Episode 50: The Bechdel Test

Welcome to another educational edition of Nerdificent where we learn about the representation, or lack thereof, of women in film as determined by the Bechdel Test! This week, Dani and Ify are joined by Jamie Loftus and Caitlin Durante of HowStuffWorks and iHeart's own The Bechdel Cast. The group discuss the history of the test from its first appearance in the comic by Alison Bechdel to the many further tests it has inspired and the awareness they have brought to the many inequalities in Hollywood. Learn a thing or two about your favorite films on this week's episode of Nerdificent!

FOOTNOTES:

Bechdel Cast Twitter

What is the 'Bechdel Test?'

FiveThirtyEight: The Next 'Bechdel Test'

GOOD: The 'DuVernay Test'

The Atlantic: Beyond the 'Bechdel Test'

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, Hello, Hello, welcome to another edition of d I
am one half of your host Danny Fan isn't sitting
across from me as always as if you way, how
are you doing? I'm doing good? If you were you
asking me or were you asking the audience collectively? And
you know I was asking the royal We everyone involved,

(00:30):
front to back, side to side, up and down all around. Yeah,
how are you doing? How are you feeling? Maybe you
know today was a rough day and you were along
with me for it. And you know, people can keep
up with my life on social media, so I know
Danny was going through hard stuff. Meanwhile, I was playing

(00:51):
Apex Legends all day. Your your your struggle was also
hard you uh you know you'd be you know. Something
to note is they released a new hero out uh
called Octane, who is Latin x h yeah and he
uh he's also disabled. He has to uh metal legs
and he runs real fast. Now you know they've been

(01:15):
It's it's funny because they've been effortlessly diversifying the game,
like they have Bloodhound, who is uh non binary. You
have uh, you know Gibraltar, who is a you know,
Maori gay biker. Uh you know, so so you know
all that stuff, all that stuff that and and it's

(01:35):
people in the real world are what's fun about it
is it's such a good game that no one's been
complaining too much about it. I was there's someone I
still don't know if it's a joke or not, honestly
don't care. But the one white male character is this
guy who who drops like this toxic bombs. And so
someone made a YouTube video that was like, the one

(01:57):
white male is the toxic white male read between the lines.
There's like it's funny because it's like, oh man, this
is a great character if it is. But we live
in a time where you just can't tell. But if
you're doing a character, good job. If you're not, you
know what I mean. Um, I wanted to introduce our guests.

(02:18):
They are both They are in our studio here there
at our how stuff work stuff. I heart media studio.
There we go podcast studio works. What we are Disney. Um.
That's Caitlin Dante and Jimmy Loftus of Bechtel Cast. Thank

(02:39):
you for joining us. Yeah, we today are talking about
the Bechtel Tests. Yeah, really excited about it. Me and Caitlin.
We're matching. We both have pesta. You're the same. Yeah,
we take a picture. Yeah, let's do it. Look my Instagram,

(02:59):
always trying to show the looks and always trying to
show the friends. I was on y'all's podcast Were You
on It? Black Panther episode lauded as one of the
best episodes of their podcast, people that Yes, look I was.
You caught me out a good time. I was charged
up on Black Panther Energy. I was doing voices, I

(03:22):
was re enacting scenes. It is the most ridiculous I've
been on any podcast ever. You're reenacting full scenes, like
playing every single part I was going to. I was
on the Lota Croft tomb Raider episode and introduced the
cast to women in fridges watches, Uh yeah, fridging the

(03:44):
doom fridging and how gayl Simone came up with that
whole website. If you don't know what that is, it's
essentially when a female character is killed to further the
plot of a male character, which is very common, and
that website still exists. It's really cute because I think
it still has like almost n these ish looking software too.
It like a space Jam website. Yeah, I think they

(04:05):
did that with Captain Marvel too. They made it like
nineties for her website. Yeah, so we are talking about
the Bechdel tests. Wh Why did y all decide that
you wanted to make a podcast about this? Caitlin, Well,
I suppose it was my idea, Bragg, But basically, I
am a huge film buff, to the extent that I

(04:28):
stupidly got two different degrees in film and spent you know,
tens of thousands of dollars on an education and film
and uh yeah, I mean movies. Movies are life for me,
umnestly crazy, I mean brave, really really brave. Yeah, everyone
started hashtaging Caitlin brave. Um. So I love movies and

(04:51):
I wanted to talk about them and kind of reconcile
the fact that a lot of my favorite movies treat
women horribly, or at least the movies that I grew
up with and just had become accustomed to watch. Some
of those that you discovered, like, oh crap, I love
me awful, but I didn't didn't have the representation of

(05:12):
women yet, right, Um. The Big Three were like for me,
it was like the like trilogies of Back to the Future,
Indiana Jones, and Star Wars like those were like the
crux of my childhood movie development. Uh and then just
any I mean most movies since and before those were

(05:36):
also not great to women. So I just I wanted
to kind of examine these movies more closely, just any
movie that has had like a big cultural impact and uh,
you know, take a look at them and figure out,
you know, maybe how much media is responsible for the
patriarchy still being a thing. Um. And so yeah, we

(05:59):
just to I I asked Jamie if she wanted to
collaborate with me on this idea, and she was very down.
And two and a half years later, here we are,
Oh my gosh, that sounds about the same as krilling it.
And eventually nerdifficent. I was like, hey, you want to
do this. I was like, yeah, yeah, good idea. And
I had seen, like, I have not seen a lot

(06:22):
of well now I have when the podcast started, I
had not seen like most of I had also technically
onto film school, but technically I went, but I've majored
in radio, so I had also had to use the
medium more radio worth it thousands in debt. Uh. But yeah,

(06:49):
and I hadn't seen most of the movies that we
covered and so it was like an in real time education.
But I think it helps to get those two different
perspectives from like me, who like is apologetic to a
lot of these movies and then you're like, oh, I'm
just seeing them for the first time and wow, they're
not good. Yeah that makes sense, Yeah, because you're watching

