The Movie Guide for Women
  • Home
  • Author Bio
  • Women in Film
  • Book Blog
  • Excerpts

Spectre (2015)

5/1/2018

0 Comments

 
Women are most effectively silenced when filmmakers choose not to include them, but there are also many other methods used (e.g. preventing them from talking--especially to each other, telling them to shut up, interrupting them, etc.). Even though Spectre (2015) runs for two hours and twenty-eight minutes no two women ever speak. So it fails the Bechdel test—a test that serves as an indicator of the active presence of women in movies—on the second criterion. The first criterion is the inclusion of two female characters, preferably named. The second criterion is that they speak to each other, and the third criterion is that their speech relate to something besides a man. There are only three named female characters (or four if you include a dead woman who makes an appearance in a video Daniel Craig watches on his TV). Two of these women are Craig's love interests and the third, although she does not actually have sex with Craig, definitely appears interested and pays him a visit at his flat. As for men there are seven named male characters. Moreover, the sexist Hollywood age gap is maintained here: Craig is 17 years older than Léa Seydoux, who plays his girlfriend.

In Spectre women are silenced by being relatively absent and prevented from speaking to each other. They are also interrupted. During a meeting when a doctor has the floor she simply stops talking when a man enters the room and does not resume her speech until he gives her the go ahead. He says to her, "Don't let me interrupt you," but that is precisely what the filmmakers have allowed him to do. Furthermore, if it does not strike you as odd that no two women ever speak in a feature-length film ask yourself this: how many movies can you name in which no two men ever speak? 


Hoping this latest James Bond movie
will be the last Bond movie is fairly pointless given how appealing these movies are to our sexist societies. Even hoping women have more voice and presence in the next one would be absurd. It would be like hoping women were less sexualized in it. If women were not silenced and sexualized in a Bond film it wouldn't be a Bond film. 

© 2018 Alline Cormier
Picture
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    The film analyst who puts women first. Author of an upcoming film guide for women. 
    Watch related movie clips on her YouTube channel (ACPicks). 
    ​Read her articles in Island Woman Magazine, Feminist Current, 4W,  Women Making Films India and The Post Millennial. 

    Picture

    Archives

    December 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    July 2021
    May 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Site powered by Weebly. Managed by Web Hosting Canada
  • Home
  • Author Bio
  • Women in Film
  • Book Blog
  • Excerpts