Our favorite thing to tell toddlers is how unique they are, that each and every one of them is a special snowflake. Although they are each made of the same stuff, ice and air, their bodies, personalities and experiences are individualized. Then, for the lives of a good half of them, we find ways to make them feel less so.
Take the lack of representation of women in film, for example. In 2014, a study from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media found only 31 percent of speaking roles in worldwide films were occupied by named female characters. U.S. films fell below that average with named female characters only grabbing 29.3 percent of speaking parts.
And what were these female characters able to say? Apparently, not much. Only 23.3 percent of global films had a plot centered on a woman or girl.
But if the statistics aren’t tangible enough, there’s another way of finding out whether women on film are represented compellingly: the Bechdel test.
Based on a comic strip written by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in the mid-1980s, the test has gained quite a bit of traction in the last decade. It’s composed of three questions: 1) Does a film have at least two female characters? 2) Do they talk to one another? 3) Are the subjects of their conversations about anything other than men? Many U.S. films wouldn’t make it past the second question.
So, why is this test important?
Because movies can profoundly move you. For me, an example of such a film is director Wes Anderson’s "The Darjeeling Limited." It centers on three brothers travelling through India who reconnect a year after their father’s funeral. It’s a sharply witty and touching ode to brotherhood in the face of the unmanageable loneliness that follows a parent’s death.
Now, I don’t have any brothers, nor have I ever experienced the death of a loved one. But I see myself in this movie; I see my relationship with my best friend.
We’ve never flung belts at one another, pepper sprayed one another or released deadly snakes on one another. But, we’ve found that loved ones, especially those our own age, provide us an insurmountable strength against experiences that could have been once unbearable. Thus, through this work of fiction, I find myself.
So, if this fictional movie still resonates with me despite not resembling my personal, surface reality, does it matter if it resembles the lives of other viewers, many of whom include women? Does it matter if less than a third of films pass the Bechdel test? Yes, it most certainly does.
"The Darjeeling Limited" can solely be about the personal journey of three men, and there would be nothing wrong with it. But, at the very least, for every tale of brothers, there should be one story of sisters.
Life doesn’t come in one-size-fits-all. Between the universal facts of life are nuances as varied as the seven billion people who exist today, and the billions who have come before. Some of these nuances include race, class, sexuality and gender. These factors, for better or for worse, create different outlooks and different ways of seeing oneself.
So if fully formed female characters are absent from a vast majority of films, what will female viewers see? Not themselves. The Bechdel test challenges films to allow women to take part in the process of storytelling and self-discovery, because to ignore the existence of women in film is to ignore the existence of women in reality.
Neel Bapatla is a sophomore English major. His column appears on Thursdays.
