15 Great Feminist Movies That Failed the Bechdel Test
The recent Twitter hype has cast doubt on the whole point of the Bechdel test, a set of criteria to help assess the representation of women in popular entertainment first put forward by Dykes to beware cartoonist Alison Bechdel in 1985 and partly inspired his essay. from Virginia Woolf. As a reminder, the criteria are (although there are variations): 1) there must be at least two women in the film, 2) who are talking to each other, 3) about something other than a man. after the release of Hulu’s queer male film Island of Fire , New York Magazine writer Hannah Rozin spoke out, citing the Bechdel test in her Twitter critique, noting that the film receives an “F-” on the Bechdel test in a whole new way. To be fair, she has since deleted the tweet and apologized for possibly targeting a rare movie highlighting the AAPI queer experience.
However, Alison Bechdel herself does not value the test as much as those who either use it for over-criticism or criticize it as being too reductive. She responded to this noise with a special exception:
Of course, there are films that have passed the Bechdel test, but are not recognized as masterpieces of feminism. Think of the sex comedies of the 1980s; Weird Science passes, but the story of two nerds who use science to create a hot girl is probably not exactly what Bechdel had in mind. In the same way, as we shall see, there are films that don’t get through but still have feminist credibility. I am using the broadest possible definition of feminism here, including films with characters and themes that directly challenge misogyny, as well as those that feature well-crafted, stereotype-defying characters who identify with women, with free will.