Hullo,

It’s Friday! I hope you are as pleased about this as I am.

If you are reading this newsletter you are most likely familiar with the Bechdel Test, but watching most films you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a very difficult test to pass. Not so. McSweeney’s have illustrated how easily you can improve your film with strong female characters:

TRAVIS: Are you talkin’ to me?

JENNIFER: No, I’m talking to my friend Melinda. Hi, Melinda.

MELINDA: Hi, Jennifer.

JENNIFER: Did you see what happened in the stock market today?

MELINDA: I did. Big morning.

JENNIFER: OK, great chat. Bye, Melinda. Bye, Travis.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/scenes-from-iconic-films-hastily-rewritten-so-that-they-pass-the-bechdel-test

Perhaps you didn’t know, because I didn’t before today, that the Bechdel Test is credited in part to Virginia Woolf’s A Room Of One’s Own. Here’s a nice thing to do over the weekend – read A Room Of One’s Own. Unlike Virginia Woolf’s fiction it’s quite an easy read. Here’s a free version for you to download to your device:

I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends. [..] They are confidantes, of course, in Racine and the Greek tragedies. They are now and then mothers and daughters. But almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men.

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200791.txt

Have a great weekend,

Alex.