Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: The questions asked if movies have.
Speaker 3: Women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 3: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and
Speaker 3: best start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Bechdel Cast. It's not April Fools. Maybe
Speaker 2: you looked at the title of this episode and thought, no, there's.
Speaker 4: No way that's real. But well, guess what.
Speaker 2: Look at the month. It's not April, it's real.
Speaker 4: It's May. And when we were joking on the April
Speaker 4: Fool's episode on Snakes on a Plane where we were like,
Speaker 4: it's been all leading up to this, that actually applies
Speaker 4: to today's episode.
Speaker 2: It's kind of true. I mean, I cannot believe that
Speaker 2: this happened. We recorded this interview yesterday and I can't
Speaker 2: believe it. If this is your first episode of the
Speaker 2: Bechdel Cast and you're coming here because of our guest,
Speaker 2: my name's Jamie.
Speaker 4: Loft It, my name is Caitlin Durante.
Speaker 2: And this is our podcast where we talk about in
Speaker 2: a normal episode. This is a very special episode. It
Speaker 2: is just an interview, and not just an interview. It
Speaker 2: is the interview, but we're not talking about a movie.
Speaker 2: We're talking about living, laughing, loving with you know, she
Speaker 2: who shall be named in just a moment. Every week
Speaker 2: for almost nine years now, we have talked about your
Speaker 2: favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens, using the and
Speaker 2: here's where it gets interesting Bechdel test as a jumping off,
Speaker 2: like for a discussion. And normally we would tell you
Speaker 2: and the Bechdel test is this thing, and we tell
Speaker 2: and someone invented it, and she's our guest today we've
Speaker 2: been using her name. I truly have been I've like,
Speaker 2: not quite lostly, but I've for years wondered, is she
Speaker 2: mad at us? My favorite looping thought to have this
Speaker 2: person I've never met who doesn't know I exist, are
Speaker 2: they at him? And we can answer definitively, it does.
Speaker 2: It doesn't seem it doesn't seem like it. It doesn't
Speaker 2: seem like we can't be sure. Maybe she was just
Speaker 2: being nice, but it doesn't seem like it. We're so
Speaker 2: thrilled to have Alison Bechdel on the show today. We
Speaker 2: are talking about a couple of things. We're talking obviously
Speaker 2: about the Bechdel Test, but we are also talking about
Speaker 2: her new book Spent, which we've both gotten a chance
Speaker 2: to read. It will be out right around the time
Speaker 2: you're hearing this episode, and it's terrific. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: guess what I wanted to say before we start is that,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're listening to this, I'm assuming you're
Speaker 2: familiar with the Bechdel Test, but if you're not familiar
Speaker 2: with the work of Alison Bechdel, that really is where
Speaker 2: the good shit is. And the more that we like
Speaker 2: revisit her work because, as we've discussed, the Bechdel Test
Speaker 2: was a one off joke she made in the eighties
Speaker 2: that has become a serious media metric. But so much
Speaker 2: of what we actually talk about on this show, intersectional
Speaker 2: feminist issues and just trying to survive in a capitalist hellscape.
Speaker 2: That is literally what she's been writing about for forty
Speaker 2: years in a very funny, thoughtful way. And so you know,
Speaker 2: we'll have all the links in the description to her work,
Speaker 2: but you know, let this be a reminder if you
Speaker 2: haven't picked up in Alison Bechdel book, You simply must,
Speaker 2: You simply must.
Speaker 4: You simply must. And also she is touring with her
Speaker 4: I think the tour has already kicked off by the
Speaker 4: time you are hearing this episode, but she's on a
Speaker 4: book tour in possibly a city near you, and so
Speaker 4: check out her website her Instagram for tour dates and
Speaker 4: be sure to go out and support Are now best
Speaker 4: friend Alison Bechtel URBFF and I think, without much further ado,
Speaker 4: here's our interview with our best friend, Alison Bechdel Enjoycast.
Speaker 4: I'm going to say the very cliche thing that our
Speaker 4: guest today needs no introduction, but it's true, and we're
Speaker 4: going to introduce her anyway. She is an author and cartoonist.
Speaker 4: Her works include Dikes to Watch Out For, Are You
Speaker 4: My Mother? Fun Home, and her new comic novel Spent,
Speaker 4: which everyone should buy right now. And our podcast is
Speaker 4: named after her. It's Alison Bechdel, Hello and well welcome.
