Bechdel test observations

[Quantus]

My comment was not to try to pretend that there is an issue of men not having meaningful roles in films. I was simply wondering how much the gender of the protagonist and antagonist in the film have to do with whether there is any meaningful interaction between two members of the opposite gender (from the protagonist or antagonist) that don't have something to do with either the protagonist or the antagonist. I would think that this would be rare.

I would think that the sixty second rule that the woman in the You tube clip was proposing would be very problematic. Any action films that are light on lengthy dialogue would be almost automatically eliminated.

I found it funny that Wall E was listed as having failed.

Thats what I am thinking.  The test in itself is biased.  The Protagonist (and Antagonist as you point out) are in a position to have many more interactions of all kinds, whereas the supporting roles are far more limited, due to their literary roles.

And, I dont see how it makes a work any better or worse if a female character asks some random lady the price of rice in china, or fails to do so.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

And, I dont see how it makes a work any better or worse if a female character asks some random lady the price of rice in china, or fails to do so.

It indicates that the author is aware that women exist other than as love interests or adjuncts to male characters.  This strikes me as a non-trivial plus.

[knnn]

It indicates that the author is aware that women exist other than as love interests or adjuncts to male characters.  This strikes me as a non-trivial plus.

On the flip-side, I'd bet that over 90% of lesbian porn movies pass the test...

[Quantus]

It indicates that the author is aware that women exist other than as love interests or adjuncts to male characters.  This strikes me as a non-trivial plus.

Gender equality is certainly a good thing, and so is having properly written, rounded characters.   Im just saying that this particular test, without the addition of some normalizing elements at the very least, strikes me as a remarkably arbitrary way to rate such a thing. 

In 99% of stories the MC will have to be either a Man or a Woman, and in either case the test is dramatically scewed towards that gender choice.  As mentioned above Wall-e doesnt pass, but thats mostly because there are only three characters with real gender (5 if you count the pair of robots with 2 word vocabularies) and many of them never interact.  But if you randomly say Auto is female (which would make sense since Ships are traditionally female) then it passes with flying colors.  But that doesnt in any way affect the quality of the work, or the relative gender equality demonstrated.  Knnn's observation about Lesbian Porn seems relevant to this point as well. Hell, you could write a story that passes with flying colors, that is nothing but a couple of women mudwrestling over a pair of shoes.   You could also write one that fails simply because the two female protagonists are focused on taking down the male villain, and so dont stray to other topics (granted it would probably have to be short).

To be clear, Im not saying that there isnt bias in Fiction (though Id like to think its a little less so in Literature than in Hollywood), or that Female characters arent trivialized at times.  Im not entire convinced that there isnt a similar number of flat, useless male characters out there that are relegated to base tropes, but Ill fully admit that I dont usually take much note of that sort of thing, so i may just be uninformed. 

Now, if you remove any POV characters from the equation, and evaluate it as a ratio of the conversations between two women that do and do not center around a man, Id think you have a more representative metric.   

[LizW65]

(snip) ...You could also write one that fails simply because the two female protagonists are focused on taking down the male villain, and so dont stray to other topics (granted it would probably have to be short).
(snip)
...Now, if you remove any POV characters from the equation, and evaluate it as a ratio of the conversations between two women that do and do not center around a man, Id think you have a more representative metric.   

That was why I mentioned in an earlier post that it's almost necessary to eliminate plot-relevant dialogue from such a test; in, for example, a police procedural/crime thriller, much of the dialogue will be discussion of the various suspects, some of whom will almost certainly be male.  I don't believe anyone would consider it sexist for detectives Carol and Alice to discuss the probability of Bob's guilt rather than Mary's.
(Of course, that brings up the question of whether all non-plot-essential dialogue should be edited out anyway...one can make a pretty good case either way.)

[Quantus]

That was why I mentioned in an earlier post that it's almost necessary to eliminate plot-relevant dialogue from such a test; in, for example, a police procedural/crime thriller, much of the dialogue will be discussion of the various suspects, some of whom will almost certainly be male.  I don't believe anyone would consider it sexist for detectives Carol and Alice to discuss the probability of Bob's guilt rather than Mary's.
(Of course, that brings up the question of whether all non-plot-essential dialogue should be edited out anyway...one can make a pretty good case either way.)

Precisely.  The more you look at the test the more you realize you have to discount in order to make it work, at which point what you are left with is all pretty trivial anyway. 

[OZ]

Yes. If the story centers around taking down a bad guy, then most of the dialogue is going to be about the bad guy. Any that isn't is probably going to end up on the cutting room floor. If the main character is male then he's going to be involved in most of the conversations. If he's just standing watching two women talk about some random subject it is going to be

a) a little strange (why doesn't he join in the conversation) and

b) probably superfluous and again will end up on the cutting room floor.

