The Bechdel Test: Women in Movies
I received this email from GITS reader Martha Early:
Hi Scott,
I’m a female screenwriter and I love your blog. I thought you might be interested in the following video about the Bechdel test, a well-known questionnaire of sorts that helps to gauge the presence of women in any given film. I think it is a very interesting issue to keep in mind for screenwriters, especially. Personally, I’m trying to consciously make sure all my work passes the Bechdel test. The video explains it all.
Here’s the video:
The Bechdel test is comprised of three simple questions:
1. The movie has to have at least two women in it.
2. The women have to talk to each other.
3. The women have to talk to each other about something besides a man.
I posted on it here before:
The simple fact is: Hollywood movie studios discriminate against women. I don’t mean jobs as development execs or above-the-line gigs such as directors (although there’s certainly evidence to suggest that is true as well). I’m talking about female protagonists in movies. The ‘conventional wisdom’ is that girls will watch movies with male or female leads, but boys won’t watch movies with female leads. Presumably this is an attitude Hwood believes continues as the boys become men and the girls become women, otherwise that would mean that the studios have ceded this point only to boys: If they don’t resonate with female leads, then we can’t have female leads.
So some questions:
Why do you think this state of affairs exists in Hollywood movies? Is it institutional, a reflection of society, or both? Do you think about these issues when writing an original screenplay?
For more info go to: