Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and that makes this Stuff you Should Know.
The podcast that's right movie Crush adjacent. Today. I put this one together in big thanks to Mark Mancini of HowStuffWorks dot com. A great article in Vogue from Ridka Seth, really good article from a guy named Douglas Lamon from Collider and also Collider from Thomas Butt and the Mary Sue,
Danielle Baranda, all good stuff about the Bechdel Test. And we would be remiss if we didn't mention right out at the gate that on our own iHeart Network, we have a great podcast called The bech Del Cast that's been around for a long time now, They've been with us for years. Yeah, and this is hosted by Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus and it talks all about movies kind of through the lens of the Bechdel Test or the Bechdel problem.
Yes, and you can get that wherever you get podcasts.
Very well done.
So what are we talking about, Chuck? I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who know all about this still interesting. There's other people who maybe heard of it but don't quite know what it has to do. Maybe they're confusing it with a litmus test. And then other people are like, I've never heard those two words together in my life.
Well, maybe I think it might be fun if we just sort of work through the Casablanca example, okay, and illustrate it and then give sort of the definition. Does that work for you?
It works for me. I just have to find that.
Page, okay, Can I start while you look?
Sure?
So, the movie Casablanca, one of the all time greats, is on the AFI one hundred years one hundred movie quotes list, with six different quote in trees, making it the most, you know, the most number of quotes from a single movie on that list. And I still have not seen all of Casablanca. I watched a lot of it not too long ago. Didn't finish it. Oh yeah, I meant too. It wouldn't because I didn't like it.
But I will say this, and I know we talked about it right after I saw it some but I thought it was good, but I wasn't like, oh my god, this is the best thing I've ever seen.
Okay, yeah, I vaguely remember talking.
Yeah, like plenty of movies from that era. I like much more. But I even know here's looking at you, kid, Louis. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Will always have paris of all of the gin joints in all the small towns, or all the towns in all the world. She walks into mind like, these are all just in the sort of if you'd like movies, you've probably heard these, even if you haven't seen the movie.
Yes, But as a little aside, no one actually says play it again, Sam in that movie. Nope, they say play it Sam, or play say play as time goes by a couple of other variations, but no one says play it again, Sam.
They don't say that.
The thing is the reason we're talking about this and how it relates to the Bechdel test is that Casablanca. It's a great movie. There's a lot of great lines in it. Some of them are uttered by Lauren Bacall, but none of them are between two women. If Lauren Becall's character ils Lund is speaking them, she's speaking them to a man, and then all the other men are speaking to other men or to Ilsei Lund. There's no woman to woman conversation in Casablanca, which you might say, like, so, well,
actually there's a big fat explanation to that. So we're gonna dive feet first into it. So open up patriarchy because we're coming in.
A quick statistic for you just to sort of illustrate part of the problem is usc Annberg Annaberg Annenberg. I knew i'd get there. Their Inclusion Initiative did a study and there were a think tank that looks at diversity in arts, and they saw that just thirty three point one percent of speaking roles period in the top one hundred grossing movies of twenty eighteen, and that was, you know, thirty three percent, like seventy or sixty oh gosh, help
me out. Sixty seven percent of speaking roles in the one hundred grossing films were men.
Yes, that was a big increase though from two thousand and seven, where twenty nine point nine percent went to women.
Yeah, facetious, about three percent ish.
And one of the reasons I saw is that that the majority of supporting roles, especially like one scene like speaking part just a bit part, just kind of like very quick roles, those are almost always are very typically filled by men. Right. I saw it described as does your protagonist report a crime to a CoP's probably a man. Do they get stitched up? Doctor's probably a man. The President's probably a man, and the soldiers that he commands
are likely men too. And that's really true. And I was reading an interview with a person named Kate Hagen, who is the director of community at the Blacklist, which is a place where if you're a screenwriter you can submit your stuff for like really good feedback, I believe.
Well, you know the Blacklist is it's a list of the best screenplays in Hollywood that didn't get produced.
Oh I didn't know that. I thought it was like a kind of a work shopping website.
Well, they may have, like you know, made it into something, but the Blacklist is like, you're the ten best scripts that didn't get made into features.
