Introducing a male equivalent of the Bechdel test

mister_ghost · 2013-11-26T16:53:58+00:00

A movie fails this brand new “Masculinity-Movies.com test” if it has a leading male role who:

Is risking his life in order to serve/protect
Is risking his life in service of truth and/or justice
Is risking his life/wellbeing in order to make it in the world/“become successful”
Is jumping through hoops to get the girl

(for the lazy)

Whisper · 2013-11-26T19:38:01+00:00

I already have a personal version of this test.

1: Are there two named male characters who are neither feral, sinister, nor inept?
2: Who work together towards a major goal which does not involve helping a woman, securing female attention (romantic or otherwise), or serving "society" in general at significant risk or loss to themselves?

Examples of movies that fail:

Django Unchained (only two males pass criteria #1, and the whole film is about them rescuing a woman)
Heat (Only one male character passes criteria #1, and he is serving society at great personal risk and cost)
Terminator 2 (Only two male characters at all, one sacrifices his life for the benefit of society. Schwarzenegger's character does not count... he's a robot)
Dogma (No male characters are neither feral, nor sinister, nor inept)
Lord of the Rings trilogy (All male characters who pass #1 endure great risk and loss to preserve society)
The Professional (Only one male character passes #1, he sacrifices his life to save a woman)

MockingDead · 2013-11-26T17:01:57+00:00

He says that Ms. Doubtfire passes, but he's risking his sanity and working two jobs to protect his family. I think it fails.

C0CKPUNCHER · 2013-11-26T17:45:46+00:00

I'd like a test wherein no man suffers without at least the barest mention that is bad. Ie no red-shirts. No heros doing stuff that gets lots of innocent bystanders killed where we don't care because they are men. In non-action movies this can include bullying and theft. If the victim is laughed at, that at least admits the sadism in the movie. (Any time a woman or child suffers there is sad music and tears, also pets normally get this sympathy, men don't).

oneiorosgrip · 2013-11-26T18:10:43+00:00

One thing which strikes me as particularly telling about the Bechdel test:

Any movie which contains dialogue and focuses strictly on female experiences unrelated to their interaction with men would pass, but a movie which focuses strictly on male experiences unrelated to their interaction with women would fail. In other words, what is acceptable and encouraged for the goose is apparently a problem for the goose when the subject is the gander.
It's not a test of whether or not there's actually anything wrong with a movie. It's a test to see if a movie has catered to the interests of feminists.

typhonblue · 2013-11-26T23:50:00+00:00

Find a movie in which a man isn't judged by his benefit to others.

KnowsAboutMath · 2013-11-26T18:29:48+00:00

As for the male equivalent test, two of the five movies he specifically lists as passing, Dead Poets Society and Good Will Hunting, do not in fact pass. They both feature scenes of a leading male character who "is jumping through hoops to get the girl":

Good Will Hunting: "Well, I got her number. How do you like them apples?"

Dead Poet's Society, From the Wikipedia plot synopsis:

Knox meets and falls in love with a girl named Chris, using his new-found love of poetry to woo her. He presents one of these poems in class, and is applauded by Keating for writing a heartfelt poem on love. Knox travels to Chris' public school and recites his poem to her, later convincing her to go to a play with him.

Hoops galore.

(I think The King's Speech passes, but I haven't seen the other two, so I can't comment.)

c0mputar · 2013-11-26T17:13:50+00:00

Interesting twist. It comes down to what people find to be desirable or undesirable stereotypes. It's no surprise that most movies universally follow generic formulas. The traditional Bechdel test universally ignores any perceived negative male stereotypes, and only looks at one perceived negative female stereotype.

DavidByron · 2013-11-26T18:56:14+00:00

Farrell introduced a sort of test for movies many years before the Dykes to Watch Out For cartoon strip. (Is that name right?) He based it on male vs female disposability. Said that a female character will NEVER die in a movie if she appears in at least 3 scenes with two exceptions (1) the entire movie is about revenging her death and (2) it's a horror movie.

