Stuff You Should Know - What is the Bechdel Test?

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

The Bechdel Test is a is a measure of the representation of women in film. You'd be surprised how many movies fail. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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your reality. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. 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 with a podcast. That's right, movie crush adjacent today. I put this one together in big thanks to Mark Mancini of HowStuffWorks.com, great article

in Vogue from Radhika 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 of the gate that on our own iHeart Network we have a great podcast called the Bechdel Cast that's been around for a long time now, they've been with us for years 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've maybe heard of it but don't quite know what it has to do, maybe they're confusing it with the 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 100 years 100 movie quotes list with six different quote entries 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 to, it wasn'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 about that. Yeah, like plenty of movies from that era like much more but I even know here's looking at you kid, Louis I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, we'll always have Paris of all of the gin joints and all the small towns or all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine like these are all just in the sort of if you 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 they say play as time goes by, 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 Bacall's character Ilsa Lund is speaking them, she's speaking them to a man and then all the other men are speaking to other men or to Ilsa 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 going to dive feet first into it. So open up patriarchy because we're coming in. Quick statistic for you just to sort of illustrate part of the problem is USC, Annenberg, I knew I'd get there, their inclusion initiative did a study and they're a think tank that looks at diversity in arts.

They saw that just 33.1% of speaking roles period in the top 100 grossing movies of 2018 and that was 33%, like 67% of speaking roles in that 100 grossing films were men. Yes, that was a big increase though from 2007 where 29.9% went to women, being facetious about that. 3%-ish. And one of the reasons I saw is 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? Cops probably a man. Do they get stitched up? Doctors probably a man. Presidents 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 workshopping website. Well, they may have like, you know, made it into something, but the Blacklist is like, here are the 10 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 cases, like if the thing 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 Hagan is saying is like, once you do start to notice it, you're gonna 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 Allison Bechdel, who had this long running comic strip called Dykes to Watch Out For. And in one of the entries in 1985, 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 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, two, 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 2000s, 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 Allison Bechdel likes to credit her friend Liz Wallace by calling it the Bechdel Wallace Test, more people know it as the Bechdel Test. Right. And actually, later on in a blog post from 2013, Allison 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 Bechdel 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 pass 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 brise, breeze by two women talking in a cafeteria briefly, right? 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. And 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 sounds really easy, but it's not. It's extraordinarily hard for Hollywood, it turns out. And I think, Chuck, this is a pretty good place maybe for our first ad break. What do you think? I say, totes. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University and I've spent my career exploring

the three pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities. Like does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or can we create new senses for humans? Or what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality.

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So for simple, smart savings on your prescriptions, check GoodRX. Go to GoodRX.com slash stuff. That's GoodRX.com slash stuff. Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception. I'm Andrea Gunning, and now we're sharing an all-new story of Betrayal. Ashley Lytton was helping her husband set up a business Venmo account when she discovered a terrible secret. I scrolled down, and that's when I saw a hidden folder, and I opened it.

What the hell did I just see? I was scared that he was coming home. What Ashley discovered that day was a secret so dark, she feared for her life. She was like, oh my god, I gotta get out of the house. He's gonna find out that I've seen this, he's gonna come kill me. In a season two of Betrayal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so now that we've explained what the Bechtel 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 Bechtel test talking about the Bechtel test, but I hope you guys have been listening to it long enough to not rake us over the coals for it. Well, you can do that to a podcast though. I think you can in some way, shape, or form. There's some sort of Bechtel test that you could apply to podcasts for sure. So then every podcast hosted by one or two people that are guys fail the 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 Bechtel test. We talked about Casablanca, of course, huge movies like Citizen Kane did not pass the Bechtel test, and a lot of movies, as you might expect from the 30s and 40s, 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, 100 movies, American movies, that is, released from 1916 to 2001. That's a lot of movies, and 70 of, I'm sorry, 70 of those 100, which is almost at 70%, it is 70%. Failed the Bechtel test, only 30% of the top 100 movies through 2001 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 2017.

It has a female villain, a female superhero, so you've got Hera and Valkyrie, I think. It's directed by Taika Waititi, and it still fails the Bechtel 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 Bechtel test because Hera and Valkyrie never speak to one another in that movie. Yeah, here's another study, and this is from 2018, when they looked at, so you wonder about what about quality films, I get it 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, and the 2018 study from BBC found that less than half of Best Picture winners passed the Bechtel test, and since 2018, they've done much better. There have been six films since then, and five of the six passed it, so Nomadland, Coda, Nothing, Everywhere All At Once, and Parasite, and The Shape of Water All Passed, and Only Green Book Failed. Tisk Green Book. But also, that's just Best Picture.

The nominees did a little worse in 2020. The Irishman, 1917, 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've 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, it kind of is, and then somebody can say, well, it's not really. And then Little Women, JoJo Rabbit, and Parasite all are definitely passed the Bechtel test. Yeah, I mean, there can be, and there often are, and I think it's meant to be debated.

