Female Characters Still Need to Be Better - Why The Bechdel Test Didn't Really Help
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- čas přidán 3. 07. 2024
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Five years ago, cultural conversation around The Bechdel Test reached a peak, as numerous voices called for a reckoning in the overwhelmingly inadequate way women were portrayed onscreen. But it became the focus of so much debate because, even in the 2010s, a shocking number of films were failing it. So what about now? Did the Me-Too era resurgence of interest and attention around the Bechdel Test and female representation make a difference in what we’ve seen since?
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We are The Take (formerly ScreenPrism).
00:00 Is the Bechdel Test even a good measure?
01:51 How does the Bechdel Test really work?
05:00 MUBI
06:07 How the test has and hasn't helped
10:57 Characterization and BTS is what truly counts
14:27 Where do we go from here? - Zábava
Get a full month of MUBI FOR FREE: mubi.com/thetake
From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent [change your inner self-your old way of thinking, regret past sins, live your life in a way that proves repentance; seek God’s purpose for your life], for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Jesus taught, “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men … but when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your father who is unseen.”(Matthew 6:5-8)
Jesus Teaches About Fasting
16 “When you fast, don’t make yourselves look sad like the hypocrites. They put a look of suffering on their faces so that people will see they are fasting. The truth is, that’s all the reward they will get. 17 So when you fast, wash your face and make yourself look nice. 18 Then no one will know you are fasting, except your Father, who is with you even in private. He can see what is done in private, and he will reward you. Matthew 6:16-18
Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Acts 2:38
💕
@@leahjackiepeah4130 you go woke you will be broke end of story that why femal lead movie fail box office
The Bechdel Test was never a device for reviewing individual movies, but to demonstrate how underrepresented women are in narrative media.
Yeah, i really wish more people understood this
It’s also worth pointing out that the term “The Bechdel Test” was not coined by Bechdel herself and doesn’t necessarily reflect Bechdel’s intention when she made the comic it first appeared in. It was never intended to be a critical framework
@@bodiesXunderXmyXbed Isn't that basically what I said?
@@ihateunicorns867 sort of? but i still think it was valuable as a reply bc it was providing further context you didnt actually touch on and adds to your point.
Speaking of providing context, i have some to provide myself. The original comic was part of Alison Bechdel's strip "Dykes to Watch Out For" which was heavily based on her life and friend groups as a lesbian, and the context for the specific comic from which the "Bechdel Test" was derived (titled "The Rule") was about the underrepresentation of lesbians and other queer women specifically; the idea behind it was that if the two women had a conversation about something that wasn't their interest in a man, we could at the very least *imagine* they may be lesbians, but most movies don't even provide us that luxury. Also of note: it wasn't even Bechdel herself who came up with the test, but her friend Liz Wallace (who she's always given credit to) who was heavily inspired by the writings of Virginia Woolf. So really, while it may have something to say about the state of cinema, to remove all context and present it simply as a test of female representation alone is... a bit reductive and disingenuous, lmao.
It wasn't meant as a genuine test at all! It was a half-joke one of Bechdel's friends, Wallace, came up with because queer women had scraps.
That tidbit about how early film was a female medium reminds me how computer science was originally female dominated. There is a real pattern of up and coming technology fields being female dominated in their early stages due to lack of respect and tedium and once they become more accessible, they tend to force them out of those fields.
Most early women majority jobs were low status and provided little opportunity to make decisions. Men who took over those jobs emphasized their individualism and creativity. They basically claimed that were everything that women weren't allowed to be.
This is so true. My mom was a computer programmer in the early 90s and worked for Apple and Dell in the very beginning of their run. Then she had kids and was never able to move up the ladder afterward.
Male privilege and ego!
With a family to support wouldn’t it be even more important for her to get promoted?
Funny enough so was the medical field. Kinda. Alot of medicine women and midwives got any expertise they had totally ignored by more "civilized" doctors.
I think it is so important that the conversation move from quantity(as important as that is) towards quality. It isn’t enough to have more representation, but to have that representation actually show good stories and characterization. It’s why I find shows like “The Crown” and it’s portrayal of the Queen and other woman in the show better female representation then stereotypical “strong female character” like Laura Croft. Having a woman fighting and kicking butt means nothing if the character is a cardboard cutout.
Lara Croft has never been a cardboard cut out.
Lara*
Sexy Animatronic Lamp
a cardboard cut out? LARA? far from. the new idea of "Strong female character" is boring mainly because its focal point is that 'she's a woman, she has no flaws, and is bad ass.' IE Rey from starwars. Lara Croft is a character that sure is strong, is conventionally pretty. but she has flaws and works to overcome them. its even explored in the newer Tomb raider trilogy. examples of this trope is captain marvel and the new controversial she hulk. characters that focus that they are women are inherently strong and have no flaw
*Rey
one of the things i've noticed is sometimes films do pass the bechdel test, but the main women are pitted against eachother
Movies where there is one man but many women can still be awful...if all these women still only talk to the one man, and never to one another. It's all so very subjective.
Women pitted against each other isn't necessarily bad. Imagine a Silence of the Lambs where Special Agent Clarice Starling interviews Dr. Hanna Lechter so she can take down serial killer Buffalo Billie? (The names don't all crossover well.) Anyway, that would be two women pitted against each other which could tell a very riveting tale- if done correctly. Emphasis on "done correctly".)
