TEDxSalford

The 2013 Best Picture Nominees vs. The Bechdel Test

At TEDxBeaconStreet Colin Stokes gave a talk called How Movies Teach Manhood, in which he spoke about the effect on young males of the female archetypes they witness in the movies. He argues that we should seek out and celebrate movies that pass “The Bechdel test”.

What’s that then? Alison Bechdel is the artist behind a series of comic strips named Dykes to Watch Out For. In a 1985 strip entitled “The Rule,” (shown above, click to expand) she presented a set of three criteria a film must meet to be deemed worth watching. In increasing order of stringency:

1)   Does the film have at least two female characters in it…

2)   …who speak to each other…

3)   …about something other than a man?

Here are some dead famous films that fail the test. (Incidentally, The Hobbit flunks the test even harder than Lord of The Rings – with Galadriel as the sole female character. And she wasn’t in the book.)

At bechdeltest.com a user-built catalogue of films is growing, showing how many of the criteria each meet. Using the site I looked at how the 2013 Oscar Best Picture nominees measured up. Here’s the list:

• Amour
• Argo
• Beasts of the Southern Wild
• Django Unchained
• Les Misérables
• Life of Pi
• Lincoln
• Silver Linings Playbook
• Zero Dark Thirty

Django Unchained and Life of Pi are the losers, passing only the first criterion with at least two women but no chat. Fans of two women in conversation should look instead to Silver Linings Playbook – but that conversation is about a man.

The remaining six pass all three tests, though often by the skin of their teeth. You’ll often need to be fairly eagle-eyed to spot the brief moments of female interaction. Some of the ratings are qualified as “dubious”, and the comments below each film’s entry have users debating how long a moment of interaction should be before it can be called a conversation. As you’ll see if you watch his talk, Colin doesn’t pass Argo with flying colours.

All of the nominees bar one were directed by men, the exception being Kathryn Bigelow’s latest, Zero Dark Thirty (she’s the one who took 2009’s Best Picture Oscar for The Hurt Locker). A total of two female writers were involved in the whole list – Lucy Alibar co-wrote Beasts of the Southern Wild and Doris Kearns wrote the book on which Lincoln is based.

It’s certainly more of a litmus test than an exam, but the Bechdel test does give a quick insight into whether a film even has the chance to display anything close to three-dimensional female characters and their relationships.  I’d love to see it added as an iMDB category.  The next time I head to the cinema I’ll definitely keep an eye out for where the women are – and what they’re talking about.