(Lets ignore the fact that the alien was a walking penis-monster, as this was before the Xenomorphs had established sexes the Queens werent introduced until 1986sAliens.). You will have a very real assessment of how much screen time this element has. Rise Together is key to creating greater opportunity by providing you with the support, knowledge, and community to break through barriers. For fun, how about shows that not only regularly pass the normal test but fail the reverse Bechdel Test? Ghostbusters (The one with all the women)We loved the 2016 Ghostbusters. Thank goodness theres one more season to go. How about Girls? Miramax Films That means having at least two, named, female characters in the movie, who talk to each other about something other than men. The movie: The all-singing, all-dancing movie adaptation of the stage musical Chicago (opens in new tab) sees Rene Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Richard Gere sing their hearts out as two female jazz stars/murderesses and the amoral lawyer trying to get them off. Most any military-based show. How it passes: This ones obvious. The Morning ShowOof this last season was a toughie (hello, news media + New York + #MeToo + Covid = messy! With Kristen Wiig and Rose Byrne going head-to-head in this hilarious bridesmaid-off, expect a lot of laughs and plenty of super awkward moments. posts, comments and submissions available. She+ Geeks Out was originally founded on land that is the traditional territory of the Massachusett and Pawtucket tribes, and which is still home to descendants of these peoples. All Posts; The Rundown; Entertainment News . At a time when toxic masculinity is still very much alive and well, this entire show is a breath of fresh air. While theres been some improvement, much work is left to do. The Bechdel Test (BT), which checks for a rudimentary level of female-centricity in media, has elsewhere been covered thoroughly for movies, with a crowd-sourced manual approach, but not, to my knowledge, for television, except at a high level or in very selected cases. It has to have at least two [named] women in it 2. Who talk to each other 3. In order to pass, a film must feature at least two women on screen talking to each other about. Did you see that fight scene where there was no music and she was just fighting and it was painful and awful and brilliant? Overall, women accounted for 25% of those working in key behind-the-scenes roles (directors, writers, executive producers, producers, editors, cinematographers) on the top 250 grossing films in 2021, up from 23% in 2020. Theres glitter, spandex, and a lot of fighting. An extra big kick in the nuts to Star Wars fans: The prequel trilogy actually passes the test (partially). Big Little Lies was produced by Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman, two women who were sick of seeing women portrayed in a one-dimensional way. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: PartII. Heres an excerpt on research conducted on film and gender in 2021: After reaching historic highs in 2020, the percentages of women directing top grossing films declined in 2021. The dramedy follows Issa, her best friend Molly, and their other girlfriends as they navigate life in Los Angeles. While Enid occupies herself with finding him a girlfriend, she and Becky grow further apart. 4. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Fantasies are notoriously male-dominated (Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, we see you!). These 11 iconic films, including "To All the Boys I've Loved Before" and "Mean Girls," pass with flying colors. A kid on a distant planet finds out about a magical force from an old man and he learns to be a Jedi and they fight against the Empire and yada yada. Yes, but her relationship with French agent Lasalle is significantly more interesting. The Office increased its pass rate during its run, as did Seinfeld and Frasier, with the exception of their final seasons. All rights reserved. 2020, however, has already been a promising year for Bechdel Test-passing hits. Having acquired hundreds of sitcom episode transcripts, I can apply the test programmatically to each episode of these . The trilogy is over 10 hours long but Arwen (Liv Tyler), Eowyn (Miranda Otto) and Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), all strong female characters, do not meet even once. Yes, Good Girls is about three women who find themselves caught in an organized crime ringyet its not that dark (except for a few scenes). They exchange quips a few times, such as when Mrs. Weasley utters the iconic line of "Not my daughter, you bitch" to Bellatix as she protects Ginny. Employment is overrated. For the most part, the shows that pass the Bechdel Test are shows about women who are devoted to their careers, Leslie Knope, Olivia Pope, Alicia Florrick. There are also a handful of episodes that do not pass either test (grey). Definitely not. Zoe Delahunty-Light. Enter search term: Or, you can show the list for one or more years: The measure sometimes is enhanced by adding that the two female characters be named in the film. They discuss many different topics through the film, including the trajectory of their lives after graduating high school, but rarely men. The Good FightWe were fans of The Good Wife, and when The Good Fight aired, we were excited to see some of our favorite characters back and connecting with each other in fascinating and exciting ways. Its just to get people thinking about gender and how its presented in film. Amongst civil unrest and economic collapse, Theo unwittingly becomes responsible for a young pregnant refugee, Kee, who he must protect against all odds. The movie's total kill count of . Her pregnancy is discussed with the surprisingly sympathetic assassin Karen Kim, plus her last talk with O-Ren Ishii in the snow in particular is touching as they gradually admit their respect for each other. The meaning of BECHDEL TEST is a set of criteria used as a test to evaluate a work of fiction (such as a film) on the basis of its inclusion and representation of female characters. Popularized by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in a 1985 strip called Dykes to Watch Out For and inspired by Virginia Woolf, the test measures the representation of women in film, television, books . Aw, Sorkin, you charmer,you. If you have a mixed ensemble cast its not unusual for it fail both the Bechdel test and the reverse Bechdel test because its rare for only the men or the women to have a conversation without talking about the opposite sex. Kee talks to revolutionary leader Julian and her midwife Miriam at many points throughout the movie, and its almost never about a man. The movie: When Princesses Elsa and Annas parents die, Elsa must become Queen, but during her coronation party everyone finds out that shes been secretly hiding powers (which she can use to freeze anything) all this time. Its pass rate drops dramatically at steps 2 and 3. Although they spend a good portion of the film apart they still manage to have a many conversations about important things like their love for