Revisionism
July 4th, 2006 | Uncategorized
I started this as a comment to the NPR post, in response to some of the topics people raised there. But then it got really long so I’m making it into a post of its own.
1. Yes, Liane Hansen mispronounced my name, to the great annoyance of my mother. (It’s BECK-dull) I didn’t notice during the interview. I think they pasted it in later.
2. Yes, they edited the bejeezus out of what I said! I had lots of cliffhanging pauses and rambling digressions which they snipped right out, to my great relief. I wish I could do that in real life.
3. Yes, it was very cool to hear Liane say “Dykes To Watch Out For” right there on the radio. But it’s peculiar to me how all of sudden, DTWOF is being perceived as some kind of established cultural fixture. Liane Hansen said that I’ve “received quite a bit of critical acclaim” for my Dykes cartoons. Huh. No one sent me that memo. It’s true I’ve gotten my fair share of acclaim in the LGBT universe. But I don’t think that’s what she meant, or what other reviewers who’ve alluded to my “success” have meant. There’s a strange revisionist mechanism at work, I think, the culture attempting to right itself by saying, “we didn’t notice you before but now that you’ve attained a measure of respectability, we’re going to pretend that we did.”
What do you think?
Maybe I should just shut up and enjoy it while it lasts.
34 Responses to “Revisionism”
I think there is definitely some revision at work. People who wouldn’t have known or cared what ‘Dykes to Watch Out’ was before want to now pretend that they weren’t narrow-minded idiots before. And now they want to kiss your arse – I’d say enjoy it, it’s one of the more slimy aspects of fame, but can be satisfying nonetheless.
For “acclaim outside the LGBT universe” — I’m not the only straight person who follows “Dykes To Watch Out For.” There’s my whole family, to start with, only a couple of whom are not straight. But I don’t know how well known the strip is in the big world: I do keep having to tell people about it. It has a pretty universal appeal, _I_ think. At least when I show people what I’m talking about they get it.
As for the revisionist mechanism, I think you’re right, but there’s also, “oops, the cool kids are all talking about the Dykes, and I’m cool, so I better be too.”
I think you’re mistaken to believe the LGBT universe is separate from the “real” one. We Are The World (TM) and all that.
Maybe you’re just finally ready to hear the acclaim you’ve been receiving all along. Nu?
Just a datapoint: last night, I asked a straight friend if she’d heard of Fun Home. She said no. I asked her if she’d heard of Alison Bechdel. She said no. I asked her if she’d heard of “Dykes to Watch Out For.” She said yes, absolutely. *shrug*
Maybe you can both continue to speak up AND enjoy the recognition.
In reply to your astute observation: >
Absolutely. It’s like being at a cocktail party where some Big Wig snubs you all night until she discovers you are important. Then she backpedals and tries to make nice. (This happens in Academia a lot). Wouldn’t it be astounding if they referred to you this way….”Alison Bechdel, creator of the brilliant yet long- ignored and foolishly-disregarded by mainstream media strip, DTWOF.”
On the other hand, within the world of lesbian publications and many independent ones, DTWOF *is* an established cultural fixture and you are phenomenally successful, aka, a fuckin’ big deal. I remember how bitter May Sarton was for being overlooked. While her feelings were justified, it is a exhausting way to live. Or, as I’ve begun to view the world, “At least no one is carpet bombing my neighborhood today.”
Ellen
I tend to agree with Rebecca above. I have also asked the younger people at my office if they have heard of DTWOF and they all have read it, but aren’t familiar with Alisons’ name……so I took in my “Complete Dykes To Watch Out For Volume l” and they loved it. BTW, if I had been able to get up to Portland, I would have asked Alison to sign it, bedraggled, dog-earred and coffee stained as it is!
There are those of us who have love you for many years Alison! Enjoy the recognition!
I totally agree with what you said. In fact, I have your comic “What I Know about Being an Oppressed Minority Cartoonist” on my wall, and it reflects a similar message. But hey, enjoy the well-deserved notice you’re getting now, and know that your fans have been supporting you the whole time!
