[the.duckman]

Hi All,

I would like to see an add-on for filtering and sorting movies/shows by their Bechdel test score.
In the same way I can sort by date/genre/rating/etc

ie "does a movie have at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man."
There are some data sources that can be scraped, eg: http://bechdeltest.com/

This would seem like an important/worthwhile thing to do.

The test can be ranked as pass / fail There may be a count of times a female talked to another female...
There is also the reverse Bechdal test. - do 2 guys talk to each other, not about a woman.
Shows that fail the reverse test are often cool (Orphan Black,).

-dm

[jjd-uk]

This in line with my personal view

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/...-film.html

[Karnagious]

What about just creating an addon that posts a notification whenever a movie starts telling you that "you really are better than other people, they are all very sexist and you are superior in every way!"?

Seems to fulfil the primary purpose of the Bechdel Test, without that unnecessary step of ignoring the Bechdel Test result and just watching what you were going to watch in the first place.

[Ned Scott]

I've never heard of the Bechdel test before. The results are pretty interesting, actually. I guess I can see how some people can get worked up about this, but I don't really see it as "good" or "bad". If anything, it's probably ineffective for OP's use (or most practical uses, for that matter). I'm sure you could do a test like that with a lot of things. Does a movie have a boss and an employee, and do they talk to each other about something that isn't about tacos? It's funny or interesting to see the results, but hard to use that data in any practical sense. It simply has no real meaning.

Still, it's all certainly possible. You'd need a way to scrape this data from the website and then compare it to library entries. People have done similar things for top 100 lists.

[the.duckman]

RE "Op's purpose".

Sorting movies/shows by, for example, year.is a useful way for some to find an interesting movie.
Old movies are not for everyone... but for those that want it, you can sort by year.

The Bechdel test's presence as an add-on would not effect people who feel it's (somehow?) offensive; so please take a chill pill.

Regarding its importance.
-Having a Bechdel option lets you discover movies that break with tradition.
-The Bechdel test has been a talking point for 30 years now.
-Some countries have adopted it into the program classification system. This speaks to its relevance as meta-data actually used by viewers.
-Some parents/teachers want to know this information
-Having the test present, sends a message to screen writers

As the test has a large support base, its presence is not un-warranted.
Certainly it would not be the add-on with the most obscure support base.

[Karnagious]

The Bechdel test's presence as an add-on would not effect people who feel it's (somehow?) offensive; so please take a chill pill.

It is offensive by implication. It fails a movie if it has an all male cast, or if it has a male central protagonist that drives all conversations in the movie.

You want to make a movie about the relationship between two brothers? Better shoe-horn two women in there talking about the price of milk if you want to meet the Bechdel criteria. If you cant see how offensive that is, then you need to check your privilege.

-Having a Bechdel option lets you discover movies that break with tradition.

No, it doesn't. There is absolutely no "tradition" that the "test" allows viewers to avoid. It is offensive to say there is a tradition to NOT have two female characters talking about something other than a man. It is offensive that people tell us that The Shawshank Redemption is sexist. And that is all the Bechdel Test is there to do; to identify "approved" movies, those that meet the absurd criteria of people who value an ideology over art.

-The Bechdel test has been a talking point for 30 years now.

No it hasnt. It has only gotten recent surge in popularity by people pushing an agenda. People who are so focussed on their agenda they ignore the actual results of their "test".

-Some countries have adopted it into the program classification system. This speaks to its relevance as meta-data actually used by viewers.

One has, and it is hardly one anyone would call an ascendant world power. Was it really popular demand that lead to the creation of a LAW that requires the test results to be disclosed for every film? As a rule, you really dont need a law to force something that the majority of the consumer base is demanding of companies selling a product in a competitive market. Nah, this is another case of activist politicians forcing relevance onto an irrelevant measure for ideological reasons.

-Some parents/teachers want to know this information

The test provides absolutely ZERO useful information about a movie. The fact that there are two female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man is not in anyway useful, as the results comprehensively have shown.

-Having the test present, sends a message to screen writers

BOOM!

Yeah, the message is that they should compromise their art to suit the political sensibilities of shrill, self-absorbed naggers.

Seriously, if this Test gets an traction in major markets, then it will be an assault on artistic freedom. So it is right for it to be rejected before it gets to that stage. This is reason is enough to reject the idea completely; Team kodi should never be sending any message to screen writers on what they should be doing.

Your comment perfectly proves my point; the test is about nothing more than ideological posturing for people who get a thrill from calling everyone else sexist.

You want it, you code it.

[jjd-uk]

This test serves nothing more than some peoples political agendas and as such is not something we should not be supporting in any official form in my view. The fact a film like Gravity can fail which has a strong female lead, but a film like The Hottie and the Nottie does pass just goes to show how flawed & useless it is.

[Ned Scott]

We can speculate as to why the.duckman wants this and vilify him or not, but this is just a feature request thread. Let's look at this from a generic standpoint:

Can a true/false metric from an external website be used to filter a movie library? Yes. It would likely need an add-on to handle taking the information from the website and doing anything with it, but there could be some sort of playlist be generated, or use the data to create video tags (wiki). There's no real feature for us to add here, though. At this point the.duckman's best bet is to find someone who knows python (or learn python) and make some kind of add-on.

Hooray, controversy averted.

[the.duckman]

Cheers Ned.

I certainly seemed to have ruffled some feathers.
The Bechdal test does not equal 'political correctness of a movie' or 'better movie' or 'more intellectual movie' or anything like that .

Politics aside.
Its a metric, I find it useful. I want it, I have friends who want it.

Iv'e been avoiding it, but I guess I have to bite the bullet and learn Python one day.... [oops, might have triggered the next flame war]

Approximately how long does it take to develop a kodi plugin, of this nature (assuming I have the relevant score data)?

[the.duckman]

[keeping away from politics]

My thoughts on the nature of the plugin.

The true/false alone may not be fine grained enough.
An integer representing the tally is very useful.
The "reverse Bechdal' is also useful.

Defiantly sort-able either direction. Sometimes you want to watch a movie that fails the test, but has other tags.

Many movies have no ranking... so a'?' result is also useful.

so:results int he form: ? (not examined), 0 (fail), (pass, score unknown), 1, 2, 3....

sample usage scenarios:
-I like movies in 'action' genre, that pass the test (Aliens, terminator).
-I like drama that score low on the reverse test (orphan black, dollhouse),
-I want to avoid anything with a female cast that fails (or performs poorly on) the test. Because that's just women siting around talking about men. (eg 'sex in the city')
NB: that's my personal tastes, don't need to justify that to anyone.

So it looks to me like a metadata field (like year, rating etc) would be the most useful thing.
The field would need to be available in the 'sort by' option.

I would think icons next to the movie title (as per SD HD etc) would be unnecessary.
It's not like I want to live inside a Bechdal approved box or something.

To me, including Bechdal score in the parental lock would be more of a political thing that should be avoided.

Rather than starting from scratch,
Is there a plugin out there that could be adapted to this purpose?

[Karnagious]

Can you make one for black & white people too?

[the.duckman]

[Not engaging in any further political debate.]

I am happy to discuss the development of this as a feature/plugin with interested parties.
As a first time poster, not too impressed by the welcome, I did not come here to troll or be trolled.

[Karnagious]

What makes you think what I suggested was political?

Sometimes people might want to watch a "non-traditional" movie in which there are at least two black guys who talk to each other about something other than a white guy or vice versa?