Woolf and the Bechdel Test

In response to today's musings as to whether Virginia Woolf's ideas are still relevant in light of new research (and, of course, the ubiquitous "isn't-femenism-kind-of-over" question), I'd like to take a look at Woolf's "Chloe Liked Olivia" section. Woolf talks about the way literature and media so rarely portray female homosocial situations. When we come across a scene in which Chloe is free to like Olivia, we are startled. Shocked, even: "Do not start," says Woolf, "do not blush.  Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen.  Sometimes women do like women" (899). And though we know that life might work in this way, that women actually do have positive relationships with other women, we've come to accept that movies (or books or anything else) usually do not.  Women are shown only in relation to men, only as the Other to men. Woolf suggests that this is the product of fiction written by men who are "terribly hampered and partial in [their] knowledge of women" (899).

And, as we all know, this is absolutely still a thing. In film, especially, women are shown and defined only through their relations with men, which in reality are very small parts of life.  So, in response, I offer you The Bechdel Test

Some of you are probably pretty familiar with this test, but I put it here because it changed the way I looked at movies. It's a test used to identify gender bias in fiction, and was created by Alison Bechdel in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For.  Here's how it works: for a film to be free of male bias it must 1. contain two female characters [with names] 2. who have a conversation 3. that is not about a man. 

In 2011, of all of the films nominated for Best Picture, only The Help passed.

Here's a website with listings of different films. Do your favorites pass?