Bechdel test does not apply to reality TV well. I doubt it's failed but if it has, only because the targets of the women are male.
I don't agree with the casual sexism comment at all. Women are featured whenever they're doing something relevant. Angela played a huge part in the last episode and was portrayed as a badass during immunity. It's not the producers' fault that the people in power right now are all male and that men are perceived as greater threats.
Therein lies the rub. Women are featured only when they're relevant (with some notable exceptions like Kellyn). Men as a whole receive far more screen time than women (because the editors frame the story around what the men are doing), that's just an established fact. I can get you the receipts on that if you want :P But you only need to look at this season to see just how bad it's gotten. As for the bechdel test... it applies everywhere. Of course the reality tv-ness skews it since the essenve of the test is to see whether a piece of media has a female perspective but with the amount of footage they have, and the quality of editors they employ this is absolutely open to the scrutiny of the Bechdel Test for displaying
literally the most basic of conversations between two female people.
Regardless of what the on-screen dynamics are. If we were to look at what's actually happening this season, it's clear that Chelsea/Desiree are a significant part of the merge dynamics currently and along with Kellyn have been the main driving forces in many of the votes. We see Laurel and Angela going to these three for final approval of how they should vote.
Wendell/Domenick/Chris/Michael are production favourites and get so much screen time. Bradley/Donathan had a couple of lowkey episodes but were mostly huge characters. Hell, I'm pretty sure that Kellyn is the only female player that has more confessionals than
Jacob.
You look at the edits of female winners and they are far more likely to have an incredibly under-developed storyline compared to male winners. The only time a male winner gets a more subtle edit is if they come out of nowhere with immunity wins like Fabio or Bob. Meanwhile you've got Natalie White, Sophie, Amber, Danni, Vecepia and Michele who all got very quiet edits.
Now, I don't want to be quoted by people saying "But there's not enough time to show every single character, they have to focus on what's happening and explaining the vote!" because not only do they have more than enough footage to tell any story they want, but it is almost no effort at all to have just a small amount of time or a single quick confessional showing what people are thinking. Of Domenick's 4-8 confessionals per episode maybe give one of those to Laurel, or Desiree, or Libby. These people clearly have
some perspective on the game and have been shown to be really eloquent and engaging when they get the chance to speak. Only being shown the perspective of the three big men and Kellyn got real boring, real quick.
