Sleepless in Seattle-- Bechdel Test

Jessica Johnson

I watched the movie “Sleepless in Seattle,” and the main story line starts with a son of a man, who had lost his wife, calling into the radio station and wishing for his dad to find a new wife and be happy again.  After having the father on air to tell his story, all sorts of women from all over swoon over him without even meeting him and send him letters about themselves.  Throughout the film I was looking to see if there were two named female characters that talked to each other about something besides men.  The movie did not end up passing the test based on those three questions but there were two female characters that talked to each other, it just happened to always be about men.  Watching this film and asking those three main questions made me look into things a little further and my gatherings do not just end with the film passing or failing the test.  The way in which the movie showed women and the characteristics that women were shown with made me decide that it was not a feminist movie.  I think the movie portrays women as needy, desperate, and easy.  There is one woman who is even engaged to get married, then second guesses herself after hearing this man speak on the radio and in the end, ends up meeting up with him and ideally falling in love with each other.  Although the film is more of a love story and that is the main focus of it, there are small clues and underlining things that do sometimes come off as unequal or stereotypical of the women characters.  I do see women portrayed in these similar ways in a lot of films and media forms and I think that more often than not it is just overlooked and seen as normal for women to be portrayed in those ways and it is hardly ever questioned or seen negatively.