So she always had this idea in the back of her mind that she wanted herself and her queer friends to be seen and to be seen as human.īECHDEL: I was like, oh, if we can make ourselves visible to the world, which doesn't seem to recognize us or see us, then how can they not help but like us? How can they not want to, like, give us civil rights? That was the thinking, you know? We just have to make ourselves visible. Mystery disease known as the gay plague has become an epidemic unprecedented in the history of American medicine.ĪBDELFATAH: Alison was drawing her comic during the AIDS epidemic and saw how mainstream news and politicians treated AIDS like a punishment gay people had coming to them. In recent years that in order to bring about any change in women's rights, women must be convinced that in a male-oriented society, they deserve equality.īECHDEL: As a kid, it was just like this, you know, assault on women that I took kind of personally.ĪBDELFATAH: As Alison got older, it wasn't just misogyny that she witnessed.īECHDEL: One thing that's really hard to convey to young people today is how really nasty people were to gay people. And the thing I remember, very powerful force in my life was just seeing all the rampant misogyny that was going on in the culture.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: When do we want it?īECHDEL: I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania in the 1960s, so my childhood is very aligned with that decade. RAMTIN ARABLOUEI, BYLINE: The monster is a punch line, but for Alison, the fact that the women in her comic could only watch "Alien" captured a bigger truth about the American culture she'd grown up in. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Last movie I was able to see was "Alien." The two women in it talk to each other about the monster. One, it has to have at least two women in it. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) I only go to the movie if it satisfies three basic requirements. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Want to see a movie and get popcorn?īECHDEL: As they talk, they're trying to decide what movie to go see. Cartoonist Alison Bechdel is living in New York in a shoebox-size apartment, working on her comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For.ĪBDELFATAH: One day, she sits down and starts to draw.ĪLISON BECHDEL: Two dykey-looking (ph) women, a Black woman and a white woman walking down the street together. Here are Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei. The hosts of NPR's history podcast Throughline talked to the Bechdel creator about its value and its limits. One test has become a convenient shorthand for measuring representation in movies - the Bechdel Test. After this year's Oscars, some are still celebrating historic victories for inclusion, as well as critiquing what and who are still missing from the silver screen.
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