npr:nprfreshair:Since coming out as a lesbian in 1980 at the age of 19, graphic novelist Alison Bech
npr:nprfreshair: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. 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.“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. “I threw myself into the gay community, into this life as a lesbian cartoonist, deciding I was going to be a professional lesbian. In a way, that was all my way of healing myself.”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. Fun Home has since been turned into a Broadway play, which recently won five Tony Awards, including the award for best musical. Lyricist Lisa Kron and composer Jeanine Tesori join Bechdel in a conversation about the play.Lesbian Cartoonist Alison Bechdel Countered Dad’s Secrecy By Being Out And OpenOn “the Bechdel test” of female characters in movies and on TVAlison 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.” It somehow has gotten attributed to me over the years. Many, many years ago — back in 1985 — I wrote an episode of my comic strip where two women are talking to each other. They want to go see a movie and one woman says, “I’ll only go to a movie if it satisfies three criteria.”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. 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.” That left very, very few movies in 1985. The only movie my friend could go see was Alien, because the two women talk to each other about the monster. But somehow young feminist film students found this old cartoon and resurrected it in the Internet era and now it’s this weird thing. People actually use it to analyze films to see whether or not they pass that test. Still … surprisingly few films actually pass it.Photo: Alison Bechdel by Elena Seibert/Courtesy of O+M Co.This interview has the origins of the Bechdel test and so much more! -Emily -- source link