@@originalcosmicgirl ...I'm trying to imagine the phrase "done correctly" in the same sentence as the word "Hollywood", and it doesn't seem to be working out too well
In real life too many times women and girls even at early ages they pit us against each other
Technically, action movies, epic films, fantasy movies, and the other very popular genres always feature men fighting othrr men but nobody cried about misandry. A conflict always makes things more interesting, rising the story's stakes higher.
If you have two female characters who both have real names (not just mrs. male name or wife of male character) who say hi to each other in a movie, then technically you pass the Bechdel Test since there's no time limit stated.
I remember that’s how Magic Mike XXL passed it, Jada Pinkett and Elizabeth Banks basically did that and that’s how it passed
Remember Rick & morty's Bechdel test "feminist máster piece" skit from the train episode?
Kindergarten Cop is another. Most of the cast is female and all interesting and strong women. Yet none of them speak to each other. The only examples I can think of are Phoebe and Joyce first being introduced, Phoebe telling Joyce, "We're not who you think we are," and Phoebe telling Joyce not to worry. Joyce doesn't even reply in those last two examples. It's weird -- as if filmmakers and writers are afraid of two women having a conversation. (I guess there's also the trio of mothers who talk about Mr. Kimball.)
and they still failed :)
No you're supposed to make them have a conversation about something other than a man. Conversations are not just a word.
The part about how male actors still get more lines than wmen reminds me of a study in which the researchers recorded a class lecture, keeping track of how long men vs women spoke and who spoke more words. In both cases, men spoke more words and for longer. Another study focused on classroom discussions, measuring how long each person spoke, and later asking men and women questions about their perceptions of how long the opposite sex spoke. Men felt that women got equal speaking time when women spoke about 30% of the time, and felt that they were dominating the conversation (speaking about 90% of the time) when women finally did manage to get equal speaking time (50%). Women, on the other hand, tended to be more accurate in estimating how long men spoke.
Nobody complains about the lack of good male representation in content such as Sex and The City, Mean Girls, Clueless, Gossip Girl, Twilight, or even Desperate Housewives; interestingly so, content marketed is to women.
But sounds like male-oriented content should cater to women more than it normally caters to men. Is it not a double standard?
It’s such a beautiful irony that some of the films we consider cult classics (Exhibit A: Legally Blonde) were shot on shoestring budgets. Even now, we see ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ be successful but shot on a relatively less generous budget. If the investment is rerouted, they can make profits and good Cinema.
Passing the Bechdel test was never supposed to be enough...
Yeah its just that how many movies fail such a low bar shows how bad the current state of women in films is.
@@meredithwhite5790 there is no high or low bar here. It’s just a really specific list that in the grand scheme of things doesn’t accomplish anything more valuable than ones that don’t pass it.
Who cares...🙄
Реально
And I haven't ever heard anyone say that it is, this video is arguing against a viewpoint that doesn't exist. Films can also fail for a good reason, like Shawshank Redemption or Saving Private Ryan, there's logical reasons they don't have many women in them, they shouldn't shoehorn in a random female conversation just to pass.
The point in this video that resonated with me most strongly was that films about men tend to center on work, films about women foreground their protagonists' personal lives. In the drama genre, male characters nearly always get to do the things I've longed to see women doing: fighting for justice, righting wrongs, seeking to express themselves creatively. I keep hearing so much talk about the need for a "female James Bond" or a "female Indiana Jones"; meanwhile, I keep asking, "Where's my female Atticus Finch?" or "Can we please see a movie about Irena Sendler, a woman who saved multitudes of Jews from the Holocaust, that's as amazing as Schindler's List was?"
The more personal focused stories are often excellent and well worth seeing. (It shouldn't be forgotten that one of the best, and best-reviewed, movies of 2019 was Lulu Wang's "The Farewell.") But it wouldn't do any harm to see more high-quality movies that center on female characters engaged in work and in conflicts on a little bit larger scale.
Atticus Finch's young daughter Scout was just a strong character as he was. She was his moral conscience, stood up for him among the other children and a tomboy.
Yes along with Irena Sendler I would like to see a movie about women named ilse Koch the sadistic witch of Buchenwald who was known for her insane cruelty and brutality in concentration camps.Lot of times nazis get portrayed as men and crimes committed by female nazis are swept under the table.This has to be changed
@@anonkasper7937 I think the movie "Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS" is based on her.
There is the movie Zoologist wife I suppose
After many years, I've realised that "Oh my God, Becky, look at her butt" passes the Bechdel Test! 😹😉
and also "stop trying to make fetch happen"
And now all she talks about is pot lol
HA! Another win for misogyny. Classic Tate W! I totally mean that unironically and I’m not typing this because Andrew Tate LITERALLY caught me respecting women in public and is holding a loaded gun to my head and will literally cap me if I don’t do as he says.
Uhhh….uhhhh A-Andrew Tate is better than me at arts and crafts and gets more bitches than me and his hair is better than my full head of hair.
He is top G.
(Please help me.)
This discovery was very enlightening.
"my anaconda don't want none unless you got buns, hun!"
- Sir Mix-a-lot, pioneering rap feminist
By definition it is a bare minimum, which is part of the joke.
The thought that Bechdel, a talented comic artist who left a mark on comic books history, is mostly remembered for that test is kinda discouraging.
Not surprising, though, as she was targeting a niche market in the Reagan Era.
Fun Home and Are You My Mother? are excellent!
@@indigoziona i checked Fun Home out from the library thinking it would be a light, not super challenging read bc it was a graphic novel and boy it humbled me very quickly. That's one of the heaviest and most complex things I've read in my life, and it was AMAZING
She's a niche author. Don't expect her to transform the entire industry because being niche automatically limits your reach as an artist.
I remember Zoya Akhtar, an Indian director, mentioned that the Bechdel Test doesn’t add up sometimes and that’s true in her case because she’s had great male protagonists told through the female gaze and equally captivating female characters.
Yea well that's cause she chose to make movies about men through the female gaze hence she failed at the bechdel test.
I'm a huge fan of Zoya.
@@joannejones363 you essentially just restated what the above commenter said, so I'm a bit confused on what you were trying to say
Why does she not focus on creating stories centered on female protagonists?
So, a black writer friend of mine (who doesn't write about black issues) said on his channel and he liked that Tenet featured a black protagonist but the story was not about his blackness or his black experience etc, it was just a story with an amazing protagonist who happened to be black. His subs who commented about this were split, with many agreeing with him but many calling him nasty names. Watching THIS video made me wonder about the analogous issue in female representation on screen. If we take away the female characters who think/talk about nothing but men, and we replace them with female characters who think/talk about thing but women's issues, that's not progress toward depicting women as people.
I totally support that. I mean see how James Olsen character was wasted in Supergirl.
Yep, the difference is between female characters who talk about Men, who are just there as the Love Interest of the Man, who is the real character and women who talk about men as their plot and characterization require. Which is of course only sometimes, the same way that their plot and characterization will require speaking about women and social issues sometimes.
I don't know how I feel about this. "Women's issues" are a huge part of the lived experience of women, and I don't know that it is possible to separate women on screen from the ways in which society oppresses us and still end up with a character that feels fully rounded and authentic. For instance, I felt that one of the most exciting moments in recent cinema was Greta Gerwig's Little Women. In that adaptation, she made the subtext text and intentionally gave voice to the way in which Amy had to navigate marriage as an economic proposition. Her skill - painting - had to be exceptional if she was going to be able to support herself and her family. Amy's skill, however, wasn't genius; it was simply better than average which, for a woman, was nowhere near enough. In order to have food and clothes and opportunities for herself and her family, then, Amy had to pursue the path that was open to her: marriage. Later, Gerwig lampshaded this idea by alluding to the fact that the author was pressured to marry off the single protagonist for financial gain. The central role of this one decision, marriage, in most or all aspects of a woman's life is almost never spoken aloud.
For many women, the choice of one's partner remains the biggest financial consideration of one's life - with ripple effects for our entire lives and our entire families. And yet, like Amy, we face judgment and condemnation if we are perceived as making any deliberate or well-considered effort toward securing our futures in the way that society leaves most available to us (for a limited amount of time). We are treated by society as commodities, status symbols, housekeepers, childbearers, etc. for men, with our ability to fulfil that role (or not) having far-reaching consequences in every corner of our lives and coming with a ticking clock. We have to navigate those expectations on a daily basis. It is exhausting. I, for one, really appreciated hearing the character of Amy say the quiet part out loud. To me, the fact that the women in Little Women had to grapple with the problem of shaping their characters and forging a path for themselves in a society that constricts and constrains women's choices was the appeal - and the fact that they actually talked about it was a major plus for me. We're conditioned not to talk about it. We're supposed to pretend that we don't weigh or even see these choices. After all, commodities aren't supposed to manipulate their own place on the market. Hearing a woman weigh these choices out loud, being honest about her place in society when speaking to a man who was simultaneously judging her for being mercenary and expressing no small degree of entitlement to her, felt revolutionary.
I think it is possible that we may still be at the stage at which giving women space in which to talk about women's issues does constitute progress. Maybe someday we can transcend into the next stage in which women on screen can be fully realized characters without directly addressing anything that might be deemed a women's issue. That sounds like it would be... a relief, maybe, and very empowering. Maybe featuring women who talk about women's issues isn't the end goal, but it does seem like an important marker of progress along the way.
Sorry for the rambling reply!
@@sircharlesmormont9300 Well, being neither black nor female, I can only relate through struggling through a long recovery from severe physical and psychological family abuse. One of the most important insights I got is that you’ll stunt your own growth and joy if you build your whole identity around being an Abuse Victim and your whole life around Recovery. At some point, you’ve got to start imagining the You you’d be if you’d come from a healthier environment, and then start being THAT person in every way that’s still possible. So when I hear James say he likes stories that show black people focused on something other than black struggles, that's where I hear him from.
@@sircharlesmormont9300 Notice though that modern white women have to turn to fiction, past centuries, or distant countries to point out examples of “their” struggle and hardship. Refugee women get gang-raped in Sudan, and white women scream, “See how hard WE have it?” Or they run around in expensive Handmaid’s Tale costumes they bought because states they don’t live voted to restrict abortion. Or they claim to totally relate to 19th century women who forced to marry because they weren’t allowed to have jobs. (B---h, you have a job, and you won’t stop complaining about it.) When someone is so desperate to claim victimhood that they'll claim someone else’s as their own, something has gone haywire in their rethinking.