(07:10):
them with like an air of nostalgia too. Yeah. So
for people that don't know what is the Bechdel test
is our favorite thing to explain to the Bechdel Test.
We can get into the history of it, but just
like the version and the way that we use it,
because there's a few different like permutations of it. But
it's a test that is applied to media, usually movies

(07:33):
and TV, in which a movie that passes the Bechtel
test has a scene with two female identifying characters who
have names, who talk to each other about something other
than a man for at least two lines of dialogue.
That's our version. That's our version. There's a bunch of
different versions. They're simpler ones, there's more demanding ones, but
that's the one we use, okay. Yeah, And it originally

(07:56):
started from Alison Bechdel, right, who wrote in a comic
strip that was Dikes to Watch out for that appeared
in nine and we'll have a link to the actual
comics so y'all can see it. But it was essentially
two women that were trying to go see a movie
and had that same thing where they were saying, I
only go to see a movie if it satisfies three
basic requirements, when it has to have at least two

(08:17):
women in it who talked to each other and about
something other than a man. And then it ends with saying,
the last movie I saw was Alien. Yes, that was
like that, which is funny because that movie barely passes
the Bee. So because they're talking about the alien and
or protocol on the shipsina monster as with every like

(08:39):
major sci fi movie as a vaginal monster because yourgina's
are scary, scary, so wild. And then there's just to
give a little bit more context on that is Alison
Bechdel is a queer cartoonist. A lot of her work
has been about, you know, her identity as a queer woman.
And if you've seen fun Home, which is like a

(09:00):
very famous comic book and musical, now that that was
all her. Yeah, And in the context, this test derives
from it's these two women who basically they they've established
these kind of guidelines for this test because they there's
so little representation of queer women in movies that they

(09:22):
are like, oh, well, if two women are in a
movie and they're not talking about men, that kind of
allows me to ship them together and pretend that I
am seeing like two queer women on screen. So like,
that's a little bit more of the context that has
gone largely ignored in conversations about the Bechtel tests, like
as it's been sort of appropriated to more like mainstream

(09:44):
entertainment stuff. But and and yeah, like unlike I mean,
I guess sort of like a lot of these metrics
that have come more into the conversation in the past
ten years, it wasn't originally intended to be a metric.
It was just like a joke that she she said,
it was a quote, a little lesbian joke in an
alternative feminist newspaper um And then like twenty years after

(10:07):
it came out, everyone's like, oh, this is here, it
is this is the rule and the hard and fast
tests feminism. But it was I mean, at the at
the time that it was the only thing that anyone
had it's so strange. It's and we've found, like through
our podcast that it's definitely it's not the test by
any means. It's definitely flawed. You can have two women

(10:28):
in a movie talking about some really dark um that
doesn't test. There's very often they're talking about something extremely
domestic and still pretty starry types um that makes sense
talking and movies are always talking about either clothes, food,

(10:48):
or cooking other domestic chores birth like babies. There are,
of course exceptions, but we come up on this a
lot where a movie will pass the test and then
it's like, but they talked about cooking, but there's like,
but that exchange was so or is this like an
exchange that's so like just like, hey, what's up? Nothing?

(11:12):
And then they're like, wow, it's a feminist text. Um. Yeah. So.
Alison Bechdel also credited the idea to her friend Liz
Wallace and the writings of Virginia Wolf. After the test
became more widely discussed in the two thousands, a number
of variants like y'all were saying came out that we
will also get into. So in her nineteen essay A

(11:33):
Room of One's Own Virginia Wolf observed about the literature
of her time with what equivalent would be of the
Bechdel test back then that essentially it was largely the
same thing, largely male. I mean, also who was Who's
writing most of these roles? You know? Like that for
because a study of gender portrayals in eight hundred and

(11:54):
fifty five of the most financially successful US films ranging
from nineteen five d to two thousand and six, And
they did another study after that, but during that range
show that there were on average two male characters for
each female character, a ratio that has remained stable over time.
Female characters were portrayed as being involved in sex twice

(12:15):
as often as male characters, and their proportion of scenes
with explicit sexual content increased over time. Have you all
seen that as you've had to watch all these because
you watch like a movie a week for your podcast. Yeah,
I mean I think we do. It's we rarely cover
movies that didn't come out post seventy ish. We've only

(12:35):
done a few older movies. But you can see. I mean,
I always I feel like I always get harsh feedback
every time I'm like really critical of eighties movies. But
I think that that is like the eighties and nineties,
it's sort of had problematic peak um for for stuff
like that. I've found, I don't what do you think.
I mean, Yeah, it depends on the filmmaker, and it

(12:56):
depends on a few different things. But yeah, there's a
whole swaw of very problematic movies from those eras and
from before and from yesterday. So it's just an ongoing trend.
And the more we watch, I mean, yeah, we definitely
we're noticing a lot of trends. We're noticing a lot
of tropes in terms of how women are represented and treated.

(13:19):
I mean the ones that you listed, there's also you know,
so few women of color in movie in mainstream movies,
or so few queer women, uh so, a few you know,
women with disabilities, any any group that's marginalized. It is
rare to see them represented, and when they're represented, it's
always in very specific trophy ways. Yeah, this was a

(13:41):
conversation that I tried to have on Twitter as civilly
as possible about you know, people people really okay, because
the whole thing with Netflix and Steven Spielberg trying to
basically discredit some of the films that were on there,
including Roma, which won an Academy Award. So my argument

(14:02):
about Netflix, which also just canceled one day at a time,
so not great. This my argument was before that happened,
but which was a great representation of both women of
color and the queer community and veterans. To be honest, um,
but my issue is that a lot of people are like, oh,
Netflix doesn't care about about real cinema, and if you did,

(14:23):
you would have films from the fifties, you know, you
only have these current films. I'm like, yeah, but okay,
those films from the fifties didn't really include us at all,
you know. I'm like, there weren't so great for women
of color, people of color in general. So the fact
that there's such a wealth of of filmmakers of color
and specifically women of color that are in a lot

