Second, the women must talk to each other. note Additionally. The data Im using are the same as introduced in this previous post: episodes transcripts for most episodes of seven major sitcoms from the last 30 years. People tend to have strong feelings about the Lena Dunham-created comedy. Summit Entertainment. Grace and Frankie Theyre the kind of friends you can share all your embarrassing moments with because theyve seen (and done) it all. G LOW, Netflix's new series about a troupe of female wrestlers in the 80s, opens with a dig at the lack of roles for women in the entertainment business. Toy Story is such a beloved film to so many, but it unfortunately doesn't pass the test. Seinfeld has only one female character in its main cast, so was bound to do badly in this test; however, it does pass step 1 in almost 90% of episodes. This Canadian-made comedy about friends navigating motherhood will have you laughing out loud. Toy Story is such a beloved film to so many, but it unfortunately doesn't pass the test. 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. This movie about the pressures and pleasures of family-life, will have you teary . This was probably intended to refer to a one-on-one conversation, but in sitcoms often a larger group of characters are present in a scene. To pass the Bechdel Test, two female characters who have names must have a conversation with each other about something other than a man. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. And its been surprisingly challenging for movies and TV shows to pass this basic test, even in our current golden age of media consumption. advertising. The Legend of Korra might regularly fail both because of the ensemble, but later seasons have a majority female cast. Answer (1 of 3): Disclaimer: I love Firefly. In 1985, American cartoonist Alison Bechdel. services and 6. The comic strip that popularized the test was titled "The Rule," and it says that to pass the test the movie must have three things. This site uses cookies. Probably because, well, just have a look at this article to see who sits behind the camera. Not only are the relationships between the female characters strong and loving (see: Rebecca and Keeley, Nora, Noras mom Sassy, and the powerful moments between Rebecca and her mother), one might argue that Teds lack of patriarchal bullshit is what makes him a part of the feminist society ideal that many of us wish for. Ted LassoWhile it may be a mans name in the title, this might be one of our favorite TV shows that passes the Bechdel test with flying colors. ABOUT. The test is named after and . During the comic relief French Lesson scene (Act 3, Scene 4) Alice teaches Katherine how to speak French and there is no mention of men whatsoever. How it passes: This ones obvious. Harry and his friends (several of whom are female) begin making their final moves to take down Lord Voldemort. Lola must figure out how to come up with 100,000 Deutsche Marks in twenty minutes or her boyfriend will be killed. "Glitch". But not dwelling on that, the show quite obviously passes the Bechdel Test, with a strong . SuperJail, unless JailBot is female. Users are reminded that they are fully responsible for their own And so are five other '90s tattoo styles. Currently, only the titles of the movies are searchable. Well, surprisingly hard to manage it seems, with up to 50% of films failing the test. Most of them fail, even ones full of female characters. All Rights Reserved. Bath Rate. This evil stepmother figure in Disneys 1998 remake is finally receiving the appreciation she always deserved. Aw, Sorkin, you charmer,you. policy. I dont think its really within the spirit of the test to count a brief conversation in a single episode of a TV series that ran for years as a pass. TL;DR: Some episodes do, some d. The label of his particular examination is taken after a caricature artist, Alison Bechdel. If you havent, then youre missing out on the creative genius that is Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson. There arent enough shows that embrace female insecurities. Most people probably werent as mindful of the cringe-worthy storylines, one-dimensional characters, and lack of diversity that was, unfortunately, part of the norm before the early 2000s. We can look at the results for each show, broken down by test step. GamesRadar+ is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Big Littles Lies also brings drastically different women together who have one thing in common: Their kids are in the same class. 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. Fox Searchlight Pictures But seriously, I cant remember two female characters even talking to each other. For a movie or TV show to pass the test, it has to feature at least two women talking to each other about a topic other than a man. CONTACT. But, even though this movie passes the Bechdel Test, it doesn't pass the Dangerous Bear Trope Test. The percentage of women working as directors on the top 100 films retreated from 16% in 2020 to 12% in 2021. Most are finally passing the Bechdel test, aka a test that analyzes a scene where two or more women talk about anything else other than men. The movies follow The Bride as she kills her way through the list of assassins who targeted her, working her way up to Bill - their boss and her former lover. To identify female characters, I manually selected names from the list of all speaking characters in the dataset, including both major and minor characters, but excluding unnamed characters like Waitress. Lauren OCallaghan. How it passes: Dont let the name fool you, Children of Men (opens in new tab) passes the Bechdel Test with flying colours. The show is set in the world of 80s womens wrestling and follows an out-of-work actress who decides to achieve fame by wrestling. They discuss many different topics through the film, including the trajectory of their lives after graduating high school, but rarely men. How it passes: The Hunger Games (opens in new tab) actually passes the Bechdel Test in the very first scene. Euphoria doesnt shy away from topics that would never have been included in a teen show ten years ago. 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. 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. To pass the Bechdel test, a movie must follow three rules that are supposed to show if the story has a good representation of women. TV shows tend to run far longer than movies and thus, most of them end up passing the Bechdel Test. Heres how the test works a piece of fiction has to satisfy three requirements: Thats it. It doesnt matter what age you are or if you have kids or not, because its that good. Lers kick things off with a choice that surely wont disappoint. Washington Post, many films and TV shows fail the Bechdel Test (Rosenberg, 2015). The show takes place in the beautiful town of Monterey, California, and follows three moms: Madeline, Celeste, and Jane. The WitcherAnd our second fantasy series is The Witcher, which, despite a lot of male energy (wayy more um, cleavage, in this one), does indeed pass the Bechdel test a few times Yennefer and Tissaias complicated relationship, as well as Ciri and Eithns short time together, and honestly probably more but were still working our way through this story (hey, we still have pandemic time to watch!). 