Oh that's cool, Okay. Well, she's the director of community there and she's like, once you see this, you can never unsee it. And she also points out that it's not just bit parts going to men, but crowd scenes are very typically mostly men and mostly white men, which in some way cases like if the thing's set in rural Iowa at a men's club, sure that would make sense. But if it's like New York City, that doesn't really
make sense. And the thing is chuck. It's so common that it's just really easy to look right past and not really think about. But what Kate Hagen is saying is like, once you do start to notice it, you're getting to notice it from that point on.
Yeah, for sure. All right, So all that was a nice little build up to what is the title of this podcast, which is the Bechdel Test, named after a graphic novelist named Alison Bechdell who had this long running comic strip called Dykes to Watch out For and in one of the entries in nineteen eighty five, so this is a long time ago, it was called the Rule and then subtitled with Thanks to Liz Wallace. And in one of those panel In one of those panels, one
of the characters says, I have this rule. See, I only go to a movie if it satisfies three basic requirements. One it has to have at least two women in it who too talk to each other about three something besides a man. And that was in this cartoon sort of lived quietly for many years, and then in the two thousands it really got spread around the internet, especially in feminist communities online, especially in film websites for film
buffs and stuff like that, and it became known. Even though Alison Bechdeal likes to credit her friend Liz Wallace by calling the Bechdel Wallace Test, more people know it as the Bechdel Test.
Right, and actually, later on, in a blog post from twenty thirteen, Alison Bechdel said, you know, I think my friend Liz Wallace actually might have gotten the idea from Virginia Woolf, who wrote, quote, all these relationships between women, I thought, rapidly recalling the splendid gallery of fictitious women, are too simple, And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are
represented as friends. Almost without exception, they are shown in their relation to men, and that really is kind of the basis of the Backfelt Test. It's kind of a little more refined and a little more stripped down, but the idea is that women characters typically are there to support the men, or are deferential to the men, or are subservient to men. In some way, shape or form, even movies that feature like a female protagonist.
Yeah, and we'll get to a couple of those in a minute. But if it wasn't clear enough from that comic strip, the very three basic rules are, it has to contain and this is whether or not it passes or fails. It's a past fail thing. Two female characters. And then later on it was added that they should be you know, named characters and not just like and we breeze by two women talking in a cafeteria. Briefly,
that's rule number one. Rule number two is the characters have to talk to each other and just each other in a scene, and that their conversation has to be it can be about anything on planet Earth, except for a conversation about a man or a group of men.
Even beyond planet Earth. They want to talk about galaxies that would count. Galaxies, you know, talk about the Big Bang that would count too.
It seems so easy and it's so amazing, And we'll get to statistics that so many films sorry, flunk this test.
Right, that's the point, Like, it's it sounds really easy, but it's not. It's extraordinarily hard for Hollywood. It turns out yeah, and I think, Chuck, this is a pretty good place maybe for our first ad break.
What do you think I say toats.
Learn and stuff with Joshua job stuff? You shine up? All right, So, now that we've explained what the Bechdel test is, I think it's a good time to say that we're totally aware of the irony of a podcast that doesn't pass the Bechdel test talking about the Bechdel test. But I hope you guys have been listening to us strong enough to not rake us over the calls for it.
Well, you can't do that to a podcast.
Though, I think you can in some way, shape or form. There's some sort of Bechtel tests that you could apply to podcasts, for sure.
So then every podcast hosted by one or two people that are guys fail to test.
Well, we'll get into that, Chuck, because a lot of people say the Bechtel test is great in theory, but it really kind of doesn't make sense sometimes.
Yeah, all right, Well, let's go back in time, at least to the studio era where not a lot of films were passing the Bechdel test. We talked about Casablanca. Of course, huge movies like Citizen Kane did not pass the Bechdel test. And a lot of movies, as you might expect from the you know, the thirties and forties, may not pass this test because movies have gotten more inclusive, more progressive, and stuff like that over time in general. But this is not like a problem from the bygone era.
AFI did a separate list one hundred movies American movies that is a release from nineteen sixteen to two thousand and one. That's a lot of movies, and seventy of I'm sorry, seventy of those one hundred, which is almost said, seventy percent, it is seventy percent failed the Bechdel test. Only thirty percent of the top one hundred movies through two thousand and one passed.
Yeah, and it kept going even beyond that though. I think that one of the examples they give is Thor colin Ragnarok, which is from twenty seventeen. It has a female villain, a female superhero, so you've got a hera in Valkyrie. I think it's directed by tai Ka Ytt, and it still fills the Bechdel test.
Yeah.