(14:44):
of these Netflix films, to me, it's like, I understand
what you're saying, but also it is giving a more
diverse platform for people that didn't previously have it. And
also we are still considered real film Like to me,
when you say that, when you say, oh, they don't
have real films, what you're saying is Oh, these films
of these people that don't look like me in these

(15:04):
stories I don't care about. That's why it's not real.
In your nineteen fifties film is real cinema. And to me,
it's like, no, that there's a clear just like there's
a clear issue of why you're saying that that you
don't you don't care about our stories as much, or
you don't care about you know, these these filmmakers. Well,
I feel like anytime you put real in front of,
like as a descriptor in front of any subject, it's

(15:26):
usually followed by some bs like real women have curl,
really don't cry. Real blank, you know, like it's it's
a nothing term and it's something used to be elitist,
you know, and because usually when the person is using
real blankety blank blank blank, it usually means the latter.
So it's like real films. No, a real film is

(15:47):
any film made, work put into it. Because if if
you've ever tried to shoot anything, not even necessarily a film,
you know how much of a labor of love and collaboration.
It is so too for anyone, you know, to disc
credit anything because they think it's cool and edgy, because
it's in black and white, you know what I'm saying, Like,
like Clerks did it in black and white, and they

(16:08):
didn't have to be in the fifties. I think also
we're not. I mean when you look at to the
amount of people who are are allowed to have theatrical releases,
because that's essentially what he was saying is, oh, no,
the film should have to have a theatrical release. Well,
think about who gets that type of funding, and think
about the stories that don't get that funding, you know,
in the studio and the and it's nice that we're

(16:28):
able so many eyes on Netflix are able to see
our stories and are able to see the work of
these filmmakers, and it's unfortunate. Of course they want to
have theatrical releases. It doesn't mean the studio is going
to help them with that. Yeah. I think what it
all comes down to is this just that old head mentality,
which is all funny because as I explained that there's
still going to be some like light irony stuff because

(16:49):
like I feel like a lot of old head mentality
is this idea that now it's becoming easier to do
what I worked hard to do. The reason that's irony
is because especially a lot of creative spaces. Uh. You know.
The reason you're right, the reason there are a lot
of these issues are because it's primarily dominated by white men,
specifically older white men who have been in the game

(17:11):
for longer than The reason they've been in the game
for longer is because they've had this ability to like
whenever I hear like a story of this filmmaker who
had a camera at like three, and he always got
it like my my dad would never let me touch
a camera because we didn't have the money to burn
on me wasting the family camera like I didn't, so

(17:31):
you have. And and then also I was talking about
this a little bit in the E Sports episode, and
I think it's kind of the same, the same kind
of symptom of it, where it's like there's all these risks,
like for me to pursue my career, it was it
caused like a real huge, big blow up in my
family for me to you know, my dad comes here
from Nigeria and he wants me to be something that

(17:55):
is guaranteed to make money, like a doctor or a lawyer,
or an accountant or a pharmacist. You know. I I
used to want to draw and I got talked out
of going to college for art because he said there's
no money in that. So when you think of that
mentality from parents who and usually families uh from poverty,
like even you know, even like some white families. And

(18:16):
then you add like a layer to it where like
say you are a person of color, or if you
are a female or a woman, uh, you know, sorry,
it's a black thing. You know, you have to move
it out my vernacular. Uh, if you're a woman and
you're like expected to like especially like a lot of
immigrant families are like you when you're a woman, it's

(18:36):
like you have to make yourself presentable for a husband.
You need to. You can't intimidate them. So like me
trying to go into this field that is like, yeah,
I could be in this for thirty years and nothing happens.
Luckily for me, things have been happening and my dad
has been able to sigh release and now he's bragging
as if I did get a doctorates. But but that's

(18:57):
what you know, people of color and women are usually
facing where it's like because I don't have anyone to
point to and hopefully now you know, you know, even
on my stream, you know, he means it jokingly, but
hopefully like you know someone he's like, he's like, you know,
I can show you like, um, this guy Draco, he's
he's Nigerian, he's in the UK, and he's like, I
can show my mom that you have dreads and and

(19:18):
she'll let me get dreads. Because that's really how it works.
That's you know, when you can point to a Steven Spielberg,
Peter Jackson, any name, any one of them and be like, look,
that's who I want to be, and your parents are like, oh, yeah,
you know you are a young white kid and yeah
you look like that. But if if I'm like, you know,
I'm like, hey, I want to be like Steven Spielberg

(19:40):
Peter Jackson, there's all this baggage where my dad's like, well, no,
you're not like them, you you you gotta go, you
gotta do the lawyer. And then you add even more
compound that's from an immigrant perspective, where like some people
who grow up in the hood and think the only
way out is basketball, sports or or or wrapping those
those are the only two options. So of course, yeah,
this is going to be dominated by this. And then

(20:02):
you add in the effects of like, okay, you got
like college you know, bonds, so you got like Emmerson mafia.
If you wrote for the what you McCall it the
you know what I'm talking about, But what's the comedy
thing over there that's real big, right for the Lampoon.
You have all these connections, and you have this expectation
where you have these these these like Ivy League folks

(20:25):
in these rooms, um show runners who who think that, oh,
I'm good because I went to an Ivy League school
and not necessarily because they're funny, and they may have
a person of color or a woman in front of
them who is genuinely funny, but they're like, well, they
didn't go to Emerson, they didn't go to an Ivy
League school, they didn't write for the National Lampoon. And
that's my like bar for comedy. When it's like, oh no,

(20:47):
it's this whole funny thing like that's you know, and
it and it gets even more insulting. I'm doing a
tangent ran again, but it gets even more insulting when
you see like how often people pluck from black Twitter
memes and pluck from the things that we are saying
and use it in their bs and then uh, and
then still have the goal to not want to hire
black people for some BS bar that we can't reach

(21:10):
because even then, ivye have a hard time letting in
black people. And I and when I say black people,
I mean black people. Africans get in higher on average,
just so they can say they're letting in black people,
but they're letting in Africans. And there goes a whole
another baggage that I can but anyway to reel it
all in that is that I don't barely scratch the

