CELEBRATING TWO TEENAGERS, THE BECHDEL TEST—AND MAYBE A NEW PARLOR GAME PART 2

YESTERDAY, TWO TEENAGE GIRLS ENCOURAGED their Illinois state legislators to include climate change in public education. Today in Part 2, Good Energy applies a test devised by cartoonist/memoirist Alison Bechdel to assess the impact of climate change in movies. I propose a parlor game along similar lines.

What’s the Bechtel Test? In “These Movies pass the ‘Bechdel Test’ for Climate Change,” GoodGoodGood, February 17, 2026, Meghan Cook describes, “The Bechdel Test was first coined in 1985 when cartoonist Alison Bechdel created a comic strip that proposed new film criteria: A movie should have at least two women in it who talk to each other about something other than a man.”

Ha. How very novel, treating women just like ordinary people.

LGBTQ and Virginia Woolf. Wikipedia recounts, “The Bechdel test, also known as the Bechdel-Wallace test, is a measure of the representation of women in film and other fiction.” The Wallace link comes from Bechdel crediting the idea to her friend Liz Wallace and the writings of Virginia Woolf, especially A Room of One’s Own.

Alison Bechdel, Lock Haven, Pennsylvania-born 1960, is an American cartoonist and graphic memoirist. Image by Chase Elliot Clark at the Boston Book Festival, 2011.

Bechdel created the Dykes To Watch Out For comic strip, 1983–2008; two graphic memoirs, Fun Home and Are You My Mother, the first of which was adapted to win the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015. Bechdel was also a 2014 recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant.”

I find endearing her comment, “the secret subversive goal of my work is to show that women, not just lesbians, are regular human beings.” 

Origin of the Bechdel Test: Dykes To Watch Out For, 1985. 

A Bechdel Test for Climate Change. “Now,” GoodGoodGood recounts, “the non-profit Good Energy has created a similar test to evaluate whether the reality of climate change is being reflected in films or television. A story passes Good Energy’s Climate Reality Check if two conditions are met: Climate change exists in the world and at least one character acknowledges it. ” 

“It seems easy,” the website notes, “but a lot of films fail. Even in films where the first box is checked—like  the disaster flick 2012— climate change is never mentioned.”

A Study with the Buck Lab. Good Energy joined forces with the Buck Lab for Climate and Environment at Maine’s Colby College. In applying the Climate Reality Check to 250 flicks released in 2013–2022, they found that fewer than 10 percent of the analyzed movies passed the test.

Good³ (my shorthand, not the website’s) quotes Matthew Schneiders-Mayerson: “If more films meet the Climate Reality Check, it would expand our capacity to respond to the climate crisis,” he said. See also Yale Climate Connections.

It Needn’t Hurt the Storytelling. The website continues, “ ‘We are very story-first at Good Energy,’ said Carmiel Banasky, Good Energy’s editor-in-chief. ‘The writer is the expert; climate needs to bubble up in an organic way to that story, no matter what kind of amazing messages we think should be put out there.’ ”

Three Flicks That Pass. Good³ describes several flicks that passed the Climate Reality Check:

“Nyad. Diana Nyad’s (Annette Bening) history-making swim from Cuba to Florida is interrupted by a box jellyfish, which is miles offshore from its normal habitat. ‘Global warming,’ surmises Bonnie Stoll (Jodie Foster).”

“Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) talks climate change with Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), who says the next world war will be over ‘drinkable water’ and ‘breathable air.’ ”

“Don’t Look Up. This satirical climate allegory centers on two scientists (Leonardo DiCaprio) and (Jennifer Lawrence) as they desperately try to warn the world about an extinction-level event. In an interview with director Adam McKay, critic Nathan J. Robinson called it a film that managed to ‘reach people… entertain people and educate people at the same time.’ ”

All This Got Me Thinking of a New Parlor Game…. Why not apply Bechtel-like testing to other matters. Here are suggested News Reality Checks based on it;

Two ethical philosophers discuss the phrases “hinted without evidence” versus “stated without evidence” versus simply “lied.” 

Two or more government officials quote things “anonymously for fear of retribution.” 

Trump claims in a press release, “I didn’t know about that….”

Two Republicans discuss Biden without blaming him for something that happened completely independently of his 2020-2024 presidency.

Any two organizations in Washington, D.C., or New York City retain their original name and signage.

Any two federal buildings are left ungraced with a banner of our 친애하는 지도자.   

Any national monument in Keystone, South Dakota, honors only its original quartet.

Geez. This is fun. Care to add some? ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026