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. When Bechdel was 19 years old, just months after she had revealed to her parents that she was a lesbian, her father was struck and killed by a truck, an event that Bechdel later theorized was actually an act of suicide. Sign-up for our free weekly e-mail newsletter. The Public Theater / Joan Macus. [35][36][37], Fun Home premiered as a musical Off-Broadway at The Public Theater on September 30, 2013, and opened officially on October 22, 2013. I had this very formative moment: I was browsing in my college bookstore and I found this book called Word Is Out. 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 . Alison Bechdel was born on September 10th 1960. So I tend to write first thing, and then do my drawing later. Bechdel: Yeah, it's like a kind of transitive procrastination. No Straight Lines starts in the 1950s, when gay and lesbian artists found that censorship made it impossible to tell their stories in the comics section of newspapers. It was a huge break that Fun Home succeeded the way it did. Her lifelong pursuit of fitness along with inner transformation is the theme of . In it, two women discuss going to the movies and one adds that she only sees releases that have at least two female characters in it who speak to each other about . Among other things, the story of LGBTQ+ liberation is a story of spaces. However, all same-sex marriage licenses given by the city at that time were subsequently voided by the California Supreme Court. Though her homosexuality was, at that point, hypothetical (and not physically confirmed), she thought it worth sharing with her parents. Her father was an army veteran who was stationed in West Germany. Additionally, this graphic memoir helps show the hardships individuals face when coming out. But if the option had been open to her when she was young, she recently said, she might have been transgender instead. In a way, that was all my way of healing myself. 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. Fun Home has since been turned into a Broadway play, which recently won five Tony Awards, including the award for best musical. Questions such as How do you identify? Bechdel says seeing her life story put to music was a visceral experience: "I was kind of blown away. I have this rule, see. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. "It was funny to hear myself speaking to. 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. Alison Bechdel says her love of physical activity drives this latest graphic memoir, "The Secret to Superhuman Strength," which is out from HMH Books on May 4, 2021. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. You cant make anything up. The critically acclaimed work was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and it won the Eisnerthe most-prestigious award in the comics industryfor best reality-based work. And Jeanine said, "We have to," and then I said "OK," because I do what Jeanine tells me. A graduate of the University of Virginia, she lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and cairn terrier. (Laughter) It was like someone had actually almost hit me. There are variations of the Bechdel Test for other protected groups, such as the DuVernay Test, and the Vito Russo Test. I vastly prefer living in the country. Eating pattern tied to 24% reduction in cardiovascular, cancer mortality in people diagnosed with the chronic condition, HMS/Brigham study shows most advertised medicines little better than other treatment options, Khalil Gibran Muhammad says College Board needs to stand firm behind curriculum, Chief counsel of respected mid-70s Senate inquiry into improper federal investigations says credibility of oversight function at stake, 2023 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, Illustration by Judy Blomquist/Harvard Staff, By Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite Harvard Staff Writer. American director, playwright, and costume designer. But somehow young feminist film students found this old cartoon and resurrected it in the Internet era and now it's this weird thing. In 1983 Bechdel began writing and drawing Dykes to Watch Out For, a comic strip that soon became a mainstay in gay and alternative news weeklies across the United States. Originally best known for the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, she came to critical and commercia. Alison later suggested that her father may have killed himself in part because of his perceived inability to escape the small-minded town. 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. I feel hopeful when I saw the young people that [Kleiman] talked to for this movie, said Bechdel. No Straight Lines is a testament to how, with just ink and paper, LGBTQ+ artists can envision profoundly validating bodies, identities and relationships that often have no space in the cis-het world. Updates? She is the daughter of Helen Augusta (ne Fontana)[4] and Bruce Allen Bechdel. Congrats! That just seemed pretty straightforward and necessary to me as a young person. She came out as a lesbian at age 19 in 1979. Michael Ray oversees coverage of European history and military affairs for Britannica. 