It can be as cut and dry as literally do any two women speak. Because people will say, well, there's that one scene where those two, even though they're named characters, it was super fast. I think that the spirit of it is have a real sort of conversation of substance. Even though, and again, this is, it's an online sort of movie test thing for people to argue over to a certain degree. Sure. So, well, like you said, we'll get into the ins and outs of it.

Hold your horses, bucko. I know, I started to get into that again. So one really roundly, man, my brain just fell out of my ear about 10 minutes ago, I think. Yeah? So a widely cited movie that kind of shows like the Bechtel test is not all-encompassing is Jackie Brown. Yeah.

Did Tarantino direct that? Oh, yeah. Okay. Great movie. Love it. It is a great movie. Well, it was adapted from Leonard Elmore, right? Yeah.

Okay. Or Elmore Leonard. Leonard Elmore. It was adapted from Leonard, Elmore, I mean. You know how many people just went, what? Yeah, I know. I know. Cool your jets, everybody.

So Jackie Brown has Pam Greer in it as the lead, Jackie Brown, and the whole movie. Her Greer Pam. You're right. Greer, comma, Pam. Don't forget the comma. Yeah, 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 arms deal 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 like. How smarting them at every turn.

Yeah. To use a very tired phrase, 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 watched Jackie Brown probably is very happy with that movie, including Alice and Bechdel as well, who said like, I love that movie, but it definitely fails the Bechdel test, but it's still a really great movie. And that's something really like 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 the 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 Breca was even in Goodfellas 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 out another couple of surprising examples? Sure. American Pie 2, Showgirls 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.

And 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 it. I even saw the new one, even though I kind of back on this movie. CGI world. One thing to remember about Avatar is that it had a couple of really strong female leads.

There was Zoe Saldana's character, and of course Sigourney Weber's character, and James Cameron historically, writes strong female leads, from the Terminator to the Abyss. He just has a strong history of working with strong female leads, and that certainly was the case in Avatar. But Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weber 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. She didn't talk to anyone though. No, that's true. But Gravity, that whole movie is just basically Sandra Bullock trying to figure out what the

heck to do in space and the reason why is like it doesn't pass the back delt 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 to say like, again, this is a really low borrower 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 back delt 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? Mm-hmm.

A movie that passed, two movies that passed. 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. You know, border, well, not border, on that delve into psychological abuse of these women, you know, to try and get a performance out of them. He 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'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 Bechtel test reminds us is that things are more complicated and nuanced and layered than something like past fail, pro-feminist, anti-feminist like things, things are often a lot more wrapped up and a lot more wax than, 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 it in a long time. I loved it back then. I saw it in the last 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 guy from the Hills have eyes and the bikers crash that party? I think they accidentally left the little thing that brings whatever they want to life. I think on some ad or something like that or maybe on a movie box. So that was explained? Yeah. I think I just don't remember that part. It's not explained.

They just show what's happening and then those people 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. Okay. Good.

Well, I had a big thing for Kelly LeBrock. Kelly LeBrock, you know. Who did not? I mean, if you're a boy in the 80s and I'm sure plenty of girls in the 80s and you saw Weird Science and The Woman in Red, the great Gene Wilder movie, then you probably had a thing for Kelly LeBrock. Yes. The Great.

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, but 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 in Guardians, the first Guardians, and I think one of the most sort of complex relationship arcs in any of the MCU is between Gamora 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. 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 seen 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? Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University and I've spent my career exploring the three pound universe in our heads.

On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities. Like does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or can we create new senses for humans? Or what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or

wherever you get your podcasts. Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception. I'm Andrea Gunning and now we're sharing an all new story of Betrayal. Ashley Lytton was helping her husband set up a business Venmo account when she discovered a terrible secret. I scrolled down and that's when I saw a hidden folder and I opened it. What the hell did I just see? I was scared that he was coming home.

When Ashley discovered that day was a secret so dark, she feared for her life. She was like, oh my God, I got to get out of the house. He's going to find out that I've seen this, he's going to come kill me. Listen to season two of Betrayal on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're looking for someone to help you unpack Queen Charlotte a Bridgerton story, you're in the right place. It's me, Gabby Collins.

Come with me because on Queen Charlotte, the official podcast, we're stepping behind the scenes and the drawing boards of this team to experience the life breathed into the Bridgerton prequel. Listen to the leaps executive producer and series director Tom Verica took to capture the feeling that's put that lump in your throat. And you've got to catch creator Shonda Rhimes. He's dropping gems, diamonds, and mics. On this podcast, we're going beyond the basic line of questioning and getting to the heart

of the show. All while appreciating the contributions of the show's creative teams and remarkable cast. Go inside each episode of Queen Charlotte a Bridgerton story with the creatives, the cast, and creator Shonda Rhimes leading the way. Listen to Queen Charlotte, the official podcast, Thursdays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts. All right, so now we're kind of done just talking about movies and whether or not they

passed or failed. Yeah, 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 1985 when the Bechdel test was invented in this cartoon. And 1985 wasn't the most feminist pro-woman time in the United States history. But at some point, we're going to do podcasts 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 the visibility and 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 1985 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 88. Two. Diane Keaton, Baby Boom in like maybe 86, 87. Three. I could go on. That's just literally off the top of my head. It's not like I researched feminist or strong female lead movies in the eighties. That's off the top of my head.