Speaker 1: Hi Caitlin, Hi Jamie. I'm very happy to be here.
Speaker 4: Oh We're so happy to have you. It's a dream
Speaker 4: come true.
Speaker 1: Thank you for naming your podcast after the Bechdel Test.
Speaker 1: That's crazy.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: Thank you for we were talking about this off Mike. Thank
Speaker 2: you for not being mad at us about it. This
Speaker 2: is like, this is so surreal. We're so excited to
Speaker 2: have you.
Speaker 1: I was just listening to some episodes. I I listened
Speaker 1: to the Groundhog Day episode because that's one of my
Speaker 1: favorite movies. Though of course it doesn't pass.
Speaker 4: The test, and that's one of our very old episodes,
Speaker 4: which we are I'm sure humiliated by in the year
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: But well, Caitlin, I learned that you are also a
Speaker 1: Pennsylvanian like me.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, I'm originally from rural western Pennsylvania and now
Speaker 4: my family lives around the State College area.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you were just in State College? I was, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you went to penn State.
Speaker 4: I did. I been doing a little research for my
Speaker 4: first degree, which I would never mention, but but yeah,
Speaker 4: so we have Pennsylvania roots.
Speaker 1: Did you have fun in State College on this recent visit.
Speaker 4: I did. I did a comedy show there at a
Speaker 4: theater called the Blue Brick Theater. Everyone checked that out
Speaker 4: if you're ever in the State College area. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I did a stand up show and it was a
Speaker 4: lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah. But anyway, again, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 4: We want to start by just chatting a bit about
Speaker 4: your new book, Book Spent, So just to start us off,
Speaker 4: tell us a little bit about it, give us an overview,
Speaker 4: and we'll go from there.
Speaker 1: Spent is a subtitle is a comic novel, because of
Speaker 1: course it's told in comics, and it's also hopefully funny.
Speaker 4: It can confirm.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of funny mashup of my memoirs that
Speaker 1: I've written about me and my life and my comic
Speaker 1: strip Likes to Watch out for from back in the
Speaker 1: olden days in the eighties and nineties and early aughts,
Speaker 1: where I wrote about a whole little community of friends.
Speaker 1: In this new book, this new book, Spent, it's funny.
Speaker 1: It was. My plan was that it was just going
Speaker 1: to be another memoir. It was going to be like
Speaker 1: fun Home or Are You My Mother? This book where
Speaker 1: I looked at my own life, in this case, looked
Speaker 1: at my own life, my financial life, and my relationship
Speaker 1: to money and privilege and living in capitalism and everything.
Speaker 1: But when I sat down to start working on that,
Speaker 1: I just felt like I wanted to go to sleep.
Speaker 1: It was just like, oh my God, I can't do that.
Speaker 1: And then I got this almost immediately. I had this
Speaker 1: great idea, Well, what if I'm writing about a cartoonist
Speaker 1: named Alison Bechtel who's trying to write a memoir about
Speaker 1: money and just constantly getting distracted by other things. And
Speaker 1: so that's what I ended up doing, and it was
Speaker 1: much more fun. And one of the directions that it
Speaker 1: went off in was my friends in this new book,
Speaker 1: my friends who lived down the hill for me in
Speaker 1: Vermont are actually some of the old Dikes to watch
Speaker 1: out for characters Oh cool, Lois and Ginger and Sparrow
Speaker 1: who used to live together in this group house one
Speaker 1: hundred years ago and they're still living there and they're
Speaker 1: still now, but now they're in their sixties. And it
Speaker 1: was really fun to rediscover those people and to start
Speaker 1: writing about them again. And I just felt like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I missed you guys. So it's about It's
Speaker 1: kind of about me and my real life with my
Speaker 1: partner Holly, even though it's also filled with all kinds
Speaker 1: of purely fictional scenarios like in the book, Holly and
Speaker 1: I live on a pygmy goat sanctuary, which in real
Speaker 1: life we do not do. But I just let myself
Speaker 1: do whatever I wanted and it was so fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I kept as I was reading it, I
Speaker 2: was like, Oh, this is like Alison Buchdel Avengers Endgame.
Speaker 2: It's all of your world's like colliding in this super
Speaker 2: cool way.