03:30 - not only lines on screen but in real life! There is empirical evidence to suggest that men speak more than women do and yet overestimate how much time the women in a mixed group spend talking as opposed to the men. At work I've observed that in many couples the husband will actually roll his eyes and apologise for his wife asking too many questions/"talking too much" when actually HE'S the one who won't stop talking and is speaking way more than her. I see it in my own parents, my grandparents, my next door neighbours. It's like men just consider themselves to have something more valuable to say and that anything women have to say is superfluous to the type of conversation they want to have. There's a german phrase that translates to “one man, one word - one woman, one dictionary” and a Japanese phrase that says “where there are women and geese, there’s noise.” Let the women speak!
It's actually tragic how throughout history women were silenced, just to be a silent object of a baby-making machine, and reduced to nothing else
I watched a video of a transgender man that said as man now he feels more respected. That people actually ‘listened to him’ now. Who would know better than him? It’s sad but true.
@@kf8449 That speaks to how women want to be portrayed as “badass”. It’s the only way they perceive that they can be respected.
sounds like you're surrounded with awful toxic couples... I agree with the empirical studies though. Hopefully minds and behaviours are changing
I felt like Tootsie was entirely about how unfair and difficult things were for women in the entertainment industry, and it fails the Bechdel test too.
The joke of the strip when it was first released was that it was barely enough THEN!
Now I want to see a romantic comedy where two men fight over a sexy lamp! Doesn’t even have to be an inanimate one. Have it move around, give it dialog, but have everyone treat the lamp like a person. Instant comedy gold!
Write it!
I feel like you're describing an episode of supernatural 😳⛷️
I think you're referring to "This Means War" with Reese Witherspoon
I love lamp
but then cast a real lamp for representation porpusses.... this could be this lamps time.... to shine....
The flip side of this is that many films actually protary strong multi-layered female characters and yet still don't pass the test.
My "Bechdel Test" for a film is does the film have a multilayered female character who follows her own agency in pursuit of some goal other then a romantic relationship.
Ripley in Alien
Sarah Connor in T2
Laurie Strode in Halloween 2018
Emma Stone in Curella
Moneypenny and Paloma in No Time to Die
Molly Bloom in Molly Bloom
Nobody complains about the lack of good male representation in content such as Sex and The City, Mean Girls, Clueless, Gossip Girl, Twilight, or even Desperate Housewives; interestingly so, content marketed is to women.
But sounds like male-oriented content should cater to women more than it normally caters to men. Is it not a double standard?
When they mentioned the percentage of female directors, I'm glad they included a clip from Candyman (2021). While Jordan Peele was a producer, Nia Da Costa was the director. Too many still credit Peele with the movie, not her. Hell, Peele himself has had to correct people. Even when a woman makes great strides like this, she still may nit get the credit she deserves.
DaCosta* and Peele*
@@shannonceleste5557 Lol, they said Peeler three times, I was wondering if it was on purpose (some sort of joke)! 🤣
@@lynnevetter Sorry. Autocorrect. 😞
@@UnboxingAlyss no worries here. I just thought I was missing an inside joke. Lol
“Hidden from history” by Sheila Rowbottom.
What if a woman doesn't want to be strong or empowering, but just a person?
!
I mean yes, of course we should tell those stories too? I'm not sure what you're getting at
That's what that is.
My older brother loves to watch movies, but insists on being the one to chose. On a recent visit, he kept making suggestions that all ended up being action films or bromances. To speed things along I suggested he apply the Bechdel Test. Being a good liberal feminist, he agreed that it seemed a reasonable ask.
Twenty minutes later he frustratedly exclaimed that it “eliminates virtually every movie ever made!”
So yeah, while the Bechdel Test isn’t the be-all and end-all, it certainly helped my brother become more aware of the sexism in his favorite medium.
For that, and for the decades of cartoons and books, I will love and cherish Alison Bechdel forever!
Also The Bechdel 'Test' was inherently commentating on what it's like to be a lesbian in a world where people can't comprehend women not thinking about men.
Alison Bechdel was quoted in an interview as saying that some of her favorite movies don't pass the "Bechdel Test". I'm glad the test started a conversation and an examination about female characters and female representation but some people take it to an extreme. There are a lot of great movies that don't pass this test and they shouldn't be condemned. Ultimately, the "Bechdel Test" is another way to dictate content and I don't think anyone has a right to tell someone what they should or shouldn't write. One can always just choose not to watch something if they don't like it. And while I definitely want women to talk about things other than their love lives on screen, women who date men DO talk about men with their girlfriends - that's just a reality so to ignore that is rather inauthentic. SATC never passed this test and it is one of the most popular series ever so people clearly don't have a problem with women talking about men on screen at times.
First of all, the test ins't about telling ppl what tp write, it's about highlighting a fact about the representation of womne in existing films. Secondly of course SATC passes the test! An example off the top of my head is when Carrie had money troubles and had it out woth Charlotte for not offering to lend her money. And so many others - Miranda's mother's death, Samantha's breast cancer, Charlotte deciding to stop working, Carrie marrying herself, Miranda making partner at her firm...
Didnt Bechdal herself state that the test is a joke?
Yes, but like some jokes, it become animated and took on its own life...like Rule 34.
@@gbonkers666 LOL!
