The Bechdel Test (and the 2012 oscar nominees)

[Sasha]

PH8JuizIXw8

This Is Insightful, You Should Watch It of the Day: The Bechdel Test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test#Bechdel_test) is a straightforward evaluation of the gender bias present in a given movie.
To pass, a film must meet three requirements: 1) Have at least two female characters 2) who talk to each other 3) about something other than a man. (A variant of the rule called the “Mo Movie Measure” adds the requirement that the female characters must have names.)
Feminist Frequency (http://www.feministfrequency.com/)‘s Anita Sarkeesian applies the test to the 2012 Best Picture nominees to see if the pass.
Spoiler Alert: Most don’t.
[ontd (http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/66621994.html).]

[manic expression]

Good points, but IMO that kind of test shouldn't be applied when it has to do with certain subjects...much of history is dominated by males and women's voices are scant at best, so of course when we sit down to put those stories into film it's going to have a bias to men. Good filmmakers humanize female perspectives in spite of this (HBO's Rome series, while not being a movie which is probably relevant, is an excellent example of how to go about this), but even still it's a fact of history that noteworthy women have more often than not existed in a male-dominated world and thus talked about men (and so for instance The Alexiad by Anna Comnena, one of the few examples of a woman writing about the political history of her country, talks mostly about...men). That's a problem in and of itself, but it doesn't help to yell at filmmakers about it.

In the examples given, this really applies. With Moneyball, women just aren't very involved in sports on the biggest stages, so naturally a movie about sports isn't going to focus on female characters. War Horse is about WWI right? Pretty self-explanatory there.

So yeah, I think there needs to be more female leads, but at the same time they shouldn't be tokenistic. If a story is about something then it should tell the story and not try to shoe-horn women into it...that would be pretty patronizing IMO (in addition to needlessly distracting us from the plot of the movie). Oh, and either apply the test or don't...disregarding one's own test because the exchange was too brief or involved other people is cheap and stupid.

By the way, the Oscars aren't the best of the best (ask any good actor and they'll likely tell you that comedy is harder to do well than drama is), and the Best Picture nominations are not representative of the movie industry as a whole. Feminist Frequency shouldn't perpetuate myths in order to fit its own narrative.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Well she herself said that it wasn't a universal thing that determined if a movie is good or not, obviously movies like The Shawshank Redemption aren't going to have women in them, that's not a problem. It's more an indicator of a general trend in the industry I guess.