My Bechdel Test Theory

So today in my AP English Language class we talked about the Bechdel Test. For any of you who don't know the Bechdel test is a list of 3 criteria that have to be passed in order to pass the test for any given film. Those three criteria are:

1. Have at least 2 women, by name in the film.
2. Those two women have to talk to each other.
3. And talk about something besides a man.

We wrote down our favorite film at the beginning of class, and now are supposed to write a blog on our favorite film and how it does with the Bechdel Test.
My favorite film is Taxi Driver (1976), and will write a blog on it for my school blog, but not this one. So I will not be talking about or writing this blog on Taxi Driver, but writing it on the Bechdel Test.

Very few films actually pass the Bechdel Test, when I first heard of this test (about a year and a half ago) I had a hard time actually thinking of films that passed it. Now, I'm not an expert on movies, but find I tend to know more about film than most of my peers. And I like to think of myself as somewhat knowledgeable about film. The fact a bunch didn't come to mind disturbed me. Over time I have developed a theory as to why not many films pass the test. We'll get to that in a minute though.

When I first started getting interested in film, about 3 years ago, I noticed trends in the movie industry. One of the easiest trends and one of the first ones I noticed was that big budget explosion fests are some of the most popular and profitable films. Box Office Mojo has a list of the most profitable films ever. On the list 99 are what I would consider to be more popular big budget mainstream films, The Passion of Christ is number 90, and is the one film that you could potentially consider being an "arthouse" film. It could be lumped pretty easily into the previous category as well though. Here is a link to the Box Office Mojo site, if you want to look at it. This just goes to show which types of films are the profitable ones. Unfortunately the small indie arthouse films just do not make a lot of money. And the people who write films know this.

Now, with the majority of popular films being mainstream movies, which gender is more likely to go see action/explosion/mainstream movies (which again take up a large portion of the list)? Surprisingly enough it is close to a 50/50 split last year. Where this may be an emerging trend, historically men have been more likely to go to the movies. Men, ages 15-35, did for a long time predominantly dominate ticket sales for years. Hollywood is sometimes slow catching up with things, sometimes they like to hold on to the old ways or whatever. The way this turns out, is that many times screenwriters will write to their perceived main audience. Where that main audience may be changing now, they (the screenwriters) are still in the mode for writing to a predominantly male audience. The screenwriters, thinking that males are the primary audiences, will want to write a movie that will make them the most money. How do they do that? Write a movie that their primary audience will connect with, specifically characters that the audience will connect with. And who is their audience (in their minds)? Males. And who do males most easily connect with? Males. I think that screenwriters, thinking and still writing for a majority male audience, will write more male characters than female characters. When more male characters are written for more movies, less films will pass due to less female characters being written. The problem of many films not passing the Bechdel Test is due to screenwriters not writing to a female audience. Less female characters written, the less two of them (named) will have a conversation not about men. It's simple math really.

With new studies coming out, saying that females are going to the movies just as much as males, this may change soon. This is good thing, for it is not hard to write a conversation, even if it is a short one, between to women that doesn't involve men. It's not a challenging thing, and seeing these recent changes could prove to solve this problem eventually. But for now, I believe that it is the screenwriters perceived notion of a predominantly male audience that keeps them from writing more female characters and that in turn is reducing the number of films that pass the Bechdel Test. Here is a link to Bechdel Test website if you want to visit it.

If you have a theory of your own on why many films don't pass the Bechdel Test let me know, or if you think my theory is wrong let me know why.