Question of the week: is a mandatory Bechdel test a good idea?

11 November 2013 Rob Buckley Film 11 Comments

An interesting news nugget from Sweden is that in addition to the existing rating system, that country is going to implement a Bechdel test system for all its movies, too. For those that don’t know, the Bechdel test is designed to see just how male-centric a story is. The story passes if:

  1. It has to have at least two women in it,
  2. who talk to each other,
  3. about something besides a man

Now, obviously this isn’t science. If you have a story about two female cops chasing a male suspect, for example, even though they’re the focus of the story, if they spend all their time talking about the suspect, the film will fail the test.

But despite these flaws, it’s a useful rule of thumb to see if a story is perhaps a little too focused on what the men are up to to the detriment of the female characters. So this week I’m asking the question: 

Is a mandatory Bechdel test for movies a good idea or something too clumsy to be meaningful in practice? And would you welcome its introduction in your country?

As always, answers below or on your own blog, please.

Author

  • Rob Buckley

    I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.

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