(21:31):
surface of the baggage. But that's what is up against
all of people of color and women, and that type
of stuff isn't carried. And that's generally what people talk about,
just in case someone needs to hear this, When they
mean privilege, that doesn't mean that you didn't have a
hard life. That doesn't mean that you may not have
been poor. But if you were poor and white, you

(21:51):
still have a better chance of getting at Harvard than
a poor and black person. It's just simple facts, and
there's data to back that up. Affirmative action help no
one but white women, straight up. And it's and it's
and that's just why let's just stick to the back.
But I would say to go to end that point

(22:11):
is essentially that is what studios are more willing to
take a risk on, their less willing to take a
risk on filmmakers of color, and they're less willing to
take a risk on stories from people of color. And
that has been shown throughout these decades and even now,
which is a conversation that we've had in the last
couple of podcasts, we're still dealing with that. So all
I wanted to say is when people are like, oh,

(22:31):
you don't have real film, you know, because it's we
don't have film from the nineteen fifties. It's not that
I'm saying that you can't watch those. I'm just saying
that you're invalidating the current landscape of what they have
on there that is hard hitting stuff from people of coloring.
And that's the thing. You even like what you like,
but don't try and uh nag or knocked down something
someone else likes to try and prop up the thing

(22:54):
you like, And which is like Steven Spielberg game by
saying something like what is he losing out on by
making that criticism, and just like it just seems so
empty to do in the first place. It's just the
the old head thing. It's that idea of like it's
so easy when I worked so hard, when you should
be happy about it. It's it's very much like crabs
in the barrel, like I made it and everyone should

(23:14):
should that. That's what separated the cream from the crop.
And I was like, now there's a lot of other
stuff that's separated. And it wasn't even the cream of
the crop. It was the cream of the who had
the most known father or uncle or somebody who can
give them a leg up. It's it's as simple as that.
We all know it. It's all part of it. Nepotism
is part of it, and and that's not and this

(23:36):
always will be a part of it, because like I said,
there's a very collaborative scene. So even even everyone in
this room is probably gonna hire someone who is their
friend or homie. But then that just means the onus
is if you see a hole or a blind spot
in the people you're hiring, maybe hire one less homie
and put someone on who you think deserves it. Fritzing

(23:58):
out And I want to end on a positive a note.
Before I know Danny is about to take us to
break because I don't like to be so like negative
in the industry. I am without like shining line on
some positivity. And I will say, and Danny is really
good about this. Because of that, there are a lot
of dope programs to highlight and shine women and people

(24:18):
of color to get them at that point, Danny is
real good about posting when all of these are entering in.
So don't listen to this and and think that I
don't have a chance with all that that whole diet tribe.
If you do have a chance, and they are working
to fix it. It's a long problem to fix when
you have to fix so many stems and loops and
all that. But there is a shot. And I think

(24:40):
if you want it bad enough, even with nothing you
know really in front of you, just go for it,
you know, just make a safe thing. Make sure you
don't kill yourself doing it, but just go for it.
Never let anything stop you from doing what you believe
you are set out in this world to do. If
you thank you for that, I'm gonna I'm gonna save
that and listen to whenever I feel like giving up. Um,

(25:01):
I do post on my If you follow me on Twitter,
I do post. I try to post as often as
possible for different writers and creators of color when they're
accepting submissions for things. We do have to take an
ad break. We will be right back to talk more
about the Bechdel Test. And we're back still joined by

(25:24):
Caitlin and Jamie, and I wanted to ask y'all about
some of the films that we're surprising that didn't pass
the Bechdel test. Okay, let me pull up our list.
There's I'm never surprised when a movie does not pass
the Bechdel times. I mean sometimes they seem to be
marketed specifically for women, right, and there's even some of

(25:47):
those don't pass it. I think the most famous example
of that that we get. We haven't covered it on
the show, but it comes up all the time is
I think it's like ane late nineteen thirties movie called
The Women and we're all female past. It's like ten
women you do not like your famously, and the way
it was marketed like it was like you don't see
a man on screen the whole time, and that is true.
It does not pass the back because they're only talking

(26:10):
to talk to each other. But it's always about it's
always about a gotten, it's always about a man named Steve.
They're talking about Steve the whole movie. Do you know
who wrote that? Let me the womenkay written by? Oh,
it was written by It was written by two women
over so really uh really uh job, no no way

(26:33):
to no way around it. No, the thing is for me.
I tend to not remember unless it's like it very
handily passes, or it is very clear that the movie
would not pass because it only has one woman in
the entire movie see Raiders of the Lost Dark see
you Know a New Hope, that kind of thing. Um.

(26:55):
I tend not to really remember if a movie passes
the Bechdel Test or not us because it's a metric
that is a useful metric first starting off point to
talk about representation of women in movies. But that's pretty
much all we use it for is just like, Okay,
this initiates a larger conversation that we can talk about

(27:16):
a whole stoe of other things. So whether or not
a movie passes Jamie, as you said, like like the Room,
that famously horrible, horrible movie past test, but like it's
still such a piece of and you know, it's fun
to watch, but you know, it doesn't mean anything that
that movie passes. And then I think, like we determine
chart here, our our friends are very studious and make

(27:40):
up the chart. I would say one that I found
surprising was You've Got Mail because it's a rom com. Yeah,
you didn't think like movies that are like made right
for women in theory. And that was came out like
what two decades ago. So yeah, I think they talked
about you know, well, no, I think I think it's
probablyly in her book in the scenes in the bookstore,

(28:02):
you know, when she because she's talking about her mom
and she's talking about you know what I mean, Like,
I think that's probably how it passed. It. The whole
order of the Rings trilogy does not pass the Vachtel test,
not one of it's a ten hour it doesn't pass.
It's crazy. It has every opportunity and it doesn't. Uh.
And then another one we did recently that I thought,
I guess sort of for the same reason you were saying,

(28:25):
Danny about You've Got Mail, is five Days of Summer
doesn't pass the Vechtel test um. Wait, were you saying
that it does it does pass? Yeah, it does pass.
That's why I'm saying I find that surprising because it's
a rom com. You think, like you know, because she
was yeah, okay, yeah, I mean rom coms often don't pass.
I think we did. We did an episode about we

