redirected from Main.BechdelsRule
There aren't a lot of franchises with more than one, if any, interesting and complex female characters.
The Bechdel Test or the Bechdel-Wallace Test is a sort of litmus test for female presence in movies and TV. In order to pass, the film or show must meet the following criteria:
- it includes at least two women,
- who have at least one conversation with each other
- about something other than a love interest.
Now, by limiting yourself to shows/movies that pass the test, you'd be cutting out a
lot of otherwise-worthy entertainment. You may even be cutting out a lot of works that have a feminist tone. But that's the point: too little fiction created today, particularly in TV and movies, has independent female characters. Things have improved since the test was first formulated (the strip in which it was originally suggested was written in 1985), but
Hollywood still needs to be prodded to put in someone other than
The Chick.
It's obviously easier for a TV series, especially one with an
Ensemble Cast, to follow this rule than a film, because there's far more time for the conversation to occur in. For example,
Stargate Atlantis is not an especially feminist show, but one episode features two female characters discussing a (female) alien that's attacking them, and in the fourth season the presence of a female commander, a female doctor, and a female warrior meant for a
lot of conversation about something other than dudes. To compensate for this, Bechdel's Rule-inspired analyses of television often look episode-by-episode, or compare the series' compliance with Bechdel's Rule with its compliance with a "reverse Bechdel rule" with the roles of men and women swapped.
Named for Alison Bechdel, creator of the comic strip
Dykes To Watch Out For, who made it famous with
this strip
. It's also called the Mo Movie Measure, after Mo, the main character of DTWOF, but Mo wasn't yet a character when the strip appeared; it's from the early days of the strip before it moved to a serial format with recurring characters. The strip itself notes a film need not be essentially feminist to pass the test, as the last film the character saw was
Alien (with two women discussing the xenomorph).
Contrast
The Smurfette Principle — Works that follow
The Smurfette Principle include a female character strictly for demographic appeal with no real consideration for what attracts the female demographic; works that pass the Bechdel Test have regular characters that just happen to be female and are not
flat. In many ways, this makes them more feminist than works that try to be feminist. Instead of the existence of "interesting and complex female characters" being hyped and celebrated like a rare phenomenon, it's not treated as the least bit unusual.
Works with a
largely female cast could be considered cheating.
Works that score high on the Bechdel Test:
Anime
Comic Books
Films
- Fried Green Tomatoes
- Thelma And Louise
- Kill Bill passes with flying colors: When the women talk to each other, they talk about combat. When the men talk to each other, they talk about The Bride.
- For all its other faults, Death Proof also scores high: the second group of four women talk at length about their jobs, funny accident stories, self-defense and gun ownership, the film Vanishing Point. Sex and relationships work their way into the conversation as well, but they're clearly just another part of the women's lives instead of their all-consuming focus.
- Legally Blonde — The protagonist's character arc is all about finding a purpose beyond a love interest, in fact.
Literature
Live Action TV
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, although Joss Whedon was disappointed people saw his "strong female characters" as the trope Girls Need Role Models. Why do people keep acting like "strong female characters" are so unusual?
- Firefly, given that River is pretty crazy (you would be, too), and doesn't seem to have any romantic feelings, and Zoe is married and focused on work, it's not too hard.
- Fraggle Rock
- Stargate Atlantis, as noted above.
- Star Trek Voyager passes this one with flying colors almost every episode, but Star Trek The Next Generation fails surprisingly. Yes, two strong female leads, but they are usually discussing their respective love interests.
- The reimagined Battlestar Galactica was known to fail the reverse Bechdel test, in which there were episodes where two men (the Adamas junior and senior) only talked about women (usually Starbuck and Roslin).
- The Middleman. Lacey and Wendy. Art crawl!
- Power Rangers scores shockingly high for a series aimed at prepubescent boys. Then again, aside from a few seasons it's an aggressively No Hugging No Kissing franchise.
Theater
Western Animation
