- 16 Mar, 2021
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Bechdal- Wallace Test, Gender Analysis of Hollywood Movies
This semester’s paper is asking you to take a deep look at today’s popular
culture and how girls and women are represented in that culture. While women
have made great strides in representation, there continue to be stereotyped
roles for women in Hollywood, in front of and behind the cameras.
For this assignment, you will do a gender analysis of two of your favorite
films using the Bechdal-Wallace Test and reflect on how the films you
chose fit into a wider Hollywood gender context. This test includes the
following questions:
1. Are there two or more female characters in the film?
2. Are they named in the film?
3. Do they talk to each other?
4. And do they talk about something other than men?
5. What was the gender composition of the production crew – how many
women worked behind the scenes on these films?
Here is the URL to a five-minute video that goes over the highlights of why this
test was developed and what it tells us about our popular culture:
For this assignment you will need to analyze:
• Why the films pass or do not pass the Bechdel-Wallace Test using
specific scenes and dialogue from the film as evidence.
• The gender ratio of the crews working on each film – did having a higher
percentage of women working on a film lead to a higher score on the
Bechdel Test in your analysis? Were any of the major roles behind the
scenes held by women?
• Each film’s representations of women – do the films present women in a
more stereotypical way or in an empowering way? Present evidence from
the films to support your analysis.
• How these films fit into a broader Hollywood context – this will require
some research on your part. You will need to research peer-reviewed
journals and newspaper articles on the topic of gender representation in
Hollywood.