(28:47):
haven't done um you've got mail yet, but we did
do when Harry met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle, And
there are most of those. There might be like a
very quick conversation that just happens to not be about men,
but often in rom comms, I mean, there's it's it's
it's interesting because like there are certain genres that almost
never passed, like action movies like often do not pass

(29:09):
because there's usually one woman and she's the love interest.
She gets captured, she has to be saved, like she's
everyone's like, oh my god, she can kick. I mean
even if she's allowed to fight. Usually women are not
allowed to fight. Usually they just actual or if you're
in the locks arc, your only weapon can be like
a domestic item like a frying pan or in Halloween,

(29:29):
it's like all domestic items that that are weapons and
oh boy, well this is such an interesting statistics. So um, vactives.
Authors found that films from thirteen that passed the test
earned a total of four point two billion in the US,
while those that failed earned only two point sixty six billion,

(29:50):
saying that Hollywood makes more money by having more women
on screen, which, hello, we've been seeing that, you know,
as Yeah, it's kind of interesting that you might be
able to capture that whole other demographic of our population.
And you know, we make up half or more than
half of the population. Yeah, I mean, it's I mean,
hopefully people will continue to I mean the past three

(30:11):
years is there's been an increase in diversity almost across
the board, and it's like, can we, for the love
of God keep that going. There's it's not it's like
it's good business to like, there's no reason except being
a bigot toll to not do that. Like people want
to see these stories, and people will pay to see

(30:32):
these stories, So make it happen. Stop making the same
boring movie over and over and over. There's a couple
of other tests it looks like that have come up.
There's GLADS, which is Studio Responsibility Index, So that has
to do with queer characters. So essentially their criteria is Um,
the film contains a character that is identifiably lesbian, gay, bisexual,

(30:54):
or transgender. The character must not be solely or predominantly
defined by their sexual orientation. We see that so much.
It's like, that's my personality. Um, that's who I am.
That's my character trait is that I'm gay. That's it. Um,
I see that. Also. I don't know if there's a
if there's a marker for this one, but for plus
size women it's normally I'm fat. That's it. That's my character.

(31:15):
And I remember people like tweeting, hey, you know the
fact girl you can like actually give her a storyline
and other things. Right, she's almost always like the butt
of jokes. But yeah, exactly. Yeah, the test you were
just talking about is the Vito Russo tests. And yeah,
and I think the third caveat of that is that
that character, if they were removed from the story, it

(31:37):
would have like significant impact on the plot. So basically,
like their integration into the story, uh needs to be
so important that removing them would affect how the story
plays out. Um, So few movies that we've done on
the podcast that I've seen in general past the Vito
Russo test, which is very upsetting. Um. But yeah, there's
that one. UM. There's another one that I like is

(31:59):
the way test, which the rules of it are movie
passes if there's a black woman in the work who's
in a position of power and she's in a healthy relationship. UM.
Of the top fifty movies, five movies passed that very
simple metric. Um. There there was a project that five
thirty eight did at the I think it was at

(32:20):
the end of twenty at the end of where they
invited women of you know, like every every type of
woman you could think of to make up their own metrics. UM.
And there were more. There were more intersectional tests. There
were tests that focused for behind the camera, which is
I think something that we don't get a chance to
get a lot in our show, but like it's one

(32:43):
thing to have. UM. I mean, there's so many movies
we've covered where we're like, oh, cool, a female protagonist.
Like I think Carrie is a movie that we covered
that It's like, Okay, you have a movie that is
about women, but so much of it is Uncanny Valley
because everyone behind the camera is a man. So it's
like a man writing a woman's story, and so you're
like the story doesn't make sense. Um, and I don't

(33:05):
know everyone, everyone check it out. There's I think like
thirty or forty different positive tests. Here's something I want
to butt in with two because I know, you know,
whenever you have these conversations, there's this like weird like
so there shouldn't be any movies about white wo men,
and it's like, no, that's not the case. I just
wanted to just drop a number to kind of help

(33:27):
you realize how this actually isn't a huge impact and
you still can have your cake and eat it with
us representing other people and still making movies about white men.
Because look, I love Ryan Gosling. You put him in
anything that he's my favorite white dude. I'm sorry, I'm
gonna sen but there are a total of two thousand,

(33:50):
five hundred and seventy seven films produced each year on
average around the world. So yeah, I feel like you
wouldn't really know the difference if you sprinkled it in. Especially,
I want everyone to take two seconds to try and
remember every movie you saw it last year and see
if they're see which ones you even remember. We see

(34:10):
so many movies and there are are only ones that
stick with us, and I think that's okay, because that's
how stories work. We're gonna see a lot of stories,
and certain stories are going to impact us and hold
a place within us. I still have yet to see anything,
so so I think it really wouldn't make a difference

(34:33):
if every week one movie only one, not even asking
a lot. I want more, But I'm just saying, in
this hypothetical, if every year one movie is featuring just
solely underrepresented characters and actors and people, that would not
even impact the movie scene in a big way. You

(34:54):
wouldn't even notice. So so that's that's always And once again,
a lot of the things we because you know we
which which I forget which episode we're talking about, we
were talking about like you know, white men writing, you know,
people of color and women and this, and you know,
I was contacted by you know, two different people who
were who were writers and we're concerned about, like, well,

(35:16):
can I not write? And I was like no. What
we're saying is there's a difference when it's handled by
certain people, and actually it's it wouldn't be a problem
if the people representing being represented were able to write
their own stories. And we just want everybody to write.
But when someone's taking the center stage and getting to
tell all the stories, when they're getting all the chips

(35:37):
in the bowl and the salsa and we were stuck
with the crumbs, then we're gonna look at your chips
in all your hand and be like, hey, but if
everybody's getting chips, everyone's happy. And that's that's what it is.
It's more equity than anything, right. We talked about this
on the episode we did on the Beguild, which was
that Sofia couple of remakes forgot. It's like, what was

