TED talk: How movies teach manhood

I really enjoyed this talk. Colin Stokes is both eloquent and humorous. I agree with his observation that there are movies that teach girls to fight against patriarchy (like many Disney movies), but they are all tailored to girls and there are very few movies that teach boys to fight against patriarchy. As a result, there are no role models for boys to know how to respect women and treat them as equals. In a quest to achieve equality, we need work on both sides: encouraging girls to pursue their dreams without restrained by stereotypes and fostering the idea that female leadership is as normal as male leadership in boys. That's why Stokes asks for more movies that send positive messages to boys: that cooperation is heroic, and respecting women is as manly as defeating the villain.

In his talk, he mentioned the Bechdel test for movies. It is used to identify gender bias in fiction. I've heard this test before on a graduate women mailing list about showing movies that pass the test. The test has 3 requirements:

1. Are there at least 2 named female characters?
2. Did the two talk to each other?
3. Did they talk about something other than men?

You have to agree that these these criteria are some what simplistic, but it can be a good start. Even with this these simple criteria, there are only about 50% of the movies in a year pass it.

Stokes also mentioned the movie Brave, which is an nontraditional princess movie. Unlike the usual princess movies which resolve around a male romantic attachment, this movie is purely about mother-daughter relationship. There is no point in the movie that the princess becomes romantic with a male character. This is indeed quite rare in Hollywood movies. It's good that Brave also wins the Oscar for the best animated film.