I mean, if it was ever set up for success, that movie was set up for success, and it still didn't pass the Bechdel test because Hara and Valkyrie never speak to one another in that movie.
Yeah, here's another study, and this is from twenty eighteen when they looked at so you know, you wonder about, like, what about quality films? I get it if you know, if some of these dumb, stupid, big action blockbusters may not be as advanced or progressive, but surely these Oscar winners for Best Picture are in. The twenty eighteen study from BBC found that less than half of Best Picture winners past the Bechtel test, and since twenty eighteen they've
done much better. There have been six films since then. In five of the six passed it. So Nomadland, Coda, Everything That, Everywhere, All at Once, and Parasite and The Shape of Water all passed and only Green Book failed.
Tiss green Book, But also that's just Best Picture. The nominees did a little a little worse in twenty twenty. The Irishman nineteen seventeen and four versus Ferrari didn't come close to passing. Joker Marriage Story and Once upon a Time in Hollywood, which, by the way, Joker, dude, that was such a terrible movie. Did you see it?
I did.
I hated that movie.
You did?
I did? And I'm sorry anybody out there who yums it, I'm yucking it. I'm sorry about that.
Now we covered this at your personal opinion.
Once upon a time in Hollywood, you can make some arguments. Each one has something that's like, well, yeah, that kind of is, and then somebody can say, well, it's not really, and then Little Women, Jojo, Rabbit, and Parasite all are definitely past the Bechdel test.
Yeah, I mean there can be, and there often are, and I think it's meant to be debated. It's it can be as cut and dry as like, literally, do any two women speak right? Because people will say like, well, there's that one scene where those two even though they're named characters, it was super fast. Like I think that the spirit of it is have a real sort of conversation of substance, even though and again this is it's a it's an online sort of movie test thing for
people to argue over to a certain degree. Sure, so well what we'll get, like you said, we'll get into the ins and outs of it. And I know I'll started to get into that again.
So one really roundly man. My brain just fell out of my ear about ten minutes ago, I think, yeah, yeah, one widely sighted movie that kind of shows like the Bechdel Test is not all encompassing. Is Jackie Brown?
Yeah?
Was that? Did Tarantino wreck that?
Okay? Great? Great movie?
It is a great movie. Well, it was adapted from Leonard Elmore? Right?
Yeah?
Okay? Or Elmore Leonard? It was adapted from Leonard Kamma Elmore. I mean, do you know how many people just went yeah, I know, I know, coolier jets everybody. So Jackie Brown has Pam Greer in it as the lead Jackie Brown, and the whole movie, right, Comma, Pam, don't forget the comma.
Yeah, it's like the New Colon.
But she plays Jackie Brown and Jackie Brown. The whole movie is about Jackie Brown just being this ba who I can't remember. She's like setting up this whole I think an arm steal or something to help somebody get out of something. Is that right? I haven't seen it in years.
Let's just say she's always one step ahead of the man in the movie, right, So she's smarting them at every turn.
Yeah, to use a very tired phrase. She's a she's a feminist icon in this movie, and yet throughout this whole movie, she never once has a conversation with another woman. So technically it fails the Bechdel test, although anybody who has any kind of feminist tendencies and watch Jackie Brown probably is very happy with that movie, including Alison Bechdel as well, who said, like, I love that movie, but it definitely fails a Bechdel test, but it's still a
really great movie. And that's something really like too important to remember is just because a movie fails the Bechdel test doesn't make it a bad movie. And just because a movie passes a Bechdel test certainly doesn't make it like a feminist icon type movie.
Yeah, for sure. I mean there have been movies that pass that you might be very surprised, like Goodfellas. That one is another debatable one, but technically that passes the Bechdel test, even though you're probably like, who else besides Lorraine Breco was even in Good Fellas as far as
women go, But there are a few. And there's the one scene where all the mob wives get together and they're having conversations with one another and they are named, but again, it's still not like these great substantial conversations.
Can I throw at another couple surprising examples? Sure, American Pie two Yeah, Show Girls passes. And then my favorite example is Weird Science, where two horny teenage boys make a beautiful woman, literally objectify a woman, and yet two girls have a conversation about how beautiful that woman is, so it passes the Bechdel test.
In some movies that are surprising that failed, Avatar James Cameron's first dive into whatever that world is. What's it called?
I don't know. I still haven't seen.
