Transportation Safety Administration, aka the overworked, underpaid largely despised agency charged with keeping us from bringing more than 3oz of liquid or gel inside any airport terminal.
About 2/3 of the romance novels I've read so far also pass it, despite being, well, romance novels. I actually think the test is pretty useless, and kindof want to do an inventory of cootie-carrying romance movies and guns-n-explosions action movies to see how many actually pass. My guess is that it's a significantly higher number/proportion than what the original test implies.
I'm not sure I'd say the test is useless, but certainly its uses are limited. Novels generally pass it much more easily than movies: and, yes, plenty of cootie-carrying movies pass it. But I didn't think the test was intended to show that the movie in question didn't have cooties, or had some mysterious Feminist Attribute-- I thought the idea was that it was desirable to have, in a movie, two women, a conversation between them, about one of the variety of topics of conversation that is not men. It's still interesting, though, to note what does and does not pass. If we say, more of these pass the test than the original test implies, that doesn't make the test a failure, that means it offers us information we didn't have before.
Though I wouldn't use it as a guide for what I watch or read, certainly. Two books that emphatically don't pass the Bechdel test: Good Omens and Small Gods. Alas. :'( Actually Small Gods has no significant ladies at all, excepting a goddess-plot device and the lurking phantom of a grandmother.
It also has the unfortunate attribute of implying (in its original context, the dykes to watch out for comic) that lesbians are incapable of being interested in or caring about fiction which doesn't pass the test.* Which, wow, way to essentialize there, Bechdel. I realize it's doing the "generalize to make a point" thing, but I'm a much bigger fan of the "say what you actually mean" thing.
And then fandom's application of the test pervert's what's already deeply flawed into a way to judge a work's value or merit, which IMO is worse than useless.
* Some pure pedantry: It's also factually wrong: Alien came out in 1979, and Sixteen Candles came out in 1984, both predating the comic.
Lesbians generally? Been a while since I've seen the comic, but... I thought it was just one character, speaking for herself, about a certain set of plot elements she simply can't do without.
I can't really speak to that, because I don't think I've seen a lot of application of the test one way or another, but certainly fandom has it in it to do a lot of perverting.
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About 2/3 of the romance novels I've read so far also pass it, despite being, well, romance novels. I actually think the test is pretty useless, and kindof want to do an inventory of cootie-carrying romance movies and guns-n-explosions action movies to see how many actually pass. My guess is that it's a significantly higher number/proportion than what the original test implies.
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Though I wouldn't use it as a guide for what I watch or read, certainly. Two books that emphatically don't pass the Bechdel test: Good Omens and Small Gods. Alas. :'( Actually Small Gods has no significant ladies at all, excepting a goddess-plot device and the lurking phantom of a grandmother.
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And then fandom's application of the test pervert's what's already deeply flawed into a way to judge a work's value or merit, which IMO is worse than useless.
* Some pure pedantry: It's also factually wrong: Alien came out in 1979, and Sixteen Candles came out in 1984, both predating the comic.
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I can't really speak to that, because I don't think I've seen a lot of application of the test one way or another, but certainly fandom has it in it to do a lot of perverting.
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