You’ve probably heard of The Bechdel Test which was based on a 1985 cartoon strip by Alison Bechdel, in which two women are walking down the street, having a conversation:
Woman one: ‘Wanna see a movie and get some popcorn?’
Woman two: ‘Well… I dunno I have this rule see. I only go to a movie if it satisfies three basic requirements. One, it has to have at least two women in it… who two, TALK to each other about, three, something besides a man.’
In the 2014 Bath Film Festival Programming Team, one of our programmers, Elspeth Hinde, suggested that the festival follow the example of a Swedish cinema chain and rate all the films in the festival which passed the test.
Back in the office, we took a closer look at The Bechdel Test. To give you some idea of how many films fail to pass even these most basic rules, only one of the Harry Potter films passes (when Mrs. Weasley calls Bellatrix Lestrange a ‘bitch’ in the franchise’s final battle) all of the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings fail as well as 10 out of 14 Pixar films. Once you start watching films through Bechdel goggles, it is shocking how few women have conversations on screen about anything other than the male lead.
However, these three questions miss an awful lot too. It was after all, only a comic strip, not a manifesto. There are films with fantastic female leads, such as Gravity, and films by brilliant female directors such as Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker which don’t pass the test, and dreadfully misogynist films such as The Bikini Carwash Company (whose title says it all) which pass.
With wonderful synchronicity, our investigation into inequality on screen coincided with the release of The Hollywood Diversity Report which revealed that out of ALL the films coming out of Hollywood in 2013, fewer than 5% were directed by women.
Feeling that this was extreme inequality, and in an effort to highlight the role of women behind the camera as well as on screen we created our own 3 questions:
- Does it have a female director?
- Is it written by a woman?
- Is/are there complex female characters on screen who exist in their own right (not simply there to support to the male lead)?
Any film in the 2014 Bath Film Festival programme which answered yes to one of these questions was awarded the F-rating stamp of approval. Out of 42 features, 17 were awarded an F-rating, a significantly higher proportion than the Hollywood offer, possibly because of the choices we made (the festival’s sole criteria for selecting a film is: is it a great film?) and because the ratio of women is better in independent films and better still in documentaries (as they are cheaper and therefore lower risk than blockbusters).
Hoping for some coverage of the F-rating and anticipating a call from the Bath Chronicle, we were suddenly swamped by the world’s media. The F-rating was covered by every UK broadsheet (The Independent featured it twice!) as well as BBC Online, Elle, Marie Claire and magazines in China, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the US – it featured on The Wright Stuff, in Ed Vaizey (Minister for Culture)’s weekly bulletin and of course the Twittersphere went wild.
Expecting personal death and rape threats (the usual social media reaction to the word ‘feminist’) we were completely overwhelmed by the positivity and support the strand received: no one seemed to have a bad word to say.
Join Holly Tarquini on the F-rated Facebook Page and on Twitter. You can also read about the rating (thanks to Sophie Mayer) here on Wikipedia.
The F-rating 