The Bechdel Test — Do Your Favorites Pass?

Yesterday's post by Hilary Davidson on HBO's crime drama True Detective reminded me of the Bechdel Test.

What's the Bechdel Test? 

Simple — does a story have two women, who are named, who talk to each other, about something other than a man? 

Think about it. 

Alison Bechdel came up with the test in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For in 1985. In it, one woman explains her "rule" about watching movies to another:

The Bechdel Test may have given a name to a phenomenon, but it's hardly the first time women's marginal status in fiction has been noted. In A Room Of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf’s essay about the challenges women writers face, she notes that women characters  are “almost without exception [...] shown in their relation to men. [...] And how small a part of a woman’s life is that.” 

Most of the discussion of the Bechdel Test focuses on films and television shows. But we're readers here. How about novels?Off the top of my head, I can think of many big-name thriller/mystery authors whose books fail the Bechdel Test: Dan Brown, Stephen King, Scott Turow. (And yes, many of them have been made into movies.) But there are so many more. Any Ian Fleming novel. Any novel where a "beautiful woman" (nameless) apprears on the back cover description.

Why do so many works of art/entertainment fail the Bechdel Test?

Well, often, it's because there is only one woman. ONE. (My take on Star Wars: "Seriously? Is there only one woman in the entire UNIVERSE?")

 

And then, when there are more than one female character, the work fails because the female characters never talk to each other.       (I'm taking my son to see the Broadway musical Les Misérables this summer. Think about it — the men sing about human dignity and basic rights and war and revenge and forgiveness and fallen comerades. Oh, and the plot. And the women sing about — the men.)

Once you start looking at the world through the lens of the Bechdel Test, it's hard to stop. The kiddo loves a certain snowboarding video game. There is one woman. One. Even in the snow, she's scantily dressed. And her only line is about liking attention from boys. You'd better believe he and I had a long talk about that!)

The Bechdel Test helps us measure how marginal women characters still are. Applying this test to works of art isn't an end in itself  — but it is a way to see the entertainment we consume in a new way and start asking questions. Important ones. 

Because, although some disagree, I do think it's important. Stories are important. Fiction reflects our world and how we see it and how we're seen. Reading stories affects how we tell our own stories, about ourselves. I don't know about you, but I'm not happy with a walk-on part as "the girlfriend," "the wife," and "the mother."  If women don’t have a place of importance in our imaginations, then how can we have have a place of importance in the world?

And so, Reds and lovely readers, I ask you — when choosing books (or movies or television shows or plays), do you care if they pass the Bechdel test?