Some of the recognition that DTWOF is getting in the wake of “Fun Home” likely *is* coming from “narrow-minded idiots,” to use Rebecca’s term — or from trendoids eager to prove how culturally adventurous they are.
Dunno if I’d put Liane Hansen in that category, though. She’s been with NPR for 25 years, so she’s probably developed some ability to suss out cultural offerings such as Alison’s work that aren’t front and center in the mainstream media.
Not to mention that DTWOF has been around since 1983 and has earned recognition from such lefty/underground stalwarts as Harvey Pekar, Nicole Hollander and Tom Tomorrow. (I’m referring to the back cover of my own well-thumbed, much-loaned-out copy of “The Indelible Alison Bechdel.”)
The various DTWOF collections have sold 300,000 copies worldwide(!), according to a 2005 article in the San Francisco Chronicle. And the monthly humor review Funny Times has been running DTWOF strips since Ginger met Malika. So I don’t think that Liane Hansen was off base in referring to the “critical acclaim” for DTWOF. (Whether she’s jumping on a pop-culture bandwagon, I can’t say, though I’d like to think not.)
First blog post– it’s so much easier to remain an anonymous blog reader….
The reason that I’ve been such a fan of yours for the past decade is exactly because you’re someone who writes things like this post.
While I appreciate that people are telling you to enjoy the fame and fortune– my sense is that this isn’t what you’re struggling with, or at least it’s not the main struggle here. You’re doing the enjoyment thing and you’re politely thanking the Lianes of the world. But what’s so, so wonderful about you, Alison, is that you’re inviting all of us to join with you in thinking about what all the sudden hoopla is tied to– and from where I sit there’s no denying that some revisionsim is at work.
And you’re describing what it’s like to drive in the SUV while listening to the report on Africa and the diamond industry and you’re showcasing the dyke bars and indy bookstores and linking to powell’s (did your publisher push you to include the amazon link?) and recording thrushes in the forest along the way.
Travel safely to Amazon– you’ll be arriving here in the Twin Cities just as the ‘minute men’ fuckers will be headed from Saint Paul to the next stop on their nationwide tour.
For a really scary blog experience visit
http://www.21stcenturypaulrevereride.us/blog/
Talk about revisionism– I’m not a huge Paul Revere fan, but last I checked he wasn’t riding around spreading racist, scapegoating messages (though, come to think of it, Dana Frank in “Buy American” talks about the whole tea party thing in terms of co-opting poor workers into some shaky nativist crap).
And then there’s the complexity of it all (the minute men blog)– scroll down to the bit about their Texas visit and see that they refer to Bush as “a man masquerading as president of the United States” and go on about all the unecessary carnage in Iraq.
Next stop for Alison Bechdel: graphic/illustrated writing that grapples with the contradictions of white working class (though I realize not all ‘minute men’ are working class) realities and politics. The inked version of ‘What’s Wrong with Kansas’… sorry for the long post.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
I would echo what Sarah C. said about Harvey Pekar and Dan Perkins. You have certainly been long known and admired outside the “LGBT universe” – albeit in another ghetto, another underground. That’s not to say that your assessment isn’t correct. When serious comics “came out” two decades ago, a lot of people pretended to have been reading them all along. I imagine many people did the same thing when the American Splendor movie was released.
I do agree, revisionism can be a bit like slimy end of the seesaw. You go up, but your butt feels something’s amiss.