One of my new obsessions Yellowjackets passed the Bechdel Test but we saw the female characters as a full person and they're not forceful or box-checking token thing. They mostly talk about something other than men. They played soccer, they survived in the wilderness, they were both good and bad to eachother. Every character is messy, flawed, complicated, unlikeable and differerent from eachother. Their stories centered on their journeys. That's because of the female domination both on and off-camera.
Thanks for exploring this topic. I"m glad you highlighted some other measures around diversity beyond the Bechdel Test because until another paradigm is popularized, we're going to continue to fall back on this limited measure of women in film.
I guess I came at the right time.
The book I'm currently working on is based on an Anderson fairy tale, but modeled after Labyrinth. The protagonist has love interests but play a minor role in her story.
With the young heroine going on a magical journey to rescue her adopted family, gains (all female) companions along the way, and also gains introspection, growth, self-empowerment and self-acceptance of herself, as she confronts a pair of wicked Monarchs (a mother-son duo) who desire the heroine for themselves.
I know you probably don't want to copy too hard, but I want the final face-off to also be in a M.C. Escher painting.
@@JohnZ117 nah, no Escher room.
But, there will be a ballroom scene, with raving Maenads ready to cannibalize the heroine.
@@sammyvictors2603 Then, maybe they'll fix that error in the movie adaptation. ;)
Where can I read this book, this sounds fantastic!!!
I propose the O'Bannon method - a well written character inside a good plot, where the gender is irrelevant. That's how we got Ripley.
I feel the bechdel test is a base board to get you started.
But it is ok for people to focus on relationships at times because that is life. It os ok for men and women to stand side by side. Not all women have to be powerful bad asses. They can be meek or gentle but strong in other ways.
Also, I feel we need to stop ripping on past films because many of them were progressive for their time. They are still viewed positively today. They were just different, but I feel many have a surface level critique about them while not looking deeply through them.
I think it is bad history to see the past as some sort of story arc leading to now, with now being finished and right and the past growing steadily less bad towards us. Artists nowadays still make mistakes. Progress wasn't linear, some films are better/ as good as the ones made today. They are dated, but still interesting.
I'm a comic-illustrator/writer and I tried this with my characters. I realized, I'm really bad at this. Part of the learning-experience
As long as you're trying you're on the right path👍
My favorite of these “tests” is the Mako Mori test: at least one female character and that this character has an independent plot arc and that the character or her arc does not simply exist to support a male character's plot arc.
Hot take: why not write women as, say, women? As in, people? As in humans? Can we do that, are we allowed?
Does a character need to be well written to be not sexist? Are male characters on average better written, or are there more of them overall? When I see these vlogs and blogs about how feminists want more than literally strong female characters, or passing the Bechdel Test, a lot of those demands sound like something that would require generally better writing, a creative investment in deeper characters, a prioritization of characterization; however many Hollywood movies don't do that for cis-white-male characters either. Beyond any disussion of gender, audiences want better writing and Hollywood consistently fails to deliver. The reasons are capitalist. The director and writers don't really run the show, they are hired by producers who are accountable to investors and share holders who in turn want a straight forward explanation as to why people are going to watch this movie; they want it years before they start the movie and they want it in an industry where there are not really any guarantees. Instead of realizing that they are taking a risk either way and actually trusting the creative vision, the people with control over the budget all feel the need to turn the movie into something that can pretend to guarantee a return on investment, and that means something formulaic, appealing to the infamous common denominator, and nothing quite so subjective as "good writing". Plots and characters and themes have to be good in the trailer, not necessarily the actual movie. International audiences are actually important, they don't necessarily understand or enjoy western writing styles, and western writers, and again those money guys don't have the best understanding of international audiences, they just know they need something that literally every human on earth would enjoy.
If anything sometimes having a sole but well fleshed out female character can be a point unto itself. E.g. with Silence of the Lambs being the only female among so many men makes it stand out so much more the struggles she faces being not only in a male dominated work place but a male centric world in general.
We don't need strong WOMEN character, we need STRONG characters who happen to be women but sadly the industry is swarming with stoic uninteresting manly women characters due to the woke culture but I'm optimistic that this trend will soon come to an end and we'll finally get lovable strong women characters.
seems like Rings of Power was the final straw for people in that regard.
The term Woke has lost all meaning to me now.
What does "manly" even mean?
@@tapan97 I’ve been wondering the same .
@@Dragoness-si2xr yeah tbh I'm being partially facetious, because I know what connotations that term usually has. It's just that it simply isn't a very valid term, as traits like bravery, strength, honor, thrift, competitiveness etc are amply found in women as they are in men. If manly traits can be found in women, they simply aren't all that *man*ly at all.
I just knew Miranda's monologue would feature
Thats like center square at "the Take" bingo card along with the "cool girl" one from gone girl & ANY close up shot on Arabella from "I may destroy you"
6:31 The Duvernay Test sounds awesome! 👏🏽
That scene where Miranda tells the other three off is why I admired her so much and she became my favourite SATC character even though at first I thought she was too plain looking, pessimistic and down to earth and preferred Carrie and Charlotte.
Check out the Clone Wars and Rebels to see how it rates on the Bechdel tests. Ahsoka, Hera, and Sabine are all great female characters who are goal oriented.
Wow.
Amazing video
Rick and Morty did a great job satirizing how easy the Bechdel test is to pass on that super-meta train episode.
