: A Comic Drama, which was released in May 2012. [49] She lives in Bolton, Vermont, in a house she bought in 1996, adding her own studio to work in. who, two, talk to each other . The Off-Broadway cast reprised their roles on Broadway, except for the actors playing John, Christian, and Medium Alison. You know, I was coming out as a lesbian, seeing all of this unfairness and lack of representation, and I wanted to do something about it. She turned 52 in August. Unfortunately, this device does not support voice recording, Click the record button again to finish recording. Ive read your responses and I hear you. Showing 1-30 of 98. So-called underground comics rode in on the countercultural revolution of the 60s, priming the 70s to be a transformational decade. Interview by Lydia Polgreen. (2001), Listen toVFsLittle Gold MenPodcast for Unrivaled Awards-Season Coverage, 2023 Cond Nast. In a 2015 interview with Fresh Air, Bechdel said she felt "a little bit sheepish about the whole thing," given that the inciting idea for the cartoon actually came from her friend Liz Wallace, who had told Bechdel she would only watch a given movie if it had two women who discuss something other than a man. She graduated with a degree in studio arts and art history in 1981 from Oberlin College. You can try again. The pioneering artist Mary Wings explains how the lackluster representation of a lesbian coming out in the 1972 Wimmens Comix anthology inspired her to tell a more authentic story in her groundbreaking Come Out Comix. Bechdel was born in Beach Creek, Pennsylvania, in 1960, where she grew up in a home that, according to her work, ran almost entirely on the fumes of neurosis. Q: There is something nice about getting your work out there on a regular basis. And a man who was freakishly gifted with children. Unfortunately, this browser does not support voice recording. And Jeanine said, "We have to," and then I said "OK," because I do what Jeanine tells me. "[17], Bechdel resides in Bolton, Vermont, and works with the Vermont-based alternative weekly Seven Days. Has some of that abated with your more recent success? [19] Fun Home has received more widespread mainstream attention than Bechdel's earlier work, with reviews in Entertainment Weekly, People and several features in The New York Times. Alison Bechdel (/bkdl/ BEK-dl;[1] born September 10, 1960) is an American cartoonist. Bechdel is a self-satirist . In 2006, Bechdel's "healing" took the form of a graphic novel called Fun Home, in which she details her own coming out and grapples with her father's death, which she suspects may have been a suicide. And now that I'm not doing my comic strip but I'm working on these longer book projects, years go by. With no corporate sponsors or advertising, we rely on support and donations from.. Click and listen. But it feels very different. Bechdels parents were teachers, and her father was a part-time funeral director (the funeral home was nicknamed the fun home by Bechdel and her siblings). - Alison Bechdel ( BEK-dl; born September 10, 1960) is an American cartoonist. Bechdel suspended work on Dykes to Watch Out For in 2008 so that she could work on her second graphic memoir, Are You My Mother? I was so eager to get the comic strip done so I could get back to the memoir, and then I could leave the memoir to go back to the comic strip. The author and protagonist of Fun Home, Alison traces her life from childhood into early adulthood, centering her reflections on the circumstances surrounding her father Bruce 's death as well as the progression of her understanding of her own lesbian sexuality and inclination toward masculinity. They want to go see a movie and one woman says, "I'll only go to a movie if it satisfies three criteria.". It's about compulsion, aging, relationships, and Alison Bechdel's life-long obsession with any and . Bechdel's therapy sessions, whose primary content is composed of analysis of her relationship with her mother. Originally best known for the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, she came to critical and commercia Examples of in a sentence Cartoonist Alison Bechdel Awarded MacArthur Fellowship Alison Bechdel's family tragicomic Bechdel uses both masculine and feminine pronouns and has stated that they don't feel like they fit into either gender category. When it works its really quite dynamic.. Corrections? In the 21st century those guidelines became known as the Bechdel Test, a shorthand method to illustrate the dramatic gender disparity in Hollywood. Yes, Dykes to Watch Out For was often about specific things happening in the news, specific current events, and the characters would have these ideological discussions all the time. Gender is shown to be constructed, assigned through Western standards, and then practiced through performance. to the pronunciation. My mother would call me upset he had just thrown a painting down the