Movies Passing the Bechdel Test for Sexism Earned More in 2013

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

This strikes me as some pretty big correlation = causation bullshit.

I'd argue correlation =/= causation in this case

I think that people see a correlation and causation in something that isn't there.

the Bechdel Test is nice, but it shouldn't be assumed that correlation = causation between anything including box office revenue.

Look at all these people using words that are too big for them.

The chart has demonstrated a correlation between Bechdel test passing, and revenues.

After this, to state that "movies that pass the Bechdel test generally have higher revenues", is not a fallacy derived from the correlation, this is what the correlation itself SAYS.

If I know that closer to the equator, violent crime rates are higher, then it would be a false causation to believe that it is due to the high temperature, however, it would NOT be a false causation to say that "I don't want to go anywhere near the equator because crime is higher there". It is a practical application for the correlation.


In case of the Bechdel test, looking for a causation would mean to make hypotheses about exactly WHY the Bechdel-passing movies are more successful: Is it the female audience's appreciation? Is it due to better reviews from liberal/feminist reviewers? Is it because mixed gender plots are more original annd refreshing to the general auddience? Is it because macho action movies with male-dominated casts tend to have worse sales than (typically more diverse) family movies?

You fail to understand basically everything you're saying. The point we're making is this: These films passing the test could have absolutely nothing to do with their status at the box office.

As I said in another post, for there to be any evidence that test passing films make more money, we would need the data from many previous years.

The only thing you could state is this: "Amongst the films counted in 2013, as a whole, those that passed the Bechdel Test generated more box office revenue than those that failed"

As an aside, you should probably work on spelling before you insult others for their vocabulary.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

The best example is Desolation Of Smaug. The female elf, among a few other things in the movie, was completely unneeded. Everything she did could have been accomplished by Legolas instead.

So you're saying they should have made Legolas fall in love with Kili?

That would have been AMAZING!

...I'll admit I forgot about that.

That would, however, be pretty goddamn fantastic.

I demand fan fiction immediately.

 

[Icehearted]

I don't even know what to make of this. Sexism? Really? Because I know all these women being kept from education, employment, and voting because movies. See? I can overreact too!

I'll chalk it up to bad writing more than anything. In all honesty people have their MacGuffins, in reality and fantasy, that it's a pretty girl or some variation isn't because Vagarious Attitudes Generate Infantilized Needy Adults. That's just typically a two dimensional item representative of a larger idea. We see his goal is the pretty girl, but our minds fill in the rest with assumptions, many of which are implied (she's symbolic for love, success, overcoming shyness or other personal obstacles, etc). If anything this could be construed as sexist in both directions, the guy being just as shallow an image himself for predictably thinking with his dick, and having no life outside of impressing the girl and proving his manhood.

I honestly do not take any of this seriously, and I know I'm not saying anything that has probably not already been said better by others smarter than myself. I just find it annoying that this is really a thing still being leveraged against or for a group or demographic in unfair fashion. It feels like every time the word sexism is used it's by people with a huge chip on their shoulder and ants in their pants.


Incidentally, I keep meaning to check into gravity but for some reason keep forgetting that movie exists. The peril of not having a regular TV viewing habit (I cut the cord years ago) is that I really don't know what's playing anymore. Honestly, Riddick and Thor 2 came out of nowhere for me.

 

[An Ceannaire]

No one ever claimed it was scientific. It's an arbitrary set of standards invented to demonstrate the current state of gender roles in films. Stop derailing.

"Arbitrary" being the operative word. It's like me saying a film is racist if it doesn't have two non-white people having a conversation for a certain period of time pertaining to a topic other than white people.

Sounds ridiculous, right?

 

[devilmore]

Ok, I guess I get the 2 or more character part. you don't want token females. Though its somewhat dubious that a woman apparently can't be strong unless she has a female BFF, but whatever. I get the talking about something other than a man (the most meaningful part of the whole test). But why do they have to talk to each other? The Hobbit fails because the women don't talk to each other? Really? Why? Why isn't a female character strong or deep or w/e unless she talks to other women?

I call bullshit.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

This is starting to worry me a bit. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but the idea of this test being taken more and more seriously is just a bit spooky.

It's great to try and include women more, but it should be done for the sake of story and character, not this arbitrary check list of things that make your movie less sexist. The best example is Desolation Of Smaug. The female elf, among a few other things in the movie, was completely unneeded. Everything she did could have been accomplished by Legolas instead. Her scenes were nice and she was a good actress, but she further bloated an already overlong movie.

I think that's more "we gotta stretch this shit out because studios figured out that more movies = more money. So let's see, um... Legolas is back! And he has a girlfriend!" Again, I don't see this as anything more than capitalism. If you have more relatable female characters, you conceivably have double the potential audience. Also, women just so happen to be driving profits nowadays with stuff like 50 Shades of Gray, Twilight, Hunger Games, etc and so forth.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

This is starting to worry me a bit. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but the idea of this test being taken more and more seriously is just a bit spooky.

It's great to try and include women more, but it should be done for the sake of story and character, not this arbitrary check list of things that make your movie less sexist. The best example is Desolation Of Smaug. The female elf, among a few other things in the movie, was completely unneeded. Everything she did could have been accomplished by Legolas instead. Her scenes were nice and she was a good actress, but she further bloated an already overlong movie.

