I'm going to tell you a secret. Are you ready? Okay:
The Bechdel Test is meaningless, an arbitrary benchmark set without much forethought. If a female character contains one line of dialogue even as a throwaway line to another female character, the movie passes the test. In addition, a movie set in a way that requires an all-male cast (such as a prison movie) automatically fails the test, but are you gonna be the one to tell Shawshank Redemption or Saving Private Ryan that they lack meaning or depth? Now flip that last bit around: a movie set entirely in a women's prison would inevitably pass the test by default, but it would do so in a way that rings hollow.
TL;DR: I mean, fuck, Sister Act passes while Alien 3 fails? What is that all about?
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Date: 2010-10-27 02:15 pm (UTC)From:The Bechdel Test is meaningless, an arbitrary benchmark set without much forethought. If a female character contains one line of dialogue even as a throwaway line to another female character, the movie passes the test. In addition, a movie set in a way that requires an all-male cast (such as a prison movie) automatically fails the test, but are you gonna be the one to tell Shawshank Redemption or Saving Private Ryan that they lack meaning or depth? Now flip that last bit around: a movie set entirely in a women's prison would inevitably pass the test by default, but it would do so in a way that rings hollow.
TL;DR: I mean, fuck, Sister Act passes while Alien 3 fails? What is that all about?