Also, just got back from seeing TÁR. Movies like that and Promising Young Woman may not always make big bucks but they are GREAT cinema!
Best female characters, Luna Lovegood, Elle Woods, Regina George, Constance Wu in Fresh off the boat.
Thought the video was over when the ad came on. Good thing I realized I had 10 minutes left lol
10:55 Huge fan of the ‘Sexy Lamp’ Test. Now I know it’s by Kelly Sue DeConnick.
Thank you for this video.
The whole problem, why the Bechdel test doesn't seem to be helping is because it's not even a fair test. If we take, for example, The Mummy. Evelyn shares equal or nearly equal screen time with O'Connel, but the majority of conversations are between the two of them, or her and her brother, so she doesn't talk to other female characters really. As such the film fails the test, despite Evelyn being a strong female representation.
And newer films that pass the test are largely written with passing the test being held as a higher goal than the goal of simply telling a good story. There are plenty of good stories that focus mostly on women, just not as many as what focus on men because there are more males writing these movies. If you want just more women in the stories, then encourage more women to pursue a writing career, but don't encourage writers to focus on passing a stupid test.
I like The Mummy, but it's a bad example to use if you want to talk about representation of women on screen. There are only two female characters in that movie, and one of them doesn't speak. It's like Star Wars: a fun adventure with 15 men and one token woman.
Writers be like "Huuuh now I gotta write feeemale characters" Such a complex and non-spontaneous task considering they make 50% of the population but you probably rarely talk to one therefore can't understand the intricacies of their mysterious agency
How about you, as a woman or non-binary female-born, write female character dibsdtead of expecting men to do so? Only expecting men to revolutionize and pioneer woman characters means you need their validation to feel better about your womanhood, which is inherently not a feminist move.
What is the instrumental song played for the “Where do we go from here” chapter. It’s amazing
love this take, thank you
Please do a video on Voodoo/Hoodoo!
And still Kim Wexler's video by The Take isn't out
I kinda want to watch a movie with an all male cast and a literal sexy lamp now. I think that'd be hilarious.
Now I'm wondering about the aesthetic appeal of the light fixtures in "Twelve Angry Men."
Honestly idk much about the Bechdel Test but I assume much of these sorts of problems stems from just the way we view men and women generally. Sometimes its like to be human is to be a man and then women are just kind of secondary to that not inferior but not men. So movies about women are movies for women but movies about men are just movies. Like how some ppl think that white ppl can’t see themselves in characters of colour. Obviously this is very reductionist and idk how widespread this is or the extent to which ppl rlly think like this. Very poorly explained but sentiment stands I think
I think ultimately creating a structured test to measure creative aspects of a production turns those aspects into a maths problem as opposed to a creative one. In this sense it is an inherent limitation on what the work will be and what it can say. This can be diminishing or inspiring in any measure.
Ultimately I see a conflict here between imagination and reality. If a story must show the world as it is real, then it must become detached from the perspective of one's imagination; if a story is too surrounded by perspective, then it will likely simplify the complex world it narrowly perceives.
Consequently, to expect artists to solve a maths problem, and create good art, is akin to asking financial investors to have a heart;
it'll happen sometimes, but it won't always work out for them, so over time they will listen to their heart less and less until they have solved the maths problem.
Then what will we be left with?
I think this is an important video. Thanks.
Although I agree that there should be more women in the industry, I don't think they should be given anything based solely on the fact that they are women. Let's make sure we set that difference.
You really called Rey from Star Wars "pioneering"? With a straight face?
Please, start analyzing the meaning of particular movies again.
Thank you for this important topic!
I usually don't watch a lot of Hollywood movies, but the past year I watched a few with my (all male) roomies... and I was so shocked when I realised how super succesfull movies that came out in the last 5 years have still so many issues when it comes to female representation! (Not to speak of other representation, but that's a different topic...)
The movies we watched only featured three types of women (the love interest/wife, the all-loving mother, or the (often sterile) villain) and literally all of them failed the Bechdel test. These were movies like Marvel or Ryan Reynolds comedy-action-movies, like HUGE hollywood productions. Most interesting was how none of my roomies noticed and after some time talking about it they realised how messed up it actually is. They wouldn't see it first, or pulled the "it's not a big deal", until I urged them to imagine it the other way round.
We are so used to what we know that it's really hard to see and move past these issues. So, videos like this one are much needed & appreciated! Keep going, your channel is amazing!
to be fair movies from comics have a lot a male heroes like the comics and are written mainly by males for a mainly male audience so... it's not so shocking as it's predictable (but it's shocking as it is a big deal, I agree. The deal being patriarchy. Hollywood only reflects that.). But they're adding a lot of female heroes and adding representations in MarvelCU and DCCU so hopefully it will be better and move past these issues as you said.
That Ariel clip was perfect lmao NOT ANOTHER WORD!
all the stats quoted are about Hollywood, there are many other counties that produce films and have female leads in film and tv, south Korea and India for example...