I think that's more "we gotta stretch this shit out because studios figured out that more movies = more money. So let's see, um... Legolas is back! And he has a girlfriend!" Again, I don't see this as anything more than capitalism. If you have more relatable female characters, you conceivably have double the potential audience. Also, women just so happen to be driving profits nowadays with stuff like 50 Shades of Gray, Twilight, Hunger Games, etc and so forth.

Yeah, you're probably right about that one.

If she wasn't female, then it would have been more difficult shoe-horn a love story into the movie.

 

[Something Amyss]

"Arbitrary" being the operative word. It's like me saying a film is racist if it doesn't have two non-white people having a conversation for a certain period of time pertaining to a topic other than white people.

Sounds ridiculous, right?

For that analogy to work, the Bechdel Test would have to conclude that a movie is sexist for parallel reasons.

It doesn't.

Though its somewhat dubious that a woman apparently can't be strong unless she has a female BFF, but whatever.

Which rule dictates that?

 

[CriticalMiss]

How did Pacific Rim fail, they had a female Kaiju.

And she got killed. Typical patriarchy! Rabblerabblerabble!

 

[Erttheking]

You know, I'm starting to think that people are taking this article way too seriously. Talks of people being forced to write female characters, the death of creativity...the article just points out that movies that happened to pass the test made more overall than the ones that didn't! It's an interesting little tidbit, nothing more! Why is everyone getting up and arms over this?

 

[Lola Lazerface]

Real talk: The many moronic, laughably & extremely obliviously overprivileged comments in this thread just break my fucking heart.

You ding dongs only get to complain after the unlikely event that women & minorities of all sorts unfairly start earning more -- to name something -- than you milquetoast, sheltered kids lacking empathy up to the demanding standard of basic decency.

Shame on me for tentatively concluding -- from an admittedly tiny sample size -- that the The Escapist community was enlightened and not plagued by shit aforementioned.

 

[Ukomba]

Real talk: The many moronic, laughably & extremely obliviously overprivileged comments in this thread just break my fucking heart.

You ding dongs only get to complain after the unlikely event that women & minorities of all sorts unfairly start earning more -- to name something -- than you milquetoast, sheltered kids lacking empathy up to the demanding standard of basic decency.

Shame on me for tentatively concluding -- from an admittedly tiny sample size -- that the The Escapist community was enlightened and not plagued by shit aforementioned.

According to an analysis of Census Bureau data released by Reach Advisors in 2008, single childless women between ages 22 and 30 were earning more than their male counterparts in most United States cities, with incomes that were 8% greater than males on average.

The wage disparity comes more from types of jobs chosen and hours worked. If a man is working a harder or more dangerous job for longer hours than his female counterpart, how is it inequality that he earns more?

 

[T_ConX]

The Top 50 Movies of 2013
Um... there's only 48 movies here.

I also find the dubious category to be quite... dubious. If someone was making a list using the test to show how under-represented women were in films, they would write these movies off as a fail. However, the purpose of this chart is to show that Bechtel passers can succeed at the box office, so they might feel the need to inflate the pass side's numbers

There's about $1.2B tied up in the dubious category, which, if sent over onto the fail side, would tip the scales over in fails favor.

Also, I can't imagine any level-headed person basing all their movie going purchases on the Bechdel test.

 

[likalaruku]

Well, one reviewer wrote "There's nothing to disagree about as it relates to the film passing. The Bechdel Test doesn't measure whether a film is sexist or feminist. It's an arbitrary set of standards used to test for gender bias."

& it must be true, because "Oz the Great & Powerful" passed & The Hobbit 2 didn't. I don't know if I'm more offended that Peter Jackson tried to give the gayest Tolkein character a Relationship Sue, or that Disney turned The Wizard of Oz into a harem story.

Gender bias, whatever. I'm a woman & I tend to gravitate toward series than have little to no women in them at all. I have seen things that are the polar opposite & find them to either be obscenely sexist (regardless of the gender of the writer) or obscenely boring.

 

[Rutskarn]

The message here isn't that films aimed at something besides a scrupulously masculine viewpoint are *good*. This isn't a "social responsibility" chart; it's a SALES chart. The point is that there's money in broadening your audience.

These films didn't make more money because they "broadened their audience", they made money because they were good films that people went to see. Nobody makes a decision to go see a film just because two women in it have a conversation about a topic other than men.

Yes, but people didn't go to see them based on a random die roll, either.

I'm not claiming the Bechdel test is perfect, but I'm saying that given these numbers, it's pretty plausible to conclude that:

1.) Movies that pass the test tend to be written from a less aggressively male-centric perspective, and
2.) these movies ultimately get sought out and recommended by more people because they don't alienate half of the population.

How do you interpret this data?

 

[Dragonbums]

How did Pacific Rim fail, they had a female Kaiju.

Female beasts don't count, and while it's refreshing to not have Mako overtly swoon over Riley and focus a whole lot more on being a Kaiju rider, she was the only main female character. I didn't see her talking to the only other female character (that's not a beast) Sasha the entire time, so by virtue it failed the test.

 

[Dragonbums]

Is this whats going to happen now, a writer writes an original script and the producers tell him to rewrite it to pass the bechdel test?

Also, it's not like directors today aren't told to change their well written out female characters to fall in line with regular trip bullshit? I'm just saying that it goes a whole lot more the other way, than the way of social justice warriors.