The Bechdel Playlist

On Fridays at DMJ we run a Friday playlist where willing participants submit songs based on a theme, a playlist is then created made up of these songs, and then scores are provided on a purely subjective basis (this could be relevance to the theme, originality or picking a song that you already know and like).

Last week’s theme, in support of Inteational Woman’s day, was based around the Bechdel test. The cartoonist, Alison Bechdel, set out three criteria that one of her characters applied when deciding on whether to watch a film:

1.      The movie has to have at least two women in it,

2.      Who talk to each other,

3.      About something other than a man.

This developed upon the ideas already established by Virginia Woolf that there was an imbalance in male and female representation in literary fiction which then continued into the film-making industry.

With the Bechdel test in mind, we applied it to the Friday playlist and required selections to:

1.      Have at least one woman lead performer

2.      Has a central topic or theme that is something or someone besides a man.

Feel free to borrow the idea for your own teams / social circles and please find links to the playlist below on YouTube and Spotify:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-w9MxYU20Y4Mh0isVdZm7Mb-Is8Zm79p

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5brIjvV64x0P4utnD3sq7y?si=c01222501f30453d

The winner last week was Dolly Parton with 9 to 5, but there are plenty of other strong contenders on there.