So I disagree. I get that 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 in that decade. More depth than Baby Boom? That was a good movie.

Oh, I like Baby Boom. I love Diane Keaton. Oh man, how could you not? But the point is, except for you, most people agree that the mid-eighties wasn't high time for women in film. And so that's when the test was created. So kind of keep that in mind. And like you mentioned, the pass-fail thing, there have been plenty of people that said,

there are all kinds of other issues with women in film that have real meat on the bone that we should really look at than whether or not there was just a scene with two women talking to each other, not about men. There was this one writer, what is her name? It is Martha Lowsen 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 in saying, a movie like that fails because 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 become really popular and get the conversation going. Yeah. I was surprised that she was taking shots at it. She was saying like the test sets the lowest possible bar for assessing the quality of portrayals

of female characters. It does. That's the point. Yeah. Exactly. Like you can, anybody can step over this and yet everybody keeps tripping up on it. And then yeah, I think that's a really great point. Like we're releasing an episode on this without the Bechtel 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. Right. But I've heard of this and done this research and talked to you about this. I'm fully aware of it and I can't wait to see my next crowd scene in a movie. Right.

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 yet 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 assault 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 Ioni Skye's window with a boom box after he's been told to leave is stalking. Right. I know it's a romantic comedy, but in 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, it gets harder and harder after a certain age to like get work and then like older than 31. 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 your 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 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. Gina 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 charming people I've ever seen, right? And it's funny, like if you go back and look at the fly and then you just watch like interviews with Jeff Goldblum and you watch interviews with Gina 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 talk the same way. They behave the same way.

They think the same way. Really? Yes. They're very similar personality-wise. Interesting. Very clever, very smart, very funny, very self-deprecating. She's a mental member. Yes, she is.

So I was watching a talk that she gave at Rutgers in 2012 that I was tipped off to by Kate Hagen in a 538 article. I mentioned her before. Are you about to ruin Gina Davis? No. The opposite. Oh, okay. God, I was so nervous.

She did 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 going to the source and saying like, have you ever noticed like all doctors or men or my institute did a study and of the 6,000 films that were released between 2006 and 2009, 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, I can't remember. Just look up Gina Davis, Rutgers 2012 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, 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 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, Gina Davis was someone I thought I loved until. No, no. You thought you loved her and even more now. She was on our buddy Jesse Thorne had her on his great interview show Bullseye with Jesse Thorne and he said that last year I was like, oh man, what was Gina 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 Gina Davis by the end of the day. Yeah. You told them before 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 2017 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 2017, 538, 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 we like we just do that? Another actor named Rory Uphold said, you know, what about these film crews? When we have film crews that are 50% women. That's a lot tougher, I think. You and I have been on film crews, film crews historically. There's sausage parties. Well, they're departments that are just sort of historically one or the other.

Like, you know, hair and makeup is almost always women, script supervisor for some reason is always women. Yeah. You know who established that? Hitchcock. Yeah, probably so. What else, casting is usually women or casting directors, which is interesting. There's a lot of departments that are sort of split like the art department a lot of

times will have men and women, camera department more and more used to be very historically male, but a lot more women in the camera department now and production departments. And then you have like the grip and electric departments, transportation that are 95% 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 50% 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 22. It's a terrible one. I saw that 538 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're just talking about.

Yeah. Intersectional, which is saying like a black woman protagonist or the protagonist 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 47.6% up from 33.1% for all movies 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 Mako Mori 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, than 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 DeConnick 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. That'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 Bechtel test or something else, the 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 Bechtel 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 movies or they're meant to like move the plot along for the man or something like that, like how could we not benefit from that? It just makes everything a lot richer. It makes movies a lot richer too. Yeah. I mean, one of the great things about movies is seeing perspectives of people that aren't like you. Right.

Exactly. But it's like 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 there are more women directing movies these days than ever before, which is true. But here's some final statistics for you, again, from the USC's Annenberg report. This one was from 2023 talking about 2022 and out of the 100 highest grossing movies

of 2022, 9% were directed by women and 2.7% by women of color. And this has changed some over the years. I think there was one statistic that showed 100% increase from 25 years ago, but it's still less than a fifth of the biggest movies are directed by women. And the Bechdel test is if you apply this to independent film, the numbers skew 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, too. 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 life imitating art, but in a really negative way. Yeah. And for better conversations in this, go check out the Bechdel 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 have 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. The 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 sign. Okay, good. Thanks for specifying. So in lieu of Listener Mail today, because we had 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. 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 one go without saying, rest in peace, good sir. Rest in peace, Gordon Lightfoot. Very nice, Chuck. I think that's a great stand-in for a Listener Mail. Great. If you want to send us a Listener Mail, we'd love to hear from you. You can send it via email to stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com.

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