What Is The Bechdel Test (And Why Should I Care)

I’m prostrate on the sofa watching Parks and Recreation back to back and cursing my inability to deal with hangovers.

‘The time really got away from me,’ I explain plaintively, ‘one minute it was 7pm, then 10, then boom, 4 in the morning.’

‘What did you guys get up to?’ asks Captain Tact.

‘Chatting, mostly.’

We also drank a bottle of amaretto and danced around the living room at length, singing at the tops of our voices - but I’m not ready to think about that yet.

‘What about?’

‘Social work, politics, the impact of social media on young people growing up, The Rapture’s new album...’

‘Congratulations, your conversation passed the Bechdel test.’

The Bechdel test, for those who have not come across it, is used to identify gender bias in films, telly and so on.

The test is simply to ask ‘do two or more women have a proper onscreen conversation about something other than a man?’

If the answer is yes, the show passes. Try it yourself - although 2013 arguably did better than previous years, a disconcerting amount of popular media fails.

Having said that, almost nobody in the media is representative of normal every day conversations, irrespective of gender. Film and TV characters are good or bad; intelligent or attractive. Sometimes there’s the twist that someone good was merely pretending to be horrible, or someone beautiful was actually quite intelligent, but by and large fictional characters are broadly drawn. 

I assume the reason for this is that writers don’t deal in the everyday – or not the everyday as it actually is. Fiction is supposed to provide an escape into another world, either one close to ours but better, or like ours but awful so we come out the other end going ‘golly gee, I’m sure glad I don’t live in the popular Liam Neeson film Taken!’

Either way the fictional world is not like your actual life, because why the hell would you watch that? You’re already living real life. Why would you want to watch average looking people with average real life jobs, talking about how their kids are getting on at school or cat pictures they’ve seen in the Metro? That isn’t an escape from reality, that’s rubbing it in your face.  We want a bit of excitement from our downtime, maybe romance and adventure - something to aspire to.

Whilst I absolutely agree TV and film are bad at showing realistic conversations between women, they’re often terrible at showing realistic conversations between anyone at all.  In fact, the level of unreality is so prevalent in terms of cast and content, it’s enough to make you wonder whether very beautiful people perhaps don’t have normal conversations.

Think about this. How often in your life do you see a human woman that looks like Beyonce, or Lucy Liu, or insert-other-beautiful-celebrity-of-your-choice-here?  Not often, unless you’re doing some Grade A stalking.  The beautiful ones exist in a bubble of others like them, people whose MO is to bewitch the world with their looks and do very little else (a theory supported by all episodes of 30 Rock featuring Jon Hamm).

Therefore, is it that much of stretch to suppose that the beautiful ones don’t have conversations about normal stuff? Maybe when female celebrities get drunk, they actually do spend the entire time talking about boys.  Sure, that sounds unlikely, but the tabloids would have a hard time finding ‘sources close to the star’ to reveal all her private relationship stuff if she spent her spare time bemoaning the lack of support given to Social Workers, or arguing about whether The Rapture’s new CD needs more cowbell like me and my normal looking friends. 

Perhaps TV and film consistently fails the Bechdel test because the women beautiful enough to be on TV also fail it.  After all, it can’t be because there is a perception held by the people making and paying for film and TV that audiences want to escape into a two dimensional world where women exist to talk about men, people of colour and the LGBT community exist to provide comic relief, and people with additional support needs do not exist at all.

Can it?

Aftermath

So, if you were flyering and saw me, would you be like YES! HER! She would be interested in attending the Burlesque Circus?

Before giving an answer, I would ask you to picture the following scene. I am marching along George Street, into the second of a two day hangover, and accidentally wearing jeans that have PVA glue on them (from making William Wallace at work). Said jeans are also too big, but perversely too short. Tyra Banks would take a pure eppy if she could see me.

I am not wearing makeup, except possible remnants of yesterday's eyeliner not properly removed, and my hair is a fetching bouffant on account of being required to dry naturally in my haste to get out of the house this morning. I am, if anything, the antithesis of burlesque - unsexy, unglamorous, uncorsetted. Well, I have the grotesque parody of womanhood part covered, which in 18th century terms means I'm doing OK. But this is 2010! The art has evolved and moved on! It's now striptease, essentially, and nobody needs that from a frump in gluey trousers.

However, someone on the street saw this vision and thought, 'yes, she'll come to a burlesque act,' and flyered me accordingly. But not just normal burlesque, oh no. Burlesque with a CIRCUS THEME. What does that even involve? Clowns in nipple tassels? A performing seal in thigh high boots?

The Fringe website describes it, somewhat cryptically, thus: "ringmistress and cabaret star Tempest Rose welcomes you to a circus of the Seven Deadly Sins; introducing a stunning array of daring and dazzling new interpretations of classic burlesque, vaudeville and circus routines."

Which doesn't give a lot away, but lets pick it apart a bit and see what we can see.

I understand vaudeville to mean variety, which is straightforward - there are lots of girls on the flyer; they presumably have a variety of talents. By which I may mean they have a variety of differently shaped boobs. But still, that makes every act slightly different.

It seems plausible that 'circus routines' in this context is more likely to mean acrobatics and contortion than custard pies or chucking a confetti over one of the dads having pretended it was a bucket of water. I don't know which has more artistic merit though. It's a tough one to call.

As to dazzling new interpretations of classic burlesque... Well. This is the flyer. Are you dazzled?



Exactly.