Oh I even saw the new one, even though I kind of bag on this movie CGI world. One thing to remember about Avatar is that it had a couple of really strong female leads. It was zoe's Aldona's character and of course Sigourney Weaver's character, and James Cameron historically writes strong female leads from the Terminator to the Abyss, and you know, he just says a strong history of working with strong female leads, and that certainly was a case in Avatar. But Zoe Seldona and Sigourney Weaver don't
talk to each other. Pandora that's it on Pandora. Yeah, that's the name of the world. And there are some women kind of here and there talking to each other, but it sort of falls in the category of like they're not named characters.
Yeah, another handful of examples that don't pass, but really are still you know, they have very strong female characters and well defined ones La La Land. Oh yeah, Arrival. I think that's Amy Adams, right, yeah, great movie. Yeah, it really is. Girl with the Dragon tattoo. Gravity didn't talk to anyone though, No, that's true, but Gravity. Yeah, that whole movie is just basically Sandra Bullock trying to
figure out what the heck to do in space. Yeah, and the reason why is like that it doesn't pass the Bechdel test because there's basically no other female characters. But there's almost no other characters at all anyway.
Yeah, just Clooney basically.
Yeah. So it's not exactly like a perfect measure, but the point is is to say, like, again, this is a really low barrow we're setting here, and yet most movies don't pass this test, So what are we doing here? Everybody? That's really ultimately the point and purpose of the Bechdel test.
Yeah, can I name a couple of others?
Oh yeah, this is one of the fun parts for sure, since.
We're just naming movies. A movie that passed two movies that pass one is Hitchcock's Rear Window. Hitchcock, on the other hand, of James Cameron, is known for having very problematic relationships with his leading ladies off screen. Oh yeah, that you know, border well on that border on, that delve into psychological abuse of these women, you know, to try and get a performance out of them. He has has cast a lot of female leads, but I wouldn't necessarily say that he has ever been known as like
a feminist filmmaker. But Rear Window has a pretty good like subplot of Grace Kelly's character Lisa and Thelma Ritter Ridder's character Stella, who's the nurse to Jimmy Stewart, sort
of getting together to investigate this crime. You know. The whole premise of Rear Window is that they have witnessed a crime out of the window looking into another window of these like New York apartments where you can kind of everyone sees each other all the time, right, and so they kind of team up as investigators, which you know, wasn't the most common thing back then.
No, And I think that's another thing that the Bechdel Test reminds us is that things are more complicated and nuanced and layered than something like past fail pro feminist anti feminists like things. Things are often a lot more wrapped up in a lot more wax than it appears
on the surface. And also, I think one of the other things that reminds us is like, just say, because of the person Alfred Hitchcock was off screen, doesn't mean that the movies that he made didn't have strong female characters and can't be enjoyed for that reason too, you know. And also I want to go on record, I'm just going to put myself out there. Weird Science is a great movie.
I haven't seen in a long time. I loved it back then.
I saw a couple of years and it's I think better now than it was when I was a kid.
What was that weird deal in that movie? Though? Where the uh the guy from the Hills have Eyes and the bikers crashed that party.
I think they they left the little thing that brings whatever they want to life. I think on some mad or something like that, or maybe on the movie.
So that was explain Yeah, I think I just don't remember that.
It's not explained. They just show what's happening and then those guys show up and I don't remember where they came from. But it wasn't just out of.
The blue, all right, I think I kind of remember that. Now. Now do you like the movie? It's perfect? Well. I had had a big thing for.
Kelly Lebron.
Kelly Lebron, dude, did not. I mean if you're if you were a boy in the eighties, and I'm sure plenty of girls in the eighties and you saw Weird Science and the Woman in Red, the great Gene Wilder movie, then you probably had a thing for Kelly Lebron.
Yes, agreed.
The other movie I wanted to mention that passed that is, I guess sort of surprising is Guardians of the Galaxy. Because Marvel has sort of long been known in the Marvel or rather the Marvel cinematic universe, as not really being super inclusive as far as women go. It's gotten better in recent years. There are plenty of Marvel characters from the comics that were overlooked when it came movie making time, but they have since like kind of been
working those into the rotation. But and Guardians, the first Guardians, and I think one of the most sort of complex relationship arcs in any of the MCU is between Gomora and Nebula for sure, really rich, good emotional character arcs and interactions for them.
I have no idea what you're just talking about, but I'll take it on face that you know what you're saying I do.
And it's I'm not going to ruin in case anyone hasn't seen those, but the basis for the emotion of their relationship. But it's real stuff.
