Social justice does not sell. Never has and never will. Case in point: the feminist Ghostbusters reboot's failure to rake in the big bucks. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to stop social justice warriors from trying.
Now, for those socially conscious moviegoers who care less about being entertained than about supporting a film solely based on its feminist bona fides, the movie website IMDb.com (Internet Movie Database) has come up with a way to find just such films: an "F" for "feminist" rating system which alerts viewers to films that have a female director and/or writer, and/or features“significant women on screen in their own right.”
"The feminist rating system was first introduced by Bath Film Festival director Holly Tarquini in 2014 and has since been used by more than 40 cinemas and festivals across the United Kingdom," reports Breitbart:
If a film doesn’t feature a female director or writer, it can earn the special “F” designation by passing the so-called “Bechdel Test.” To pass the test — first established in 1985 by comics writer Alison Bechdel — a film must feature two female characters who converse with each other about something other than a man.
Tarquini characterized the "F" label as a way to open up a dialogue about women in film. “The F-Rating is intended to make people talk about the representation of women on and off screen,” she said.
Kung Fu Panda 2, The Girl on the Train, and golden oldies like Freaky Friday, Animal Farm and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes have all been placed under the system, which includes 21,800 films.
“It’s exciting when new organizations decide to join us in shining a light both on the brilliant work women are doing in film and on how far the film industry lags behind most other industries, when it comes to providing equal opportunities to women,” Tarquini said.
“But our real goal is to reach the stage when the F-Rating is redundant because 50% of the stories we see on screen are told by and about film’s unfairly under-represented half of the population – women.”
Until then, the F-rating is a helpful way to either find feminist films -- or avoid them.
