“It’s a low bar, but many good movies don’t pass [the Bechdel Test]. Birdman fails. Avatar fails. Fucking Toy Story fails.” –Daniels & Anderson, 2016

Filmmaking is a popular endeavor. The majority of our American population are consumers of the filmmaking industry. Therefore, it’s only fair to find out who and what are films made of. The Largest Analysis of Film Dialogue is a polygraph joint that looks into over 2000 movie scripts in order to statistically depict the amount of film dialogue between genders. Its goal is to support the validity of the “Bechdel Test”, which measures specific gender dialogues within a film. Within the next paragraphs, this blog will explain the reasons behind the film statistics and how the Bechdel Test examines the genders roles of filmmaking and the film itself.

The birth of this project stems from criticism towards the Bechdel Test as it fails over 40 % of films in its test website. To explain, the Bechdel Test measures the overall gender dialogue of a film based off of female interactions. This quote explains how, to pass, “The films need to satisfy three requirements; one, it has at least two women in it, two, who talk to each other, three, about something besides a man.” At first, these rules seem achievable for most films, but surprisingly, quite a number of iconic films fail this test, such as Avatar, Toy Story, and Gravity. Moreover, the pass or fail result seems to correlate with the gender diversity of the writing team. Within the 200 highest grossing films, Bechdel results show that an all-male writing team produces a 53%/47% pass-fail ratio, while an all-women writing team produces a 100%/0% pass-fail ratio, and a writing team that has at least one woman produces a 38%/62% pass-fail ratio.

Through the measurement of dialogue and the Bechdel test, the data presented has given us an adequate view of how the filmmaker’s gender is correlated to the gender domination within the film. Thus, the validity of the Bechdel test stands tall, while Hollywood’s gender diversity remains in question. Plus, it doesn’t help that studios within the United States overall, has an average Bechdel fail percentage of 45%, while the rest of the international scene only averages 34%. In conclusion, the filmmaking culture needs broaden its horizons through more female depth and diversity, so that future films can cover all of our perspectives.

###Sources Freidman, Lyle, Matt Daniels, and Ilia Blinderman. “Hollywood’s Gender Divide and Its Effect on Films.” Polygraph, n.d. Web. 02 Oct. 2016. http://polygraph.cool/bechdel/

Anderson, Hannah, Matt Daniels. “Film Dialogue, from 2000 screenplays, Broken Down by Gender and Age.” Polygraph, n.d. Web. Apr. 2016. http://polygraph.cool/films/