(36:00):
just a wretched movie, but it's it's an adapt She
remade a movie that Clint Eastwood was in from I
think the seventies, and that was an adaptation from a
novel um and basically she erases all of the people
of color in the book, so it's only white women
in this. In this story, she there was there was
a character who was a slave because it takes place

(36:23):
during the Civil War, but that character gets erased and
then when asked about it was like, oh, well, I
didn't think I would be qualified to write that character,
so I just took her out her completely instead of
hiring someone Ellab someone I thought I hadn't. I thought,
like I saw a couple of people commenting on this,
and I thought it was also because then it would

(36:44):
make her white female protagonists harder to root for if
they had slaves. It's like, well then you need to
write a better than don't. Don't make that Like it's
as simple as that. It wasn't a good movie to
begin with. It was not. It was also the that
I never saw it. I mean, not to come down
too hard on the nepotism scale, but like that was

(37:05):
on that same press tr Sophia. Couple of us like
what am the beck tailed tests? Just like I just
I sure feminist hero you know, I mean everyone, Yeah,
that movie was trash. Did you want to go over
the Maco Morey sure? Yeah. This is another interesting one.
This originates from the film The Masterpiece Pacific rim and

(37:29):
the Maco Morey test requires that there must be at
least one prominent female character in the movie who has
her own narrative arc and which is not about supporting
a man's story, right, so it's those three conditions. Is
named after the character in the movie whose name is
Macomoory who who whose arc does pass that test? And

(37:50):
she has I mean, she has like her own story.
I My main criticism of that movie is that, in
spite of the fact that she's given her own storyline
and it's satisfying and as dependent on a man, she
has launched out of the climax of that movie, which
made me gasp, and she doesn't get to participate. They
are putting her in a pod and she can't be
at the end of the movie. And then at the

(38:12):
end she's bobbing at the top of the It's just ridiculous.
But didn't she say? It also didn't pass the Bechdel
tests that that movie, and I don't think that yeah, yeah, um.
There's also the Duvernate test um, which is says that
characters who are people of color have fully realized lives
rather than serving as the scenery in white stories, which

(38:35):
is something that we do see a lot in the
movies that we cover on the podcast, where there might
be one person of color who's the best friend of
the protagonists, but they don't have their own narrative arc.
They only exist to basically serve as scenery. I feel
like that's every nineties movie, really, I do. I feel
like that's every It was like, you know, the black friend,

(38:57):
the Latina friend, you know, and it was like, oh,
it's a sassy one, you know. And then they normally
die or get killed, like I'm thinking of scary movies,
but they you know, comes, It's like they never get
a fully realized their own Yeah. Yeah, that reminds me
of Sorry, I was going to say, that reminds me
of Dave Chappelle showed up randomly and you've got veil

(39:18):
also also in A Star is Born, he just shows
up randomly. It's like, Dave Chappelle, why are you in
this movie? And then by the time you get the
chance to ask that question, he's gone. You don't. I
don't why you keep drinking your brother telling you what wrunk?
I love a minute, but I just was like, wait,

(39:38):
he shows up and then he never comes, you know.
That's what I want for the twilight of my career
is just to show up in movie like he's just
been showing up, like he showed up at the Means,
he showed up at the oscars. That's That's where I
need my career to That sounds nice. That sounds nice.
So then there's the Riz test Uh, named after a
Riz amn Muslim character based on either their ethnicity, their clothing,

(40:08):
or language they speak. Do they talk about or are
the victim of a perpetrator of islamis terrorism? Are they
shown as being irrationally angry? Is the character anti modern
culturally backwards? Are superstitious? Do they get presented as a
threat to the Western way of life? And when it
comes to the gender of the Muslim character, is the
male character presented as being misogynistic? Does a female character

(40:31):
get presented as someone who is oppressed by males, which
which just seems like all these tests are like are
you doing the stereotype? You know, like yeah, yeah, just
don't adhere to stereotypes, because yeah, I imagine people listening like,
oh my gosh, we have to do all of these tests,
and it's like, no, it's just if you have a
person of color, if you have you know, if you
have a woman, if you have these which you should,
but like actually make them real characters and not just

(40:53):
side characters and not just stereotypes. Well, my new answer
is like, if you're a good writer, you have nothing
to worry about because you know, as as I've been
just writing more and more, you go back and like
there there are like blind spots, Like I was thinking
about this episode today and uh, you know, and one
of my pilots I was like, damn, there's like two women,

(41:14):
uh actually three, but they all are so disjointed that
they literally can't pass the Bechdel test because they don't
have any scenes together. So then you you have to wonder,
you know. I I've eventually came to terms that it
kind of served the story I was telling. But but
like and I think that's an important thing too. Whereas
like that's something to have in my head and say,
you know, you know this gets picked up to a series, baby,

(41:37):
you know, like then I have to make an honest
effort to rectify that and make sure you know, we're
getting scenes with women, adding more women, I think. Uh so,
like in the case of you know, white women, Uh,
you know, we had a we write stuff for ourselves
and we're six black dudes, so we make sure that

(41:59):
you know, when we write something that we are including women.
And you know, it's funny looking at our old stuff
because some of our old stuff we're like, we failed y'all,
uh simply put, but we're like, you know, going forward,
we need to be more aware of that because you know,
you've got six men locked in there, and what can
you do do here? And I think it's literally that simple.

(42:19):
And like sometimes if you're like, if the story is
so important that it serves us, you know, then yeah,
then you just go forward with that in your mind
and be considerate of that and considered just the women
you do have in your story, how are they, how
are they communicating with people, how are they being portrayed?
And and that's really all you need to think about.
Like I was had one show concept that had you know,

(42:44):
and an Asian woman in it who like had the
the like tiger mom type thing, and I like called
up a friend I don't think she's been on the
cash Jinny Yang, and I like walked through the beats
of the character is to make sure like I'm not
doing anything offensive and and we hash it in it
with something great. And obviously if that show got picked up,

(43:07):
it's like you're in the room. But like you know,
right now, when it's just me the writer, you have
to do your due diligence. And those are examples of
ways that you can represent people appropriately, talk to have
them read it. You know, if you if you have
black people in your story and you're wondering like, oh,
is this gonna be offensive? Find a black friend sended
to them and have them read it. They'll tell you straight.