Here in the UK, LGBT community is aware of Alison Bechdel in spite of the fact that there’ll never be enough bookstores with DTWOF on their shelves. Three that I can think of in London, in fact. I think it’s partly because UK in general doesn’t have comic book tradition that’s so thriving and influential in Europe. I know tons of youngish dykes who’ve never heard of DTWOF; their best effort is to buy Marvel or an occasional Manga. Graphic novels, bandes desinees, however you want to call them, don’t have a niche in Britain. It’s simply not viewed to be preferably comparable to ‘real’ literature. *snort*
In spite of all the talk about illustration making the big comeback, visual narrative is still something only trendy Soho designers with cool messanger bags and Maske glasses fuss about. LGBT community simply had to pay attention as there was very little that reflected our lives out there, but those who are happy with heteronormative mass production could merrily skip intelligent comics altogether or treat its as freak entertainment. (Bitter? Moi?)
This makes no difference to the fact that your work is absolutely excellent, relevant, gutsy, witty, and should have received all that critical acclaim years ago. Enjoy the ripples for now. Your work will probably end up being re-discovered dozens of times, while being ‘mainstream acclaimed’ all along.
Isn’t the revisionist mechanism more to do with the fact that your are a graphic novellist? It’s like the way everyone claimed to have read V for Vendetta or Blade or Ghost World when the films came out. The way everyone pretends to have read Maus 300 years ago.
I find they do it with everyone who publishes a beautifully drawn graphic novel.
even though it’s not mainstream, I believe the recogniton that you’ve gotten in LGBT-land counts as critical acclaim. I take some satisfaction that those in the larger world are just coming to appreciate something that folks in the shadows have enjoyed for decades! and isn’t that the point? yes, it’s been a long time coming, but NPR and other mainstream media have finally found/embraced a treasure that’s been buried in a very fertile field.
perhaps you can assimilate the sudden widening of your fame . . . and point out that the critical acclaim you enjoyed for the first decades of your career came from a rather select audience.
2¢: It seems like a compound situation. As Anon. mentioned above, graphic novelism (pun intended) is complicated to categorize into pop culture literature. Mainstream readers don’t want to be challenged into different modalities of reading unless they are certain, via media encouragment, that their discomfort will have a pay-off. The revisionism of your creative history is part of the mechanism of legitimizing you to this audience; see, the graphic memoir may disturb you in format and content, but she’s really not a hack so it’s actually a good read.
The other part of the problem (is it a problem?) is that lesbianism has become fashionable in the Hollywood media. People feel comfortable admitting they read queer lit. It’s just a matter of time before DTWOF is remade into a Laguna Beach-style faux reality teevee program. 🙂
Enjoy it Alison….for all that its worth, but never become complacent because of the “new regonition” that you are now recieving. I have been reading your comic for years now, and its really funny that I just realized that you are older than my mother, and when she sees me reading your comic, she stops and says…in her Jamaican Lingua Franca “Wow that comic is still going on?”….So it has been long enough…you deserve all that you get, but I think that you should have corrected that woman when she said your name wrong…
Ok…Ok….don’t obsess about the age thing Alision , you’re still hotter than all get out…
Ain’t it the truth.
Just another data point– I’m a college student who came out at 14 and was obsessed (from the bookshelves of my suburban bedroom) with the art and artifacts of lesbian culture as I went through adolescence. DTWOF was really important to me as a piece of gay art as I grew up. I brought my whole collection to college when I was a freshman, with the rest of my favorite books, as a comfort-blanket sort of thing to keep me company among the scary new environment. But I brought it back sophomore and junior year because all. of. my. friends, straight or gay, picked it up and loved it. I think the straight guy down the hall still has my Split-Level Dykes– I should bug him about returning it. (Or buying his own!) And the “Alison Bechdel movie test” (you know, are there at least two women, etc.) is something we all talk about when we see a movie.
I’m just glad that talent and hard work will out (as it were).
When you’ve been doing something for over 20 years, you’re an institution, or a Tradition, if you will. All but the most backward-looking in the population have to concede that something(DTWOF) or someone(vous) around that long has staying power, especially since you’ve made your living entirely from DTWOF for much of that time.
Yeah, and the kudos from recognized names like Pekar and Hollander helps that greatly.
