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Feminist Frequency Puts the Oscars to the Bechdel Test [Video]

by Jamie Frevele | 5:59 pm, February 19th, 2012

So, we’ve got one more week until the Oscar telecast, and that gives us yet another week of people trying to handicap the possible winners. But goodness or badness of the movies aside, how do they stack up when it comes to how women are portrayed? Feminist Frequency asked this question and have put the Best Picture nominees to the Bechdel Test: Two women, with names, talking to each other, but not about men. You’ll find that this year’s nominees … will disappoint you. At least when it comes to this. They’re obviously not “bad movies,” but Hollywood clearly has some work to do when it comes to telling quality stories about women.

(via Pajiba)

TAGS: 2012 Oscars | Bechdel Test | Feminist Frequency | Oscars

http://twitter.com/JinxyBlastwave Jinxy Blastwave

I love the Feminist Frequency videos, and since first finding out about the Bechdel Test I’ve found myself applying it to any fiction I look at, and it’s amazing how many works I’ve really enjoyed cannot pass the test. I try to write things that aren’t true every now and then, and since hearing about the test I apply it in my own stuff, and I find it amazingly helpful. You might’ve thought you had a good character, and then you think critically about it and realize you weren’t as clever as you thought you were. Some characters seem so clear in your head that you can forget you’ve not put it all down on the page.

The films she recommends in the video that don’t pass the test are all totally worth seeing, with Moon being a movie I loved that some of you might have missed. Also, Winter’s Bone was phenomenal. Passes the test, it’s shot well, great acting, and it gave us a woman who could be a believable Katniss! Thanks Winter’s Bone!
Philippa Willitts

This is a great video, and covers such an important issue. How on earth is it that we *still* have so few movies passing the Bechdel test?!

However, your use of the word ‘handicap’ in the description below the test is really disappointing and quite offensive.
http://twitter.com/JinxyBlastwave Jinxy Blastwave

I know the word “handicap” has some ugly history to it, but I’m sure Jamie didn’t mean anything by it. As she’s used it, she was most likely using it in the Vegas sense, where they call odds-makers Handicappers. I know that doesn’t change the background of it, but that’s one of those words that’s offensive to folks that not everyone is up on.
Carmen Sandiego

I thought handicap was a gambling/golfing term when used in this context? Should it be replaced with something else? I had not considered that it might be offensive. I thought it was more like a homonym.
Anonymous

I find it strange that woman need to talk to each other for their interaction to be meaningful. Why cant a man and a woman have meaningful conversation, wouldnt that not better show that the genders are equal…

This is a strange and flawed test, and I think negates the purpose of most movies, to tell stories.

Like when she mentioned that in “The Help”, most of the time, the black woman talk about white people. Well of course they do! The movie is about black woman being oppressed in white homes and not having the freedom and equality they deserve. Just inserting dialog about other things would slow the story down.
E S

I believe that the rule of having two women talk to each other about something other than a man (and their conversation doesn’t actually have to be meaningful) is used to illustrate the lack of representation of women’s relationships with each other in media rather than to diminish the value of women and men’s relationships.