In 1985, the American cartoonist Alison Bechdel devised a test to establish if a film’s gender bias—that is, whether its female characters, where there are any, are more than two-dimensional. The test, which has been expanded to judge the merits of other pop-culture works, involves three queries. A film passes if it has a) two (named) female characters who b) talk to each other, about c) something other than a man.
Most mainstream films fail. It’s not that every film should be held to account—one of my favourite movies of all time, Home Alone, doesn’t pass—and it would be pedantic to dismiss otherwise transformative works of art for not including well-rounded female characters, but the Bechdel test is important. Not because it measures quality, but because it helps gauge a film’s inclusiveness and intended audience. Great trash like White House Down doesn’t really need to pass the test, but did Gravity need to fail?
According to a recent report by Indiewire, “Four independent theaters in Sweden have launched a campaign to install a rating system that classifies films based on their representations of gender”. If, for example, Flicks (or independent cinemas themselves) were to put Bechdel-test icons next to each title – cribbed, probably, from an aggregator – I’d imagine you’d find only about one film every three weeks to assign a smiley to. This is largely because we live in a country in which most of the best films – the most interesting works of cinematic art – in any given year, screen in a compressed block in the middle of winter, at the New Zealand International Film Festivals.
Noah Baumbach’s spritely and vivacious comedy of twentysomething insouciance Frances Ha, co-written by the film’s star Greta Gerwig, was one of my favourites at the Auckland festival this year; it definitely passes the test. It came back to a small handful of theatres for a limited run, but to little fanfare. Similarly, one of the films I’m most looking forward to at the moment is Abdellatif Kechiche’s Palme d’or-winning lesbian romantic drama Blue is the Warmest Colour. By all accounts it passes the test, but its screening here outside the festivals will encounter two hurdles: first, the censor’s office (for its extended sex scenes), and second, the willingness of a notoriously risk-averse set of distributors to take a chance and trust audiences’ abilities and sensibilities.
Nearly 30 years after Bechdel wrote her comic strip, nothing much has changed in Hollywood – but things have slowly been changing outside it. More films about and by women are being more prominently heralded and awarded; more people are starting to examine gender representation, and not just in movies. (Also, it’s not just gender representation: SNL is being criticised this season for its lack of diversity.) Bechdel Icons alongside screening times would probably be quite depressing for a while, but maybe those films that pass would attract more interest – and at the very least they’d raise awareness.
