media content labeling project – an initiative

What the Swedish Film Institute did was applying one of the “harshest” and most effective means by which pro society organizations can defend society, that is, LABELING. The Bechdel Test provides us with a simple “yes or know”, “passed or failed” kind of value which will inform “users” (people) about such basic characteristics of the given film that will fundamentally influence their decision on weather or not to take that product. Such a decisive value! It'll sort of “stamp” the given product, revealing some of its most basic characteristics which normally would go without being noticed. Feminine or non-feminine? Or rather, traditional (non-feminine) or progressive, i.e. feminine?

 this picture is just illustration - absolutely independent from the concept propagated in this article

The Swedish Film Institue's “rating” is already a breakthrough. Movie ratings have been so far a privilege of the top of the film industry, that is, the MPAA. If you haven't yet seen the “This movie is not yet rated” than you may not have seen the big picture at all :) Movie ratings, rating the movies have been the privilege of a given country, like in Hungary there's a media authority monitoring all aired media contents. They will label the media contents on the basis of sex and violence, basically. Needless to say that they flag sexuality without its being violent .) They'll go alert on nudity too. Very bad system, actually. Picking two of the vast variety of phenomena which can do harm to a person's mental and behavioral health, of which sexuality is not even harmful, not to mention nudity. So this is pretty much like a Reaganian system, in terms of its effects too.

Now, the next few moves seem to be:

 #  get the Bechdel test rating into effect in art movie theaters
(following the example of Ellen Tejle's art cinema, the Bio Rio in Stockholm)

This will create opportunities to propagate the whole idea, the goals and principles of the movement, and by that to become a driving force of social progression :)

 #  develop another another test, a more complex one which can give a clue on how non-feminine a given movie is ... this value could have like 3-4 different digits (being 3-4 dimensional .)), each of them ranging 0-10

 #  get the movie databases, including not only Rotten Tomato and IMDB, but the Wikipedia too, cooperate by making these ratings appear a their ratings' sections ...

 #  set up an alliance, based primarily on the Swedish Film Institute and the EWA, and extend it, and create a website where these ratings could be edited and monitored and disputed (collectively, in wiki style).

 #  get press, starting with The Guardian, to make the Bechdel Test ratings appear along their movie reviews

some further strategic steps:

Media Content Labeling is a vital need for our cultures, for our societies, otherwise it'd be exclusively the commercial interests which form our culture and what's in our heads – which latter directly influences our behavior. Speaking of which .)

The next move should probably be adding another value to the media content ratings which informs us about if that piece is influencing our behavior or reality perception in a damaging way, as much as causing perhaps behavioral disorders.

And there could come medium labeling too, on the basis of which medium is femininity-friendly, in terms of their published contents and their hired workforce.

some notes:

Gender equality in media does not only bring “equality” but all those positive outcomes and further influences on our cultures, on our societies too which would never be possible without gender equality.

Gender equality and the femininity of media contents are not good for the women but for the whole society. Simply everybody will profiteer from it, our societies will be healthier and happier for basically every one of us. Film will be better, tv couldn't be that destructive anymore which will result in a new era in which people might watch some tv (so it's even commercial interest).

Last, but not least, we should keep in mind that the Bechdel Test which serves as the basic for this whole cultural and social breakthrough, is not just a joke, moreover, it actually originates in a Virginia Woolf thought in the A Room of One's Own (as the independent.co.uk pointed it out):

“And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends. [...] They are now and then mothers and daughters. But almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men. It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman’s life is that.”

Let's bear this in mind :) Jut to know where this all comes from and where it's all headed :)