How sweet it is
First of all, we do thread titles differently in workshop fora. Here, titles go like this:
Issue chosen via dropdown: title of page as a wikiword, with non-Main pages joining appropriate namespaces with a period.
I'll fix the title. I will also leave this open to discussion, as you addressed an issue with the description.
she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report
"Brechdal Test" is a typo, seeing as Google could only find eight sites on the internet that contained that phrase and none of them described anything different from the normal test.
It seems the paragraph in question was expandedExact addition here about three weeks ago. It was expanded in response to a sentence which used romantic comedies as an example of works justified in failing the test. I believe the point that the addition is trying to get across is that romantic comedies are only justified in failing when the protagonists are of the opposite sex, and even so, that important female characters should still talk about more than men in those works. I think this addition only muddles the brief point and I would advocate for cutting it.
Two other shorter clarifications were also added making sure people knew that the romantic comedies they were talking about were about heterosexualsLike here , which is a fine thing to do, but it could be shorter and clearer.
Zzzzzzzzzz
All that garble was added by one editor. I've cut it out, since 1) it's editorializing, and 2) it's incomprehensible anyway (It wouldn't be good writing even if we allowed editorializing outside of Analysis pages). I also rearranged the paragraphs a bit, so that instead of starting with "what it is" then jumping to "don't use it as your only metric for quality of strong female character or feminist themes" then back to "it's really simple" and "here's how to apply it." they follow from one another: What it is. How to apply it. Why it shouldn't be your only metric.
Better?
edited 29th Nov '16 2:18:21 PM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Yes, much better, though IMHO the article seems too pro-BT slanted. ![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Still too much cruft, imo.
Now, by limiting yourself to shows/movies that pass the test, you'd be cutting out a lot of otherwise-worthy entertainment; indeed, a fair number of top-notch works have legitimate reasons for including no women (e.g. ones set in a men's prison, or on a WWII military submarine, or back when only men served on juriesnote ), or with no conversations at all, or having only one or two characters. If it's a romantic comedy about a man and a woman, then it's justified that the female characters would talk about men and romance. The reverse test isn't really an issue itself
as an estimated 90% of movies pass it. It may only be interesting in comparison to the original test since it shows how the concept of the movie/ work altogether deals with gender regarding same gender relationships.
But all that's the point; the majority of fiction created today, for whatever reason, seems to think women aren't worth portraying except in relation to men. Things have changed 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 use something other than The Smurfette Principle.
With the recent push for diversity and the unfortunate attempts to stifle said movement, the film Mad Max: Fury Road has added the "Furiosa Test" to the ranks for how badly it angered misogynists (see the Web Original folder).
It's obviously easier for a TV series, especially one with an Ensemble Cast, to pass this test than a film, because there's far more time for the conversation to occur in. To compensate for this, Bechdel-inspired analyses of television often look episode-by-episode, giving an final average (such as 7/13 if seven episodes pass in a 13 episode season,) or compare the series' passing Bechdel's Test with its passing a "reverse Bechdel test" (even without such compensation, it's often surprising to notice how long it takes many TV shows to pass). Another tactic would be the probability that a typical two-hour collection of episodes would pass.
Compare The Smurfette Principle. Works that follow The Smurfette Principle include a female character strictly for demographic appeal but make no real attempt to treat her as an interesting character in her own right, outside of her relationships with the male characters. See also Never a Self-Made Woman, which shows that even a well rounded female character with her own goals is most often only relevant to the story by her relationship to a man. Finally, see Token Romance and Romantic Plot Tumor for the effects of Hollywood's belief that both male and female audiences are generally uninterested in female characters except in the context of romance with a male character. See also Deggans Rule, which is a similar rule regarding race.
For other tropes regarding the representation of gender in media, see Gender-Equal Ensemble (self-explanatory) and Chromosome Casting (works featuring only male characters or only female, but not both).
And for those curious about the pronunciation, according to The Other Wiki it's like "BEK-dal" (/ˈbɛkdəl/), but Bechdel herself has said it rhymes with "rectal".note Well, they're almost the same, anyhow.
There are also lesser-known variations of the test, such as Deggans Rule (aka Race Bechdel Test), in which two characters of color talk about anything other than the white leads, and the Reverse Bechdel Test, with the roles of men and women swapped.note The film Mad Max: Fury Road has inspired the "Furiosa Test" (how badly does the film anger misogynists?) and Pacific Rim inspired the "Mako Mori Test" (Does a female lead get their own Character Arc?), which can be seen in the Web Original folder.
It's obviously easier for a TV series, especially one with an Ensemble Cast, to pass this test than a film, because there's far more time for the conversation to occur in. To compensate for this, Bechdel-inspired analyses of television often look episode-by-episode, giving an final average (such as 7/13 if seven episodes pass in a 13 episode season,) or compare the series' passing Bechdel's Test with its passing a "reverse Bechdel test".
Compare The Smurfette Principle (one female character included strictly for demographic appeal in a work with many male characters). See also Never a Self-Made Woman (a female character is only relevant to the story by her relationship to a man). The prevalence of Token Romance and Romantic Plot Tumor contribute to works failing rule 3 of the test.
For other tropes regarding the representation of gender in media, see Gender-Equal Ensemble (self-explanatory) and Chromosome Casting (works featuring only male characters or only female, but not both).
And for those curious about the pronunciation, according to The Other Wiki it's like "BEK-dal" (/ˈbɛkdəl/), but Bechdel herself has said it rhymes with "rectal".note Well, they're almost the same, anyhow.
edited 29th Nov '16 3:37:07 PM by crazysamaritan
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
The proposed edit distills the original intent really well.
Hi
Yeah, that seems like a good distillation.
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Yes, excellent. By the way, I wasn't trying to claim I'd cleaned the page properly. I just was getting rid of that nauseating garble that was shoehorned into the middle of it. That's a much better write-up than what I left.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
No worries, foxy; I figured that was more first-aid than it was intensive surgery.
I swapped out the paragraphs with my proposal, then did a few more smaller changes (I realized I could condense two of my paragraphs into one, and corrected spelling mistakes) that I noticed after waking up this morning.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Troper ~Tight Wire made additional changes to the description. Do we approve of those changes?
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Zzzzzzzzzz
I've reverted it. None of those changes helped.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Closing this as done.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I'm trying to make my way through The Bechdel Test. Now, I understand the test, but at least one giant paragraph needs some serious work.
This Wall of Text has, on my browser, a full 28 lines. It's filled with explanations of nuances and such that should go into 2-3 paragraphs, not one, and may not even need to be all in the same place. Some of the sentences are difficult to parse because of the sub-clauses fighting each other. Example:
If it is, well, not and it's about romantic/ sexual relationships between women - Romantic comedy or any other genre - movies do not only pass the Brechdal Test because of the main plot itself but also demonstrate how easy it actually is to pass, often not only regarding the romantic relationship.
The same paragraph also references "The Brechdal Test," thrice, and I don't know enough to know if this is a simple repeated typo or if there's a secondary version of the test.
I would've considered rewording the mess myself, but partway through I realized I couldn't make enough sense of what was there to accurately rephrase it. Hope someone else can.
Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all.