Alison Bechdel: Yeah, it is! I struggle to get up at seven and almost always fail. Seems easy enough. How? 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. Both of her parents contributed to her career as a cartoonist. shelved 474,725 times Showing 30 distinct works. 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. Alison experienced a chaotic summer in 1974 because of events in the country, in her community, and in her personal life. Truth Social has been a complete disaster and the ex-president seems to know it. Bechdel's memories of interactions with her mother throughout her life, beginning in childhood. Alison Bechdel Andrew T. Warman for The New York Times. A College student writing an essay on Fun Home submitted a question for Bechdel about how nostalgia influenced her narratives. And there was so much going [on] in that exchange. [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. Her relationship with her father, in . Alison Bechdel was born on September 10th 1960. That's kind of cool. Q: You drew Dykes to Watch Out For for twenty-five years, which is a good, long run for an alternative strip. There the strip gained new life, and one particular cartoon would embed Bechdels name in the popular culture lexicon. It's a terrible feeling. 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. [29], Time magazine named Alison Bechdel's Fun Home number one of its "10 Best Books of the Year." According to Cruse, this made the comics world into a bland space of cis-het individuals that subscribed to heavily binary, limited ideas regarding gender roles and sexuality. I love having something concrete or tangible, since I work for long stretches without any sign of that. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alison-Bechdel, National Public Radio - Lesbian Cartoonist Alison Bechdel Countered Dad's Secrecy By Being Out And Open. The success of Dykes to Watch Out For allowed Bechdel to quit her day job in 1990 to work on the strip full-time. The Public Theater production was directed by Sam Gold. [41] The musical played at Broadway's Circle in the Square Theatre, with previews from March 27, 2015, and an official opening on April 19, 2015, running to September 10, 2016. My mind and my body are working together.. She was a 2014 recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" Award. It's very satisfying to see a drawing start to come together. The Broadway musical won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Performance by an Actor in Leading Role in a Musical, Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Direction of a Musical. The roles and expectations of men and women in Alice Munro's story "* Boys and Girls" are described in great . Congrats! 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. 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. Even Before Will Smith, It Was a Strange and Awkward Oscars 2022, Photo by Jeong Park. You have earned {{app.voicePoint}} points. Bechdel will speak at CCAD's Canzani Center in conversation with Hilary Price, the creator of the comic strip "Rhymes With Orange," at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 2, as part of Cartoon Crossroads Columbus. No Straight Lines is also a story of media. Alison Bechdel. 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. [40] Originally scheduled to run through November 3, 2013, the run was extended multiple times and the musical closed on January 12, 2014. [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. 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. 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. The sex symbol confessed that "girls thought I was a jokea happy buffoon," before he met his wife. 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. [47] In February 2004, Bechdel married Amy Rubin, her girlfriend since 1992, in a civil ceremony in San Francisco. 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. Since you have exceeded your time limit, your recording has been stopped. In 2006 Bechdel published the graphic memoir Fun Home, a coming-of-age story that detailed her relationship with her father, a closeted gay man with an obsessive eye for decorative detail, and her own emerging lesbian consciousness. 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. Bechdel: But I do feel that somehow these more personal works are also somehow more political. In a way its still me obsessively keeping track of myself in this kind of compulsive way I used to do. Basically, my work is play. Since then, you've shifted toward intensely introspective work. Image by Author. [7], In November 2006, Bechdel was invited to sit on the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. The only movie my friend could go see was Alien, because the two women talk to each other about the monster. One, it has to have at least two women in it. It was OK to be gay in 1980. All Rights Reserved. Seemingly without even intending it it, Kinnard discovered that when he made his Brown Bomber come out, it became entwined with his own coming out, elegantly making the case for the substantial impact that queer comics can make in the lives of those who participate in them. [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. November 12, 2013. Her mother was an actress and teacher. There are variations of the Bechdel Test for other protected groups, such as the DuVernay Test, and the Vito Russo Test. Among other things, the story of LGBTQ+ liberation is a story of spaces. It somehow has gotten attributed to me over the years. "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. She began Dykes to Watch Out For as a single drawing labeled "Marianne, dissatisfied with the morning brew: Dykes to Watch Out For, plate no. 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. She has also won the Grambs Aronson "Cartoonist with a Conscience" Award, and was named a 2012 Herblock Prize Finalist. by Alison Bechdel, ALISON BECHDEL, and Alison Bechdel. 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. I just need a lot of quiet and solitude, and I'm so easily distracted. Many, many years ago back in 1985 I wrote an episode of my comic strip where two women are talking to each other. People actually use it to analyze films to see whether or not they pass that test. It was a huge break that Fun Home succeeded the way it did. You've got the pronunciation of Alison bechdel right. Along the way, Bechdel finds her own sexuality. By Carmen Phillips | May 13, 2021. 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. Her work has also appeared in such publications as Slate, the New York Times Book Review, McSweeney's, Granta . But the writing is hard, and the drawing is fun. Her story of growing up lesbian in . It's incredible. Now that you've moved on to graphic novels, do you miss it? May 13, 2015. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. 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. It's crazy. Rate this book Write a Review Friends & Following Unfortunately, this browser does not support voice recording. As well as her own childhood and life. 