The Bechdel test began as a joke in a comic strip
Three simple questions about a film started life in 1985, and the woman who thought of them wasn’t Alison Bechdel.
Here is a surprisingly useful question to ask about almost any film: do two women, who have names, talk to each other about something other than a man?
That is the whole Bechdel test. It is named after the cartoonist Alison Bechdel, but she is quick to say the idea was not hers.
A joke in an alternative newspaper
The test appears in a 1985 episode of her long-running strip Dykes to Watch Out For, titled “The Rule”. One character explains that she will only see a film if it has at least two women in it, who talk to each other, about something besides a man. Bechdel has described it as a little joke in an alternative feminist paper, and credits her friend Liz Wallace, which is why she has said she would rather it were called the Bechdel–Wallace test.
Bechdel has also said she believes Wallace may have been inspired by Virginia Woolf, who noted in A Room of One’s Own how rarely women in fiction are shown as friends. That link is a reasonable reading rather than a documented fact.
What it does, and doesn’t, tell you
The test took off decades later, in the 2000s, and some Swedish cinemas and a TV channel even used it in their ratings in 2013. Its strength is that it is simple and easy to check. Its weakness is exactly the same.
- It is a low bar. Many films pass while giving women very little to do.
- It is not a quality score. Plenty of fine films fail, and some films centred on a single woman fail by design.
- It measures a pattern, not a verdict. Asked about thousands of films, it shows how rarely women’s conversations get screen time.
Bechdel herself treats it as light social commentary, not a scientific standard. That is the generous way to use it too: as a curious lens that makes a favourite film look new, not as a stick to beat anyone with.
Bring it up
“The Bechdel test started as a joke in a 1985 comic strip, and Alison Bechdel herself says it should really be called the Bechdel–Wallace test.”
Follow the thread
- RelatedThe same face, three different emotions Both show how much of a film’s meaning comes from what the camera chooses to put in front of us.
- RelatedThe scream that has been in hundreds of films Another small, checkable pattern that, once you know it, you can’t stop noticing in films.
- Same patternOnce you notice something, it’s everywhere Once you know the test you start seeing it everywhere, much like noticing a newly learned word.
