For those of us who were unaware of the Bechdel Test’s existence until reading the title of this article, it is an [imperfect] tool that easily gauges how much Hollywood pays attention to women in its blockbusters. Created in order to assess the portrayal of females in movies, has three seemingly easy requirements: (1) there are at least two women, (2) these women speak to each other, and (3) these women speak to each other about something other than a man.
For the first time in 2013, a majority of the top 50 grossing movies passed the Bechdel Test. Most notably this occurred in the two movies The Heat (whose leads bantered about their lackluster jobs and barely skirted the subject of men) and Disney’s Frozen (whose leads, Elsa and Anna, were more concerned about saving their kingdom and Elsa’s magical powers than romance). The top two most successful movies, Iron Man 3 and Catching Fire notably passed as well, showing that successful movies don’t have to stick to the standard boy-meets-girl format.
However, what’s still problematic is that behind the scenes, all but one of the movies tested had male directors– with Frozen being co-directed by Frozen. This is representative of 2013 in its entirety, with just two other wide-release movies– Carrie and Black Nativity- being directed by females.
It will be interesting to see if in 2014 trends behind the scenes change as a result of the success of empowered women on screen. But until then, we will have to wait.
