Twenty-nine Gay movies that fail the Bechdel Test
Maybe Hanna Rosin didn't misapply the Bechdel Test. Maybe the Bechdel Test is all about white feminism wanting everything to be about me.
Recently Hanna Rosin condemned the movie “Fire Island,” a rom-com movie about Gay men on Fire Island, and gave it an “F-” on the Bechdel Test.
I have a detailed write up about it in an earlier post to which I will provide a link at the end of this post. As you will see, “Fire Island” isn’t the first Gay Asian movie to be trashed by the Bechdel Test. Three actually before.
The Bechdel Test requires that there are two female characters, that they have a conversation in which the topic isn’t a man. As you imagine for a Gay rom-com on Fire Island, a get away for Gay men, there might not even be two women characters in the story.
This is her website.
https://dykestowatchoutfor.com/
What was interesting is that Alison Bechdel, who is the originator of the Bechdel Test, realized that this tweet was about to ruin the credibility of her test and implicate her through her inane test with the repressive hostility of Hanna Rosin’s tweet.
So she pronounced a modification of the Bechdel Test to allow “Fire Island” to pass, as reported in this Variety article.
The fact is the movie does fail the Bechdel Test because it is a stupid test. So Alison Bechdel modifies the test with a “Corollary to the Bechdel test.” The modification is this.
“Two men talking to each other about the female protagonist of an Alice Monro story in a screen play structured on a Jane Austen novel = pass.”
She is obviously pulling something out of the air to salvage her reputation and the reputation of the Bechdel Test. What if the two characters instead were reading “Poems of a Penisist,” by Mutsuo Takahashi, then would the movie be evil and failing the Bechdel Test? Or perhaps Alison Bechdel would pull something else out of the air.
The Bechdel Test is about a white feminism in which everything needs to be about me.
Hanna Rosin spectacularly exposed what the Bechdel Test is about.
What needs to be asked is how Hanna Rosin felt empowered to do her tweet, what made her think that it would be acceptable, what gave her the arrogance to do so? It is because the Bechdel Test has been used to attack and trash thirty other major Gay movies and no one complained.
So there is a website which says that they are not affiliated with Alison Bechdel.
https://bechdeltest.com/ and it has a search engine.
https://bechdeltest.com/search/
Before the people start making excuses for Alison Bechdel, has she ever commented on this website? Also, people friends of Bechdel start getting all upset over this article, do the movies that I will mention actually pass the Bechdel Test or will there be an additional 30 modifications or ad hoc additional rules to the Bechdel Test.
These are movies that fail the Bechdel Test at the website. Thirty of them. They aren’t about women. “Brokeback Mountain” failed the Bechdel Test. “Moonlight” failed the Bechdel Test. The movie “Philadelphia” staring Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks about a person discriminated against because he had AIDS failed the Bechdel Test. Someone actually submitted these movies and 28 others to have them fail the Bechdel Test for their own self-righteousness and self-glorification.
This is the list. I have made sure that the website is archived in the Internet archive at Archive.org.
1. “Boys in the Band.” Failed. In a Gay men’s party there weren’t two women. How shocking!
https://bechdeltest.com/view/3681/the_boys_in_the_band/
2. “Moonlight” https://bechdeltest.com/view/7421/moonlight/
3. “Happy Together” https://bechdeltest.com/view/3232/chun_gwong_cha_sit_(happy_together)/
4. “Maurice” https://bechdeltest.com/view/2644/maurice/
5. “My Beautiful Laundrettte” https://bechdeltest.com/view/4949/my_beautiful_laundrette/
6. “A Single Man” https://bechdeltest.com/view/697/a_single_man/
7. “Brokeback Mountain” https://bechdeltest.com/view/2037/brokeback_mountain/
8. “The Birdcage” https://bechdeltest.com/view/4977/the_birdcage/
9. “Philadelphia” https://bechdeltest.com/view/5919/philadelphia/
10. “Milk” A biographical movie about Harvey Milk. https://bechdeltest.com/view/5919/philadelphia/
11. “My Own Private Idaho” https://bechdeltest.com/view/7650/my_own_private_idaho/
12. “Weekend” https://bechdeltest.com/view/4601/weekend/
13. “Boy Erased” https://bechdeltest.com/view/8832/boy_erased/
14. “Handsome Devil” https://bechdeltest.com/view/9369/handsome_devil/
15. “Love is Strange” https://bechdeltest.com/view/6195/love_is_strange/
16. “Kiss of the Spiderwoman” https://bechdeltest.com/view/6792/kiss_of_the_spider_woman/
17. “Mysterious Skin” https://bechdeltest.com/view/2817/mysterious_skin/
18. “Behind the Candelabra” About Liberace. https://bechdeltest.com/view/4168/behind_the_candelabra/
19. “The Crying Game,” https://bechdeltest.com/view/3141/the_crying_game/
20. “God’s Own Country” https://bechdeltest.com/view/8394/god's_own_country/
21. “Love, Simon,” https://bechdeltest.com/view/8142/love,_simon/
22. “The Normal Heart,” https://bechdeltest.com/view/6124/the_normal_heart/
23. “Nighthawks” https://bechdeltest.com/view/9729/nighthawks/
24. “Maurice” https://bechdeltest.com/view/2644/maurice/
25. “Tropical Malady” https://bechdeltest.com/view/1498/tropical_malady/
26. “Torch Song Trilogy” https://bechdeltest.com/view/3075/torch_song_trilogy/
27. “Another Country” https://bechdeltest.com/view/5761/another_country/
28. “Get Real” https://bechdeltest.com/view/2440/get_real/
29. “Velvet Goldmine” https://bechdeltest.com/view/516/velvet_goldmine/
30. “Howl” https://bechdeltest.com/view/2778/howl/
The Bechdel Test is about a white feminism in which everything needs to be about me.
Yet, the trashing of these thirty major and often historically important Gay movies wasn’t condemned by any of the so-called Gays in the LGBTQXYZ movement. They would tremble at being accused of mansplaining and sexism. No Gay person in the neoliberal formation is willing to stay that some feminist thing is inane.
Why wouldn’t Hanna Rosin feel empowered to trash “Fire Island,” with the Bechdel Test, when movies really critical to the Gay community had been casually trashed before without consequences.
After this link to my earlier Hanna Rosin story I am going to have links to YouTube trailers for each of the movies following the share and subscription buttons. EMAIL MIGHT BE TRUNCATED.
Evil Gay movies that fail the Bechdel Test. Be wicked, watch them!
the tweet by alison bechdel is obviously a joke oh my god. it’s not actually “”””a rule”””” that she just “”””made up”””” – she’s just joking about the bechdel test to support the movie that got backlash. also it’s not like alison is some sort of scientist who Invented The Test – she just made a comic strip. almost forty years ago. also not passing the bechdel test doesn’t mean that the movie is bad, it just means that it’s… well… not passing the test? again, the test that appeared as a joke. forty years ago. this whole article is ridiculous