(43:28):
It's so it's so frustrating, Like and I like when
a writer is like, well, I'm too anxious to try
to represent people that aren't exactly me. That's like what
perpetuates this problem every single time. So I'm just going
to go out and say you're not a good writer
if you don't want to do that. If you're limiting
your if you're putting training wheels on your scripts because
you're afraid of messing up, you're not a good writer

(43:49):
because you're supposed to be challenging yourself. And right, like
what we said, like if you have queer characters, that
shouldn't be their whole That's why if you're saying, like
you're not a good writer, that shouldn't be their whole
thing is that they're queer. That's just the part of
who they are, but it's not their whole personality. Yeah,
that's not a fleshed out character, is just queer. So
on that we have to take a quick break and

(44:09):
we will be right back to talk more about the
Bechtel test, and we're back. I was going to say,
I don't know if we have a Latin next one,
but I think if we did, I would want to
Are they superstitious? Do they have a decal of Virgin
Mary on the back of their car? Do they at

(44:30):
some point say that's in so many school? When I
was at Io in their screenwriting class, I was like,
please stop writing us, like we don't all say that. Well,
this is your opportunity to make up. Yes, the IF test,
the IFI test for you know, movies feature in Nigerian?
Am I in it? It fails? Or you're racist? Um?

(44:57):
So I think those were the main tests that I
could find. There's no please go ahead. There's something called
the sexy lamp test. Gosh, she told me this and
it was terrifying. Isn't that based around a Christmas story.
It's the Christmas story that has the the late woman's
leg as like the base of a lamp um. So basically,

(45:20):
if you can replace your female character with that sexy
lamp in your story and the story is still basically works,
then that movie fails. Were the ones that they tried
to do that with. I mean, I would say, like,
are they saying a Christmas story? Is that movie? You
could replace them? Or no, not so much that they're

(45:40):
just borrowing that sexy leg lamp from that movie. But
I would I would say that, like apply the sexy
lamp test to a lot of like Bond films. I
bet those would fail like anyone though, there's just like
a token woman who is like the male heroes, like
you know, girlfriend back home that he has to like
have sex with once and then like or like a

(46:04):
woman who's there to like give one piece of information
and then disappear like it could have been from the lamp. Yeah, talking,
would you count Lars in the Real Girl? Oh my gosh,
that's an interesting well we have this com We had
this conversation before we started recording. I think about Solo
about the robot. Do you count? Like do those do

(46:27):
female characters that aren't human count? I would? I would
say so, yeah, if they are, if they seem to
identify as female in some way. And I would also
extend like so that we're not being so rigid with
like gender, if they are like non binary, if there's
a non binary character who talks to a woman or
another non binary character like I would and if they're

(46:49):
not talking about a man, I would say that pass,
like yeah, we don't, we don't want to like you know,
place these rigid restrictions on anything like that. But yeah,
and then there's just like our men not talking the
whole movie, liked about right right or the subject of
every conversation. Yeah, another one I like this. This is
like a more specific vision of the behind the camera stuff.

(47:12):
Is the Reese Davies test by Katerie Davies. A movie
passes if every department has two or more women, which
is not which which is something that doesn't happen very much.
Only about a third of movies pass this test because
there is such a disproportionate representation behind the camera as well,

(47:33):
which is something that I want to be better on
our show about like paying attention to of. Like it's
so rare to see female composers, female editors, photographers, um,
where it's usually where I we're talking about directors, writers
and talent. But there's like there's so many things that
like when a movie is edited by women, they're probably

(47:55):
going to edit out the shot where you know, probably
the male cinematographer. It's like a lingering shot of a
woman in a swimsuit exactly. Yeah. Um, there's another one
that is, uh, I think lesser known because it's it's newer,
but it's called the Kent Test. It's from um Clarkesha Kent,

(48:16):
and it's there are many different components to it, so
I'll just name kind of the main one. But it
determines whether a film or other piece of media has
provided the audience with adequate representation of women or fans
of color. And then it has all these different like
criteria by which you can like basically, it's like, I
think twelve different things, and if it scores higher than

(48:38):
like a six or an eight or some some number,
then it's like, oh, it's doing pretty well. A lot
of movies don't fare very well on this test. I
was gonna say, for if he for your episode of
Black Panther, I'm assuming that that passed the Bechdel test, right.
And I love the fact that Ryan Coogler had Rachel Morrison,
who's his DP and has worked with him on Fruitvale
Station and on Black Panther, So that was that is

(49:00):
a huge thing that that was pretty cool that he
had a woman behind the scenes. Um, as one of
the head people of his crew. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And
then I was pointing I was pointing this out to
you the other day that George Miller, who made Mad Max,
his wife edited it and he there's this quote where
his wife was like, why do you want me to
edit this movie? Was like, because if I have a

(49:20):
man edited, it's gonna look like every other action movie.
And that that's true. Like one of the benefits you
get from having an underrepresented peace to your film is
you're getting a different perspective. I mean, in a good
writer's room, that's why you want different perspective. I was
and probably one of the most diverse writing room a

(49:42):
few weeks ago, and you know, we had you know
me uh, you know, the showrunner was Indian. You had uh,
we had like two women to two men who were writing. Uh.
And and it was just interesting too, like you know,
have you just your different things to the way people say, like,

(50:03):
you know, it's it's all. It's very interesting too to
have just the one line that I always like to
hear in those situations, uh, you know when someone speaking
and goes, oh, a woman wouldn't say that, you know,
like his because because I just even from my perspective,
whenever you see like a black person written by a

(50:23):
white person, you're like, no black person in their life
would ever say that, you know, even just I think
we were saying that a few episodes ago. Just even
the relationship to the police, you know, like you, black
people have a different relationship to the police. Black people
have a different relationship to food. Family eating. There's a
different dynamic and one parent, two parent households, how they