I don’t think many people of any sexual orientation have as many books and awards as you do. It’s just an unfortunate fact that *no* artists make that much money. I had a friend who was doing accouting for Cheap Trick back in the 80s when they still had the occassional top 40 hit, and they were only making like $60K a year, which like sure that’s enough to live on, but if that’s top 40, what do “indi” folks make?
Another straight guy who’s into DWTOF.
My two cents are that it’s easier for people to talk about “critical acclaim” for books/art/etc. with LGBT content or themes because in the “mainstream” culture, LGBT folks are supposed to be more sophisticated and artistic. Granted, the stereotype applies much more to gay men than to anyone else, but it’s still there. Hence “critical” acclaim–the approval of the in-the-know crowd who have expertise in matters literary and artistic. Since we straights (fingers crossed now) think that most of that crowd is gay anyway, it just stands to reason that a artist who is successful in a gay subculture is also (almost by definition) successful with “critics.”
I seem to remember a DTWOF making fun of the NPR arts interview show “Fresh Air” and its female host with a penchant for flirting with gay male guests.
Yeah, we had a little Terry Gross discussion back on the thread for Fun Home on NPR about David Beyond-Cool-Guy etc. a coupla days ago too.
_Dharma Lion_, a biography on Allen Ginsberg, came to mind when I heard your NPR review. Ginsberg worked very hard at marketing his work, and connecting with all segments of society. I like his example, because he also had a thorough committment to the integrity of his creative output: like you, he was amazingly principled, brilliant, talented, and more than a little aware of Moloch; while raging against the machine, Ginsberg also danced with its inhabitants for survival’s sake. Best cheers, Elizabeth
“don’t obsess about the age thing Alision , you’re still hotter than all get out…”……*falls off chair*
Alison, what a pity no one sent you that memo! I’ve been mentally writing a version of it for the twenty years I’ve been reading your work.
DTWOF has long been insightful, funny, poignant, timely, smart, and perceptive, in both your supple and articulate use of language and the beautiful lines of your artwork. During the mid-80s, when I was coming out the first time, I thought surely you lived in the same city I did and were cartooning about my friends, because your work was so perfectly attuned to our lives. Your images and phrases have become part of my household vocabulary, and I am sure ours is not the only home where people quote “This isn’t indeterminacy, this is a salmonella colony.” and “Skip blend, press liquefy.” and “H is for Hope…” as well as many other memorable dtwof-isms.
Obviously you have countless enthusiastic, loyal, queer readers like me. Surely you get enough fan mail to know that your audiences are truly diverse – I don’t really know what the word “mainstream” would mean when applied to your readership, but you have got to believe that we are authorized to give you “critical acclaim” and have been loving your work since it first started to appear in print. I hear what some of your nonqueer readers are saying about it, too. In 2002 when my mother underwent a long hospitalization for chemotherapy, I lent her my complete collection of your cartoons, and we spent some happy hours (re)reading and admiring and discussing them. Recently after I bought Fun Home, my partner got us a second copy so that we could lend one and keep the other nice. Both of us consider you the best cartoonist of the twentieth century. Our love for your work is not only a matter of who we are (I’m queer, he isn’t, and we both relate to your characters), it’s also because your art is incredibly expressive and we enjoy taking it in and watching it evolve.
What I’m trying to say here is that I believe your queer audiences are not separate from, nor lesser than, some mythical mainstream readership whose acclaim should somehow count more than ours. The NPR interviewer isn’t guilty of revisionism, she’s pointing out that you have been a beloved and successful writer-artist for a long time and in the eyes of a lot of people.
With Fun Home you establish yourself as a graphic artist in a new way, with those nuanced, emotional ink washes, photo-album-like visual compositions, and gripping, literary material. Alison, this hardcover sold out practically overnight! Hear your readers shout: We like it *better* than Proust. Of course there’s a well-deserved wave of critical acclaim for your new book, and this is in direct continuity with readers’ responses to your work over the past twenty-plus years, just as Fun Home has artistic continuity with the impressive body of work you’ve already published. I won’t ramble on about how the strips about Sydney and her dad emotionally and visually resemble parts of Fun Home, how your silent 9/11/2001 strip anticipates its ‘serious’ feel and design, and so on
Suck up the praise, babe, because we’ve loved your stuff all along. I think you’re more acclaimed than you realized, and it’s time for you to catch up and face the facts. We’re here, we love your art, get used to it.
