Ava DuVernay Supports "DuVernay Test" to Monitor Racial Diversity in Hollywood

Could a new Bechdel test be underway? The collective Internet sure seems to think so, after New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis recently used the term "DuVernay test" to describe a way to measure the representation of people of color in film. Ava DuVernay, the director of Selma whom the term is referring to, recently gave her full support of the "test" on Twitter.

The Bechdel test gained notoriety after cartoonist Alison Bechdel wrote it into her comic strip. The test requires that two female characters talk to each other about something other than a man in order to prove it has any sort of egalitarian portrayal of female characters. Bechdel later admitted she did not mean for it to be taken so seriously, saying, "I feel sort of funny about that whole thing because it wasn't like I said, 'This is the Bechdel test, and now you must follow it.' It somehow just got attached to me."

The DuVernay test, should it catch on, would have similar unintentional beginnings. Dargis used the term in a piece on this year's Sundance Film Festival, where she mentions that several films at the festival passed "what might be called the DuVernay test, in which African Americans and other minorities have fully realized lives rather than serve as scenery in white stories."

The term quickly gained a following, to which DuVernay tweeted:

Wow. Floored. What a lovely cinematic idea to embrace. What a thrill to be associated with it. Absolutely wonderful. https://t.co/zjoWBBIKVy

— Ava DuVernay (@AVAETC) January 31, 2016

Some are even taking to the Internet to discuss what the rules of the test should be. In a piece for The Guardian, Nadia and Leila Latif suggest that the test should require that two named characters of color have lines of dialogue, not be romantically involved with each other and discuss things other than supporting or comforting a white character. They also mention that the characters should veer far away from what they call the "magical negro" stereotype.