You should consider how many strawman arguments you’re making. The Bechdel Test isn’t constitutional law with mandated compliance, it’s a canary test for the industry as a whole.
People aren’t demanding every movie pass.
People aren’t saying Bechdel Test means anything about the quality or aims of any individual movie (Those could be separate and valid critiques about particular movies, of course, but that has f-all to do with the Bechdel Test specifically)
It is simply, “Look at how many movies literally box women’s dialogue into narrow concerns, and look at how men’s dialogue, industry-wide, covers so many other topics.”
By all means keep talking, but don’t imply a world government feminazi conspiracy, when it’s just a rough test to see how women get different cinematic treatment than men, on average, across all movies. And the test still “works” because it still indicates the contrast.
I wish that the illustrator had provided some more Bechdelgrams. I haven’t seen Crouching Tiger.
Quite frankly I’m missing the structure-- and revealing structure of the underlying data is what any sort of visualization is ultimately judged on. So no, it’s not particularly Beautiful.
Can you put that gif behind a spoiler or something? I don’t have epilepsy, but several family members do, and so I can instinctively tell if it’s the sort of flashing that would be a possible trigger for them. And just in general, it’s a bit hard to have on the screen. Thanks!
Set in the future? Other than the drive system on the Red October everything in there was set in the present. This was one book out of a long series, the books have basically tracked the changes that have happened in reality.
I feel like the Bechdel test is just plain too clever for people. Here’s what you are meant to understand when you hear the test: If you proposed a test that was identical in every way except replace “woman” with “man” and vice versa, it would be passed by far more films
Even if it makes sense that Hunt for the Red October does not pass the test, does it “make sense” that our society had not created an equal number of equally famous movies of equal quality about predominantly female characters?
It’s supposed to make you think about how underrepresented female characters are in film, not actually start applying it to movies to see if you should see them. If you don’t realize that and start pointing to movies to say how the test does not measure how feminist or sexist a movie is, then you will end up feeling like a person who is being mocked for being 100% right because you don’t understand the conversation that everyone else is having.
Are you challenging me to find a counter-example?
Despite what I said above about not applying to specific movies and therefore it being silly to quibble about it’s application to any given movie, I’m going to get myself pointlessly emotionally invested in thinking about how we shouldn’t really count The Birdcage.
Interesting thought experiment. Take one of the bechdel graphs from the OP, and flip the minimum number of nodes and edges so that the new graph passes the test. Then, count the number of childhoods ruined.
There ought to be. Women need their egos stroked too.
Did you not notice which of your posts I was responding to?
You responded to:
with:
That was your entire response. If you meant to change the conversation to talk about a different movie than the one you were quoting @anon59592690 referencing, you should have made it clear.
The strobe pattern still shows up when blurred by the spoiler tag. Since I know you want to avoid the risk, may I recommend using the Hide Details tool just above the Spoiler tool in the Options drop-down menu?
Also, thanks for the movie recommendation. Added to my To Watch list.
Possibly the most succinct illustration that the utility of the Bechdel Test is not to judge individual films, but to demonstrate one of the the most prevalent (though by no means sole) systemic bias of the portrayal of female roles the entertainment industry.
