On The Rag Media Lord of the Rings
On The Rag Media Lord of the Rings

MediaJuly 24, 2020

We fixed Lord of the Rings and more iconic New Zealand films

On The Rag Media Lord of the Rings
On The Rag Media Lord of the Rings

Are you sick of that moment towards the end of a film when you realise that not a single woman has spoken to another woman the whole time? Turns out you can test for that. 

In your real life, we bet you probably speak to a whole bunch of different people. Some of them might even be women! And those women might then go off and talk to other women! It’s a concept that may seem simple, and yet so many movies fail to reflect this reality. 

Thankfully, there’s an easy way to figure out if a movie has thought about how well it is representing women. It’s called the Bechdel test and it asks the following: Are there two women characters? And do they talk to each other about something other than men? 

It turns out that even here in progressive old New Zealand, there are a bunch of famous films that don’t feature two women characters having a yarn about … anything. So without further ado: here’s what some of NZ’s most iconic films would look like if they passed the Bechdel test.

On the Rag is made with the support of NZ On Air

Watch the full Media episode here

Keep going!