Now I am certainly not saying that this is true of all movies. If the movie is about a family then the mother talking to another woman (or her daughter if she has one ) would make perfect sense. If there is a female villain it makes great sense for two female cops,reporters,lab techs, etc. to be discussing how to catch her. If the driving plot of the movie does not involve a human villain but rather deals with survival from nature or aliens or the supernatural or whatever then it would make much more sense to have two female characters discussing the problem.

[knnn]

To make a fair benchmark, you need to first consider the ratio of non-protagonist male/female characters.  If the ratio is fair, then given the we assume two random characters are speaking to each other the chance of them being both female is (f/(f+m))^2. 

Thus, if the males outnumber the females by merely 2:1 (IMHO quite reasonable for things like police/army and probably *much* worse for action flicks), then we'd expect female-female conversation to take up only 11% of the dialogue.  Given that movies have a limited time frame, I don't expect the characters to be doing small talk unless it is germane to plot of the story.  If they are talking, they can either be talking about other characters (random 2:1 it is about a male character), or some plot device.  Assume 50-50 (at best), giving us around 7% "Bechdel worthy".

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

(Of course, that brings up the question of whether all non-plot-essential dialogue should be edited out anyway...one can make a pretty good case either way.)

I do think dialogue does other things as well, like characterisation and world-building, and while ideally as much of it as possible will do more than one of those things, if you cut everything that's not doing lots of things at once you end up with "The Waste Land" or "Four Quartets", which are awesome things to have, but not novels.

[knnn]

I do think dialogue does other things as well, like characterisation and world-building, and while ideally as much of it as possible will do more than one of those things, if you cut everything that's not doing lots of things at once you end up with "The Waste Land" or "Four Quartets", which are awesome things to have, but not novels.

I would argue that world-building dialogue is more relevant to novels.  Right or wrong, "Show don't Tell" for movies usually means that you substitute dialog for a spectacle.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Thus, if the males outnumber the females by merely 2:1 (IMHO quite reasonable for things like police/army and probably *much* worse for action flicks), then we'd expect female-female conversation to take up only 11% of the dialogue.

The question would be whether that in and of itself is, if not problematic per se, at very least something worth indicating one is aware of, though.

[OZ]

I was speaking mostly of movies. Novels are of course a different story.      In a novel, a little extra dialogue may help with characterization. Even there though too much extra dialogue can bog things down and there would still need to be a good reason for the main character not to be entering into the conversation if it's a 1st person POV with a male main character. I was talking about movies however where in many cases everything has to fit and extra dialogue gets removed. (Even worse a full 60 seconds of dialogue like the woman in the youtube clip advocates.)

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

(Even worse a full 60 seconds of dialogue like the woman in the youtube clip advocates.)

meep.  if you were to take random 60-second samples of the dialogues I engage in with my friends and my professional peers alike, a very significant fraction of them, you/d not fit a single sentence into.

[knnn]

The question would be whether that in and of itself is, if not problematic per se, at very least something worth indicating one is aware of, though.

I suppose. 

Thing is, if you are trying to portray "real life", then the male:female ratio is a number that is not really under your control.  Given that an action movie will probably feature male-dominated positions, take a look at these male/female ratios:

USMC - 7:1
US Army - 6:1
USN - 6:1
USAF - 5:1
Police force - 7:1
Firefighters - 20:1
Truck Drivers - 17:1

...
(taken from Google-fu, don't necessarily take these numbers as 100% correct)
...

So if you are portraying a "realistic" police station, the total number of female-female dialogues about anything should be less than 2%.  If they are talking about a random colleague, then 84% of the time it will be about a male. 

Given the above numbers, it seems to me that shows like Castle/CSI/NCIS are already massively skewed in the female direction (3:1 for CSI, 1:1 for Castle, 3:2 for Leverage, etc.)

[Quantus]

To be clear I dont think the Goal of the test, to draw attention to gender inequality or flat female characters, is not a worthy and important thing, just that the implementation of the specific measuring standard is very effective in its implementation.  As Knnn notes, there are a number of vocations that are realistically going to be dominated by one gender or another.  In a historical fiction it would likely be worse, but if we are talking about a Futuristic/Fantasy setting, you may then have the freedom to wave a wand and make all gender inequality go away. 

I would say that other paths to the same goal would be to over-exaggerate the gender inequality, have one or more character comment on the one-dimensionality of the character, or even simply swap the gender roles.  I read a book that was a medieval society, but dominated by the magically superior women, instead of physically dominant Men.  So the women engaged in politics, while the men spent their days embroidering pillows.  I cant say for certain whether any two men had any conversations that were not about a woman.