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. Record the pronunciation of this word in your own voice and play it to listen to how you have pronounced it. [40] Originally scheduled to run through November 3, 2013, the run was extended multiple times and the musical closed on January 12, 2014. [7] Bechdel gradually moved from her early single-panel drawings to multi-paneled strips. 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. Only four months before Bruce's death, Alison had announced to her parents, in a letter, that she was a lesbian. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. I was having a conversation with myself and failed the bechdel test :(, tweeted New York magazine senior writer E. Alex Jung. (1981) from Oberlin College, she moved to New York City. Q: There is something nice about getting your work out there on a regular basis. I didnt know until I saw the show that theres this whole strand of younger artists. Q: You drew Dykes to Watch Out For for twenty-five years, which is a good, long run for an alternative strip. It's something that we don't really seem to talk about much in polite society, though, so a lot of people are telling me they liked hearing about that in the book. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. He was also a high school English teacher, working full-time and operating a funeral home part-time. Bechdel and Rubin separated in 2006. you write about professional envy and career anxiety. Bechdel . Okay, I just added a corollary to the Bechdel test, Bechdel began her tweet. Ratings & Reviews What do you think? Every two weeks, I'd have this achievement. Alison Bechdel (/bkdl/ BEK-dl;[1] born September 10, 1960) is an American cartoonist. Literature/Poetry. Will Smith Slaps Chris Rock at Oscars 2022 After Joke Gone Wrong. Elena Seibert/Courtesy of O+M Co. - Alison Bechdel ( BEK-dl; born September 10, 1960) is an American cartoonist. 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". 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.". It just felt very powerless. 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. It just seemed like his life had become impossible. There had been gay comics before. [31][32] It also won the 2007 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work. It's hard to pick out a particular point, because there are so many weird ways that I connect with him, but maybe the main way is his kind of gender ambiguity. On writing "Ring of Keys," a song about the first time Bechdel saw a butch lesbian. Bechdel left high school a year early and earned her A.A. in 1979 from Bard College at Simon's Rock. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Congrats! [21][22], Fun Home was hailed as one of the best books of 2006 by numerous sources, including The New York Times,[23] amazon.com,[24][25] The Times of London,[26] Publishers Weekly,[27] salon.com,[28] New York magazine,[29] and Entertainment Weekly. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It somehow has gotten attributed to me over the years. Its mostly about this generational transmission and the political changes that have happened over the past 40 years or so. Both of her parents contributed to her career as a cartoonist. This transition proved to be the beginning of a major new chapter in her career, as the resultant book Fun Home broke through barriers to become a smash success and bring her stories to entirely new audiences. Q: You illustrate that one moment in the book, where you realize you're just not going to get her approval. But he was a man -- I found out he was a small man, a man with a high-pitched voice, who suffered from impotence. Hopefully one day, I'm going to get out of this tank of water. Smith approached the stage after Rock made a joke about the best-actor nominees wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. That's been pretty intense; I have to really stay on top of things in a way I didn't before. 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. I haven't been drawing lately, and I just hate that. But it's a great challenge, and it pushes me to take a bigger view of things, though, sometimes I wish I could just do my silly comic strip. All these ideas sounded so deeply nurturing, I just assumed that this Winnicott person was female. Forget genre and sexual orientation: this is a masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other. 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. Since you have exceeded your time limit, your recording has been stopped. So in some way he started to decompensate, like there was something he was just having a hard time managing. It captured a string of awards during its Off-Broadway run, and in 2014 it was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Register 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. But it feels very different. Alison Bechdel Has Amended the Bechdel Test Just for Fire Island The cartoonist chimed in on the fiery Twitter debate spurred by one user's claim that the gay rom-com Fire Island did not pass. SPEAKER #1: Well, .I dunno. Alison Bechdel: "Correr ayuda ms a combatir la depresin que las pastillas" Empez dibujando las tiras cmicas de 'Unas lesbianas de cuidado', y triunf con 'Fun Home'. My friend Liz Wallace said, "I'll only see a movie if it has at least two women in it who talk to each other about something besides a man." Drawing on more than 100,000 leaked documents, a, Inside the Succession Drama at Scholastic, Where. 