
Swedish cinemas take aim at gender bias with Bechdel test rating - tomcrisp
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/swedish-cinemas-bechdel-test-films-gender-bias
======
kunai
This has to be one of the most absurd things I've heard all day. And when you
work where I do, you hear a lot of absurd things.

People have often lambasted those who scream and wince whenever an ounce of
political correctness shows up in society/media.

Well, to those people: look at your work. Did you want to encourage
censorship?

Of course, I'm overblowing this thing way too much. But 5, ten, maybe even 20
years ago, if this kind of thing happened, people would revolt. For some
reason, censorship in the name of equality seems to be the norm in today's
world.

Harrison Bergeron, indeed.

~~~
MartinCron
Censorship? Did you read the same article I did?

------
stolio
Having seen both the Swedish and American versions of The Girl With The Dragon
Tattoo I have to say Sweden is a bit ahead when it comes to gender
representation, so they're doing something right somewhere.

On the other hand, Harry Potter was written by a self-proclaimed feminist and
has a very empowering female in Hermione Granger, if _that_ series fails the
Bechdel Test then I'm left wondering how many other false-positives the test
throws. Even The Vagina Monologues fails the Bechdel Test (to be fair, because
monologues).

~~~
saraid216
It throws a lot of false positive and false negatives; it's not actually
useful for any analysis involving rigor. Never use it to make a final
judgement call.

But it can serve as a smoke test. Harry Potter, for instance, _does_ have a
fairly empowering female in Hermione, but the series itself has a lot of
problems, not all of them feminist in nature. Not sure how much spoilering or
detail I really ought to go into it here.

~~~
stolio
> It throws a lot of false positive and false negatives; it's not actually
> useful for any analysis involving rigor.

If a tool carries a lot of weight, has little accuracy and is only used
against one's opponents - that tool has a lot in common with a bludgeon.

------
tzs
Much of mainstream hard core porn passes that test.

~~~
saraid216
Prove it. Offer a way to develop a representative sample of "mainstream hard
core porn" and then quantify what "much" actually means as a percentage.

Good luck.

------
biff
This is a strange blind spot for film to have, especially with regard to
genres like science fiction or fantasy where the art is limited only by the
creator's imagination and conventional boundaries are expected to be tested.

Maybe Hollywood's worried that target audiences won't identify with a female
lead, maybe the formula's considered too risky for a blockbuster. But surely
there's an alternate universe somewhere with aliens or magic where (hold on to
your hats) a matriarchal society somehow evolved and manages to be part of the
fabric of the story without characters constantly drawing attention to it,
comparing it to Earth, having it set up a battle of the sexes, etc.

~~~
Buzzzz
Maybe they should try to make movies out of Katherine kerrs books they are
both good reads and has varied genders (if I remember correctly). Buzzz

------
Jun8
Swedes evidently think "too much of a good thing can be wonderful": they have
had a Minister of Gender Equality since the 50's
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_for_Gender_Equality_(S...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_for_Gender_Equality_\(Sweden\)))
and there are efforts to introduce a gender-neutral pronoun
([http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/04/hen_s...](http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/04/hen_sweden_s_new_gender_neutral_pronoun_causes_controversy_.html),
although this has been tried in English, too). In the Global Gender Gap Report
2012, Sweden is named as a world leader in gender equality
([http://www.weforum.org/reports/global-gender-gap-
report-2012](http://www.weforum.org/reports/global-gender-gap-report-2012)),
etc. etc. I mean, the country even has an official gender equality webpage in
English ([http://sweden.se/society/gender-equality-in-
sweden/](http://sweden.se/society/gender-equality-in-sweden/)). It seems they
can't go any further. And then this.

Even Jezebel ([http://jezebel.com/sweden-introduces-new-movie-rating-
system...](http://jezebel.com/sweden-introduces-new-movie-rating-system-based-
on-the-1459696241)) has to admit the "test" is not perfect:

"Sure, the Bechdel test is imperfect (Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker
doesn't pass, for instance, but you could hardly argue that a female-helmed
war movie doesn't empower at least one woman), but that doesn't make it
useless as a starting line for sniffing out broad trends in gender bias. And
that's what we're talking about here. Trends. Analysis. Examination. Critical
thought. Information. I'm sure there are plenty of people who consider
themselves scrupulously egalitarian who never even noticed that there are only
like THREE WOMEN IN ALL OF MIDDLE EARTH."

I understand that this is just a thing introduced by a a few movie theaters,
i.e. it's not the law or anything (yet). Yet, that's what riles me most: as
librarians are the first to defend any censorship, movie professionals should
push back on _any_ arbitrary limitation on what can be shown. Some examples of
movies that fail the test are given, e.g. _LOTHR Trilogy_ , _Pulp Fiction_ ,
_Pacific Rim_ , etc. However, the test would also exclude many art films such
as Tarkovski's _Stalker_ and _Solaris_. How about movies with only a single
female lead that don't quite fit the purpose of the test, e.g. Bergman's
_Through a Glass Darkly_? How to handle movies with no dialog, or experimental
movies such as _Eraserhead_? One can easily see that this sort of simplistic
testing can have little artistic or practical merit.

