Does Your Book Pass the Bechdel Test? Does It Need To?
The Bechdel test was developed in 1985 in –perhaps unusually – the comic strip of Alison Bechdel, an American cartoonist and 2014 recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant”. In it, two women discuss going to movies and one of them outlines her requirements for seeing any of the films being shown. They have to meet three criteria:
*The movie has at least two female characters.
*The two female characters talk to each other.
*The conversation is about anything other than a man.
Bechdel credits the idea to her friend Liz Wallace, who was in turn apparently inspired by some of Virginia Woolf’s writing. Twenty-five years later, the Bechdel test gained mainstream recognition (maybe a sign of the times).
Approximately half of all films meet the requirements of the Bechdel test, including Alien and Aliens, All About Eve, Die Hard, Gone with the Wind, The Matrix, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Silence of the Lambs, Singin’ in the Rain, Some Like It Hot, The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and The Wizard of Oz. So we can keep watching many of our favourites without feeling like we’re contributing to gender inequality.
However, if about half of all films meet the Bechdel test, this also means that about half of them don’t. Some of the films that we might think would – considering their kick-ass female characters – but don’t include The Avengers, The Blind Side, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Run Lola Run and the original Star Wars trilogy (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi).
And some films that we might think shouldn’t pass what is essentially a feminist test (a very basic one) but do include Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, 50 Shades of Grey, Goodfellas, How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, Transformers and Weird Science.
The Bechdel test is something I’ve only become familiar with in the past few years and the vast majority of my fiction writing was done before that so I’ve had to go back and do some self-assessments to decide if my writing passes it. I’m pleased to say that I think almost everything I’ve written passes with flying colours.
It’s a very low bar so it’s not that hard. But having said that, there are some very valid reasons for why some writing might not pass the Bechdel test. Alien 3, in which Ripley’s shuttle crash lands on a penal colony, doesn’t pass the test because she’s the only woman in what is essentially a men’s prison, the only thing left on a planet that was abandoned by all other inhabitants. In Gravity, Sandra Bullock’s character, Dr Ryan Stone, is the only woman on a space mission. In a variety of movies based on the battlefields of historical wars, are we really going to be surprised that two women don’t pop up and have a conversation? And in the romance genre, which we read specifically to see relationships develop, are we going to criticise two women discussing a man? Usually, these conversations are a means of advancing the plot.
Still, there are lots of measures we use to assess our writing (plot, pacing, character development, etc) and there’s no reason why this can’t be one of them. Not the only one but part of a holistic process. Sometimes it will prove useful. Sometimes it won’t. But think about it like this. Readers can pick up on the teeniest, tiniest details they don’t like and base entire bad reviews around them. If you can remove the possibility of not passing the Bechdel test, then why wouldn’t you?
