Does it matter if 'F1: The Movie' didn't pass the Bechdel Test?

How many folks in the paddock can pass that 'test' on a regular basis?

Now that F1: The Movie has been in theaters for just under a week, I've catching up on all the reviews I put on the backburner until I'd seen and digested the film myself. And there's one recurring theme that has me perplexed: Almost every woman to review the film points out that it didn't pass the Bechdel Test.

If you're unfamiliar, the Bechdel Test is an unofficial “test” created by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in her comic strip “Dykes to Watch Out For.” It basically states for a movie to pass this “test,” it must feature 1) two named female character who 2) talk to each other about 3) something other than a man or their relationship with a man. It is a very, very low bar, but you would be surprised by how many films, books, TV shows, video games, or other pieces of media completely fail it.

F1: The Movie does not pass the Bechdel Test. I also really don't care. Let's talk about it.

Who's talking about F1 and the Bechdel Test?

(Allow me to preface this by saying I have the utmost respect for the journalists I'm talking about here — so this isn't a critique of their work. Rather, I took way too many classes on applying feminist theory to film and literature in college and need somewhere to talk about it, lol.)

In her review titled “F1: The Movie review — Why this film is ‘the pits,’” the inimitable Katy Fairman writes at Motor Sport Magazine, “The movie also fails the ‘Bechdel test’, a measure used to see if two women have a conversation about something that isn’t about a man across a piece of media. It might feel like an overreaction or irrelevant point to some, but it is still a disappointing representation for a group that will be a large percentage of the audience for this film.”

Meanwhile, over on Motorsport.com, the exceptional Em Selleck writes, “It goes without saying that the film doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test either. Joshua Pearce’s mother appears in a handful of scenes, almost exclusively to swoon over Pitt’s character. Meanwhile, Pearce’s manager suggests his career is safe because “the ladies love [his] smile.” God forbid a woman just enjoys watching sport!”

I've also seen this take multiple times on social media, that the film is bad and/or harmful specifically because it does not show women speaking to each other (which is an even lower bar than showing women speaking to each other about something other than a man).

I loved both of the aforementioned reviews, and I do think they raise very important concerns about motorsport as a whole that should be addressed regarding the problematic portrayal of women. But I don't know the Bechdel Test is necessarily applicable here.

Do you pass the Bechdel Test on a race weekend?

Because reader: I often do not.

Yes, the Bechdel Test is often used to evaluate media, but you can also loosely drape that framework over real life. And as a Formula 1 journalist, I rarely pass the Bechdel Test when I'm working. I will absolutely talk to other women in the paddock, but in almost every instance, our conversation is centered around the men who serve as the key touchpoints of the sport.

I grant that this could all come down to the fact that I need to be more social and need to make more friends and consider getting hobbies that are not motorsport related (because all those things are all absolutely 100% true), but… Formula 1 remains a male-dominated sport. There are many talented women in the paddock who play many critical roles in F1, but at the end of the day, I'm reporting on drivers, team principals, and on-track action. Because there are no women drivers or team principals, I am limited in what I can write about women (unless I pivot to the F1 Academy paddock — though I also want to chat about that). Even if my reporting includes a woman, she is often situated within the context of her role with a team, where she is generally surrounded by men.

Is it a problem that we still don't have many women in the paddock? Yes! Is is a problem that needs addressing? Yes! Is it something that I, personally, can consciously make an effort to change? Yes! But if I'm very honest about the reality of the work I do, I'm generally not passing this arbitrary test, because even when I'm talking to my female colleagues, we're usually talking about something that involves dudes, because dudes are the primary face of this sport.

And I also don't think F1: The Movie is really the place to make these major systemic statements. I keep asking myself where there was space to add in a Bechdel Test-passing scene, and I don't know that there was one, since our cast of on-screen female characters is limited to like two characters (Kate and Bernadette), and at least one of those women is primarily preoccupied with her son. Other women were cut from the film, but again — I'm not really sure if the problem would have been rectified if those folks had remained in the final cut considering the storyline involving actress Simone Ashley had positioned her as Joshua Pearce's love interest. I'm going to talk more about the portrayal of the female characters below, because I think they were badly written and should be discussed, but: My argument at this point in the post is that the Bechdel Test is a bad metric, so bear with me!

The problems with the Bechdel Test

Here's where I put all of my university degrees into play: The Bechdel Test is not the be-all-end-all metric for measuring film quality, or even for measuring what constitutes a Well Written Woman Character in a movie.

As I mentioned above, the Bechdel Test stems from an Alison Bechdel comic strip — but she never intended it to transcend that strip.

Here's an excerpt of an interview with Bechdel, published in The Guardian:

We should talk about the Bechdel test…
If we must.

How do you feel about it these days?
It was a joke. I didn’t ever intend for it to be the real gauge it has become and it’s hard to keep talking about it over and over, but it’s kind of cool.

Is it dismaying that so many films continue to fail the test?
What’s really dismaying now is the way so many movies cynically try to take shortcuts and feature strong female characters – but they just have a veneer of strength and they’re still not fully developed characters.

She's pretty lukewarm on it being used as a feminist metric, which is understandable, because the original context of the comic strip centered around the experience of queer women. But she also points out something extremely critical: It doesn't prevent shortcuts in developing female characters.

It also throws films with well-written characters into the discard bin. If you've seen Gravity (2013), then there's a good chance you were struck by the depth of Sandra Bullock's character… but there are only two leads in the film, so she never talks to another woman; therefore, the film fails the Bechdel Test. By contrast, something like American Pie 2 (2013) can pass the Bechdel Test, but only because two named female characters talk to each other about clothes.