Okay, great, I've even seeing Guardians of the Galaxy and I still have no idea what you're talking about. But again, way to go, Chuck, I say, Also, what do you think about taking a second break?
Yeah? Why not?
Why not.
Learn and stuff with Joshua John stuff fu, shine up.
Josh Sis.
All Right, So now we're kind of done just talking about movies and whether or not they passed or failed.
Yah, let's talk about the background, the backdrop, the context.
Yeah, and whether or not it's an outdated test and are there better ways to go about this. There have been people that have written about sort of the time period in nineteen eighty five when the Bechdel test was invented in this cartoon, and nineteen eighty five wasn't the most feminist pro woman time in the United States history. At some point, we're going to do podcast on feminism in general in the different waves. But it just kind of ebbed and flowed over the years as far as
its popularity and just visibility in the zeitgeist. And the seventies was a time where it was kind of happening feminist wise. There were a long list of really good female centric movie dramas that were made, and that was not the case in nineteen eighty five at all.
I take issue with that. You've got nine to five from the early eighties.
There's one Working.
Girl with Melanie Griffith in like eighty eight two, Diane Keaton Baby Boom, and like maybe eighty six, eighty seven three. I could go on. That's just literally off the top of my head. It's not like I researched like feminists or strong female lead movies in the eighties. I like, that's off the top of my head, all right, So
I disagree. I get that, like that's the that's the way it's thought of is like, yes, it was much stronger in the seventies, and yes they probably were a little more, had a little more depth, but that's just because everybody was on so much cocaine in the eighties. No one had any depth than that.
Decade, more depth than Baby Boom.
That was a good movie.
Oh like Baby Boom. I love Dyane Keith oh Man.
How could you not?
But the point is, except for you, most people agree that the mid eighties wasn't you know, high time for women in film, and so that's when the test was created.
So kind of keep that in mind. And you know, like you mentioned the past fail thing, there have been plenty of people that said, you know, there are all kinds of other issues with women in film that have real meat on the bone that we should really look at then whether or not, you know, there was just a scene with two women talking to each other, right, not about men. There was this one writer, what is
her name? It is Martha Lausen from San Diego State University's Center for the Study of Women in Television Film, in an article called Moving Beyond the Bechtel Test, where she basically says like uses gravity as an example and saying, you know, a movie like that fails because you know, she didn't talk to other women in the movie. But American Hustle Will Pass, which has very sexualized portrayals of women,
And she's right about all this. The only thing that I will say is that to me, I think she diminishes a little bit the value of just sort of how a test like this can be become really popular and get the conversation going.
Yeah, I was surprised that she was taking shots at it. She's saying, like the test that's the lowest possible bar for assessing the quality of portrayals of female characters. It does the point. Yeah, it's exactly saying like here, everybody like you can anybody can step over this, and yet everybody can keeps tripping up on it. And then yeah, I think that's a really great point. Like we're we
have a we're releasing an episode on this. Without the Bechdel Test, I'm not sure we would have found some entry point into this. You know, we might not have been thinking about it in any real way at least me. I don't know about you, but like I have never really noticed crowd scenes like that before, or that the
doctor is always a guy. And now that this that I've heard of this and done this research and talk to you about this, I'm fully aware of it and I can't wait to see my next crowd scene in a movie, and I can be like, oh, man, what is this crud?
What is that a Rush concert?
So, yeah, man, that is so true, and yeah, Rush is a great band.
Well, you know, to me, the idea is that it's a conversation starter, and then it leads to the conversation of like, hey, maybe let's look at how women are really portrayed in a movie. Let's look at the fact that, you know, scenes of sexual assa are just and it's getting better, but like historically, we're just sort of routinely tossed in there as plot devices or like, you know, Lloyd Dobbler standing outside of ione Sky's window with a boombox after he's been told to leave is stalking, right.
I know, it's a romantic comedy and that's people might say, like, oh, don't take it that seriously, but stalking historically in movies is portrayed as like, you know, the guy that just won't say no because it's so romantic.
Right, It's true and then also like in the actual like casting of older women, that it gets harder and harder after a certain age to like get work.
And then it's like older than thirty one.
