Bechdel Pilot Study

Sandy Hobbs, 13 November 2018

The Bechdel Test derives from an episode in a lesbian comic strip drawn by Alison Bechdel. One woman says to another that she only goes to a movie if it obeys three rules:

  1. there are two named female characters,
  2. they have a conversation,
  3. about something other than a man.

This has been developed as the basis of a test for anti-female bias in media. Films, for example, have been scored from 0 to 3, depending on how many of these conditions are met.

David Main has suggested to me that this might be relevant to our investigations of film noir, since we have found that, overwhelmingly, the Principal Protagonists are male. As an initial exploration of the possibilities, the Bechdel-tested movies list (at bechdeltest.com) was searched for films which had been employed as examples of Noir and Non-Noir by Cornwell and Hobbs:

Found : 18 of the 42 Noir; 12 of the 42 Non-Noir.

Ratings:

  3 2 1 0
Noir 5 3 8 2
Non-Noir 6 2 4 0

The numbers are small, but they suggest noir films tend to be less female-orientated, which fits with our find that PPs are generally male.

  Mode Median Mean
Noir 1 1 1.6
Non-Noir 3 2 2.2

It could be useful to include a Bechdel analysis in our discussion of Noir. However, it must be acknowledged that the filed ratings are not necessarily reliable. Comments on the website suggest that some of the raters are somewhat casual in their approach. Phrases such “I don’t recall” or “it’s a long time since I saw this movie” are not encouraging.

Some of the comments quite reasonably question what counts as a conversation.

It is not clear how the “naming” of a character is determined. Does it have to be mentioned in the action or is it a question of searching IMDb listing, say? Gilda has a Zero rating, but two comments refer to the eponymous Gilda having a brief conversation with a maid named Maria. IMDb has Rita Hayworth as the only credited female role, Gilda. It lists several uncredited roles for women, but none of them are named characters.