The opportunities have always been there, whoever you are. I saw a shot of Martin Scorsese there, in the video, the montage was made to seem as if he stood for the old boy's club Vanguard. That's not fair, apart from the fact he came up at a time when his own ethnicity was looked down upon and only given one dimensional representations, his carear long collaborator is screen writer Thema schoonmaker. Yes, his films are male dominated, but they talk about many issues that go beyond just being a man, or being italian, or a criminal, a Christian etc. They are about being human, understanding your limits and reconciling the moral and ethical questions we all face. You know, stuff both men and women can identify with. The issue with a lot of female dominated film and TV is that the feminism comes over too overtly and it switches most people off, i mean people in all its plurality. These issues need to be explored, don't get me wrong, but unless you bury it in narrative It comes over preachy and amateur. Fuck these quotas, make great art, with great characters, write a female character as if she was intended to be a man and vice versa, see what you get, you might realise It works, because at the end of the day, it's Just optics.
We want more. More than this provincial life. More adventure. We want to live. Full and authentic lives, just as men do.
That is the message here, and it is a beautiful message.
LET'S GGGGGOOOOOO!!!!!
i understand the point, but that sexy lamp in A Christmas Story played its part well.
Okay but how many female directors/screenwriters are there? Let's start with that
Lots.
Here’s a question for you about the idea of the test, if the two women appear on screen and talk about the villain of that story does that pass? Because if the villain is a guy you could say no but the villain could be a woman so does it still count?
Yup
as an Autistic strate woman, who's and anspering author I love your vidoes.
Gréât vidéo
I am a filmmaker. I work on a lot of small independent films. Small crews and sometimes me as sound, the DP, and maybe a Director. On my scripts, cast, and crew I do everything I can to include a variety of people. I tend to have more women and minorities on my sets. I plan to have a trans person in every production. But sometimes you go with what is available and many times there are a lot of white cis males on sets. When I am working on other sets I see more and more women all the time. But requiring 50% may be very difficult because not as many women that I know go after this kind of job and life. In film school, there were maybe 5 females out of 20-30 males in the school in the film track. Only personally know 2 female DP's and one Female Audio person. have seen a few female script monitors and AD's.
On one of my productions, we had I had 3 males and 12 females on set and 2 trans people, 2 of color, and 3 deaf. But I also did a production that has more women than men but after I noticed I had only one person of color. But it might be hard to meet those clauses. but having a spotlight on it may help bring more attention and raise it. I am not sure it can be 50/50 because people's interests like garbage handlers, construction sites, and more are open to women but not many go after those jobs.
I watch videos like these that help me become a better filmmaker. Thank you for your help.
Devil Wears Prada is the best movie ever made. Human society will advance once reconizing it and why that is the case.
Edge of Tomorrow doesn't pass the bechdel test but it's one of my favorite movies and the female lead is well written
This is the best video from The Take that I have seen in a very, long time. Thank you for returning to your intersectional and deeply informative critique!
EXACTLY. So many weirdly sexist films technically pass the Bechdel test. Like representation, it's just a start, a bare minimum. Kind of a joke. It's not the bar. Thank you for actually contributing to this conversation and bringing up so many great points here. This is genuinely excellent discourse here. Keep it up! :)
I’d love to hear The Take do a video series about reality shows like The Bachelor and Love Island! Lots of fodder for discussions about race issues and feminism.
this is actually the thing that I don't get in all of this. Everywhere you hear how bad women are portrailed in media and I get and even agree with it. If I have to sit through only one more unnecessary love sub plot I lose my mind... but then again, series like "sex and the city" or reality shows like "The Bachelor" or "Keeping up with the Kardashians", which all have terrible portrails of women have the highest percentige of female audience. So Women choose to whatch this in masses. I know, because I was forced to whatch this trash with some of my ex-girlfriends... And it was never like "well, this is the best we women get so what do you wanna do". They actively looked forward to whatch it and where legitimate Fans... Which is fine I guess. What ever floats your boat... but what is the fuzz about then? If so many women have a problem with depictions like that (which again, I totally get and agree with) then why are those shows so popular?
Anyone listen to Vast Horizon or Zoo?
Music is too loud...
What is with this background music??
The issue is that most movies are made for men by men, if you want more representation or better said more accurate representation you will have to do it yourselves but that is another issue cause even me being a man i have witnessed women that are actually doing a better job than i being ignored.
Why is the assumption is that men can't possibly write good female characters? Some of most well written female characters come projects created/led by men.
Are stories really better when you demand male/female quotas?
It’s possible for men to write women well, but sadly some male screenwriters weren’t raised to see women as complex people but rather as objects to control, own, or have sex with.
@@beethovensfidelio Who?
@@beethovensfidelio And what movies? Because there are certain demographics
It was never meant to be a measure of "good" but rather a demonstration of bad. It is literally the lowest bar.
8:35 So that's how you say it!
15:06 Tbh a lot of this sounds like... affirmative action. Call me old fashioned but I don't particularly care if the board of JP Morgan Chase is filled with disabled transwomen of color if they are going to continue stuff like predatory loans.
Same concept applies here. Plugging different looking people into an existing system produces the same results because incentives remain the same.
I see the solution being something like the Blumhouse model. A creative suggests something new/interesting, they are given a small budget (1-3 million dollars), and the creators have significantly more creative control. You aren't going to get anything that breaks from the model in high budget Hollywood, regardless of who is behind the camera. Those projects deal with a TON of money and boil down to "made by committee" projects
I was so excited for the female ghostbusters, but come on. That movie was gross. I know the humor in the orignals was a little adult at times, but qu**f jokes?! I don't like the movies with dudes in it that are like that either. They let the ghostbusters down with that. The fans were already going to be hard on them because they were female. They didn't need to go "Superbad" on us. I still defend that it wasn't as bad as some say, but it wasn't a Ghostbusters movie. 😑 Just a bad example to pull up.
