23 Aug
2013
23 Aug
'13
12:31 a.m.
Quoting Rohan McLeod (rhn@jeack.com.au): [Bechdel test:]
but what I couldn't work out was whether the test concerns 1/ all conversations between the two female characters or 2/ just one
The test very simply is: At any time during the movie / novel / etc., does such a conversation occur at all? The beauty of it is that it's deterministic and makes no ideological claims about what yes or no outcome might automatically mean for work X. It implicitly acknowledges that there might be any number of reasons other than sexism why it works out to 'no'. But in practice it's an interesting metric.