stairs. All these ideas sounded so deeply nurturing, I just assumed that this Winnicott person was female. (Bechdel herself preferred to call it the Bechdel-Wallace Test to acknowledge the friend who inspired The Rule). For as long as the LGBTQ+ community has sought freedom and equality, it has been essential for this group to have places both concrete and metaphorical where they can safely gather, emote, care for one another and understand their identities. One, it has to have at least two women in it. Originally best known for the long-running comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For, in 2006 she became a best-selling and critically acclaimed author with her graphic memoir Fun Home. I was reading a book about him that didn't use a pronoun in reference to him. Using a brush instead of a pen was a way of getting outside of my comfort zone, because there is no sketching or reworking, she said. The story's dramatic action is multi-layered and divides into a number of narrative strands: An excerpt of the book, entitled "Mirror", was included in the Best American Comics 2013, edited by Jeff Smith. I spoke with Alison via Skype one afternoon in early April, catching her at home in Vermont during a brief lull between trips to San Francisco and Montreal. English. In 1985, cartoonist and graphic novelist Alison Bechdel created a comic strip called The Rule, a part of her much-loved Dykes to Watch Out For series. For as long as the LGBTQ+ community has sought freedom and equality, it has been essential for this group to have places both concrete and metaphorical where they can safely gather, emote, care for one another and understand their identities. The graphic novel tells the story of Alison Bechdel's attempt to find the truth about her father's sexuality and what lead him to possibly commit suicide. Please Its a neurological fact that every time you remember something, you degrade it a little bit in your circuitry. Every two weeks, I'd have this achievement. [20] Fun Home spent two weeks on The New York Times Bestseller List for Hardcover Nonfiction. Bechdel and Rubin separated in 2006. Omissions? Cartoonist Alison Bechdel, author of the legendary comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For and the bestselling graphic memoir Fun Home, has been traveling the country in support of her latest book, Are You My Mother? And-- You're not supposed to talk about people's ages. Do we just ignore the drab lesbian stereotypes bc cute gay Asian boys? I would even settle for being an accountant. I think it's interesting to talk to different cartoonists about how those activities work for them. He was also a high school English teacher, working full-time and operating a funeral home part-time. Two years later Bechdel was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation genius grant. In 2021 she published her first book in nearly 10 years, The Secret to Superhuman Strength. At the same time, I've always thought it would be kind of a luxury to have all that time to make something perfect. We recommend you to try Safari. Bechdel: I wish I had a typical workday. I was having a conversation with myself and failed the bechdel test :(, tweeted New York magazine senior writer E. Alex Jung. Bechdel's phone-conversations with her mother in the present. As well as her own childhood and life. Alison Bechdel and Beth Malone to talk Fun Home at Winter Words in Aspen, Book News: A Q&A With Alison Bechdel, Cartoonist And MacArthur Winner, Cartoonist Alison Bechdel Awarded MacArthur Fellowship, Are you a foodie? The Musical! She is the daughter of Helen Augusta (ne Fontana)[4] and Bruce Allen Bechdel. [9] In 1987, Bechdel introduced her regular characters, Mo and her friends, while living in St. Paul, Minnesota. Hopefully one day, I'm going to get out of this tank of water. He earned a B.A. I'm a very writerly cartoonist. Q: What's a typical workday like for you? No Straight Lines is also a story of media. mong other things, the story of LGBTQ+ liberation is a story of spaces. ALISON BECHDEL: I thought was going to faint. [2] In 2012, she released her second graphic memoir Are You My Mother? Ratings & Reviews What do you think? The sex symbol confessed that "girls thought I was a jokea happy buffoon," before he met his wife. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures, Trumps Relationship With Jared and Ivanka. Despite its relatively recent publication, it has already attracted much scholarly attention. Bechdels story is instructive: her long-running Dykes to Watch out for was originally carried in the alt-paper Funny Times and syndicated in queer newspapers, but as it became increasingly difficult to stay afloat financially in that format, she was forced to embrace the graphic novel form. I like to draw at night. So @hulu #FireIslandMovie gets an F- on the Bechdel test in a whole new way, wrote Rosin in a since-deleted tweet. You can contribute this audio pronunciation of Alison bechdel to HowToPronounce dictionary. The Secret To Superhuman Strength is a memoir about trying to control the experience of life. Drawing on more than 100,000 leaked documents, a, Inside the Succession Drama at Scholastic, Where. 