If Wonder Woman Passed The Bechdel Test is a Rhetorical Question!

Wonder Woman has a kick-ass representation of women

Gal Gadot (L) and Robin Wright (R) in Wonder Woman. (Photo: Lijumol Jospeh/The Quint)

Just as seeds are dispersed through the force of wind and water, movies too have the power to disperse ideas through their narratives. For many of us used to the
mawkish idea of a hero ‘saving’ us, Wonder Woman offers a forceful rethink.

It is also one of the rare movies to pass the infamous Bechdel test with full marks! Not one scene has two women talking innocuously about men, or fighting over them. And not one scene disempowers the female characters or objectifies them. Even the photograph that leads the story to Gal’s past, has her occupying centre stage, almost symbolic of the rest of the treatment of the film.

Of course, Wonder Woman passes the Bechdel Test. (Photo: Lijumol Jospeh/The Quint)

What’s also brilliant is how the idea of the hero saving the heroine is subverted, in such a shandaar way, and not in one, but in multiple sequences throughout the movie.

In their first scene together, Diana (Gal Gadot) saves Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) from drowning in the sea. Another time, when the bad guys gherao them, Gal once again steps in to save her companion, deflecting bullets and kicking the butt out of them.

She doesn’t just save Steve though. In one of the most remarkable scenes in the movie, Diana dashes alone through No Man’s Land, rallying the Allied forces behind her to help liberate a village. “Stay here, I will go ahead,” she says to the trained soldiers and the male characters in the movie. And the men follow.

Gal Gadot is the hero millions of women had been waiting for. And it is one we have got, although a decade too late.