The Bechdel Test

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/wiki/The Bechdel Testwork

The Bechdel Test, Bechdel-Wallace Test, or the Mo Movie Measure, is a sort of litmus test for female presence in movies and TV. The test is named for Alison Bechdel, creator of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, who made it known to the world with this strip.

In order to pass, the film or show must meet the following criteria:

1. It includes at least two women,
2. who have at least one conversation,
3. about something other than a man or men.

If that sounds to you like a pretty easy standard to meet, it's not, because the gender that makes up half the population has a tendency to have a member that's relevant to the plot of a work somehow, and thus most conversations in a plot-based work will involve them as a subject or participant.

Now, by limiting yourself to Bechdel-positive shows/movies, 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 (such as ones set in a men's prison or on a WWII military submarine or back when only men were on juries), or with no conversations at all, or having only one or two characters. You may even be cutting out a lot of works that have feminist themes. Thus the test's stupidity, and why any rational person does not give it any validity whatsoever. A highly feminist work would likely not pass, because it would involve women discussing the problems that they've had with men; meanwhile a work that portrayed women as vapid and shallow, discussing that math is hard and how great shopping was, would pass. Some proponents of applying the test thus attempt to argue the "spirit" of the test, ignoring the fact that the test itself is a technicality, and thus has no spirit, as noted below.

The requirements are just what they say they are -- it doesn't make any difference if, for instance, the male characters the women talk about are their fathers, sons, brothers, platonic friends or mortal enemies rather than romantic partners. Conversely, if a work seems to pass, it doesn't matter if male characters are present when the female characters talk, nor does it matter if the women only talk about stereotypically girly topics like shoe shopping -- or even relationships, as long as it's not relationships with men. Neither was the test ever meant to be taken seriously as a benchmark for determining a work's degree of feminism, let along considered more than a joke.

This is because the Bechdel Test is not meant to give a scorecard of a work's overall level of feminism. The test was designed as a joke. It is entirely possible for a Bechdel-positive film not to have overt feminist themes -- in fact, the original example of a movie that passes is Alien, which, while it has feminist subtexts, is mostly just a sci-fi/action/horror flick. A clearly Bechdel-positive movie can still be incredibly misogynistic. Conversely, a Bechdel-negative story can still be strongly feminist in other ways, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. There is still an attempt to keep the test relevant by pointing out the number of works that do not pass it, but again generally all that means is that there is a plot relevant male in the work (leaving one to wonder if the demand isn't simply for more works set entirely in a Lady Land where men are simply not acknowledged as ever having existed)

We don't list every movie's Bechdel Test result because that would be huge. If you're interested, see Bechdel Test Movie List, but mostly you shouldn't bother.

Works that reference The Bechdel Test (named or not):

Film

• The 2016 Gender Flipped Continuity Reboot of Ghostbusters passes bigtime, with a team of four Badass women who talk science, the supernatural and money, and have to deal with a male Dumb Blonde receptionist. Possibly the most extreme example of proving that a movie passing the Bechdel Test does not mean it is worth watching.

Literature

• The Doctor Who fandom book Chicks Dig Time Lords includes an essay about companion Nyssa of Traken. The author points out that many of Nyssa's episodes pass the Bechdel test, and includes a brief explanation of what the test is.

Web Comics

• Questionable Content references the reverse Bechdel test in the title of this strip.
• Discussed starting in this Dumbing of Age strip. Also played with -- as pointed out in the last panel, most lesbian porn will automatically pass the Bechdel Test. It further elaborates on the flaws of the test not necessarily indicating feminism, and later one male character implies that his own life would not pass the reverse Bechdel Test.
• Skin Horse namechecks it here, when even the lesbian cast member decides it's fine to discuss local Memetic Sex God Tip.
• Leftover Soup: "Bechdel Test passed, bitches."
• In Magick Chicks, when Cerise and Callista go to a date, Callista complains that the movie they've seen didn't pass the test.
• Unwinder's Tall Comics references the test on page 100 with the Rastov Test (which, instead of dealing with feminism, is a dig at overly-elaborate Space Operas and Techno Babble).

Unwinder: You may know a bit about [Warren Rastov] actually. Ever heard of the Rastov test? Barbecue Sauce: Is that like where a book or movie is only good if it has less than four warring factions, and they have to say at least one sentence that isn't full of made-up space jargon? Unwinder: That's the one. It was actually a pretty direct response to his father's work. They had some issues.

Web Original

• A Feminist Frequency video shows a large number of popular Bechdel-negative movies. In a running joke, the commentator yawns, wanders away, comes back with an apple, and eats it, while the movie posters are still blinking steadily along in the background.
• Feminist Frequency discusses the test again here. She proposes that the test be modified so that the scene in question must last at least sixty seconds to pass. She also describes a variant of the test for people of color.
• Name Dropped in AH Dot Com The Creepy Teen Years episode 2x19. It's noted as being the first time the series actually passed the test. The two women are discussing vacation plans.
• Linkara brings up the importance of the third point during his review of Sultry Teenage Super Foxes. Yes, the cast is almost uniformly female but they never talk about anything but men. Unless you count the villains, that is.
• Talked about in Extra Credits in the episode "Diversity".
• In The Nostalgia Chick's review of X-Men: First Class, she pointed out that it was one of the only superhero movies to pass the test. She then told her audience to go look up what the Bechdel Test was.
• Stuff You Like references this when reviewing Underworld here. The scene is Selene and Erika (briefly) discussing dresses (before going on to talk about... umm... men).

Subtitles: Did they just pass the Bechdel Test?

• Dumbing of Age named a strip after the trope and uses it to do a lot of Conversational Troping about it.
• Cracked.com's Luke McKinney points out in The 4 Best Moments in the Worst Movies Ever Made that the movie based on the video game Dead or Alive "physically beats the shit out of the Bechdel test" "within the first 10 minutes".

Other

• While she didn't call it by name, Lauren Faust referenced this trope, claiming that a focus on romantic plots and subplots is what ruins a lot of girl's shows.
• This blog runs the Bechdel Test on several Disney and Disney/Pixar animated movies. Roughly half pass, though older Pixar films didn't do so hot. Many Disney films have two female characters interacting not about a man, but fails to be a conversation due to one of the parties being an animal.