134 likes. Q: Do you ever find yourself wishing you had a simple life as a mushroom farmer or something? I just felt like I was doing what I had to do. On seeing a butch lesbian for the first time when she was about 9 years old. Last year, the 54-year-old Bechdel was one of the recipients of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" worth a cool $625,000. I recall a good deal of criticism of the George W. Bush Administration. Cruse, whose groundbreaking 80s series Wendell was one of the first to speak to the Aids crisis, explains how prestige venues like newspapers and newsstands self-censored via the Comics Code Authority, explicitly forbidding any mention of homosexuality. Dykes to Watch Out For is the origin of the "Bechdel test", which has become a frequently used metric in cultural discussion of film. Its a neurological fact that every time you remember something, you degrade it a little bit in your circuitry, said cartoonist and memoirist Alison Bechdel in a virtual talk. Bechdel, 60, recently came across a journal entry she wrote when she was 16. I didn't have any long period of struggle. In the graphic memoir, Bechdel explored her interest in fitness crazes while addressing such issues as body image, interdependence, and mortality. On writing "Ring of Keys," a song about the first time Bechdel saw a butch lesbian. Questions such as How do you identify? When I got started as a cartoonist in the early 1980s, said Bechdel, I was conscious of it as a form that nobody was going to criticize, and that just gave me a great sense of freedom and possibility. Only four months before Bruce's death, Alison had announced to her parents, in a letter, that she was a lesbian. On what led Bechdel to believe her father, who died after being hit by a truck, may have committed suicide. That was the story that she followed to structure the book, she said. What makes the work of Donald Winnicott so important to you? In Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, the story is crafted through a lens of intertextuality between the characteristics of people in her life and those in great literary works such as James Joyce's Ulysses.Much like how Joyce's Ulysses is a story dependent upon a framing of intertextuality between his work and Homer's Odyssey, Bechdel's Fun Home has a method of storytelling crafted through . I accept that this is what you have to do in this day and age to promote a book, and I'm lucky to get invited to do this stuff, but it's still a huge drain. The new memoir, recently released in paperback, delves into Alison's complex relationship with her mother, frequently invoking the writings of Virginia Woolf and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year Jennifer Garner, flanked by Lyndsey Mugford and Nick Amador, parades through Harvard Square. Q: You currently live in a rustic setting in Vermont. [46] Her sexuality and gender non-conformity are a large part of the core message of her work, and has said that "the secret subversive goal of my work is to show that women, not just lesbians, are regular human beings". It then follows that story down through the generations, integrating the careers of later creators like Alison Bechdel and the Gen Z artists who are again redefining how the LGBTQ+ comics world looks and where it is found. It never actually feels that way -- I'm always aiming to attain that state. I have to confess, I stole this whole thing from a friend of mine at the time because I didn't have an idea for my strip. Its just really super accessible, not only in the ways it can be distributed but in the ways its assimilated, the ways we read it, the ways we ingest these words and images.. Self-printed and self-distributed by Wings, it was noteworthy for being the first to portray a lesbian protagonist as a fully fleshed out human being, as opposed to just a sexualized object. [2] Even Before Will Smith, It Was a Strange and Awkward Oscars 2022, Photo by Jeong Park. Alison Bechdel once believed in striving for a "lone wolf" style of self-reliance. In 1988, she began a short-lived page-length strip about the staff of a queer newspaper, titled "Servants to the Cause", for The Advocate. [47] In February 2004, Bechdel married Amy Rubin, her girlfriend since 1992, in a civil ceremony in San Francisco. Alison Bechdel's Fun Home challenges both established gender roles and heteronormative identities. He was a teacher in the Chicago suburbs and Seoul, Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. The useful information method #4 getAllMovies gives us are movie title, IMDb id, unique website id (id), Bechdel Test score (rating), and