each other and saving their Kingdom from a perpetual winter. Sex and drugs are a large part of the show, but so are friendships, as Rue, Jules, Lexi, Kat, Cassie, and Maddy dominate the series. Fox Searchlight Pictures Easily passing the Bechdel test, Dead to Me brings together two women with completely different ways of being in the world together to deal with some wild bananas weird stuff. Thankfully, by Toy Story 3 Pixar had included a conversation between female . Um, no. This movie about the pressures and pleasures of family-life, will have you teary . If there were ever a female landing party member and a love interest for Kirk in the same episodethey usually just glared at each other. A film that excavates layers of myth and memory to find the elusive truth at the core of a family of storytellers. The squads a little more preoccupied with ghost bustin than affairs of the heart, and casually saving the world from an evil menace. One difference between what we found in our broader sample of 1,794 films released between 1970 and 2013 and the analysis at BechdelTest.com of about 5,000 films is that BechdelTest.com shows 56. Big Littles Lies also brings drastically different women together who have one thing in common: Their kids are in the same class. Plus, its not as though failing the Bechdel Test means a movie is automatically terrible or sexist. The movie: The Bride is hellbent on - surprise surprise - killing Bill because he and his assassins tried to kill her and her unborn child many years ago. But what makes this show pass the Bechdel test so handily is her relationship with her manager played by the brilliant Alex Borstein (she is everything). A paraplegic dude gets his brothers hand-me-down remote control alien, falls in love with another alien, fights off a bunch of humans, and decides he likes being an alien more, because apparently he thinks living on a planet full of terrifying animals and waiting for the humans to come back sounds like a goodtime. Anyone else feel like going for a little drive? That said, I wouldnt be terribly surprised if MASH** didnt pass even that loose version of the test. InsecureThe real love between Issa and Molly gives us all the feels like all of them. Theyre flawed, complicated, and sometimes make horrible decisions. It originated in a comic strip by Bechdel in 1985. The movie: Following the careers of the human computers Katherine Goble, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughn, Hidden Figures explores the rampant racism (and sexism) the three figureheads endured during their time working at NASA during the space race. It has a lot of well written three dimensional women, but theyre spread far apart from each other. And, sure, maybe its not realistic to have female characters in historically accurate movies set on ships in the 18th century, such as 2003sMaster and Commander with Russell Crowe, which features zero females. Please note that uses cookies to improve your experience and to provide TV shows tend to run far longer than movies and thus, most of them end up passing the Bechdel Test. This test, put forth by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in a comic strip from 1985, posits . A few years ago, we compiled a list of recent TV shows and movies that pass the Bechdel test and thought it was time to revisit this with a focus on TV we live in a golden age of television! Starring Jeon YeoBeen (as Hong JiHyo) and Afterschool's NaNa (as Huh BoRa), "Glitch" is a dazzling celebration of female friendships and WLW relationships, and the theme is brought out with the utmost grace and delicate nuance. Users are reminded that they are fully responsible for their own Its a good thing that she has good friends to help her do it. For a movie to pass The Bechdel Test, it must contain just one thing a scene in which two or more named female characters have a conversation (that is, back and forth dialogue) about anything at all besides men. Now its up to Elsa to find her and help her get control of her powers so she can unfreeze their home. REVIEWS. By continuing to browse, you agree to the use of cookies. Have we missed anything? The movie: This dystopian movie paints a bleak picture of a future where humanity has lost the ability to reproduce. Emma Stone chills, sings, dances and colour-coordinates her outfits with her three gal pals, buuuut the friends themselves are never named. The Bechdel Test is a metric used for measuring how women are represented in a given film. How it passes: Although we dont hear The Brides real name until about halfway through the second movie, her codename is enough to set her apart as a named character. The movie: The 2016 Ghostbusters (opens in new tab) film is technically the third film in the franchise, but actually serves as a reboot, replacing the four main male characters with female alternatives - played by Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones. Its not always pretty, but its a true representation of female relationships. The series begins with the three of them working at Scarlett magazine (inspired by Cosmopolitan), and four seasons later, theyre still best friends and bonafide badasses. In three films, none of them says a word to each other. Bath To pass, the work simply has . Well, surprisingly hard to manage it seems, with up to 50% of films failing the test. When Ive seen people discussing the Bechdel test with regard to television, theyre usually talking about individual episodes and not the series as a whole. Why? Beyond the central relationship between those two women, any time theres a moment between women features the show at its best. A scene fails this step if any of the three lines in the back-and-forth mention any of the main male characters by name, a male pronoun like he or his, or any of a short list of other male identifiers, such as men, boyfriend, dad, or mr. While they both grapple with these feelings, we get to see how gorgeously complicated the human experience is through the lens of this intense and beautifully acted series. This is a function of the number of main characters of each gender available to take part in storylines: in the extreme case of Will and Grace, if the characters were split into two pairs, the only combination that allows same-gender conversations is Will-Jack and Grace-Karen, whereas as the other two possible pairings involve different-gender conversations. Some Western animated shows would fail a reverse. Here are our favorites! Yes, theres boy drama and girl drama (Kat identifies as bisexual), but the show isnt about romantic relationshipsits about friendships. Let us know! 5. "Glitch" is a drama that has earned its rightful place in any discussion about feminist science-fiction. 20th Century Fox. RELATED: 10 Best 2019 Movies That Passed The Bechdel Test, Ranked After witnessing a series of inappropriate events at school - none of which are taken seriously by the staff - Vivian . In one installment of her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, one character informs the other that she will only go to see films in theaters that have adequate female representation.