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. She came out as a lesbian at age 19 in 1979. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Another audience member asked if Bechdels rituals of documentation had affected her memory. Alison Bechdel has spoken. The Secret To Superhuman Strength is a memoir about trying to control the experience of life. 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. Bechdel has also written and drawn autobiographical strips and has done illustrations for magazines and websites. Still surprisingly few films actually pass it. At the same time, I've always thought it would be kind of a luxury to have all that time to make something perfect. In her community, locusts had risen from the ground and infested the town. Bechdel: When I was writing my first memoir, Fun Home, I was also doing the comic strip, and having that other, constant pull on me to do something else was very motivating. I felt like I was living some kind of lie. 2022 The Progressive Inc. 931 E. Main Street, Suite 10 Madison, Wisconsin 53703 (608) 257-4626. Bechdel: It certainly was an important moment for me, that realization that I was not going to get what I wanted. Alison Bechdel is the author of the long-running syndicated comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. So I tend to write first thing, and then do my drawing later. I recall a good deal of criticism of the George W. Bush Administration. You can contribute this audio pronunciation of Alison bechdel to HowToPronounce dictionary. 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. So Jeanine said we need to write a song about this panel [in the graphic novel] and I said, "We can't because there's not going to be a way to do it that people won't laugh at that character and I couldn't bear it." But I get to do for a living what I did as a child for fun, and that's pretty cool. hide caption. Earlier in your career, you lived in New York City. Introduction. I always have my best ideas, like, within five minutes of starting. Fun Home has since been turned into a Broadway play, which recently won five Tony Awards, including the award for best musical. That really does make me hopeful. Subscribe to learn and pronounce a new word each day! In the 21st century those guidelines became known as the Bechdel Test, a shorthand method to illustrate the dramatic gender disparity in Hollywood. I certainly spend more time on the writing than I do on the drawing, even though the drawing, of course, is very time-consuming. She comes out at as a lesbian at the age of 19, while she is in college. I deleted a tweet that many of you rightly pointed out was offensive, wrote Rosin in a three-tweet thread. It was very freeing. 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. mong other things, the story of LGBTQ+ liberation is a story of spaces. Alison Bechdel's Fun Home challenges both established gender roles and heteronormative identities. I kind of lost my originals. The score was by Jeanine Tesori and the book and lyrics were written by Lisa Kron. Bechdel: Yeah, it's like a kind of transitive procrastination. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Bechdel: I love Donald Winnicott. : A Comic Drama, which was released in May 2012. 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. Scene Stealer: The True Lies of Elisabeth Finch, Part 1, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodwards Daughters Appreciated the Fuck Hut Detail Too. Alison Bechdel's new memoir, "The Secret to Superhuman Strength," follows her lifelong obsession with exercise. Her family was Roman Catholic. "Bechdel" redirects here. Corrections? 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 . [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. The thing that surprised me when I interviewed the young people, said Kleiman, was how grateful they were to the pioneers of queer comics. "[17], Bechdel resides in Bolton, Vermont, and works with the Vermont-based alternative weekly Seven Days. Sam Gold, who directed the Public Theater production, also directed the show on Broadway, leading the Off-Broadway production team. My mother would call me upset he had just thrown a painting down the stairs. invited deep and honest accounts of adolescence, taking hormones, changing pronouns-and how these experiences can differ depending on culture . In mainstream culture, the way that it has often been expressed is as a stock character of ridicule. As a kid, cartoonist Alison Bechdel was obsessed with the bodybuilding ads at the back of her comic books. Additionally, this graphic memoir helps show the hardships individuals face when coming out. Despite its relatively recent publication, it has already attracted much scholarly attention. The Public Theater / Joan Macus. But it feels very different. Ratings & Reviews What do you think? In 2012 Bechdel released Are You My Mother? 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. tags: alison-bechdel , fun-home , grief , suicide. And now that I'm not doing my comic strip but I'm working on these longer book projects, years go by. We'd exchanged e-mails in the past, but had never met or talked to one another. I like to draw at night. 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. I think it's interesting to talk to different cartoonists about how those activities work for them. It's like one of the first things I remember is wanting to wear boys' clothes and fighting with my dad about it. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.". In the graphic memoir, Bechdel explored her interest in fitness crazes while addressing such issues as body image, interdependence, and mortality. Alison Bechdel, (born September 10, 1960, Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, U.S.), American cartoonist and graphic novelist who was perhaps best known for the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For (19832008)which introduced the so-called Bechdel Test, which evaluates movies on the basis of gender inequalityand the graphic memoir Fun Home (2006). Two men talking to each other about the female protagonist of an Alice Munro story in a screenplay structured on a Jane Austen novel = pass., Bechdel felt the need to update her unscientific test after Fire Island trended for nearly two days straight seemingly in response to Rosin giving the film an F- on the Bechdel Test. Okay, I just added a corollary to the Bechdel test, Bechdel began her tweet. We and our partners share information on your use of this website to help improve your experience. I try not to have anything too much going on between waking up and getting to work. Soon after coming out, Alison learns from her mother that Bruce has always carried on affairs with men and boys. "I said, 'You better still be running when you're old and gray,'" she says. Rian Johnson, Halle Berry, and More Share Their Inspiration, From the Archive:Who Stole the Oscars? Only four months before Bruce's death, Alison had announced to her parents, in a letter, that she was a lesbian. 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