The author of Fun Home, famous in the world for its famous Bechdel test, is one of the three finalists of the Grand Prix of the Angoulême festival with Catherine Meurisse and Riad Sattouf. Encounter.
At 62, American author Alison Bechdel, known for Les Gouines to follow and Fun Home, and initiator of the famous Bechdel test, reaps the honors. She is thus the first cartoonist nominated for the Prix Médicis for The Secret of Superhuman Strength, last September. And his work has been the subject ofa course at the College de France. Alison Bechdel, also appears with Catherine Meurisse and Riad Sattouf among the finalists of the Grand Prix of the Angoulême festival.
Model for several generations of queer designers, Alison Bechdel was crowned “the popess of feminist and LGBT comics” in August by The world. As discreet as modest, she admits to being embarrassed by this title, which she prefers to attribute to Howard Cruse (1944-2019), pioneer of LGBT comics and creator of the magazine Gay Comixwhich inspired her in the 1980s to tell her own stories.
“He should have had this title,” she insists to BFMTV. “There was a whole movement [d’artistes]. It wasn’t just me. I was influenced by artists. We worked together to change the system. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else.”
“I am an exhibitionist in my work”
Alison Bechdel is a paradox. If this author born in 1960 cultivates the secrecy around her life, each of her books explores in the smallest details the key moments of her existence: the discovery of her father’s homosexuality after his death (Fun Home), his complex relationship with his distant mother (Are you my mom?), his taste for bodybuilding (The Secret of Superhuman Strength).
“I was raised Catholic,” she says. “I really liked going to confession. I loved the feeling. I felt pure, like a saint. As an adult, I became a memoirist and started writing about my life. It’s a similar exercise : I have the impression that I have to confess about everything I have done, in a very scrupulous way, with a lot of honesty.
And the designer to add: “I am an exhibitionist in my work, but not in my private life. I would prefer to publish a book and not have to talk about it. But that’s not how things work. It’s a curse and a blessing. I feel like I have to justify my actions, but it’s also a lot of fun trying to understand a real situation and put it into a comic.”
“The best feeling in the world”
Autobiography fascinates her. “I love telling stories from reality. There is no logic or meaning in our lives. It’s a very fun puzzle to solve. I dare not imagine myself doing fiction .” Drawing is for her a “vital activity”: “It’s the best feeling in the world. You enter a moment of intense concentration where you only do that and it’s a delight.”
Alison Bechdel is a hard worker. It often takes him several years to finish his books. Fun Home was published in 2006 in the United States, Are you my mom? in 2012 and The Secret of Superhuman Strength in 2021. “For The Secret of Superhuman StrengthI needed time and experience”, justifies Alison Bechdel. Then there were the things of life: “My mother died when I started this book.”
“I wanted to make a funny book, but the death of my mother changed the bottom of the book a little”, continues the designer, who needs an almost religious calm to write. “After my mother’s death, it took me a long time to calm down to work.” When she draws, on the other hand, she needs the hubbub of television, where she looks “in the mouth” Curb Your Enthusiasm and Sex and the City.
If her latest comic announces to reveal “the Secret of superhuman strength”, the designer does not have it. “This book speaks precisely of the fact that no one is superhuman”, slips the designer, animated by a perpetual doubt. A doubt that manifests itself in her books where she draws herself on each page: “I always try to show that I exist. I hope one day no longer need to affirm my existence in this way.”
“At peace” with the Bechdel test
The restraint shown by Alison Bechdel lives up to the crushing shadow of Fun Home. “No one warns you of the dangers of writing a bestseller,” she laughs. “I’m very grateful, but it was difficult afterwards to write another autobiographical story. The book about my mother disappointed the public, who wanted something similar to Fun Home. It was tough, but I’m proud that I stayed true to my vision.”
References to the Bechdel test – which aims to highlight the under-representation of female characters in cinema – also poison his life. “I try to distance myself from it. I’m glad it’s become important, but I don’t need to talk about it all the time.” Because this famous test, mentioned in a 1985 strip, had been imagined above all as a joke.
“I never thought it would become something so important,” she says. “I’m at peace with it now. I had imagined it to celebrate female characters. It’s one of the main subjects of my work.”
“I only drew men”
She herself began to depict female characters late in life. “Until I was 19, I only drew men. It was when I came out that I thought it was strange to only draw men. guys who did interesting things in my childhood! I didn’t want to draw a woman ironing, but a policeman!”
Drawing female characters has long been “difficult”, she reveals: “I had to practice to get there. If I thought it was a lesbian, I was better at drawing her. I didn’t can’t believe I’m talking about this publicly, but that’s how I work!” The discovery in the 1980s of lesbian comics (like Come Out Comix of Mary Wings) was “a clap of thunder”.
Having become an icon of the LGBTQIA+ community 40 years later, Alison Bechdel only regrets not having tackled the major issues of her time such as AIDS in Les Gouines to follow, humorous strip telling the daily life of lesbians between 1983 and 2008. “It was a mistake”, she concedes. He was also criticized for not addressing domestic violence. “It was too dark a subject, which moreover I did not know.”
Soon Bechdel in animated series?
With only three books in fifteen years, she could also regret not being more productive. “It’s good to take time! What’s the rush?” Money, often, we answer him. She will also make it the subject of a forthcoming book which she announces as being less autobiographical and more autofictional. She stages herself there as a designer leaving comics for television, out of greed.
Alison Bechdel is also considering giving a revival to her Dykes to follow, which she would like to include in this new comic. A project that excites him more than the Hollywood adaptation of the musical Fun Home by Jake Gyllenhaal. Alison Bechdel is not involved in the project, the evolution of which she follows distantly (two years after the announcement of the project, the shooting has not been announced).
Finally, Bechdel has been working for several months with actress Carrie Brownstein on an adaptation in the form of an animated series of Dykes to follow. “We have to submit our script. We’ll see what happens,” says Bechdel, who would like to see the project succeed after years of aborted projects. “That would be really cool. We’ll see.”