~~~
fryguy
a recent movie that's similar is _Gravity_. It doesn't even pass the reverse
test since there are so few characters.

~~~
gph
Haven't seen that one, but the first thing that popped into my head was "What
about a movie like Moon?" I mean there was really just the one main character,
and I suppose he talked to his wife and daughter who were both named so it
gets an A grade. But they were the only two female characters that I remember
and I don't think they really added a lot to the gender equality context
seeing as they were the stay-at-home family back on earth.

The formula is just so simplistic. If you wanted to build a comprehensive
metric you'd probably want to take a few factors into consideration. Maybe a
ratio of dialogue to on-screen time for female characters vs. male characters.
Perhaps number of non-traditional female roles vs. traditional roles. I don't
know. There should be something better than an eye-test some comic from the
80's threw out there.

~~~
sixothree
In my opinion they do not even populate the denominator, much less the
numerator; but according to this test it gets a 0/1.

But then again, Moon does have two female characters so maybe it deserves a
1/3.

------
skaevola
Pulp Fiction passes the Bechdel test.

[http://bechdeltest.com/view/91/](http://bechdeltest.com/view/91/)

------
Hoozt
A population so small, making so much noise... :)

------
roarroar
Maybe if feminists (part of the parasitic political class) spent less time
being resentful of what others have built and built something themselves
they'd have less reason to be resentful in the first place. Now we're living
not just with the reactive feminist losers, but the reactive-reactive super-
loser MRA types.

~~~
vectorjohn
Wow, worst of HN award? This is up there with the worst garbage I've read on
here. Broad generalizations and extreme sexism.

You might as well have said civil rights leaders should have sucked it up and
built something themselves. As if that's not what they were doing.

Or excellent troll. But out of place - this is for serious discussion.

~~~
saraid216
I glanced through roarroar's comment history and it only seems to appear to be
an account for being anti-feminist.

~~~
roarroar
In other words, you ignored the content of my comment and went looking for
_dirt_ you could use against me. Bravo, you complete imbecile. And I am anti-
egalitarian - feminism is just the current vogue in the tech scene, which is
currently degenerating both technically and socially. And your behavior of
gossiping about my account is a prime example.

~~~
saraid216
See, being anti-egalitarian, you should understand this:

You are not worth my time.

~~~
roarroar
It's okay, I don't expect chronically stupid people to recognise their
betters.

~~~
saraid216
Oh my god it's an actual flame war on HN this is AWESOME.

Ahem.

I'm sorry you weren't able to recognize me as your better. I hope your chronic
stupidity is duly cured someday.

Did I do it right?

