Visualising the Bechdel test
The Bechdel Test classifies movies according to whether they have two female characters, who at some point talk to each other, about something other than a man.
It’s not that all movies should pass the test — for example, a movie with a tight first-person viewpoint is unlikely to pass the test if the viewpoint character is male, and no-one’s saying such movies should not exist. The point of the test is that surprisingly few movies pass it.
At Ten Chocolate Sundaes there’s an interesting statistical analysis of movies over time and by genre, looking at the proportion that pass the test. The proportion seems to have gone down over time, though it’s been pretty stable in recent years.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »