• 8 years ago
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    What Happened After Swedish Theaters Introduced a Bechdel Rating for Its Movies?

    --Swedish films are now 2.5x more likely to pass the Bechdel test since the A rating's implementation. In 2013, only 30% of Swedish feature films passed the Bechdel test. The next year, that rate jumped to 60%, and in 2015, a whopping 80% of films earned an A rating seal.

    --The A rating system is now a feature in 30 movie theaters. In addition to the seal seen above, consumers are informed of a film's Bechdel test passage by a brief trailer that runs before the start of the movie. The A rating seal has also begun to appear on DVD covers.

    http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/what-happened-after-swedish-theaters-introduced-a-bechdel-rating-for-its-movies-20160217
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      Editing … 80% is a good number. I was at a lecture where the professor estimated that around 92% would be the right amount. So there would be 8% dude bro movies and 8% dudette sistah movies. Sounds good to me.
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    • Rich .
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      Rich .
      Editing … Very few of my favourite films pass the bechdel test. In its defence, ##The Shawshank Redemption is set in a prison, they don't tend to be mixed gender.
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    • Rich .
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      Rich .
      Editing … Putting bechdel ratings in cinemas seems like a great idea for bringing change about quickly but I can't see it happening in the US any time soon and that's what it'd take to change Hollywood.
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      Editing … Yeah, a lot of my favorites fail, and even when they don't, many of them have very brief conversations of one or two sentences.
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    • Rich .
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      Rich .
      Editing … Looking at my top 10 Inception and Ferris Bueller's Day Off are the only two that pass comfortably.
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    • free fall
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      free fall
      Editing … But the Bechdel Test is totally meaningless.
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    • Rich .
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      Rich .
      Editing … I don't buy that. Try the reverse bechdel test for men (Two named male characters talk about something other than a woman) and look at how few films fail. By comparison a lot of films fail the actual bechdel test and considering it's a pretty low bar to meet that's kind of shocking. Yeah, individually a fair few films have perfectly good excuses for a lack of female characters (Shawshank's set in a men's prison etc) and some are pretty progressive in their depiction of women even if they technically fail (I was surprised V for Vendetta didn't pass) but as a test it's still pretty sound.
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    • free fall
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      free fall
      Editing … I mean it is true that more films would pass the gender swapped version. But passing the test is a worthless achievement because it ignores all context. It is all about the nature of the portrayals, it can't be quantified by a simple test. You could have two women talking about how the woman's role is to stay in the kitchen and it would pass with flying colors.
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      Editing … Of course there are loads and loads of movies that wont reach those qualifications just because they tell about something that is male dominated. Like war or prison. And obviously there will be a lot of "one room dramas" that don't have two women talking to each other.
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    • Rich .
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      Rich .
      Editing … No rule's going to replace intelligent evaluation of a film, especially a straightforward one you can assess quickly. I still think it's a good test for setting a minimum bar that a lot of films don't have a good excuse for failing to meet though.
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Created 2015-07-06 03:57 pm
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