Bechdel Test Movie List

Only two characters in the entire film; one female, the other male.

Greg is right. This movie should not be rated.

What's your problem? The movie doesn't pass the test, period.

Yes, both Sam and Greg are right.
The test has a purpose in pointing out the role of women. In this movie both man and woman have the same weight (or even more the women if you see the end of the movie). With this rating you are only adding noise to the statistics.

Generally I don't like the people who come on here to bitch about what's wrong with the system, but Greg does have a point. There are only two characters in the entire movie.

Basically, films that would not pass a male version of the test either shouldn't be included.

There are alot of things you could accuse this movie of. Propagating a conventional, male-centered world view is definitly not one of them.

I disagree with the rating for the same reasons as the other folks who did. But holy SHIT this movie could never be called "feminist." It might be the most misogynistic movie I have ever seen.

Matt, I thought it was *about* misogyny. Not necessarily misogynist itself.

In world of perfect equality then you would expect there would still be some movies that didn't pass the Bechdel test, based on format or setting. And that would be OK.

But rating a movie isn't "adding noise to the statistics." Leaving a movie out is actually massaging the data and making it look better than it is, because people expect a baseline- we're trying to look at how far reality is from the expected baseline. Hiding the baseline doesn't help assess reality!

So I think it's completely fair to include it, especially as the original poster explained why it didn't pass. If we really wanted to compare, there could be a rating like "doesn't pass Bechdel OR reverse Bechdel" and a "passes Bechdel, but doesn't pass reverse Bechdel" In a world of equality, the number of not passing Bechdel and not passing reverse Bechdel would be the same.

Read the rules for the test, and answer them about this movie. Plain and simple.

The answer is obviously no, it does not pass the test. That doesn't mean that there's not a perfectly good reason as to why it doesn't pass the test, but it does mean it's a movie that does not pass the test. Why this is even needing to be discussed is pretty crazy.

Maybe the test itself is invalid, and should have exceptions for when 50% or more of the cast is female.

I mean, how would a film production of The Vagina Monologues rate here? All-female cast, but none of them actually talk to each other...

Removing films from the statistics generated by the test makes perfect sense if the film in question's format is incompatible. The statistics this test generates will appear worse if basic issues of structure are completely overlooked. The Bechdel test only works with films that use a certain established narrative formula and as a consequence films that don't subscribe to such a formula will inadvertently alter the statistics. A few examples would be: films with two or less characters, films that are made of a series of monologues, films in which no two characters communicate with each other, films in which characters are of ambiguous gender and so on. Personally, it seems to me pretty ludicrous that films that attempt to alter what is expected from a narrative would be used as data to show the inherent sexism of films when there's nothing inherently sexist in an untypical narrative. This test demands a film stick to a conventional narrative structure and as such should only measure films that do.

Weren't there a bunch of faceless women at the end? They're not major characters in any way, but they're all women . . .

In terms of the test, it fails since the main female character has no name, and the ones that appear at the end not only have no name, but their faces are blurred. So for sure... 0 out of 3.

The movie itself is odd and filled with sexualized violence done to the man and woman that is quite graphic. The film's message seems to be that the world (including nature, animals, women, etc) is inherently evil, but the way the movie singles out women as being evil makes this movie very misogynistic.