FiveThirtyEight: In our recent project looking for the next Bechdel Test, we tried to find new ways to evaluate whether Hollywood was doing a good job of representing all kinds of people equitably on screen and behind the scenes. To put the new tests through their paces, nine FiveThirtyEight staffers watched the 50 top-grossing movies of 2016 and ran them through 12 new tests aimed at measuring gender inequality in Hollywood films.
3 comments:
This video is extremely powerful and I was shocked when I saw that the less the 200 people had viewed this video. I think it's because the video is almost 20 minutes long and many people skip over long videos or articles. I love the point that they make about Rogue One. There are many movies women succeeding and pushing against struggles, as if it is a surprise. However to move forward, we need movies about women being people. Another point that the video made was the disparity in crowd scenes. There is no need for a crowd scene to be almost exclusively male. Also, the video notes that not having women in these scene is extremely important long term because it allows them to rise through the ranks by having something on the resumes. This is an aspect that I never would have thought of and is important to let people outside of the film industry to know. Unsurprisingly there is a lot of work to be done and I think this video needs to be shared. It is extremely powerful and could affect how a lot of people see movies.
Oh the good old Bechdel Test. I can think of no other way to highlight poor screen writing than using the Bechdel Test. On a base level, it seems like the Bechdel Test should be easy to pass; women talk about thousands of different things other than men. However, apparently this is impossible for Hollywood screen writers to understand and implement. It's more than insulting, it's embarrassing for the writers as well as the actors that are forced to read these useless lines in a clearly uninspired script. I'm glad that the Bechdel Test is being reevaluated by these filmmakers in order to apply it to the greater equality disparity running rampant in the current film industry. In order for the atmosphere to improve and become equal conversations like this need to happen much more frequently. I look forward to the opportunity for the Bechdel Test to potentially be flipped on it's head in the upcoming years.
This was a super cool discussion over many facets of films that oftentimes get overlooked by many people unless there’s that one standout character in a certain role. I really liked the points being made about how women can’t have the possibility of moving up in the acting world if they don’t even get a chance to be “barista #1” in a film and add relevant experience to their resumes. Experience and connections is how people move up in the industries they’re involved in and in entertainment, especially movies, women are often sought after for these sexy, low-key roles with few lines and no development. I hadn’t seen a lot of these movies the forum was discussing, but from what they were saying, I really want to see “Bad Moms” especially since they likened it to “Bridesmaids” which is one of the best women-group movies to date for me, but thinking back on it I don’t think there is much diversity shown in either of those main groups of women.
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