Bechdel-Wallace coefficient
Oct. 6th, 2014 06:23 pmAny test along the lines of the Bechdel-Wallace test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test) is never a conclusive determiner whether an individual film is gender-balanced enough. No test ever can be, because there will always be some films which naturally have a predominantly male cast, and the real problem is that there's way too many films with a predominantly male cast.
However, I think the Bechdel-Wallace test is a useful shorthand, even for an individual film, not to say that it's "good" or "bad", but to say roughly how gender-balanced it is, which is something people often (not always) care about.
However, you might be able to have a _better_ shorthand. I'd suggest something like:
1. Gender (or orientation, race, etc) of main character.
2. Excluding main character, proportion of male-male conversations to female-female conversations.
Obviously that would need to be tweaked for films which don't have a single main character, but I think gender of protagonists is a different problem to gender balance in general: some things do well at having a non-male protagonist, but still have all secondary characters be male by default; other things are gender balanced in general, but still tend to focus on a male lead.
And using a ratio, rather than just a binary yes/no, lets you capture something about the film: for instance, edge cases with a female lead and no other characters at all; or the difference between a film which _barely_ passes, and a film which _clearly_ passes.
However, I think the Bechdel-Wallace test is a useful shorthand, even for an individual film, not to say that it's "good" or "bad", but to say roughly how gender-balanced it is, which is something people often (not always) care about.
However, you might be able to have a _better_ shorthand. I'd suggest something like:
1. Gender (or orientation, race, etc) of main character.
2. Excluding main character, proportion of male-male conversations to female-female conversations.
Obviously that would need to be tweaked for films which don't have a single main character, but I think gender of protagonists is a different problem to gender balance in general: some things do well at having a non-male protagonist, but still have all secondary characters be male by default; other things are gender balanced in general, but still tend to focus on a male lead.
And using a ratio, rather than just a binary yes/no, lets you capture something about the film: for instance, edge cases with a female lead and no other characters at all; or the difference between a film which _barely_ passes, and a film which _clearly_ passes.