4:03 Well for Star Wars it was moreso that the promoting production did, made it seem like the main character would be centered around Finn, a black storm trooper. Then in the movie he gets in a coma and forgotten till the second film and Rey is now the focus. Not because she's a woman, but because yet again a black character became a token
The trailer mad dit seem like he was the main character but the movie never really centered around him though. Rey had more screen time. Overall, the marketing was all over the place just like the trilogy was.
There are so many test to the point you don't even have a plot.
What was so controversial about she-hulk?
So do two or more females have to talk to each other and have lots of scenes together to pass the test?
nope, they just have to 1) be two or more named females who 2) have some sort of conversation that 3) isn't about men. A conversation, for the purposes of the test, is just one person saying something and the other responding. There's no minimum time, so it could just be "Nice hair!" "Thanks!" or something like that. Another discussed topic for the Bechdel test is the "not about men" criterion. Some people also don't consider conversations about marriage and having children to pass the test.
I like strong female characters
I have a feeling you guys are gonna love bl magazines
The problem that is missing from this take is the quality of these characters. For example. Rey Palpatine was a terribly written character. No flaws, no growth arc, perfect in every way. Nobody wants to see that. Audiences want to go on a journey with the characters. They want a reason to root for them.
Then you have She-Hulk, which had too many problems to count, starting with the lead character being arrogant, entitled, self-centered and terrible at her job. Then there was the fact that the showrunner and lead admitted the show was made as an F-U to people who didn't like their show. Maybe they should have focused on making a better show or hiring a legal consultant instead of crafting a show out of spite and bitterness.
What was She-Hulk's character arc? Why are we to care about her character outside of her being a woman? Just like the Bechdel Test is not enough of a litmus test, representation is not enough of a reason for viewers to care about a character. Its why Wonder Woman succeeded while Ghostbuster 2016 failed miserably.
To my understanding,
1) people writing she-hulk have NEVER worked court room scenes before
2) the show throws away anything recembling a pay off to everything set up through out the season at the very end for a -funny-
3) the lady playing Titania said she didnt care about the quality of her show since she got her payday (imagine "the good place" show runners gettin a wind of that one) [she also tore her anus while working on this? Wtf]
4) they threw away Jen's compelling origin and Villain (Trask) in order to stick it to the Internet people they didnt like
5) none of that matters to the Take
Even though two female characters exchanging expositional dialogue is not a major leap, it would still impact the way we watch movies. A lot of Hollywood entertainment features one woman along with a cast of several men. Having two women would change the dynamic in such movies. As long as they move away from the trope of the two female characters being polar opposites.
How would it be possible to crew an entire film with 50% women without actively hiring people based on their gender?
The test is idiotic in the first place.
I knew they WOULDNT have the lady balls to include any clips from the Rick & morty's Bechdel test skit 👀💬🎉
First! ☝🏾🥇
1:33 Dragon Ball Super: Super Heroes passes the Bechdel Test...I don't know wheter to be proud or sad...
3:59 I think the main reason so many people disliked the Ghostbuster’s remake and She-Hulk is because of the poor writing and storytelling, not because they have “strong female protagonists”. Rey is similarly disliked because she is written with no apparent flaws, which paradoxically makes her a weak character. We don’t need female characters who are unrealistically invincible; we need well written characters whose femininity isn’t seen as something that needs to be “toughened up” into boring perfection.
I just hate how we keep fighting over petty details and specific character types. People keep complaining that female characters don't represent them; they aren't complex in one media, too complex in another, too ugly, too pretty, too femme, too butch, too emotional, not emotional enough - as though 50% of the population can be written under one umbrella. Not every character can be a mirror into our souls. Aren't we tired of it? There are women who strong and kick ass, women who are feminine and proud, pathetic and laughable, materialistic, confident, and everything under the sun. If it comes from a place of genuine understanding and care, it can be done well. Why can't there be room for all of them? Not every movie or character is going to be an all-encompassing masterpiece . We deserve the silly action films, rom-coms, political dramas, etc. Men leads can have Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, The Godfather, Lord of the Rings, Braveheart, 300, Our Flag Means Death, and the Batman movies. We should be fighting for a bigger pie, rather than arguing over which flavor our one pitiful slice should be.
The problem is how so many female characters are sidelined and treated more like plot devices than actual human beings. They're written with objectification, sexism, hatred misunderstanding, etc. And female authors are given the token treatment, online harassment, discrimination, and higher scrutiny on all our projects. I would say adding more women in the mix would help, but honestly women can be just as sexist and gatekeeping as the men in their fields. So I'd argue that we need a combination of both women in power and change in our social narratives.
Part of the representation problem was actually addressed by The Take in one of their previous videos: For a very long time - and arguably still to a degree - works have often featured more male characters than female ones. By virtue of sheer numbers, the male characters can display a plethora of personalities and archetypes, but if there are only one or two noteworthy female characters in the story, they take on a much greater burden in terms of representation. The most obvious way to combat this is to have multiple female characters who can embody a range of roles, but that alone can be a turn-off (for lack of a better term) to anyone who views substantial change as pandering or going too far. It's something of a vicious circle.