Reality Fails the Bechdel Test

Swedish cinemas take aim at gender bias with Bechdel test rating

You expect movie ratings to tell you whether a film contains nudity, sex, profanity or violence. Now cinemas in Sweden are introducing a new rating to highlight gender bias, or rather the absence of it.

To get an A rating, a movie must pass the so-called Bechdel test, which means it must have at least two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man.

Anyone with an ounce of sanity will be rolling their eyes at this bit of nonsense.  Nobody cares if a movie passes the Bechdel Test – not even most feminists (how many of them are sitting in the theatre, tallying a mental checklist?).  For the vast, vast majority of the viewing public, all they care about is whether a movie tells a good story.

IMG_1263

A Bechdel Test Metaphor

But like so many other arguments that we get from Feminism, while people can inherently sense that it’s stupid, specifying why is a little bit more difficult.  That’s because it’s not truly an argument – it’s flak.  Flak shot up into the cultural discourse so that we spin our wheels arguing to their tune.  Marxists and Feminists don’t argue because they actually believe something, nor because they’ve given it a lot of thought – like a scorned woman, they argue for the sake of arguing.

If you looked like this, you’d feel scorned, too.

So with that in mind, I’d like to do a quick and definitive takedown of this Bechdel Test, so that you can move on with your day and do something interesting.

Like the title says – movies fail the Bechdel Test for the same reason that reality does.  To put it bluntly:

  • Men talk more about ideas
  • Women talk more about people
  • Men are focused on familial “foreign policy”
  • Women are focused on familial “domestic policy”

And that’s really all there is to it: men and women are different.  We have different emotional makeups, we have different drives in life, we have different attraction triggers, and we have different skills and talents.  We’re a sexually dimorphic species, evolved for productive competition with one another and role specialization; we are not turtles, who swim around on their own, both sexes filling the exact same niche, until the time comes to squirt gametes at one another and bury the eggs.

female-ninja-turtles

This is not how turtles work.

A movie is distilled reality; the most important aspects of what makes us human are what they put on the screen.  In real life, men have plenty of conversations about specific women, and women have plenty of conversations about non-social topics; seldom are these conversations interesting enough to include in a movie.  Somebody with a healthy psyche instinctively understands all of this.

But Feminists, out of a hatred for masculinity, femininity, and humanity in general, insist on applying masculine standards to women, and feminine standards to men.  For instance, from the above article:

Another study, by the Annenberg Public Policy Centre at the University of Pennsylvania, showed that the ratio of male to female characters in movies has remained at about two to one for at least six decades. That study, which examined 855 top box-office films from 1950-2006, showed female characters were twice as likely to be seen in explicit sexual scenes as males, while male characters were more likely to be seen as violent.

I feel like I’m trying to explain humour to Commander Data.

Show an Autist Feminist Goldfinger, and it will see the blatant sexualization of Pussy Galore, driving it to complain that Sean Connery wasn’t wearing the same outfit as he was in Zardoz:

Zardoz

Is this what you want?

Like the Histrionic Pod People they are, they utterly fail to realize that James Bond is just as sexualized of a character as Pussy Galore is.

  • Expensive suit
  • Fast Car
  • Cool and indifferent demeanor
  • Collection of guns
  • Army of worker drones under him

Men want to be him, women want to be with him; swap the sexual pronouns, and the same thing goes for Pussy Galore. “Good Lord, in a sexually dimorphous species, the two sexes have different attraction triggers?” Yes; yes they do.

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To thoroughly hammer this home, I’d like to finish off by describing a couple of possible movies: one which is pro-feminist, and fails the test, another which is anti-feminist, and passes with flying colours.

Movie 1: The movie focuses on the daily minutiae of a 35 year old woman working in an all-female HR department, in an Office Space-like manner.  One day, she sees the man she dumped five years ago getting married to a sweet, young bride, ten years her junior, and she comes to the conclusion that she screwed up by not marrying him, that she’s unlikely to find a decent man before menopause, and that it’s her fault for following the feminist script.

This movie would pass the Bechdel Test

Movie 2: I don’t even have to make this one up: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – a film about an empowered Tank Grrrrl who kills evil, white, male, rapist, Nazis – can you get anymore Progressively Feminist than that?

This film fails the Bechdel Test.

