-By Warner Todd Huston
Conservatives like to scoff at the stuff and nonsense that is modern liberalism and its attack on traditional values and the so-called Bechdel Test is a perfect example of this foolishness of the liberal/feminist milieu. The very fact this “test” is even a thing shows how feckless and silly feminism and liberalism are.
For those blissfully unaware, the Bechdel Test is a way to ascertain if a TV show or movie pays enough fealty to feminism. The “test” measures how often two female characters talk to each other about men — whether it be a potential boy friend, a current boy friend, or a husband, or an object of desire or even a father figure. The purported goal of the test is to ascertain whether the characters are indulging the stereotype of women being fixated on pursuing men or otherwise showing they are somehow subservient to the male of the species.
The test may seem simple enough — are women in the film more worried about the men in the film or are they portrayed as more well rounded characters with a richer, deeper development? But in fact, it is meaningless box checking that ignores context and the actual story of the show.
But more significant is the fact that this whole “test” is based on a joke. No, really… an actual joke.
The test became a “thing” after a 1985 panel cartoon by lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel. The test came from a cartoon she put out in 1985 entitled “Dykes To Watch Out For.”
The piece was a ten-panel cartoon in which two lesbians talk about going to a movie with one essentially laying out the ground rules for the test: “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.”
The joke of the comic comes at the end when the rule-maker says the last movie she saw was Alien because the two women talk about the monster, instead of a man. And hilarity ensues…
From there Bechdel’s “test” idea leapt off the page of a cartoon and into the world of feminism. But even the artist has said she is surprised her joke was turned into some sort of feminist litmus test to evaluate popular entertainment.
But that’s just the point. Conservatives may like to rib feminists and liberals as being a joke, but in this case it literally is a joke. This whole so-called test was actually, created out of a joke.
And yet, feminists proffer this “test” as a serious tool by which to judge the suitability of modern entertainment.
But let’s really look at what this test means to do. Instead of critiquing art (as entertainment insists it is) this test is an attempt to turn the creation of art into an assembly line process of including a series of politically correct properties in order to satisfy activists looking to push an agenda. This is propaganda, not art.
Unsurprisingly, as the Bechdel Test got more notice in the fetid industry of feminism it spawned a series of tests for gays and others who riffed on it to push their own agenda. But they are all the same, really. They are all just efforts to turn art into propaganda.
And, again, they are all based on a real, actual, literal joke.
____________
“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Follow Warner Todd Huston on:
Twitter
Facebook
Tumblr
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, Federalist Papers, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.
NOTE: If you want to comment, for some reason our Facebook comments section takes a bit of time to load. It’ll pop up soon. Thanks