year of release. : A Comic Drama. Fun Home examined Bechdels relationship with her father, an English teacher and funeral home owner who came out as gay when Bechdel was in college and died soon after in what his daughter suspects was a suicide. The success of Dykes to Watch Out For allowed Bechdel to quit her day job in 1990 to work on the strip full-time. Bechdel says seeing her life story put to music was a visceral experience: "I was kind of blown away. Dykes to Watch Out For (sometimes DTWOF) was a weekly comic strip by Alison Bechdel.The strip, which ran from 1983 to 2008, was one of the earliest ongoing representations of lesbians in popular culture and has been called "as important to new generations of lesbians as landmark novels like Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle (1973) and Lisa Alther's Kinflicks (1976) were to an earlier one". Sam Gold, who directed the Broadway production, is set to helm the film, in which Gyllenhaal will star as Bruce Bechdel.[43]. I stopped my comic strip in the spring of 2008, just before the election season, and I feel like George Bush killed Dykes to Watch Out For. When Fresh Air 's host, Terry Gross, asked her if she thought the test should be renamed the Bechdel-Wallace Test, Bechdel's response was, "I would be very happy if that happened.". tags: alison-bechdel , fun-home , grief , suicide. Truth Social has been a complete disaster and the ex-president seems to know it. I also feel like something did get burnt out in me, something very deep during the Bush Administration. Since coming out as a lesbian in 1980 at the age of 19, graphic novelist Alison Bechdel has made it a point to be open about her sexuality. Is the lack of a regular deadline a blessing or a curse? I wouldn't go back to those deadlines; they were really starting to crush my soul. Kleimans cornucopia of images from the strips themselves lets viewers experience first-hand the very idiosyncratic, forceful presences that these artworks conjure in the minds of readers. I always have my best ideas, like, within five minutes of starting. Im getting something from these people, trying to know what they know, trying to link my experience to theirs, said Bechdel. Alison Bechdel Reboots with Nighttime Badminton and Drawing in the Woods The author of The Secret to Superhuman Strength muscles through concentration lapses and morning push-ups in this. It's a book about homophobia. And we can see that Cruella does not have an imdbid, which is a problem we need to fix later.. And likewise, this book about my mother that I just did is about misogyny. However, its structure eventually evolved into a focus on following a set group of lesbian characters. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.". Sign up for daily emails to get the latest Harvardnews. A College student writing an essay on Fun Home submitted a question for Bechdel about how nostalgia influenced her narratives. The US cartoonist and graphic novelist is famous for her long-running comic series Dykes to Watch Out For - groundbreaking for its early representation of lesbians in popular culture - and more recently for the Bechdel Test measuring how well women are represented in films and fiction. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. You have earned {{app.voicePoint}} points. Michael Ray oversees coverage of European history and military affairs for Britannica. She is the editor of Best American Comics (2011), and her comic strip work has been collected in numerous volumes, most recently The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (2008). Bechdel: That struggle came so early in my life. 27". Alison Bechdel is the author of the long-running syndicated comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. Bechdel published another memoir The Secret to Superhuman Strength in 2021. Her work has also appeared in such publications as Slate, the New York Times Book Review, McSweeney's, Granta . Q: Dykes to Watch Out For was often highly political. [5] After her father died in 1980, her mother sold the family house, in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania, the small town where Bechdel grew up, and moved to Bellefonte, a less provincial small town near State College with her long-time partner Dr. Robert Fenichel. She also touches on imposter syndrome, identity formation, gender . [3] She is also known for originating the Bechdel test. No straight lines: Alison Bechdel and the unstoppable rise of queer comics The artist discusses her role in an eye-opening new documentary that trails the history of LGBTQ+ comic books and the. Bechdel left high school a year early and earned her A.A. in 1979 from Bard College at Simon's Rock. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. "I said, 'You better still be running when you're old and gray,'" she says. My second memoir, the book about my mother, I didn't have that other thing, and I got kind of stuck. Now that you've moved on to graphic novels, do you miss it? I try not to have anything too much going on between waking up and getting to work. "In many ways my life, my professional career has been a reaction to my father's life, his life of secrecy," Bechdel tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. So much of writing for me is figuring out how to sequence things, how to figure out what comes next in the story or argument. Register But I would say that my professional envy has just kind of ratcheted up another notch [laughs]. I was not doing just a comic strip, but this very marginal queer comic strip. Though her homosexuality was, at that point, hypothetical (and not physically confirmed), she thought it worth sharing with her parents. I have this rule, see. In 1986, Firebrand Books published a collection of the strips to date. Q: When you make the leap to literature, you enter a whole new world of accolades and people who pay attention to you. It follows both the past and present regarding the relationship she shares with her parents, specifically her father. In that moment, I recognized that woman: I identified with her; I wanted her; I wanted to be her. Dykes to Watch Out For ran for 25 years, with Bechdel self-syndicating the strip and eventually publishing it on the Internet. I deleted a tweet that many of you rightly pointed out was offensive, wrote Rosin in a three-tweet thread. [5] She has two brothers, Bruce "Christian" Bechdel II and John Bechdel, a keyboard player who has worked with many bands including Fear Factory, Ministry, Prong and Killing Joke. [33] Fun Home was also nominated for the Best Graphic Album award, and Bechdel was nominated for Best Writer/Artist. Bechdel: We were in Philadelphia a much larger city than where we lived, and we were having lunch in a diner and this woman came in this big, burly woman with short hair and men's clothes and I was spellbound. Will Smith Slaps Chris Rock at Oscars 2022 After Joke Gone Wrong. I do sometimes miss doing that lighter, more humorous work, and I find there's a heavier responsibility that goes along with a literary reputation. We'd exchanged e-mails in the past, but had never met or talked to one another. Since then, you've shifted toward intensely introspective work. The thing that surprised me when I interviewed the young people, said Kleiman, was how grateful they were to the pioneers of queer comics. It's crazy. Q: In Are You My Mother? A notable example of the power of these comics is the story of Rupert Kinnard, a Black, disabled artist who began his career telling the story of his protagonist, the Brown Bomber, in the pages of Cornells student newspaper. Originally best known for the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, she came to critical and commercia. It somehow has gotten attributed to me over the years. [13], In 2014, she posted a comic strip based on her Fun Home! Lev Grossman and Richard LeCayo described Fun Home as "the unlikeliest literary success of 2006," and called it "a stunning memoir about a girl growing up in a small town with her cryptic, perfectionist dad and slowly realizing that a) she is gay and b) he is too Bechdel's breathtakingly smart commentary duets with eloquent line drawings. Okay, I just added a corollary to the Bechdel test, Bechdel began her tweet. [34], In 2014, the Republican-led South Carolina House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee considered cutting the College of Charleston's funding by $52,000, the cost of the summer reading program for selecting Fun Home for a reading program. "Grief takes many forms, including the absence of grief.". It was a decision she made consciously as a reaction to her father, who was gay and closeted, and who died four months after Bechdel came out. It's like one of the first things I remember is wanting to wear boys' clothes and fighting with my dad about it. Throughout the interplay of voices, No Straight Lines begins to answer a central question: why have comics become such a powerful site for queer culture? hide caption. . It just felt very powerless. In addition to appearing in The Progressive, Jen Sorensen's comics have been featured in a variety of publications, including NPR.org, Ms. Magazine, The Austin Chronicle, Daily Kos, The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, and many other alternative newspapers. Bechdel: It certainly was an important moment for me, that realization that I was not going to get what I wanted. Log in or It's so different from when I had a comic strip. The roles and expectations of men and women in Alice Munro's story "* Boys and Girls" are described in great . For the test, see, Killacky, John R. "Alison Bechdel: graphic alchemist. Originally best known for the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, she came to critical and commercial success in 2006 with her graphic memoir