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Cartoonist Alison Bechdel is one of the best-known figures in comics. Her work, in particular, has influenced all aspects of pop culture beyond the medium of comics. Her seminal graphic memoir “Fun Home” was adapted into a Broadway musical that won five Tony Awards, and her comic strip “Dykes to Watch Out For” remains a classic example of the medium. There's also the “Bechdel-Wallace Test,” which was used for some time as a benchmark for determining whether a piece of work was pro- or anti-feminist.
In 2014, Bechdel was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and was inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame alongside Hellboy creator Mike Mignola in 2019. Her most recent work, The Secret of Superhuman Strength, a graphic memoir about her lifelong obsession with fitness and exercise, received rave reviews upon its release in 2021 and was named Best Graphic Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly.
Let's analyze Alison Bechdel's impact on comics and pop culture over the years.
Dykes and the “Bechdel-Wallace Test” to watch out for
Dykes to Watch Out For (DTWOF) was a weekly comic strip serialized in the American humor newspaper Funny Times from 1983 to 2008. It was also syndicated to several gay and lesbian newspapers and published online. Following in the footsteps of queer comics pioneers such as Mary Wings, Roberta Gregory, Larry Fuller, and Howard Crews, Bechdel offers an early and sustained portrayal of lesbianism through a fictional lens in Dykes to Watch Out For, following a host of characters going about their everyday lives.
In the introduction to Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (a collection published by Mariner Books in 2020), Bechdel writes that the work served as many readers' introduction to lesbian culture and, for some, defined the experience of being a lesbian.
In a 2021 interview with queer culture site Autostraddle, Bechdel said she found this aspect of her work disheartening: “Now that lesbian culture has really blossomed and there's so much of it out there, I don't feel that way as much anymore. But it's always been interesting to hear from young women, 'The first lesbian I ever met was one of your comic book characters,' and all of a sudden you start wondering if they were good role models or bad role models.”
Whether or not the characters in DTWOF are good role models aside, Bechdel's storytelling and comics style have clearly influenced contemporary creators who serialise their comics regularly on Autostraddle, from Archie Bongiovanni (Grease Bats, Mimosa) to Len Strapp (Reine).
Additionally, the “Bechdel-Wallace Test” originates from Dykes to Watch Out For. First appearing in the 1985 comic strip “The Rule,” the strip features two women similar to future characters Moe and Ginger discussing going to the movies, but deciding to go home together after none of the films playing at their local cinema fit their criteria. One of the women lays out three criteria: the film must feature at least two women, and they must talk to each other about something other than men. The strip touches on how queer women were marginalized in the film and entertainment industry in the '80s, and is still relevant today.
The “Bechdel-Wallace Test” is also sometimes called the “Bechdel Test,” the “Bechdel Law,” the “Bechdel Rule,” and, after the character, the “Mo Movie Measure.” In a 2013 blog post, Bechdel said she “stole” the idea for the test from her friend Liz Wallace, and believed Wallace “stole it from Virginia Woolf, who wrote about the test in 1926.”
The “Bechdel-Wallace Test” was first published in The Rules in 1985 (Woolf's A Room of One's Own was published 59 years earlier), but was popularized in the early 2000s as a way to measure whether a film was for or against feminism, and to address the lack of well-rounded female characters in Hollywood. The test is only effective to a certain extent in this application, as it was intentionally created to address the marginalization of women in film. strange Women, well, not all women. And yet, that sudden popularity has made Bechdel's impact on pop culture even more pronounced.
Fun house
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Also in the early 2000s, Houghton Mifflin published Bechdel's graphic memoir, “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic.” The 2006 book chronicled her childhood, adolescence and young adulthood living with a dysfunctional family in rural Pennsylvania, focusing particularly on her complicated relationship with her father. “Fun Home” was both a coming-of-age and coming-out story and quickly drew acclaim.
The book spent two weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list and also won a 2007 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book, a Stonewall Book Award for Non-Fiction, a Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir and Biography, and the Publishing Triangle-Judy Grahn Award for Non-Fiction. It was nominated for three 2007 Eisner Awards, winning for Best Reality-Based Work, and has appeared multiple times on best of the year, decade, and century lists.
As recently as 2022, Fun Home has been removed from school libraries and banned by conservative movements seeking to remove queer literature from shelves, but the story's influence lives on, particularly through the development of a stage musical adaptation first created by Lisa Kron (book) and Jeanine Tesori (music) at the Ojai Playwrights Conference in 2009. Fun Home premiered Off-Broadway in 2013 and was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as winning the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, and an Obie Award for Musical Theatre.
Fun Home premiered on Broadway in April 2015 and won five Tony Awards that year, including Best Musical. Its total run time was 26 previews and 582 regular performances before going on tour in October 2016. Despite these successes and an impressive run, the musical received criticism for not explicitly representing queer narratives in its marketing campaign.
In 2020, actor Jake Gyllenhaal reportedly acquired the film rights to the stage musical Fun Home, with Gyllenhaal set to play Bechdel's father, Bruce, whose suicide and hidden sexual orientation are the subject of Bechdel's memoir. A film would revisit Fun Home and further expand on its impact, furthering Bechdel's prolific influence in comics over the past four decades.
Bechdel today
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Bechdel continues to be influential in the comics and queer communities. She was named a finalist for the Angoulême International Comic Art Festival's Grand Prix 2023 Career Achievement Award and is currently featured in the “No Straight Lines” episode of the PBS investigative documentary series “Independent Lens.” “No Straight Lines” examines the rise of queer comics and features Bechdel, Jennifer Camper, Howard Crews, Rupert Kinnard and Mary Wings.
The graphic memoir Fun Home and Bechdel's other works are taught in academic settings and read in book clubs (including one I joined in early 2023). Bechdel's influence cannot be overstated: the past four decades of her career have changed not only the structure of comics, but the structure of media and pop culture.
On a personal note, Bechdel's work has helped me understand and communicate my identity as a lesbian, introduced me to queer comics history, and has profoundly influenced my work as a comics journalist, media critic, and writer. Whatever Bechdel does next, I'll be there first to check it out.
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