Reverse Bechdel Test

As you prolly already know, the Bechdel Test for movies determines whether there is “significant” female presence.

The rules:

1. It has to have at least two women in it
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something besides a man

You prolly know a lot of movies — especially action/adventure/sci-fi — fail this test.

Here’s a viral video demonstrating:

So the posse watched Return to Oz, and that is a female, female, female movie. Dorothy, Ozma, Aunt Em, and Jean Marsh as the spooky nurse/Mombi (related: I <3 Jean Marsh). One -- this movie is rad and deserves to be seen, IMHO. Two -- No human dudes even share a scene! There are many lively characters with male voices, but the human women far out-presence the human men.

I can tell you now that most of the movies I loved as a kid had strong female presence. Sure, there were exceptions — Neverending Story, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, The Fox and the Hound. But most were quite Bechdeltastic (Beetlejuice, The Rescuers).

[Woh — I just realized Who Framed Roger Rabbit fails the Bechdel Test. Dawwww.]

Anyway, this made me wonder which of the movies I grew up with would fail the REVERSE Bechdel Test — which is, it doesn’t have two men (or, for discussion sake, male characters) who talk to each other about something other than a woman. Cos check it out:

Secret of NIMH – It’s 40 minutes before two male characters interact, but they do. PASS.

The Little Mermaid – Correct me if I’m wrong — I haven’t seen it in a while — but pretty much all Eric, Scuttle, Flounder, Sebastian and King Triton can talk about is Ariel. FAIL?

Beauty and the Beast – In song, Le Fou brings up a non-Belle topic with Gaston: Gaston. Belle’s father deals with everybody. And Lumiere and Cogsworth plot with each other. SUPERPASS.

The Last Unicorn – Hunters briefly talk hunting; Shmendrick tricks dudes. PASS.

It’s just interesting, is all.

Aaaaaand totally unrelated:

A gymnast, Michael Sundin, stood upside-down (with legs bent) and backwards inside Tik-Tok’s body to move the legs.

Return to Oz trivia at IMDb

WHAAAAAAAA?! Puppeteering is crazy. Now you know.