Bechdel test for animation

from the "Dykes to Watch Out For" series, Alison Bechdel

It may have been invented as a joke, as well as a comment on contemporary cinema, but the Bechdel test is now a respectable metric of film industry's consistent tendency to default to the male. Briefly, the test - if you don't know it - asks Does the film have at least two women, do they communicate with each other, about something other than a man. It's a small test, and there are other things we could compare female vs male characters - number of speaking (or main) characters, % of screen time, % of dialogue, how well developed and visually differentiated are the characters. Big mainstream animations seem to be following the live action pattern - with some exceptions - of creating characters which are only female if their gender is a key issue. Ho Hum.

People are beginning to notice, to research it, and to publish their analyses, which is good... e.g. www.washingtonpost.com/. But meanwhile, I'm going to do an inventory of male and female roles in my own animations, and apply some of these tests



so, a quick survey of past animations: for comparison

Films with male protagonists	13
Films with female protagonists	16
Protagonists with no (apparent) gender	3
Films with NO women in	8
Films with NO men in	10
Total main characters (female)	29
Total main characters (male)	29
Films that wouldn't pass the bechdel test? if you discount those which have only one character or only characters without identifiable gender	15
Films that would pass the bechdel test	5

seems there is still work to be done then!