Movies fail the Bechdel Test for the same reason that reality does: because biology has made the sexes different, but complementary, and nobody wants to watch a movie about Autistic Pod People worshipping at Cthulu’s throne.

ͼ-Ѻ-ͽ

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Ed: I’d like to apologize to any Autists who were offended by my comparing them to Feminists.  Autists have difficulties understanding human interactions, difficulties which can ultimately be overcome.  Feminists are wilfully obtuse.

Leo M.J. Aurini

Trained as a Historian at McMaster University, and as an Infantry soldier in the Canadian Forces, I'm a Scholar, Author, Film Maker, and a God fearing Catholic, who loves women for their illogical nature.

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15 Responses

  1. Not everyone can reference James Bond, Zardox, and the Ninja Turtles in one coherent article. Thumbs up.

  2. Carnivore says:

    In real life, men are active and women are passive. A movie with an abundance of passive characters would be a flop. As an extreme, does anyone really remember the 1939 movie “The Women” which doesn’t have a single male in it or the 2008 remake? However, the 1956 sci-fi film “Forbidden Planet” is an enduring classic which has only one female character.

    I think I’m going to write a novel and proudly proclaim on the cover “Fails the Bechdel Test”.

  3. The Matrix (original):
    Trinity has brief but not-intensive conversation with what’s-her-name-who-died-in-the-hotel.
    Trinity has no on-screen interaction with the Oracle.
    Trinity and the Oracle are both integral to the plot, but because they don’t interact: Bechdel Test Fail?

  4. ramram says:

    I for one am glad for this Bechdel test – now I know which movies to avoid.
    Especially now when it is so hard to find a movie without petite female fighting army of soldiers

  5. patriarchal landmine says:

    and of course, sweden leads the charge in emasculating their native male populace.

    this test is just another perfect example of how feminists can’t get a single thing right. if a feminist tells you that the sky is blue, you better go outside and check because something amazing has just happened.

  6. ramram says:

    Although this has been covered many times before (also by Aurini) I like Sandman’s take on increasing unrealistic expectations by women:

  7. ramram says:

    BTW, I think I know why feminists would like Zardoz… after all one of his teaching is:

    “The gun is good. The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was, but the gun shoots death, and purifies the Earth of the filth of brutals. Go forth … and kill!”

  8. Your realism is liberating. Remembering people that men and women are different.

    Of course, not in Sweden, the country where nut case parents hide the sex of their children and crazy Kindergartens force boys to play with dolls and girls to play with cars.

    And where not using a condom is rape, and paying an adult prostitution is a serious crime. The country where the sexual revolution started, and later was killed.

    Expect serious consequences for films that don’t fulfill the Bechdel test. Swedes will have to leave the country for watching movies, as they now have to leave to get non-criminalized sex.

  9. David says:

    At first when I looked at that picture with the person in the library, I was like: “I don’t get it, it just looks like some young dude (no signs of facial hair) who hasn’t had enough sleep (bags under eyes).”

    But then I noticed that the person is probably female judging by the lack of muscle composition and slight bulge of what might possibly be tiny breasts on the chest, and re-thought the lack of facial hair, and was like “dear god, if that’s female she may not have the most feminine face, but she’s just self-inflicting being seen as a guy with a guy’s haircut like that (you know, the kind that emphasizes a square head – what girls usually try to avoid in order to emphasize their soft feminine features)”.

    Or is that a dude? I really can’t tell.

  10. Sarah O. says:

    “Men talk more about ideas, women talk more about people” is a gross generalization. And putting a catty, shallow caption on a picture of a woman who doesn’t give a shit what you think of her looks is a pretty weak argument.
    Oh, and by the way, I’m a feminist. And I like penises.

  11. Aurini says:

    O, Sarah – you do know what a “generalization” is, don’t you? It’s something that’s generally true. Ergo – MOST of the time women talk more about people than ideas. You’re admitting that this is true in your attempt at a rebuttal.

    You might be interested to know that we have an acronym to describe arguments like yours – NAWALT – Not All Women Are Like That.

    Yes, we know that, sweetheart. We were speaking in generalizations.

    Given your lack of logic and rhetorical flourish, I am in no way surprised to hear that you fell for the anti-woman, anti-male, anti-child scam known as Feminism.

  12. Bond says:

    “Autistic Pod People worshipping at Cthulu’s throne” Please don’t give hollywood anymore bad ideas than it already has!

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