Fargo (1996 Oscar Nominee)

Bechdel-Wallace Test

1. Does the movie have at least two named female characters?
   • Yes.  There’s Marge Gunderson and Jean Lundegaard.
2. Do the female characters talk to each other on-screen?
   • No.  Marge and Jean don’t even share a scene together.
   • Marge does talk to three women during the movie: two hookers and a female friend, but none of these characters are named.
3. Does their conversation revolve around something other than a man?
   • N/A
   • Its worth noting that Marge does talk to two hookers about where they’re from.  This conversation would have counted, but unfortunately neither hooker is named.

Please leave your comments below on whether you agree or disagree with my assessment.

Further Analysis

1. Does the movie have at least one female employed behind-the-scenes in a position of power (director, executive producer, producer, or writer)?
   • No.
2. Are the named female characters in leading or supporting roles?
   • Marge is a leading character.  Interestingly, she doesn’t appear until about 33 minutes into the movie (around the same time Jean disappears from the movie), but the last hour revolves mainly around her and her investigation.
3. How important is the female-female conversation to the overall plot?
   • Although it still doesn’t pass, the Marge-hookers conversation is very important to the investigation.

Commentary

As with Terminator 2: Judgement Day in 1991, Fargo demonstrates that a movie doesn’t have to pass the Bechdel-Wallace Test in order to be feminist.  Both Marge Gunderson and Sarah Connor are intelligent, capable women who dominate every scene they are in and are clearly the heroes of their male-dominated movies.  Its especially interesting that, aside from a need to sit down and some brief nausea, none of the male characters in Fargo see Marge’s pregnancy as a sign of weakness.  Rather, it enables her to use her feminine wiles (with an added touch of “Minnesota nice”) to throw male suspects off their guard.  There can be no doubt that she solves the case in the end, and the fact that she did it while wearing a maternity police uniform is just an added point to her badassery.

Final Verdict: