By Jill Baker, Video and Graphics Editor
There is an endless dialogue regarding the prevalence of gender stereotypes enforced in movies throughout the past century. There resides the age-old balance of a lack of men showing vulnerability and sensitivity and deficiency of strong independent women.
As a woman myself, I can speak more on behalf of the observations of women in film and how I perceive this decade’s massive step up in regards to representation. There have been tremendous strides in powerful roles of once marginalized groups but a percentage of films still fail the Bechdel Test.
The test was first referenced by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in a 1985 strip called “Dykes to Watch Out For” and has inspired other tests for evaluating artistic works regarding inclusion of people of color and varying sexualities.
For a movie to pass the test, there are three requirements: it must have at least two women in it, who talk to each other, about something besides a man.
It sounds simple enough, but a surprising number of modern-day movies do not pass: “Mission Impossible: Fallout,” “Love Simon,” “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” “The Avengers,” the entire “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and more.
Failing this test far from makes a movie bad as it is not referencing the quality of the specific work; I have personally enjoyed every movie listed above. That is not the intent of this point. Coordinating with the artist’s original intent, I believe that it simply is to direct attention to the normalized plot lines and character types of mainstream films.
I have learned through studying storytelling and screenwriting, each interaction should move the plot or element forward in a story. Acknowledging this in regards to female characters in a film, it reveals another layer of depth of substantiality of women in the development of plot.
Within this movement in the last decade comes another form of female representation that I think can be analyzed more. For a simple explanation, I will call them “fad girl gang” movies.
I am referring to the movies about all female variations of groups seen in classic movies. The two largest examples are the crews in “Ocean’s 8” and the 2016 reboot of “Ghostbusters.”
Again, my evaluations of these movies are not in respect to the quality itself of the films rather the overarching representation in the industry.
As reboots and continuations of absolutely iconic series’, I would have rather seen recognizable continuances with kick-ass women acting as pivotal parts of the crew over “fad girl gangs” that could be considered to be playing into the palm of a feminist and girl-power-hungry target market.
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