Rating Jewish Filmmakers’ Portrayal of Women

By Dan Friedman June 2, 2010

Does your film have two women in it? Do they have names? Do they talk to each other? About things other than men?

These are the questions, the only questions, of the Bechdel Test, otherwise known as the Mo Movie Measure. Like the APGAR test, it’s a flawed system. But in the same way that the APGAR is a pretty good gauge of the health of a newborn, the Bechdel Test is a pretty reliable, though by no means infallible, gauge of how seriously a film takes women.

While most comments about Jewish control of the media are clearly paranoid, there are a number of important Jewish filmmakers — almost exclusively male — in Hollywood and their portrayals of women are influential. But the films that these nice (and, presumably, some not-so-nice) Jewish boys are making all too often fail the test, perhaps to the detriment of their real and virtual communities.

The Bechdel Test Movie List is not a comprehensive list, nor does it divide up according to directors’ ethnicity. A cursory glance though, reveals that Hebrews just aren’t respecting Shebrews or any representatives of the XX chromosome pairing. Perhaps obviously, “Borat” and “Bruno,” starring Sacha Baron Cohen, in addition to any number of Adam Sandler and Judd Apatow projects, fail the test, but so do Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” and “Jaws.” But Spielberg’s “The Color Purple” and “Angels in America” by Tony Kushner got a pass.

So what to do? Well, clearly this isn’t simply a condemnation of those filmmakers but there’s a systematic problem and if people who are in the system don’t change it, who will? For an introduction to the test and a preliminary list of films that fail it, watch the video below.

Dan Friedman is the former executive editor and whisky correspondent of the Forward, and is the author of a book about Tears for Fears, the ’80s emo rock band.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO