I loved Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. It was one of the best books I read in 2007. So I was pleased to learn of the Bechdel Test, which can be applied to TV and movies:
To pass it your movie [or TV show] must have the following:
1) there are at least two named female characters, who
2) talk to each other about
3) something other than a man.
Few movies or TV shows pass it, said Jennifer Kesler.
I came across this test after spending a pleasant morning analyzing data while listening to the first six episodes of Denise Richards: It’s Complicated which I found on YouTube. (Such as part 1 of Episode 1.) The show consisted mainly of two named female characters — Denise and sister, Denise and friend, Denise and daughter — talking to each other about something other than a man.
I was surprised how much I liked it. When Denise and her dad (who lives with her) interview people to be her assistant, it was amusing (Denise has about 20 pets; one applicant said she didn’t like pets); when she gets mad at an entertainment journalist, it was forgivable; when she enters her nephew’s room to find him and his friends looking at a Playboy with her on the cover, it was unforgettable. The entertainment journalist wants to know why she is doing the reality show. “My [recently dead] mom wanted me to do it,” Denise says. The journalist can barely keep from laughing. “A deathbed wish?” she says. Denise got upset, so let me answer: The better you know almost anyone, the more you like them.
More. Gillian Flynn, one of Entertainment Weekly‘s TV reviewers, hated the show — gave it a D. Could reviewers be overly negative because they are forced to watch?
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