons for a story to fail, like if it's set in an all male prison.

 

[Anders Ämting]

I'm pretty sure all my stories pass the test, given that my MCs are usually girls.

I think fantasy and fiction in general has come a long way from these sorts of stereotypes. Films, probably less so.

Well, the entire Hollywood movie industry is amazingly backwards in many ways.

I swear Hollywood is entirely ruled by time-travelling 19th century white men.

Paraphrasing something I read somewhere. One important thing to add is that the Bechdel Test doesn't measure the quality of a story, nor does it measure whether the story is feminist or not. It is simply a tool to see if females are represented and contribute to the plot in a meaningful way. A story can have feminist undertones and still fail, and likewise be misogynistic yet pass.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons for a story to fail, like if it's set in an all male prison.

This is a good point.

 

[Chilari]

Penpilot is right, it's about representation of women in media. A story or film than passes at worst represents women in a capacity which is not dependent upon male characters, though can still show stereotypes, misogyny etc - the Bechdel-passing scene might just be one where two women talk about shoes, for example. Or such a scene could be overtly radical feminist even to the point of man-hating, and still pass if there's one scene where men aren't mentioned. But at its best, Bechdel-passing films or stories might contain good representations of women of different types with different personalities and motivations. Basically, it can cover a wide range of films. The point is, though, that it identifies films where women are underrepresented. For the vast majority of the films which fail the Bechdel test (I discount films like Master and Commander, set on a naval ship in the Napoleonic wars, when you wouldn't expect any women to be involved), it highlights the lack of female initiative in the plot - such films tend to be male-driven, with female characters incidental as evidenced by the fact they don't talk to other women, only to male characters, or of they do only about male characters. Failure demonstrates a male-centric, female-excluding story.

Having said that I think some examples that fail, though not exempted by context like with Master and Commander, don't necessarily apply. Why? Because if it's a close perspective male main character, it might simply be that the reader/audience doesn't see the conversations between female characters because the POV character doesn't. If there's never a group conversation involving two female characters and the POV character, you'd not see it. But that doesn't mean you can't have female character 1 tell POV character that she was talking to female character 2 earlier about, I dunno, the upcoming diplomatic meeting or the river dredging project or whatever. I would consider that a pass, because they did have a conversation, just it was off screen due to the point of view of the main character.

Also for rule 1, I heard it was named female characters rather than female characters with lines.

 

[Guru Coyote]

Maybe it is time to propose a new test then...

1. Does the story / movie have groups of mixed race / gender / orinetation?
2. Do the members of these groups talk to each other?

etc.

The Bechdel Test (which was defined in the 80s I think) mainly deals with the question of "Are females mentioned and dealt with as actual characters?"

I think we are beyond that by now. But do all the diverse characters actually work together?

 

[Rob P]

In my piece of work I have fourteen female characters who have lines, one is the hero, four have major parts, another two are significant while the rest remain in the minor leagues. Only two compete for the affections of a man but that doesn't mean the others are not involved in love interests.

I think it might pass the test.

I have drawn upon a lot of women in my life to flesh these characters out. Some strong, some weak, some angry, some meek.

As a guy, incorporating a healthy amount of female characters into the story helps me attune to a wider selection of emotions but it also helps focus my attention upon the emotions of my male characters more and their interplay when in mixed company.

 

[Addison]

Mine pass, but it's like Alex 97 said, those stereotypes are pretty near gone in today's books and movies and TV. Heck I'm making all of my characters, male and female, as different and out of pattern as possible. For more information read, or listen to on you tube, the American poem "Shake the Dust".

 

[Feo Takahari]

Mine pass, but it's like Alex 97 said, those stereotypes are pretty near gone in today's books and movies and TV.

Books, maybe. Movies, hell no. TV, not unless you're watching something special like Logo. (And I'm a video gamer, which means I'm quite used to women being omitted or written as archetypes rather than characters.)

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

I'm sorry, I write traditional fantasy. What's a woman again?

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Guru Coyote]

I'm sorry, I write traditional fantasy. What's a woman again?

Colin Stokes: "... the story that a male hero's job is to defeat the villain with violence and then collect the reward, which is a woman who has no friends and doesn't speak ..."

There you go. That is a 'woman.'