Right, And if you do get work, it's very stereotypical work. You're probably tired or beat or maybe bitter from having been left by her husband. There's a lot to be left to be desired with how women are portrayed and treated in Hollywood. And so to just raise everyone's consciousness about this, that's it's it's a great tool for that. There's one other thing, Chuck, that I ran across in this research that I wasn't aware of before. Geena Davis, who I thought was one of the most charming people
I've ever met. I actually haven't met her. I don't know why.
I just said that one of the most right.
And it's funny, like if you go back and look at the fly and then you just watch like interviews with Jeff Goldbloom and you watch interviews with Geena Davis, they're the same person, one in the same They're like two sides of the same coin. It's very interesting to see, what do you mean they they talk the same way, they behave the same way, they think, the same way. They really yes, they're very similar personality wise, interesting, very clever,
very smart, very funny, very self deprecating. She yes, she is.
So.
I was watching a talk that she gave at Rutgers in twenty twelve that I was tipped off to by Kate Hagen in a five thirty eight article I mentioned Davis. No the opposite. Oh, okay, she found it. She founded a study or an institute that studies gender and media, and she's walking around like telling people like hey, and talking to producers like she's she's going to the source and saying like have you ever noticed like all doctors
are men? Or my institute did a study and of the six thousand films that were released between two thousand and six and two thousand and nine, not a single one of them showed a woman in any actual like position of power, like a president or something like that. Like, she founded an institute that studies this and then is actually trying to do something about it. So it's a pretty charming talk. It's only like a half hour long, but it's it's I can't remember, just look up Geena Davis, Rutgers,
twenty twelve, and you'll see it. But she really points out some really surprising stuff. So she's out there pointing this out too and studying it. And like, I think, the more you can come up with like statistics, right, the more you can convince people to kind of open their eyes. And the more they open their eyes, the more you just again, like k Hagen said, you can't unsee it.
Yeah, boy, I'm glad it went that way. The way you set it up, it sounded like you were like, Geena Davis was someone I thought I loved until.
No, you thought you loved her, and even more now she.
Was on our buddy Jesse Thorn had her on his great interview show Bullseye with Jesse Thorn, and he said that asked her was like, oh man, what was Geena Davis like? And he said she was like the coolest aunt you've ever had, And he said the whole office was just like in love with Geena Davis by the end of the day.
Yeah, you told them, and I have to follow it up every time I've heard that she bakes cookies and brings them to meetings.
Wow, is there anything she can't do?
I don't think so.
So in twenty seventeen, there was so you know, basically, the idea of like should we come up with something better than the Bechtel test has come up plenty of times. In twenty seventeen, five point thirty eight, the website had a campaign where they said, maybe let's try and come up with something new. Let's get a dozen women in
the industry in here to talk about this stuff. And some of the things that are said, like are surprising, but it's like, really, is it that hard to cast a movie, for instance, where there is a black woman who is the lead in a movie, that has a position of power in the movie and that has a healthy relationship. And this is what Emmy winner. She's a writer named Lena waithe said, can like we just do that? Another actor named Rory Uphold said, you know what about
these film crews? Can we have film crews that are fifty percent women? That's a lot tougher, I think you and I've been on film cruise. Film cruise historically.
There's sausage parties.
Well, there are departments that are just sort of historically one or the other, Like you know, hair and makeup is almost always women. A script supervisor for some reasons always one.
Yeah, you know who established that hitchcock?
Yeah? Probably? So what else? Casting is usually women are casting directors, which is interesting. There's a lot of departments that are sort of split, like the art department. A lot of times you'll have men and women camera department more and more it used to be very historically male, but a lot more women in the camera department now in production departments, and then you have like the grip and electric departments transportation that are ninety five percent men.
Every once in a while, I would work with a woman that was like a grip or a key grip or a gaffer or something, and it was always like, oh wow, that's super awesome. And it was like super noticeable, that's how rare it was. And it's just, you know, it's interesting when I thought about this one specifically, like fifty percent women on film crew. It's sort of that problem of like you can't get the job unless you have the experience, and you can't get the experience unless you have the job.
Yeah, that's a terrible catch. Twenty two.
It's a terrible one.
I saw that five point thirty eight article and they basically took the dozen plus women their suggestions and they could break them down into four categories. Behind the camera, which is what you were just talking about, intersectional, which is saying like a black woman protagonist, or the protagonists themselves, they just having a woman protagonist, and then the supporting cast things like the doctor being a woman or the
president being a woman. And some passed more than others, but the one that did the most dismally was behind the camera.
Oh sure, like in the actual act.