(50:45):
look at wealth, how they look at fame. There's it's
just a whole different worldview. So without someone in there
to check you and be like, oh, that would be whack.
And this is why, And I can like totally break
down why that person wouldn't say that. You know, it
really does help you give that film that extra And
if you just pay attention to what people say when

(51:06):
films nail at on Twitter, I don't see why no,
not everyone does it. You know, what were some of
the films since we're closing up here, what are some
great films if someone want to check out that do
pass the Bechtel test that you guys really love well?
You you just had your Captain Marvel episode, Yeah, that
handily passes if we're talking about recent movies that pass

(51:30):
the Bechtel test, I mean we always talk about Moana. Uh,
that's just like kind of the golden standard of all movies. Um,
are there any Selman? Louise is one of my faves
that you know passes handily, and it like Beckham is
covered semi recently that that does really well with representing

(51:53):
a lot of different types of female relationships, where there's
relationships between women of different uh, generations, of different races,
of different um like income levels. There's there's a lot
of different types and that's something that I think is
a blind spot of I mean of the many blind
spots of the Bechtel test too. It takes it doesn't
take into account what type of women are you seeing? Right,

(52:16):
because there's a jillion funnily funnily is that a word?
I'm going to make it funnily enough. Um. Netflix tweeted
that out on International Women's Day and they were just like,
when taking positive representative this is what they tweeted from
at Netflix Film, when taking positive representation for women, we
need to be critical of what good representation looks like,

(52:39):
not just for white women, but for women of color.
To here are some films to watch on International Women's
Day that not only passed the Bechtel test, but the
DuVernay test too. Awesome. Yeah so and then people, oh, um,
let's see Roma, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Breaker Uppers,
High Flying Bird to all the boys I've loved before.

(53:00):
Lot of people wrinkling time. Um. People got you know,
kind of through some shade at them by tweeting back
at them their senior leadership team which is all white men. Um,
and so what I know. But I think for me,
I tweeted something like, we are aware of the problems.
You know, there's so many issues we're aware of. Who

(53:20):
runs the studios, We're aware of you know. Even when
it comes to Netflix, I think Netflix is more has
been more willing to take risks and giving a platform
to these voices than say other studios. Um. So that's
where I'm a win for it. But it's not flawless.
None of these are none of them are so um
in this progress. Yes, So it's it's gonna take time.

(53:43):
It's gonna take time for there to be you know,
more diverse, like you know, studio execs and and directed
everyone through every step of the process. So yeah, it's
just kind of waiting it out and contributing to the
diversity if you are, you know, a writer, young writer, yeah,

(54:06):
and not a straight ciss white man. Yeah. I think
that wraps everything up, unless you had something iffy. No.
The only thing I have is where can people find you? Wow?
You can follow our podcast and listen to it on
all the places that you would find a podcast anywhere

(54:26):
where you get your podcast, which podcasting Apple because I
find that or probably, and then you can follow us
on social media on Twitter and Instagram at bechtel Cast
and then on Facebook as well. Just type in bectel
cast if you don't know how to spell it because
a lot of people are like, yeah, I tried to
look you up and I don't know how to spell
this damn word. It's a b E C H D
E L. And just check out Alison Becktel's work because

(54:49):
it's really good. Um. Yeah, that's where you can find
should be, I guess individually. Yeah, please do. You can
find me on Twitter at Jamie Left His Help or
Instagram am at Jamie christ Superstar, and you can follow
me on Twitter and Instagram at Caitlin Toronte. Thank you
so much for having Yeah, thanks for coming on and

(55:09):
for going on. I learned some new tests, and I
think that that's really cool. Many tests to make my
own tests, Like like you're saying, if they're all like
basically common sense a good writer, So just have common
sense to the top of your intelligence. Yeah, and I'm

(55:31):
asked someone smarter than you. I do script notes professionally
not to plug but yeah, if you should, because we
I mean, if you actually are taking submissions. We have
a ton of you know, newer writers that we constantly
hit us up. So yeah, I do. I'm a professional
story analyst. I give thorough notes and uh, I'm so

(55:56):
excited for all the resources we give the people that
listen to this podcast. I'm such a nerd, but I
like we had voice actors giving advice. We've had we
had Xavier come on and and also take he's taking
horror scripts that he'll read, and like, oh man, I'm
so excited. Hit me up at Caitlin Dronte on Twitter.

(56:17):
Just you know, so I don't know tag me. I
don't know how you slide into my d M S.
I don't know how things work professionally, sally professionally, you
can just slide into my dar. For whatever reason, I
don't respond, but I do read them. Hey, how's it going?

(56:37):
And you know that's your boy. If I f y
n w A d i w E on Twitter and Instagram,
the discord is Discord dot g g slash Salt Squad
and you can watch me on Twitch at if D
s I f d E easy on Twitch. We're getting
it in uh and yeah. Also, you know, if you
like clothes and you need them. If you're listening to

(56:58):
this and you look down and you're like, all my
clothes got holes in them, you can go to Tea Public.
We have a Tea Public store with lots of narraw
Diifficent merch always at new stuff and we're like hitting
you up with the I don't know if you could tell.
We've had a themed merchant there. We had the Captain
Marvel March for the Captain Marvel episode. We had Harley
during the Terror Strong Harley Quinn episode. So just thank you.

(57:22):
Peep it. Yeah, it's t public dot com slash near Deifficent.
I'm at miss Danny Fernandez. If you're going to Wonder Con,
I will also be there on Friday. I have a
panel with Aurice Wanser who was on our show. Also
Chris Lam who has a who's going to be on
one of our future shows. It's LGBT and minority host
How to break Through. I know that we kind of
did an episode on that, so then you can hear

(57:43):
even more if you're interested in becoming a host. That's
at four pm, Um, I'm going to tweet out all
of this, and then Saturday, I'm on the Most Dangerous
Women panel with some killer women that I love, and
that is at eleven am. So if you're at Wonder Con,
come and say hi to me. Very very so approachable

(58:05):
and like we always say, stay neardy, stay neardy on