Brief Introduction: My name is Keishawn Smith, and I enjoy basketball, playing guitar, listening to music, video games, and I am a big star wars fan (safe assumption to make when you look at the class I am in) I am from Chesapeake, Virginia which is a similar area to Farmville, just a bit more urban.
The purpose of this blog is to discuss the Bechdel test and how it is eye opening to the state of women in the film making industry as well as the issues women are plagued by that do not affect men from getting lead and star roles.
Females have rarely been known to have prominent roles in block buster movies like the original Star Wars and even some of the Harry Potter movies which is a lot more recent of a series and still failed the Bechdel test. The Bechdel test is three forms of criteria a film has to pass that involves women and their roles in a movie. The criteria are having at least two or more female characters, that have names, and talk to each other about something aside from men. Surprisingly most movies in Hollywood still do not pass the Bechdel test which has quite easy criteria to meet, however, the extreme opposite of this can result in poor writing or focus of a movie. A controversial character like Rey in the newer Star Wars trilogy has been criticized for being a “mary sue” which is a character who is extremely strong or overpowered for no reason but has also received praise for being a strong female lead in a franchise not exactly known for female characters being more than just a damsel in distress needing to be saved. Rose, who was another character, in The Last Jedi was sent death threats over people not liking how her character was written and how she “magically became a main character” which not much character development. Women have seen an increase in occupying roles in the film industry over the years, but they still are not getting fair treatment in getting prominent roles and having real development in movies compared to men. Sexualization is another issue that plaques women actors, for example, the actress that played Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad complained about her really tight and uncomfortable outfit for her character that she was not able to change without being kicked off and replaced by another actress willing to wear it because the director and production wanted her to maintain a sense of sex appeal to the majority male audience. This has invalidated a lot of good performances in movies by people claiming the movie was only popular or the actress only got recognition because of her costume or outfit. If women are given more prominent and thorough roles in movies the perception of them being less than men, not cut out for the film industry, and not being as talented as men will slowly fade away and we will see far more women play important characters in big franchises like the Marvel and DC series of movies. How do you guys think that women could be implemented into more movies and be seen as equals with men?