The Bechdel Test

Okay, so the Bechdel Test came up in the discussion of Pitch Perfect and I didn’t want to lose the flow of the review too much (as IF my reviews are stream lined beasts rather than the rambling piles of words they actually are)

The Bechdel Test is based on a comic by Alison Bechdel

So to pass the test you need to have two female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man. I think the version most commonly used now requires the women to be named. There are other versions of it that are slightly different, but if I mention it, I want the characters to be named ladies who talk about something other than a man.

Sometimes there’ll be arguable cases and if there is one I’ll make a note of it.

It’s frankly chilling how many films fail this test.  Passing the Bechdel Test doesn’t necessarily make a film feminist or stop it from being sexist (or, for that matter, good) but it’s a really good launching off point to think about films and feminism.

Feminism will come up on this blog from time to time because it’s something I’m interested in, but it’s not something I’m going to talk about in every review because there are countless people who can do a much better job of it than me.

An Introductory Post

Hello internet.

I’m just going to say that my first thing done on this blog was type “Hello internet” and I spelt internet wrong and then had to go back and change it. That’s the level of discourse we’re aiming for here, folks. Right up at the sky.

This is going to be a blog that is primarily about my feelings about various things what I watch/read/play. I have an eclectic range of interests, so this is largely going to be films, games, books and theatre/live performance. I’ve started to record what I’ve seen this year as I think it’s a good idea and then it’ll mean I get to write about what things I think are best. I’m also probably going to do a few things about interesting things I read/watched a while ago. I listen to a lot of radio and watch a lot of TV, but I watch and listen to so much I imagine it’s a bit redundant to write about all of it.

I’m going to be working through a backlog of things that I’ve seen in January due to my shilly shallying about starting this blog in the first place, but then will try and just review everything I see. I’ll also be referring to my readers and I’m not sure if I will actually have any, but yeah, gonna start blogging folks. OH YEAH.

As a note, I hope my technical ability at blogging will increase as we go on, and so I will learn how to do pictures and spruce up the blog so it has a theme and looks nice.

NB I weep a lot at things. So if I mention crying at something it means I welled up and I basically do this all the time, it’s not like a normal person crying. That’ll be good to know going forward.