Of making movies. It is. It's just not they're just women are not well represented at least right now. But I think the fact that we're talking about it, things change when people talk about stuff, you know.
Yeah, and it has been changing on film crews, you know, little by little, especially in more recent years. You see more women directing movies than ever before. Still percentage wise, way low, obviously, but it is getting better.
And when that happens, when women direct movies, they found that female speaking characters jumped to forty seven point six percent, up from thirty three point one percent for alls overall.
Yeah. Yeah. There are some more tests that have popped up online that are Some of these are just kind of fun and funny. The Maco Moriy test from Pacific Rim. One of the characters in Pacific Rim is all films have at least one female character who has her own narrative arc and doesn't exist only to support a man's story, So that one's just a little more robust. I think the cut and dryness of Bechtel, And then I thought
the sexy lamp test was very funny. This is from a writer named Kelly Sue Deaconic and said if you can, if you can remove a female character from your plot and replace her with a sexy lamp and your story still works, then you're a hack.
It's pretty great.
I love that one.
So there are some things that you can do if you want to kind of help move this along, and one is vote with your feet where if you are, if you're a woman or a man and you're concerned by this kind of thing, and just don't go see movies that don't pass some tests that's important to you, whether it's a Bechdel test or something else. Hollywood will get the point very quickly in that respect. And then apparently in some movie theaters in Sweden they actually assign
ratings to films based on gender bias. If it has an a it means that it passed the Bechdel test at least. And I think that's good. I think that's very cool that the idea of like kind of plucking women out of this bizarre non person status that they often find themselves in in movies or they're meant to like move the plot along for or the man or something like that. Like, how could we not benefit from that? It just make everything a lot richer. It make movies a lot richer too.
Yeah, I mean, I mean one of the great things about movies has seen perspectives of people that aren't like you right exactly, you know, But it's.
Just trying it out too, in the privacy of your own home, so you can try it on for size and see if you like it without making a commitment. That's the great thing about it.
I did mention that, you know, there are more women directing movies these days than ever before, which is true. But here's some some final statistics for you, again from the us c's and Enburg Report, and this one was from twenty twenty three, talking about twenty twenty two, and out of the one hundred highest grossing movies of twenty twenty to nine percent were directed by women and two point seven percent by women of color. And this is
you know, this has changed some over the years. I think there was one statistic that showed one hundred percent increase from twenty five years ago, but it's still less than a fifth of the biggest movies are directed by women.
And you know, the Bechdel test is, if you apply this to independent film, then numbers skewed pretty differently because independent film is where you're going to find more quality scenes of dialogue between women, and in fact, a lot of independent films are all about that, and a lot of independent films are directed by women. So this is sort of the big Hollywood movies that we're mainly talking about.
Right, Yeah, which makes one more point to make two. That makes a huge difference because those are the movies that most people see. And if you're raising kids on this unconscious idea that doctors are men, presidents are men, soldiers are men, then that's what they expect reality to be too, and that makes reality that way. It's it's life imitating art, but in a really negative way.
Yeah, and for better conversations in this, go check out the bech Del cast. Yes, well, put chuck, It's great and by the way, we should just mention that we don't have to get into it. But TV historically and still has always done a much better job at this kind of thing than movies.
Yeah, have you seen One Day at a Time.
There's been a lot of great TV shows from back then that were, you know, very female centric. You got Alice, Got Alice.
That's it, Alice in One Day at a Time Carol Burnett's show.
Oh, she's great.
Well, since Chuck just sighed heavily, it shows that he's ready to be done, which means that it's time for listener mail.
That was a wistful Carol Burnett's side.
Okay, good, Thanks for specifying.
So in lieu of listener Male today because we have a bunch of people that write in. We just want to acknowledge the passing of Gordon Lightfoot. Oh nice work, Chuck passed away. Got the news today actually on recording day ironically, just what five days before we're going to be performing in Canada at wouldn't it Gordon Lightfoot's home theater.
Yes, Massey Hall is his home away from home.
That's right, So I knew. I still don't like the song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. But Gordon Lightfoot certainly meant a lot to a lot of people, certainly a lot of Canadians, and we didn't want to let this let this one go without saying rest in peace, Concer.
Rest in peace, Gordon Lightfoot. Very nice, Chuck. I think that's a great stand in for a listener mail.
Great.
Do you want to send us a listener mail? We'd love to hear from you. You can send it via email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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