This Wikipedia Wednesday comes courtesy of my friend Jack, who introduced me to this concept back in January. I later searched for it and, surprise surprise, found it on Wikipedia.
The Bechdel Test
This test comes from a comic strip, written by Alison Bechdel, called Dykes to Watch Out For. According to the Wikipedia article, this strip, which began in 1983, is "one of the earliest ongoing representations of lesbians in popular culture."
The Bechdel Test comes from the comment, made by a character, that she only watches movies if it meets three requirements, which are:
1. It has at least two women in it,
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something other than a man.
In modern interpretations, the women must have names, but others simply modify the third requirement to be that two or more women must advance the plot by their dialogue. These seem like pretty basic requirements, but if you start going down the list of the top-grossing movies of all time, you'll find that very few, if any, meet them.
The greatest find in this Wikipedia article, though, is the link to a recently-started blog which reviews movies based on these criteria. It's pretty funny and certainly made me think about some of the more inane movies which have achieved recent popularity.
Share & Enjoy!
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
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2 comments:
i can't believe i hadn't heard of this until today. brilliant.
sadly, the commitments has to receive a big fat FAIL. with the allowance that all soul music is just women talking about men (or vice versa). most of my other favorite movies fail, too. also, most of the works of shakespeare.
personally, i feel like one could easily substitute one of a few secondary phrases for "a man" in that last criterion and cover almost all movies. namely:
-their looks
-marriage/babies/children
-another woman's faults
come to think of it, maybe this is why i liked legally blonde.
actually, i guess if you take a more liberal view, all of those other things come back to men anyway.
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