It’s so fascinating to me…in a social/psychological sense, how people wanna act like there isn’t anything “different” going on here…
why the strong need to assert that it’s just Alison’s imagination? or focus? or framing? or limited perview? or maybe internalized homophobia? or homocentricity? why the need to convince her/us that somehow this is just old news and she’s always gotten this recognition but never noticed before???
I mean c’mon… you must not be all that queer if you don’t think queer audiences are separate from the mainstream…
the mainstream isn’t a myth… it’s real…in my humble lesbo opinion.
I’m totally intrigued by this rationalization? dynamic? need? whatever it is???
And just to show you that we “queers” are still marginalized…
I just got home from a shopping trip with my kid to our local Borders…and I swear, I didn’t dream this, nor was I hallucinating…
while the kid shopped I searched around to see if Fun Home was there…I know it’s not in stock at the publisher but I thought that I’d check to see if any were left in the store…
it was not in the “new hardbacks” area…hmmm…
not in the graphic comics section…hmmmm…
not even a copy of an old dtwof…
no indelible alison b’s to be found…
I finally had to ask the clerk,
where’s your gay and lesbian fiction section?
(and just so you know, I live in a big ol’ northeastern state in a large town, ie, i’m not in kansas)
Oh, right here Ma’am…(and the kid called me “ma’am” too..shit!)
yep, that’s where I found two copies of Fun Home.
…on the little teeny tiny gay and lesbian literature shelf and it wasn’t even set out on the top…it was just shelved.
How many other new hardbacks would be relegated to the tucked away back corner of the store? and with an author with the critical acclaim of Ms. Bechdel? (and that’s BECK- duhl as in RECTal, thank you…)
Even Demi Moore got the media folks to say deh-ME at some point…tho W still can’t say nuclear…but, that’s another discussion.
Anyway, anyone have a theory on the fierce determination to prove; you weren’t really in a ghetto? or the ghetto was bigger and more diverse than you thought so it wasn’t really a ghetto? or all the stage is a ghetto?
It’s overwhelming, even from a distance, to watch the intensity of the response that is being generated by Alison’s book…it’s mindblowing, not that she doesn’t deserve it…but,the whole phenomenon…the moment or the something or other, that Alison hit, unintentionally and unexpectedly that created this bang…
and that mythological mainstream, that fictious new york times, that hypothetical entertainment weekly and the mystical npr…have taken notice…
but, hey, what’s the difference, it’s all the same thing right? featured in lesbian connection? now reviewed in the new york times? same/same…right?
So Alison…
just get over it you silly goose,
nothing is happening,
nothing is different…
enjoy what you always have enjoyed.
really now, that I really mean…
revel in it, delight in it, be a media whore…
go on, Auntie says it’s okay…
you are you
and you don’t even have the capacity to be anybody else…that comes across so clearly…you won’t get jaded…or co-opted…it’s all good…you just go….
we’re proud of you and happy for you.
you go!
Well, funny how fricking Planet Out, at the epicenter of the Ghetto Mainstream puddle, somehow failed to get this acclaim notice about Alison as well, since those folks definitely should have been cc’d upon if not writing that memo. For those of you who missed it, they dropped DTWOF not so long ago, quite unceremoniously might we add! Easy to see how over the years before Fun Home finally got into the (completely overdeterminedly deservedly) High Hype Spin Cycle ~ even missing the first wave of Lesbian Chic, when we had the rush of suddenly finding our glam side cast as the New Jack Russells ~ one well-loved and eking-it-out cartoonist could feel herself relegated to some kind of marginal marketing purgatory. Independent publishers and bookstores going out of business, NPR itself becoming pretty milquetoast [sp?] especially before the bequest of Mrs. Kroc, it’s all enough to make the Mo point of view completely plausible… Having said all that, I of course echo all the praise garlanded above. Just saying it’s understandable that this characterization in Liane’s intro could have been simultaneously cause for justifiable satisfaction and cognitive dissonance.