2020, however, has already been a promising year for Bechdel Test-passing hits. Beyond the central relationship between those two women, any time theres a moment between women features the show at its best. 6 'The Social Network'. Grace and FrankieHow often do we get to see older women rise up against adversity with a whole lot of laughter and a whole lot of love? Data scientist and former climate physicist, with special interest in politics and sports analytics, Having acquired hundreds of sitcom episode transcripts. Especially the last season, with its female villain. Enter the Bechdel Test, which was created in 1985 by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in a now-famous comic strip.Essentially, the Bechdel Test is a metric which determines whether a movie or TV series pays ample attention to its women characters. And its been surprisingly challenging for movies and TV shows to pass this basic test. Sadness, joy, frustration, bittersweetness. 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. The three women talk about their work launching Project Mercury into space (ranging from aerospace engineering, to analytical geometry, to calculating trajectories, to phenomenally advanced maths), as well as about the professional obstacles in their way due to the prejudiced attitudes of their male, white co-workers. So, what is the Bechdel Test? Honestly, if you dont know this, then I hope that 35-year coma was really peaceful andlovely. Let us know! 5. The Social Network stars Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin . Holdo a total, er, force (RIP). 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. 5. It made history, being the first all-Black starring cast to cross the $100 million threshold at the box office. And it definitely passes the Bechdel test, with a diverse cast of women focusing on their careers and friendships. 5. The women of this show are complex and the show does a wonderful job of passing the Bechdel test, focusing on their friendships, their careers, their kids. Tangled (rated PG): Rapunzel and Mother Gothel have enough interaction to help Tangled easily pass the test. Definitely not. Hilary Duff? Atomic BlondeYes, please give us more Charlize Theron! Some of the most popular films of all time fail The Bechdel Test, and often for reasons you may have never considered. There are also a handful of episodes that do not pass either test (grey). 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. Swedish cinemas take aim at gender bias with Bechdel test rating Movies need to pass test that gauges the active presence of women on screen in bid to promote gender equality Jennifer. This test is passed much more frequently: almost every episode of each show passes (blue plus purple, below): However, Friends, Will and Grace, and Married With Children do show some episodes that pass the BT but not the male version (orange). Third, that conversation must be about something other than a man. TV Show Recaps; TV Reviews; TV Lists; TV News & Trailers; TV Features; The L Word; The L Word: Generation Q; . This method probably fails to catch some cases where the topic of conversation was, broadly speaking, a male character, but a three-line sequence occurred without mentioning him by name or pronoun; but it seems too harsh to throw away the whole scene if a male is mentioned anywhere in the scene, since often scenes can involve multiple conversations between different groups of characters. Despite having an array of fierce and funny female characters, the last movie of the Harry Potter installments disappointingly doesn't feature a single conversation between the women. So viewers would expect it to pass the Bechdel test with flying colors - and it does. A lot of episodes do pass, but not as many as youd think, and only barely. If youre behind on this one, too, then Im honestly kinda surprised you even know what movies are. By providing the information below you will receive early-bird invitations to our events, exclusive musings tailored to your interests, and access to our curated mentorship program. The twentysomething BFFs navigate life in New York City while getting into the most bizarre yet weirdly relatable situations. 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. The Bechdel test ( / bkdl / BEK-dl) [1] is a measure of the representation of women in film (and, by extension, in fiction in general). Its a must watch! The Bechdel (pronounced beck-dell) Test was first created in 1985 by cartoonist Allison Bechdel. It uses the same lines identified above as part of a back-and-forth between two characters, and sums these by the gender of the pair of characters involved: female-female, male-male, or male-female. del test/n. Beyond that, it paved the way for 2018's reboot, which does pass the Bechdel test, as star Alicia Vikander told Metro in 2016. This may feel a bit more like a soap opera than a drama, but it absolutely passes the test! 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. Its exciting to see them roll up with their emotional Away bags and yet be really nervous to unpack them in front of each other. New Line Cinema. However, its not the case that these shows were full of male-male conversations without female involvement: as seen by the fact that no show lies below 0.8 on the y-axis, these shows had as many, or almost as many, male-female conversations, as male-male conversations. 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. Kate McKinnon was everything. The movie: This dystopian movie paints a bleak picture of a future where humanity has lost the ability to reproduce. 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. Having acquired hundreds of sitcom episode transcripts, I can apply the test programmatically to each episode of these sitcoms, to compare the shows and track changes over the course of their runs. Here are our favorites! In fact, theyre kinda just flat characters who the male characters ignore or bang in bathrooms when its dramatically appropriate. While Enid occupies herself with finding him a girlfriend, she and Becky grow further apart. TV shows tend to run far longer than movies and thus, most of them end up passing the Bechdel Test.
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