Fun Home, which was subsequently adapted as a musical and won a Tony Award for Best Musical . Have you traded overt commentary for a more "personal is political" approach? Bechdel . The cartoonist has weighed in on a debate sparked by a rogue tweet from New York magazine audio editorial director Hanna Rosin that criticized the gay Hulu rom-com Fire Island for failing to pass the Bechdel Testa litmus test that judges films on whether they feature at least two female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man. (Courtesy of HMH) After deleting the tweet, Rosin issued an apology that included a screenshot of her original complaint. Alison Bechdel is an American cartoonist. So now all you need to pass the Bechdel Test is a film where two women talk about something other than a man or two men vigorously debate the content of a Nobel Prizewinning female author in a screenplay based on a Jane Austen novel. In her award-acceptance video, she said: "When I got the call from the. A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books. Bechdel: It's both. Bechdel has been woven into the fabric of lesbian cultural identity ever since she started publishing the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For in 1983, and at no point in her decades-long career. [7], In November 2006, Bechdel was invited to sit on the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Q: You illustrate that one moment in the book, where you realize you're just not going to get her approval. That left very, very few movies in 1985. One of his more popular ideas is this notion of a "false self" -- that some people learn to create to protect their true self, and that really resonated for me. Alison Bechdel received a B.A. But somehow young feminist film students found this old cartoon and resurrected it in the Internet era and now it's this weird thing. Bechdel: I came out by reading books, not by having actual experiences with other people. You've been very well known for a long time among lesbians for your comic strip, "Dykes to . Since you have exceeded your time limit, your recording has been stopped. Bechdel: Drawing is more fun to me than writing. invited deep and honest accounts of adolescence, taking hormones, changing pronouns-and how these experiences can differ depending on culture . "It was funny to hear myself speaking to. They were totally recognizing the struggles of the prior generations and including that sensitivity and awareness in their own consciousness., No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics is playing at the Laemmle Glendale in Los Angeles now and will be touring festivals globally before a wider release, Yoga, karate, skiing Alison Bechdel on her lifelong obsession with exercise, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, When I got started as a cartoonist in the early 1980s, I was conscious of it as a form that nobody was going to criticize, and that just gave me a great sense of freedom and possibility Alison Bechdel. Bechdel: I love Donald Winnicott. [40] Originally scheduled to run through November 3, 2013, the run was extended multiple times and the musical closed on January 12, 2014. It was a huge break that Fun Home succeeded the way it did. Bechdel has also written and drawn autobiographical strips and has done illustrations for magazines and websites. It's incredible. Last spring, she published a third memoir, "The Secret to Superhuman Strength.". Take em with a grain of salt, Historian says Fla. dispute shows why AP class in African American studies is needed, Why Church Committee alums urged new House panel to avoid partisanship, Alison Bechdel needs to know what happens next, Reminders from Hollywood on memory, amnesia, personality, One small step toward understanding gravity. My . With the adaptation of her autobiographical graphic novel Fun Home into a popular Broadway musical, Alison Bechdel is now being clocked on the street. Sets and costumes were by David Zinn, lighting by Ben Stanton, sound by Kai Harada, projections by Jim Findlay and Jeff Sugg and choreography by Danny Mefford. in history from Michigan State University in 1995. Her story of growing up lesbian in . Smith approached the stage after Rock made a joke about the best-actor nominees wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Bechdel: I have that wish frequently. [7] Bechdel gradually moved from her early single-panel drawings to multi-paneled strips. I feel like I have some kind of connection to these younger people, and that is really pleasant as someone who doesnt really have that in a familial way., If the documentary ends on a high note with testaments to the community that exists in the queer comics world and the openings it creates for complexity and different ways of being the entire film evokes the special way that generations of creators have intermingled in this space, trading inspiration and gratitude.