Tox screen report: Check out new variants of the Bechdel test for movies

Since 1985, the Bechdel test has helped quantify that dysfunction. First published as a gag in The Rule, a comic strip by author and cartoonist Alison Bechdel, it states that in order to tell if a film adequately represents women, one must ask: Does it contain at least two female characters? Who speak? To each other? About something other than a man?

A 2018 BBC study found that only 49% of Oscar Best Picture winners from 1929 to 2017 pass the Bechdel test. There have been reams of gags over the years about filmmakers whose entire oeuvre doesn’t (Woody Allen); and about how the test itself isn’t exactly ironclad. The 2013 film Gravity doesn’t pass it, for instance, even though Sandra Bullock carries the film, because she is the only speaking female character.

To be fair, the Bechdel test wasn’t designed to be ironclad; it was designed to be eye-opening, and so it endured. In recent years, there has been a move to create new tests that might better measure gender misrepresentation and other kinds of biases. Take a look.

Are there enough women?

In 2017, the statistical analysis platform FiveThirtyEight launched a campaign to create a new Bechdel test, more suited to the present. It invited women from film and TV to devise new ways of calculating gender and racial imbalance. The conversation soon became about the massive gender gap in almost every aspect of filmmaking behind the camera too.

A study by the US-based think tank Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that across 900 Hollywood films released between 2007 and 2016, less than 4% were directed by women. Given that what one sees on screen is the result of a hundred decisions made behind the scenes, Canadian-American singer-songwriter and actress Rory Uphold devised the Uphold Test in 2017. It states that no film can claim to represent women if women do not make up at least 50% of the on-set crew. None of the 50 highest-grossing films of 2016 passes this test.

Of colour?

Lena Waithe, the Emmy Award-winning writer on the web series Master of None (2015-), came up with the Waithe Test in 2017. In order to pass it, a movie or show must feature a black woman in a position of power and in a healthy romantic relationship. Only five of the 50 highest-grossing films of 2016 pass the Waithe Test: Bad Moms, Central Intelligence, Hidden Figures, Boo! A Madea Halloween, and Independence Day: Resurgence. “Everybody deserves to see… accurate and layered and complex images of themselves,” Waithe said in an interview with FiveThirtyEight.

With fully realised lives?

In 2016, Manohla Dargis, film critic for The New York Times, came up with what she calls the DuVernay Test, named after black American filmmaker Ava DuVernay. To pass it, an African-American character — or any other minority character — must have a fully realised life, with their own ambitions, rather than functioning as background characters for whites-dominated plotlines.

Writer and actress Naomi Ko’s test is simpler: To be racially diverse, a film must contain a non-white, English-speaking, female-identifying person who talks in five or more scenes.

And a happy ending?

The criteria for the Landau test, courtesy writer Noga Landau, focuses on what a film shouldn’t have. A work is not gender-friendly, it states, if its female protagonist ends up dead, unhappily pregnant or exists only to create problems for the male protagonist.

And is the background awash with white?

The majority of supporting roles, one-scene parts and bits as extras go to men. It’s an imbalance that writer Kate Hagen picked up on and then could not unsee. “The lack of women starts driving you mad… If we’re in New York City, why is the crowd 70% male and 80% white?” she said in an interview with FiveThirtyEight. A movie passes her test if: Half of one-scene roles go to women and the first crowd scene is at least 50% women.

The fact that these tests exist indicates both that they’re needed and that the conversation is getting louder. Various factors, including a push from people in the industry, growing women audiences and changing demographic and spending patterns, have seen the axis tilt at least a little. The UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report 2022, released in March, examined 252 of the highest-grossing English-language films released in 2021 via theatres and / or major streaming platforms and found significant change afoot.

The percentage of leading roles played by people of color (PoC) nearly quadrupled over the decade since 2011, and was 38.9%. PoC writing credits more than quadrupled, going from 7.6% in 2011 to 32.3%. The percentage of PoC directors more than doubled, going from 12.2% to 30.2%.

It also found that the percentage of women in leading roles nearly doubled over the decade, standing at 47.2%; women’s share of writing credits more than doubled, to 33.5%; and the percentage of women directors increased more than fivefold, from a measly 4.1% in 2011 to 21.8% in 2021.

The change is visible at the box office. Films such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) don’t just dutifully check boxes. They joyfully inhabit an entirely parallel universe.

5 Bollywood films that pass the Bechdel test

* Queen (2013): A coming-of-age film in which a lone woman embarks on a journey of discovery (albeit a romanticised one) through Europe. Though most of the film’s most endearing scenes do involve men or sex, even these often feature the silent camaraderie of women. Where the film shines brightest is in its quiet moments that hone in on what it means to begin to question everything, aided by the intimate if transitory friendships of the road. Directed by Vikas Bahl, starring Kangana Ranaut.

* Secret Superstar (2017): A Muslim teen played by Zaira Wasim dreams of being a singer. Her father smashes her guitar, tries to squash the dream, but she finds a pillar of support in her mother (Meher Vij), and together they begin a quest for fame. The two women’s many scenes together are designed as highlights of the (admittedly predictable) film. Directed by Advait Chandan; also starring Aamir Khan.

* Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare (2019): There’s a fierce restlessness that flows subcutaneously through this unexpected (if oddly titled) film starring Konkona Sen Sharma and Bhumi Pednekar. It touches upon sexual abuse in the home, trans identity, but it is a delicate, subtle story that, more than anything, explores what it takes (what it will take) to define oneself as an urban Indian woman. Also starring Vikrant Massey. Directed by a woman to watch: Alankrita Shrivastava.

* Badhaai Do (2022): Rajkummar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar star as a gay man and a lesbian who decide to marry, hoping that they will at least then be able to pursue their true identities away from the prying eyes of family. Rao is evocative as a policeman still in the closet; an actor from Arunachal Pradesh, Chum Darang, plays a woman from the north-east in a key role. It’s a delicately handled film. Immensely watchable, funny in parts, it pulls no punches. Directed by Harshavardhan Kulkarni.

* English Vinglish (2012): Sridevi plays a sweet-tempered homemaker who suffers slights from her well-read husband and convent school-going daughter because she can’t speak or understand English. Another tale of self-discovery on the road, she begins to see herself differently as she travels alone from Mumbai to New York for a niece’s wedding. Also written and directed by a woman, Gauri Shinde.

Special mention of Neeraj Ghaywan’s short film Geeli Pucchi (part of Ajeeb Daastaans; 2021). It tackles sexual identity as well as the serrated knives of caste and patriarchy, in a quiet but deeply unsettling 30 minutes. Starring Konkona Sen Sharma and Aditi Rao Hydari.