{"id":12820,"date":"2013-11-07T10:24:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T09:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=12820"},"modified":"2013-11-07T10:25:35","modified_gmt":"2013-11-07T09:25:35","slug":"ever-heard-of-the-bechdel-test-for-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=12820","title":{"rendered":"Ever heard of the Bechdel test for movies?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Devised by Alison Bechdel, the test is whether a film contains at least two named women characters who talk to each other about something other than a man. You&#8217;ll find a fuller examination <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bechdel_test\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>My all-time favourite film &#8211; &#8220;Lawrence Of Arabia&#8221; &#8211; fails the test totally. One of the best films I have seen recently &#8211; &#8220;Captain Phillips&#8221; &#8211; fails it too. So do all the &#8220;Star Wars&#8221; movies and all &#8220;The Lord Of The Rings&#8221; trilogy. <\/p>\n<p>The test &#8211; for sexism in the cinema &#8211; is not infallible. after all, the film I will see this weekend &#8211; &#8220;Gravity&#8221; &#8211; has a serious and central role for a woman, played by Sandra bullock, and it too would fail the test.<\/p>\n<p>But the test is a good way of stimululating debate on an important issue and in Sweden they are now classifying films using the test &#8211; see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2013\/nov\/06\/sexism-swedish-cinemas-films-women\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Devised by Alison Bechdel, the test is whether a film contains at least two named women characters who talk to each other about something other than a man. You&#8217;ll find a fuller examination here. My all-time favourite film &#8211; &#8220;Lawrence Of Arabia&#8221; &#8211; fails the test totally. One of the best films I have seen [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12820"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12830,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12820\/revisions\/12830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}