Bechdel and Other Tests

February 27th, 2022

Written by Erin McCoy, Katie Creel, Diana Navas, and Juliette Woodrow. Inspired by and data from “The Next Bechdel Test”

Solutions

List Comprehensions

In this problem, we'll go over how list comprehensions can be used to solve hard problems in satisfyingly few lines of code.

Here is a problem you can start with. This should be solved with one line of code:

Construct a list of all the numbers 1-1000 inclusive
Construct a list of all multiples of 2 from 0 to 2000 inclusive

Now let's try out some more! Given a list of numbers lst, write one-line list comprehensions to do the following:

Produce a list of the absolute difference between each of the numbers in lst and 10. Recall that the abs function returns the absolute value of a number.
Produce a list of the absolute difference between the numbers in lst that are between 10 and 15 inclusive, and 10. Recall that the abs function returns the absolute value of a number. (We haven't covered using if in list comprehensions in class yet, so this is just a challenge if you want to look up how to do it.)

Now, suppose we have a list of pairs such as this one:

        pairs = [('zzz', 3), ('bbb', 10), ('ccc', 4), ('aaa', 6)]

Write one-line list comprehensions to do the following:

Produce a list of the second elements of each tuple in pairs.
Produce a list of the first elements of each tuple in pairs, except that the first character of each of these elements is made uppercase. You can assume that each such element in the tuples has at least one character.

Short History of Bechdel Test

Named for Alison Bechdel, the Bechdel test seeks to analyze the representation of women in fictional media (books, movies, TV shows, etc.). To pass the Bechdel test, the piece of media must:

Feature two women
Who have a conversation
This conversation is about something other than a man

The popularity of the Bechdel test has inspired others to create their own named tests measuring other inequities in media. Here are a few examples:

A movie passes the Uphold Test if 50% of on set crew is female.
A movie passes the Waithe Test if it features a Black woman in a position of power in a healthy relationship
A movie passes the Villalobos test if the film has a Latina lead, and the lead or another Latina character is shown as professional or college educated, speaks in unaccented English, and is not sexualized

For more information about Bechdel and other tests, please take a look at “The Next Bechdel Test” article

Introduction

In this section, you will use your nested data structure and graphics skills to build your very own data visualization application. You will analyze a dataset consisting of >50 movies and which tests the movie passes and which it fails. Your goal is to build a piece of software that helps you investigate representation and bias in movies.

Identifying issues of bias and representation in datasets is a natural extension of many of the interesting ethical topics that we have talked about in CS106A so far this quarter. As we've mentioned before, our hope is that by introducing these sorts of topics early in computer science education, we can help the next generation of software developers and computer science researchers—which could include you!—be more mindful of the potential social implications of their work and to use their powerful tools to help others.

Section Overview

The rest of this handout will be broken into several sections.

Milestone 1: Getting started with matplotlib. In this milestone you are going to make sure you have everything installed properly in order to complete the assignment.To get started, download the zip file here. Unzip and open this folder in pycharm as normal. Make sure you have the matplotlib package installed, which allows you to quickly and easily draw graphs. If you haven't done this already, open the Terminal in Pycharm and run the following command (If you have a Windows computer, substitute py for python3):
```
      python3 -m pip install matplotlib
        
```
Milestone 2: Load in the data. Open nextBechdel_allTests.txt and look at the structure. The first line tells us what each of the columns means. Each line contains a movie name, followed by a series of 0’s and 1’s that represent if a movie has passed (0) a test, or failed (1). Implement the function, read_file() which will open the file, read in the data, and store the data in an appropriate data structure.
Milestone 3: Create Plots for Tests.
1. Estimate the percentage of movies that passed the Bechdel Test
2. Now test your hypothesis by writing the function called plot_test() which plots the total number of movies that passed and total number of movies that failed this specific test. To test your function type: python3 bechdelgraphs.py -onetest Bechdel
Milestone 4: Look at Other Tests.
1. Think about the values embedded in the Bechdel Test and choose two tests that embed different values. Estimate the percentage of movies that passed your two selected tests
2. Now test your hypothesis by running python3 bechdelgraphs.py -onetest test_name2 and python3 bechdelgraphs.py -onetest test_name3 Compare the results for all three tests.
Milestone 4: Ethics Questions. Consider the values embedded in the tests you selected for Milestone Y. What are those values and how do they differ from the Bechdel Test? What shared values are there among the three tests? If you were asked to design your own test, what other values would you prioritize?
Milestone 5 (Optional): Create Plots for Movies. Write a function, plot_tests_per_movie() which takes in a list of movies and outputs a chart showing how many tests each movie has passed and failed. You will need to come up with the x and y value lists and then plot them using a bar chart. The x values for both plots should be the names of the movies you are plotting. The y values for the passed plot should be the number of tests each movie has passed. The y values for the failed plot should be the number of tests each movie has failed. To test your function type: python3 bechdelgraphs.py -movietest 'moviename1' 'moviename2' 'moviename3' Make sure to put the movie name in quotes if there are spaces in the title. If you run python3 bechdelgraphs.py -movietest with no specific movies, it will run the code for all movies in the file.

Test Appendix

Definitions from FiveThirtyEight

Bechdel

Movie passes if:

Two named female characters
Said characters have at least one conversation that is not about a man

Pierce

Movie passes if:

There’s a female character who is a protagonist or antagonist with her own story
The female lead has dimension and exists authentically with needs and desires that she pursues through dramatic action
And the audience can empathize with or understand the female lead’s desires and actions

Landau

Movie fails if:

A primary female character ends up dead
A primary female character ends up pregnant
Or a primary female character causes a plot problem for a male protagonist

Feldman

A movie passes with a score of five or higher:

2 points for a female writer or director
1 point for a female composer or director of photography
1 point for three female producers or three female department heads
1 point for a crew that’s 50 percent women
2 points if there’s a female protagonist who determines story outcomes
2 points if no female characters were victimized, stereotyped or sexualized
And 1 point if a sex scene shows foreplay before consummation, or if the female characters initiate or reciprocate sexual advances

Villareal

Movie fails if:

A lead female character is introduced as one of three common stereotypes in her first scene: as sexualized; as hardened, expressionless or soulless; or as a matriarch (tired, older or overworked)

But a failing movie can redeem itself and pass if the lead female character is later shown to be three or more of the following:

Someone with a career where she is in a position of authority or power
A mother
Someone who’s reckless or makes bad decisions
Someone who is sexual or chooses a sexual identity of her own

Hagen

Movie passes if:

Half of one-scene roles go to women
And the first crowd scene features at least 50 percent women

Movie passes if:

There’s a non-white, female-identifying person in the film
Who speaks in five or more scenes
And speaks English

Villarobos

Movie passes if:

The film has a Latina lead
And the lead or another Latina character is shown as professional or college educated, speaks in unaccented English, and is not sexualized

Waithe

Movie passes if:

There’s a Black woman in the work
Who’s in a position of power
And she’s in a healthy relationship

Koeze-Dottle

Movie passes if:

The supporting cast is 50 percent women

Uphold

Movie passes if:

The on-set crew is 50 percent women

White

Movie passes if:

Half of the department heads are women
Half the members of each department are women
And half the crew members are women

Reese-Davies

Movie passes if:

Every department has two or more women