At the time he claimed zero exceptions to this rule of women never dying. Since then I have seen a few, but it's very easy to make such rules for men's issue that have far far fewer or zero "acceptable" movies that pass the test because of course the movie industry is sexist against men and bends over backwards to not appear sexist against women.

anachronic · 2013-11-26T16:17:08+00:00

Any male eqivalent test: If it includes male nudity but no female nudity it fails the test. There are many films that will have a male butt somewhere in the film, even Ma ma mia! Lately full male nudity. But rarely female nudity or even a female butt.

Fen94 · 2013-11-26T21:40:20+00:00

I think the article is betraying an implicit lack of understanding of the Bechdel test. The test is not designed to show anything other than how many female characters there are who have the capacity to stand alone without men i.e not built around men, with lives outside of men.

It is nothing to do with "traditional gender roles" and everything to do with how Hollywood portrays women. A movie can fail the Bechdel test and still be a good film, and a movie can pass it and still be a bad film that stereotypes and degrades women.

(Unless you mean that "being an individual with worth and meaning outside of the opposite sex" is traditionally solely a male role, which I find hard to believe.)

Having said this, an equivalent to the Bechdel test would surely be exactly the same, but with men instead?

Although, it would be interesting to see how many films fail tests such as "Good Guy Get's The Girl", even if it is not an equivalent test.

Also, there is another feminist-made test for movies, which is: Can the female character/s be replaced with a sexy potplant? Y/N.

Bodertz · 2013-11-26T18:08:31+00:00

Since the internet I do not really watch films. I do not enjoy them. My wife and kids do. Too much on a plate, most of the time not believable, too many aimed at females and I prefer to interact with something. So for me the Internet every time.

I might watch an extract from a film but never all the way through.

cypher197 · 2013-11-26T22:50:38+00:00

Interesting article. Thanks for posting it.

JayBopara · 2013-11-27T01:46:28+00:00

There should also be another aspect of the test. No violence against men, particularly female violence against men. How many movies and TV series particularly from misandrist Hollywood do we see where men are just presented as objects to be brutalized and killed, and it is seen as comedy.

restsdsd · 2013-11-27T07:44:21+00:00

This entire thing is getting way out of hand..

Saw this in regards to a game called Rage earlier...

In the context of video game character design, she is perhaps not unusually presented. But you can't seriously think she's not sexualized. She's wearing thigh-high boots, that lead up to hot pants, and a top that essentially barely covers her breasts. If that's not "highly" sexualized, where exactly would you go from there to make it more sexualized without garnering an AO rating with crotchless chaps and nipple clamps?

The comparisons...

It's not her pose in and of itself that is the problem here. It's that she's featured suggestively in that pose, in the forefront atop a pile of other "trophies", in the labeled "trophy room." You'd have to be willfully obtuse to miss the suggestion that the character is being presented as a trophy.

Then a dumb-ass test where woman talking about men is somehow supposed to be anti-woman...

Then if you even want to discuss this, people are not even discussing sexualization of men? Apparently men and woman are both the exact same biologically and have the same sexual standards. Because men with broad shoulders, chiseled jaws and high cheekbones, large biceps, pecs and bulging abs are not sexualized because it makes him look badass. I'M SORRY, WE AREN'T WOMAN.

My head hurts so much, fucking shit.

KnowsAboutMath · 2013-11-26T18:18:43+00:00

I'm a movie buff and fan of Alison Bechdel's comics.

Note than most of the films said to fail the Bechdel test actually pass it. People just don't look carefully enough, or go out of their way to intentionally discount parts of the film that would make it pass.

Title	Introducing a male equivalent of the Bechdel test
Author	trygvebratteli
Upvotes	86
Comments	68
Date	November 26, 2013 3:44 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1ri0mq/introducing_a_male_equivalent_of_the_bechdel_test/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/introducing-a-male-equivalent-of-the-bechdel-test.1157740 https://theredarchive.com/post/1157740

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