Point of interest — I introduced my entire family therapy class to DTWOF. As a project, each student needed to create a situation and show what a brilliant therapist we were by helping their couple/family resolve the issues. One of the profs made the comment “Remember not all families are heterosexual!” and I knew what I had to do. I blatantly lifted the Toni/Clarice pre-baby storyline and submitted that as my scenario, giving you complete credit as my source. And just to make this even more diverse, this took place at Gallaudet University so the whole thing was done in ASL. At the end of the class I had many students ask me for more info about your books & characters. We got an A for the project so thank you very, very much.
Does Jim-Bob HetBoy know of your work? Probably not and if he did it would probably be like that old guy Lois shamed in Madwimmin for drooling over On Our Backs. But you are known and very appreciated for your talent in a variety of communities. I don’t think Liane was completely off base.
Aunt Soozie,
1. Your local Borders needs its consciousness raised … and quickly! Mine — which is in a small northeastern state — has “Fun Home” front and center plus a good selection of most of the DTWOF collections.
I bought my copy of “Fun Home” at one of the local independent bookstores, where it’s been a “Staff Pick” for several weeks — yes!
My first DTWOF collection, bought in the early ’90s, came from what was the state’s sole women’s bookstore — the same place where I’d purchase a DTWOF calendar each year for my best friend. Sad to say, the store is now closed.
2. You’re right — the acclaim that Alison is receiving for “Fun Home” is way different in scale from the kudos she’s received from us loyalists over the years. Positive reviews from Harvey Pekar and Nicole Hollander aren’t even in the same hype universe as the NYT and Peep-hole magazine, for sure.
I tend to forget that just because Alison and DTWOF are “famous” in my weird little circle — the gay political organizers and lesbian community organizers and straight moms and liberal sisters — doesn’t mean that she’s FAMOUS in the overwhelming media spin cycle sense of the term.
Yes, yes, yes.
I did tell them, Borders, that I’d like them to pass onto the manager that Alison Bechdel’s new book belongs in the front of the store with the other new hardcovers and the funky looking chick at the counter said,”we have to have at least one back there on the gay and lesbian shelf so we’ll have to wait until we get more stock in.” They used to have a big lgbt, including dtwof, but over the years that disappeared. the clerk said because the lgbt literature is integrated into the other departments…I couldn’t find any though…but, I’ll go back again and do more research. I think that’s just bull.
I never thought of myself as the New Jack Russell but I really like it…so much better than trying to imagine myself losing 100 pounds and growing a foot taller so I could appear on the L-word…yeah, Jack Russell works for me.
In my local independent bookseller (in Denver), it was supposed to be shelved in Graphic Novels. It wasn’t there. The clerk showed me the note on their computer to maybe shelve it there AND in the Gay ‘n’ Lesbian section. She said it may have drifted over there. It wasn’t there. The computer thought they had a copy, so I said, I hope it didn’t get stolen. She looked at me knowingly, “That happens a lot with graphic novels.”
That sucks. Maybe that is happening in some of the cases above.
I got it about 10 days ago, did not read it in two hours as some mentioned doing. Maybe they were critics. I wanted to savor it.
As to “recognition outside the Community” – i don’t know if i count as “recognition”, though i’m certainly not female or gay, but may i present links to my two posted reviews of DTWOF material; i’ve been soer ot a low-key evangelits for DTWOF since … well, since sometime before ’90…
My review of the “Split Level…” collection, at http://electronictiger.com/reviews/sdykes.htm
My review of “Post Dyks to Watch Out For”, at http://electronictiger.com/reviews/post_dyke.htm