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. This episode riffs heavily on psychoanalytic themes quoted explicitly from the work of psychoanalysts Alice Miller and Donald Winnicott. [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. It was very freeing. Last spring, she published a third memoir, "The Secret to Superhuman Strength.". Fun Home lyricist Lisa Kron and composer Jeanine Tesori (whom you can hear in the audio link above) join Bechdel in a conversation about the play. Alison Bechdel's Fun Home challenges both established gender roles and heteronormative identities. We'd exchanged e-mails in the past, but had never met or talked to one another. In the 21st century those guidelines became known as the Bechdel Test, a shorthand method to illustrate the dramatic gender disparity in Hollywood. 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. At a young age, Alison feels as though she wants to dress like a boy and during puberty, she discovers that she is attracted to women. I kind of lost my originals. [29], Time magazine named Alison Bechdel's Fun Home number one of its "10 Best Books of the Year." tags: alison-bechdel , fun-home , grief , suicide. Interview by Lydia Polgreen. Many, many years ago back in 1985 I wrote an episode of my comic strip where two women are talking to each other. And there was so much going [on] in that exchange. [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. Bechdel was born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. I had this great opportunity because of the moment, the generational moment, when I came out. In mainstream culture, the way that it has often been expressed is as a stock character of ridicule. Share the pronunciation on. In 1986, Firebrand Books published a collection of the strips to date. Unfortunately, this browser does not support voice recording. Fun Home creator Alison Bechdel on turning a tragic childhood into a hit musical Rachel Cooke The acclaimed graphic novelist, who gave the world the famous movie equality 'test', on exposing. In that moment, I recognized that woman: I identified with her; I wanted her; I wanted to be her. Her family was Roman Catholic. 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 was not pleasant. So all my once-pristine memories of my father will become layered over with what Ive written, what Ive seen in the musical version of Fun Home, things people have written about it. I feel like Houdini sometimes, like I'm just getting out of one set of shackles after another, hanging upside down inside a burlap bag with handcuffs on. Alison Bechdel is the author of the long-running syndicated comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. How to Pronounce Alison Bechdel - YouTube 0:00 / 0:29 How to Pronounce Alison Bechdel 1,879 views Nov 24, 2017 7 Dislike Share Save Unstammer 641 subscribers Learn how to pronounce the. As Kleiman introduces these foundational stories, she intersperses the words of contemporary comics artists like Meggie Ramm, who explains that I was just so grateful that these people had come before and had helped me get to the point where I am today where I can make comics about being a queer person and have people acknowledge them and take them seriously. Throughout, Kleiman structures the film so that it feels like a series of intricate, intimate conversations across the generations, resulting in a rich tapestry of interwoven voices and images. 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. [18], In 2006, Bechdel published Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, an autobiographical "tragicomic" chronicling her childhood and the years before and after her father's suicide. 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. Alison Bechdel: Yeah, it is! Now, when she walks in the woods of her northern Vermont home, a fair distance from neighbors or the nearest. You have to start knowing what you're talking about and you have to go have public conversations with writers. Alison Bechdel Officially Gives 'Fire Island' a Pass Amid Failed Bechdel Test Furor Twitter erupted after a NYMag podcaster condemned the queer summer hit for lacking female representation. On "the Bechdel test" of female characters in movies and on TV, Bechdel: I feel a little bit sheepish about the whole thing because it's not like I invented this test or said, "This is the Bechdel Test." And I knew that that was completely unacceptable. Join the Boston.com Book Club Wednesday, May 26 at 6 p.m. for a virtual discussion with Phoenix Books' Tod Gross and featured guest Alison Bechdel on her new graphic memoir, "The Secret to . "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. Sam Gold, who directed the Public Theater production, also directed the show on Broadway, leading the Off-Broadway production team. It was OK to be gay in 1980. Despite her busy schedule, she chatted with me for upward of an hour, sounding more relaxed than the nerve-wracked portrayal of herself in her autobiographical comics. 