Since NPR dredged this strip up in "All Things Considered" in September, people have been talking about whether it's still so difficult to find movies/TV shows that fulfill the Bechdel Rule. I'd say that most TV shows meet the qualifications, mostly because they just have a lot more screen time in which to do so (although Sex and the City is, surprisingly, borderline). But movies--that's a little more difficult. For the sake of curiousity, my roommate Danielle and I went through our DVD collections (somewhere in the range
of 150 movies combined).1) Fried Green Tomatoes
2) Steel Magnolias
3) Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
4) Divine Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood
5) Now and Then
6) Girl Interrupted
7) Chicago
8) Mean Girls
9) Iron-Jawed Angels
So, that's a grand total of 9 that meet fulfill "The Rule." (Plus two that were debatable--9 to 5 and The Matrix--because women talk to each other about men, but not in romantic ways.) And this is from the movie collections of two feminists! Of those 9, we've got 5 stereotypical chick flicks, 2 movies about women who are criminal/crazy, 1 about girls being mean to each other, and... okay, 1 about the suffrage movement. Conspicuously missing (and yes, I do own a fair amount of films in these genres): action films, sci fi/fantasy, indie movies, Disney...
Of course, this isn't the only thing to think about when looking at movies--there are a lot of other films that I like, and some on that short list that I'm not too fond of. And certainly, the pool of acceptable movies would get considerably smaller if, for example, we limited it to two women of color talking to each other about something besides a man. But it's definitely something to think about in terms of media representation of women.
Not to mention that all this seems a whole lot more like a conscious choice to marginalize women in movies in light of incidents like the president of Warner Bros. declaring last year that he wouldn't even look at scripts with women in the lead role. Seriously?
1 comment:
Okay, first of all, we both know that I could easily list a slew movies that fulfill those three conditions, but we also both know that that would entirely miss the point, since regardless of the number of examples provided it still would not contradict the clear fact that such movies are a severe minority, especially recently.
However, a point you completely fail to acknowledge is the complete converse of your opinion - say, for example, I refuse to see any movies except those that meet my own three criteria:
1. There are multiple males
2. They have an intelligent conversation (to be defined)
3. At no time is anyone injured or killed
Now, granted, these are slightly less broad categories, making the results notably less impressive, but still, really think about it. And, for the record, an 'intelligent conversation' entails anything not regarding sex or sexual-related acts, violence, drugs and alcohol in a vulgar or nonacademic context.
So yes, while women are shockingly regularly depicted as dependent on men to be successful and/or happy, let us not forget the equally terrifying frequency of the brutish, violent, and yet somehow roguishly attractive visage of what a man has been turned into by Hollywood.
Oh yeah, for the record, so my perusal of my own movies isn't entirely wasted, Deep Blue Sea, Dawn of the Dead, and Eight Legged Freaks all fit in your category. It seems when giant mutated animals or zombies are on the loose, the surviving females finally get their minds off men and more on not dying and possibly making out.
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