The test discounts moving films like Moonlight (2016) or 1917 (2019) and encourages an atmosphere in which ticking a box is more important than crafting legitimately interesting and well-rounded characters. (Though, at the same time, F1 didn't exactly create any well-rounded characters, so this is kind of a moot point. More on that shortly!) Basically, the Bechdel Test is a good rhetorical starting point when you're evaluating the portrayal of women in media, but it should by no means be the thing you point to in an argument or a review. It should be the thing that makes you realize something is wrong and ask, “Where can I go from here?”

F1: The Movie still does a disservice to women in the paddock

Don't get me wrong: The F1 film is still extremely underwhelming on the female character front. Kate McKenna, the team's technical director, falls for Sonny Hayes — and she also takes his randomly solicited design advice in making APXGP's car better, and that advice also somehow magically makes the car better. Bernadette, Joshua Pearce's mom, is really only depicted fretting over her son. Both of those characters are absolutely compelling in their own right, and I'd have loved a deeper exploration on them — but in the film, they're basically just defined within the context of the men around them.

I do not enjoy the fact that Kate and Sonny hook up; I've written previously about how annoying it is to once again have any woman in the motorsport workplace portrayed as a potential love interest for all the guys around her. I don't like that his random advice is somehow better than anything she could have come up with.

I do not enjoy that the only woman on the pit crew is shown being the team's weak point during stops; even if she's given a kind of redemption arc, it continues to reinforce the incorrect belief that women don't belong in the pit lane.

I did admittedly get a chuckle at the woman in the club who asks an APXGP driver to introduce her to Carlos Sainz because I have lived that experience (at least three people have previously asked me if I could introduce them to or get an autograph from someone like Daniel Ricciardo), and I liked the very brief glimpses of women back at the APXGP team facility helping provide data for the race. But they were just that: glimpses.

The most infuriating part of the portrayal of women in F1 is how close the film comes to getting it. Kate is the first woman to hold her specific position in F1 history! Women are joining more and more pit crews, but their numbers are still few! It could have been so easy to skip the romance plot and to show Women Doing A Job (hell, not even a good job, just a job) — but instead we're handed a stinky love story and another reminder that a lot of people don't see women as capable of doing anything until a man steps in to guide them.

But I do want to note another thing, too: The male characters weren't exactly well developed, either. We have some intimations about why Hayes races, but I don't think we actually ever learn enough about him for it to feel convincing. I would have absolutely loved to understand why Ruben Cervantes went into team ownership. I'd have craved a deeper dive into Pearce's character beyond the fact that he focuses so heavily on social media. So, I guess at least there's some equality to be found in the universal application of stereotypes and poor characterization?

The kind of representation I want to see in movies

I had the honor of heading to the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb this year, where I got to meet the inimitable Michèle Mouton. Mouton used to compete in the World Rally Championship, where the took four victories and finished the 1982 season as runner-up in the title fight. She was the first woman to win a WRC event, which she did in her rookie year. She was the first woman to win at Pikes Peak in 1985 — where she also set a new record. She was the first woman to win a major rally title when she took the German Rally Championship in 1986. She's also been a longstanding member of the FIA's Women in Motorsport Commission.

We chatted about her first return to Pikes Peak in 40 years, and I thanked her for the way she contributed to furthering the opportunities for women in the motorsport space.

“Ah, I did it first for me,” she responded. “The rest, that all came later.”

That is the kind of representation I want to see.

I want to see women just… doing their jobs. Women at work. Women treated with respect. Women contributing to a plot in a way that does not make them a love interest.

It is no secret that I love talking about women in the motorsport space, because talking about women in motorsport is a really great way to remind others that women work in motorsport. But I also fear that that approach is getting old. I think it's valuable to contextualize a woman's experience in what is still a highly male-coded space, but I'm also ready to move beyond that. To just talk about those women in motorsport as people working in motorsport. To talk about more than their gender identity.

I got my first writing job by venting my frustrations at the way that women were tokenized and harassed at race tracks, and I still believe that is a very critical conversation to have. But dear god, it is not the only thing I want to talk about. I am so much more than that! My colleagues are so much more than that!

The problem with only talking to women in motorsport about women in motorsport is the fact that it continues to segment those women into their own little category. It continues to boil the essence of their existence down to this very arbitrary, socially coded thing. They're not part of the motorsport community, they're part of the women in motorsport community — and that does absolutely nothing to contribute to greater integration of women in the racing world.

I want to see more stories about women in motorsport that don't ever mention their gender. I want to learn about their motivations, their dreams, their skills, and the decisions they made to get to where they are. I want to talk about what they do, what they contribute to a team or to a publication. I want to know their perspectives on upcoming technical regulations, their thoughts on driver conduct.

Being a woman almost certainly influenced all of those experiences. Of course it would. Talking about gender is also critical in understanding how to dissociate motorsport from so many male-coded conceptions of gender. But the more we treat women as alien, the more we continue to project an image of them as Other.

I still make a point of interviewing women in the racing space, but I'm also making a point of keeping gender out of my questions. I had a fantastic conversation with Loni Unser at Pikes Peak, about how she situates herself within the context of her family's racing legacy while still staying true to the unique person she is. We talked about her training, her career, the specific landscape features she uses as references. To me, all of her responses are a far better representation of how a woman experiences motorsport than if I were to have asked her, “How does being a woman impact your experience of motorsport?” — because I've asked a lot of folks that question before, and the answer is never interesting.

F1’s portrayal of women was reductive, yes, but I don't know if we should have expected anything different in a male-produced film about racing.