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. The Off-Broadway cast reprised their roles on Broadway, except for the actors playing John, Christian, and Medium Alison. Commenting on this aesthetic, she said: In film-making I try to construct a simulated conversation among the different people that Im including in the film. Now that you've moved on to graphic novels, do you miss it? Tickets: Wheeler Opera House box office; http://www.aspenshowtix.com After decades of writing and drawing in relative anonymity, cartoonist and graphic memoirist Hunter, poet and Arabic translator Khaled Mattawa and cartoonist and memoirist Alison Bechdel. In the United States, the Watergate scandal was coming to a head. It's about the different courses my mother's life and my life have taken because of being on different sides of that watershed moment of the women's liberation movement, and that's a very political story. Alison Bechdel. And then the rest of the day is just kind of putting in time [laughs]. I was spellbound by this book and as I was reading it, I had this simultaneous realization that, "Oh my God, I am one of these people in this book," and also that it was OK. Just like that, I accepted it in myself. In the first years, Dykes to Watch Out For consisted of unconnected strips without a regular cast or serialized storyline. Alison Bechdel's Superhuman Strength [Stuck in Vermont 638]Vermont cartoonist Alison Bechdel's new graphic novel The Secret to Superhuman Strength documents . Corrections? But yeah, looking back it was absolutely kind of a rebellion that really freed me from my mother in a way, or began to free me from my mother's critical power over me. But the writing is hard, and the drawing is fun. So he became this sort of androgynous mentor for me. All rights reserved. In October 2013 Fun Home was brought to the stage by Lisa Kron (book) and Jeanine Tesori (score, with Kron). Bechdel's richly imagined, and diligently researched, historical portrayals of psychoanalyst, The International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education Distinguished Educator Award in 2013, This page was last edited on 30 January 2023, at 13:59. Bechdel's graphic novel explores the destruction of feminine female/masculine male gender binaries and proposes a more fluid understanding of identity. Alison Bechdel: The real moment for queer comics was the appearance of "Gay Comix" in 1980, which was an anthology comic book that Howard Cruse put together. I hope that it doesn't come across in that kind of heavy-handed way. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. 10/09/1960. 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? With the adaptation of her autobiographical graphic novel Fun Home into a popular Broadway musical, Alison Bechdel is now being clocked on the street. 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. Bechdel: Drawing is more fun to me than writing. Alison Bechdel, "The Rule," from "Dykes To Watch Out For" (1985) (Courtesy of the Artist) NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ There's a fine line between graphic novel and graphic memoir. "[17], Bechdel resides in Bolton, Vermont, and works with the Vermont-based alternative weekly Seven Days. Bechdel: But I do feel that somehow these more personal works are also somehow more political. 27". I didn't have any long period of struggle. For fans of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and Meg-John Barker's Queer, Fine is an essential graphic memoir about the intricacies of gender identity and expression. ALISON BECHDEL: I thought was going to faint. After deleting the tweet, Rosin issued an apology that included a screenshot of her original complaint. Which I guess is basically the same thing. Last year, the 54-year-old Bechdel was one of the recipients of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" worth a cool $625,000. It's like one of the first things I remember is wanting to wear boys' clothes and fighting with my dad about it. The cartoonist, memoirist, and MacArthur "genius" Alison Bechdel described the myriad ways she has wrestled with time during the 2022 Rita E. Hauser Forum for the Arts on Tuesday. Cartoonist Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and other works that explore queer identity and family relationships, will deliver a lecture as she receives the Washington University International Humanities Prize, presented by the Center for the Humanities. And yet it's central to this story. 134 likes. [44] It focuses on her relationship with her mother. Or other sources if you have to go have public conversations with writers an of... [ Kleiman ] talked to one another York city so he became sort! Actors playing John, Christian, and the political changes that have over. Watch Out for, she moved to New York magazine senior writer E. Alex.. Assumed that this Winnicott person was female and fighting with my dad about it escape the small-minded town actors John! Strip where two women are talking to each other my way of myself... People that [ Kleiman ] talked to for this movie, said Bechdel added. 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