Bechdel/Jung-Allen Test

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off passes the Bechdel Test, but just barely. The movie revolves around a high school senior named Ferris Bueller and his circle of friends. The plot shows us that Bueller has perfected the faked sick day, and the movie begins by him fooling his parents into letting him stay home. As soon as his mother and father leave for work, he goes on a series of wild adventures throughout the city with his girlfriend Sloane and best friend Cameron. The Bechdel Test is utilized in one of the final scenes, when he is racing home to beat his parents and sister (Jeanie) there. Jeanie was given a ticket for speeding while out searching for Ferris, and she is driving back from the police station with their mother in the passenger seat. The car ride consists of their mother nagging and lecturing Jeanie for her behavior, and the scene is interspliced with Ferris and his father travelling back home as well. Technically, this scene would qualify as a pass for the Bechdel Test because there are two women who have a conversation about something other than a man. But this interaction is extremely short, is not an isolated scene, and the dialogue is ultimately unimportant to the plot. Furthermore, many renditions of the Bechdel Test require both women to have names, while in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ferris’ mother does not have a specified name. The Jung-Allen Test requires the following things: two named women, at least one of color, that have an interaction about something other than a man for a full, uninterrupted thirty seconds. This would mean that Ferris Bueller would definitely lose this test. It is not as low a bar as the actual Bechdel Test, but it is still a relatively low bar that I can only think of one movie of the top of my head that would pass this test (The Help). As a reminder, both the Bechdel and Jung-Allen Test do not measure anything about the movie except for its amount of representation. It does not measure whether the movie is feminist or not, and does not grade its actual quality. But the Jung-Allen Test will do a better job of performing the aforementioned tasks. The racial component encourages racial representation (however low), and the uninterrupted thirty second rules encourages the idea that the conversation will have actual relevance to the plot.