Speaker 1: I don't know that reference, but yes, that's exactly what
Speaker 1: I'm going for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because how long had it been since you had
Speaker 2: worked with the Dykes to watch up for characters?
Speaker 1: A really long time. I wrote my last Dyke's episode
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, so I can't do that
Speaker 1: math anymore. A long time.
Speaker 4: Ago, almost twenty years, seventeen years something.
Speaker 2: It was so cool. Yeah, we're both big fans of
Speaker 2: the original comics, so it was really cool kind of
Speaker 2: catching up with the character.
Speaker 4: It was really nice. Definitely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're in the process of writing this book. How
Speaker 2: long did it take to write? And Yeah, A lot
Speaker 2: of what you're talking about in the book has to
Speaker 2: do with I mean, it takes place during the pandemic era,
Speaker 2: I think mostly in twenty twenty two. How much were
Speaker 2: you pulling from your feelings and anxieties of that time?
Speaker 1: A lot? I mean that was the saving grace of it, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, everything is just so fucking crazy. Yeah, life
Speaker 1: is insane, and it was an outlet for that, and
Speaker 1: you know, like a constructive outlet to take all my
Speaker 1: anxieties and fears and put them into these characters and
Speaker 1: you know, keep them somewhat at arm's length, but also
Speaker 1: just to process it all. So I was living through
Speaker 1: the news. This is something I missed from the old
Speaker 1: days with the comic strip, was it was a way
Speaker 1: to respond and figure out what was happening in the
Speaker 1: world as it unspooled, because the comic strip was not
Speaker 1: just about the carearacter's lives but about the news. So
Speaker 1: this was a way to kind of get back to
Speaker 1: that modality to you know, keeping track of what like this,
Speaker 1: the story was happening in real time. You know, certain
Speaker 1: things happen in the news, the characters would respond to them,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it happens like between twenty twenty two and
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. I finished it just before the election,
Speaker 1: so I had to I didn't know what was going
Speaker 1: to happen, so I had to sort of leave things
Speaker 1: somewhat open. Oh God, I can't even think about it.
Speaker 1: Are we all just having some kind of collective bad dream?
Speaker 1: Could that be?
Speaker 4: I hope?
Speaker 2: So that being the best case scenario is scary, I mean,
Speaker 2: but there's so much of the anxiety is that you're
Speaker 2: having that we talk about on the show all the
Speaker 2: time now of like trying to make art and connect
Speaker 2: with people during a time where it feels like you
Speaker 2: have to sort of dissociate in order to even try
Speaker 2: to do that, and it's impossible to do without ending
Speaker 2: on I mean, like we work for iHeartRadio. That's probably
Speaker 2: not good to all of these like you know, constant compromises.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Alison is definitely struggling with those kind of choices in
Speaker 1: the book and those decisions, Like it starts with her
Speaker 1: getting a very high offer to have her book published
Speaker 1: by megalipub, this big evil empire publishing company that you know,
Speaker 1: she accepts their offer, but then she's tortured by it.
Speaker 1: Just the challenge of creating, of doing anything constructive and
Speaker 1: creative in this atmosphere. That's also kind of what the
Speaker 1: book is about. And Alison in the book is just
Speaker 1: like can't concentrate on anything. She's so upset about the news.
Speaker 1: She's flitting from one project to another, which is very
Speaker 1: much like my actual creative process.
Speaker 4: Same. Yeah, to the point where I never get anything done.
Speaker 4: But I also love an aspect of the book is
Speaker 4: commentary on the state of Hollywood, basically because they're not
Speaker 4: to you know, I'm going to try to avoid spoilers,
Speaker 4: but there's a part where the Alison character goes to
Speaker 4: La and pitches a show and also visits the set
Speaker 4: of a different show. And the way that the creator
Speaker 4: of this show has adapted your work or your character's work,
Speaker 4: and just the hollywoodification of it all. It's all. It's very,
Speaker 4: very funny.
Speaker 2: And the detail, one of my favorite details or jokes
Speaker 2: in the book is Alison googling how expensive someone's stove is,
Speaker 2: because I've definitely done that where I was like, I
Speaker 2: don't like that person. Let me find out how much
Speaker 2: there's stove costs. And the answer you never like to
Speaker 2: hear it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's Allison is having a zoom session with the
Speaker 1: showrunner of the television show that's based on a memoir
Speaker 1: that Allison wrote in her youth. It's kind of it's
Speaker 1: a way to play with my book fun Home that
Speaker 1: got turned into a Broadway musical, and in this book,
Speaker 1: Allison's has written a memoir about her father, the taxidermist,
Speaker 1: death and Taxidermy. It gets turned into a Prestige TV
Speaker 1: series and this woman.
Speaker 2: Sadilla cast in the Fake Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: It's starring Benedette Cumberbatch and Sarah Paulson and Aubrey Plaza
Speaker 1: as Alison. It's funny. I was talking to someone the
Speaker 1: other day doing an interview and they were like, I
Speaker 1: googled that show, but I couldn't find anything.
Speaker 4: Thought it was real. I'm tue it would be. I mean,
Speaker 4: I know that the Alison character is a little resentful
Speaker 4: of different creative embellishments that are made, but might have
Speaker 4: been a fun show.
Speaker 1: It does sound fun. Yeah, Sadilla is just kicking all
Speaker 1: kinds of liberties with Alison's manuscript, and she has this
Speaker 1: very fancy wolf stove with red knobs that Alison is
Speaker 1: mesmerized by when they have their Zoom meetings.
Speaker 2: That was another I mean, that was another thing that
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's just like we've been again, we've
Speaker 2: been fans of your work for so long, and seeing
Speaker 2: all of these themes and seeing you sort of interface
Speaker 2: with work you've done in the past in this book,
Speaker 2: especially with the adaptation, I'm so curious, Like, yeah, reflecting
Speaker 2: on I mean, I guess we kind of want to
Speaker 2: talk about this with the Bechdel Test as well, you know,
Speaker 2: creating this tremendously successful work and fun home and then
Speaker 2: having it adapted, and then having this version of yourself
Speaker 2: in the world that is kind of outside of your control. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean in your own life. How do you manage that?
Speaker 1: It's weird and crazy? And I managed it in this
Speaker 1: case by like writing about it and playing with it
Speaker 1: in this book form. It was really fun to get
Speaker 1: to just sort of free associate about I don't know,
Speaker 1: I feel very lucky that Phone Home turned out as well,
Speaker 1: that the musical that was made from Phone Home was
Speaker 1: so good, but it could have gone the other way,
Speaker 1: and so this was kind of a way of exploring
Speaker 1: that possibility.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, speaking of the Bechdel test,
Speaker 4: I ever heard of it? We we always say in
Speaker 4: the show, like at the beginning of every episode, like
Speaker 4: we use this as a jumping off point, and you know,
Speaker 4: it's it's to initiate larger conversations. But we're just we're
Speaker 4: you know, we're curious about a lot of different things.
Speaker 4: As far as I guess, like, when did you first
Speaker 4: realize that the Bechdel test that people were using and
Speaker 4: applying to media as a metric was becoming like a thing.
Speaker 1: It was sometime in the early two thousands. I should
Speaker 1: probably try and like, well, I have tried to write
Speaker 1: about it somewhere, like on my blogger or something, my blog.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I just can't keep up.
Speaker 2: Like substocks are basically blogs, They just go by a
Speaker 2: vigilian substacks.
Speaker 1: I mean, how many substacks do you guys subscribe to?
Speaker 3: You?
Speaker 1: How are you supposed to keep up with all these people?
Speaker 1: Isn't that what newspapers were used to be for?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I feel that I have most of
Speaker 2: my inboxes on red substacks.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know what to do with them anyhow. Wait,
Speaker 1: we're digressing. What were we? Oh? Oh the Bechdel Test.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, it was like in the early two thousands.
Speaker 1: I was like, what, that's crazy. Like I had written
Speaker 1: this comic strip, the comic strip from which it got
Speaker 1: adapted in nineteen eighty five, like a thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: and I didn't really think much about it after that,
Speaker 1: you know, I wrote this cartoon. It was the kind
Speaker 1: of humor me and my lesbian feminist pals would bandy
Speaker 1: about in those days, something that we never thought anyone
Speaker 1: outside of that little sub culture would get and so
Speaker 1: it was very surprising and gratifying to me to see
Speaker 1: it entering this larger realm. I think it was feminist
Speaker 1: film students who somehow stumbled on it and felt like
Speaker 1: it expressed a useful concept and just started circulating it.
Speaker 1: But at first I was a little like, I didn't
Speaker 1: mean for it to be real. Way, this is my name?
Speaker 1: What are you doing? Right? I mean I never objected
Speaker 1: because it was always fine, but it was weird.
Speaker 4: I can only imagine.
Speaker 1: And some people, you know, mostly people think I made
Speaker 1: this declaration, which I never did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, just how I kind
Speaker 2: of forget how. Yeah, there's two full decades between the
Speaker 2: strip and then it becoming this like very commonly cited
Speaker 2: media test. That's really bizarre.
Speaker 1: Well, I learned about something called Stigler's law of eponymy
Speaker 1: oooh okay, same more, anything that has gotten named after
Speaker 1: a person that's eponymous is never named after the actual
Speaker 1: person who invented it, but someone sort of obliquely related
Speaker 1: to it, like Murphy's Law was not really invented by Murphy,
Speaker 1: and in fact, Stiegler's law of economy was not invented
Speaker 1: by Stiegler but someone.
Speaker 4: Adjacent.
Speaker 2: Well, speaking of the name of the test every so often,
Speaker 2: really it is technically called the Bechdel Wallace test. We
Speaker 2: try every so often to remind people of the original
Speaker 2: context of the town.
Speaker 1: That's very good of you.
Speaker 2: We try our best, thank you, But we'd be curious
Speaker 2: just to share with our listeners why it's called the
Speaker 2: Bechdel Wallace test. And a little more about Liz Wallace.
Speaker 1: I feel quite sheepish about this because I honestly have
Speaker 1: not been in touch with Liz Wallace since nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: She was someone in my karate class.
Speaker 2: What that's so cool?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did karate and she was talking about this
Speaker 1: one day as we were all changing our clothes, and
Speaker 1: I just worked it into my comic stare. I mean
Speaker 1: at the time I told her I was doing it,
Speaker 1: and she knew that. But in this later iteration, now
Speaker 1: that it's become a thing, I've I have had no
Speaker 1: contact with her. I don't even know how to find her.
Speaker 1: And how can you find someone with a name like that,
Speaker 1: It's like very common.
Speaker 2: Maybe she's still haunting the karate studio to this day.
Speaker 4: We don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe she is.
Speaker 4: That's so cool. But like you said, Allison, I think
Speaker 4: that people think that you set out to create this
Speaker 4: test that would be used with like those intentions.
Speaker 2: In like a very academic way, which.
Speaker 4: People have done since then because they were inspired by
Speaker 4: your test.
Speaker 1: If I had done that, it wouldn't have caught on.
Speaker 1: That's the beauty of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, it just has to happen organically. Yes,
Speaker 4: But as Jamie was alluding to the origins of the
Speaker 4: test that appear in Dykes to Watch Out For, the
Speaker 4: implication in the scene is characters discussing basically having to
Speaker 4: ship two women together in movies that they watch, because
Speaker 4: representation of lesbians in mainstream movies was like virtually non
Speaker 4: existent back then. But wait a.
Speaker 1: Second, what is this word ship? I am like an
Speaker 1: old person. I have no idea what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: That's what we're here for.
Speaker 4: Shivving is Jamie, take it away?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, now I'm gonna whiff it. Shipping is basically
Speaker 2: fan fiction in your head of like, oh, these I'm
Speaker 2: just imagining these two characters together because mainstream movies are
Speaker 2: so aggressively heteronormative that they would never put a queer
Speaker 2: couple on screen. So I'm trying to think of, like,
Speaker 2: what is a classic example, Caitlin of Oh, it happens
Speaker 2: in TV all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's it called shipping? Like what does that imply.
Speaker 2: That I wish I do? I'm not quite online enough
Speaker 2: to know.
Speaker 4: Me either, And I'm gonna take a guess and it
Speaker 4: might be so wrong, but I wonder if ship comes
Speaker 4: from like relationship and they're hoping that these two characters
Speaker 4: enter a relationship that I don't know. Actually I maybe
Speaker 4: made that up.
Speaker 2: Let's go with that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But all this to say, the test has queer
Speaker 4: roots that are often erased in this sort of like
Speaker 4: more mainstream application of the Bechdel Test. And curious about
Speaker 4: your thoughts on that, and also we're curious about how
Speaker 4: you feel representation of queer characters in media has evolved
Speaker 4: since the test first appears in Dick's To Watch Out
Speaker 4: For in the eighties, because there has been some progress
Speaker 4: since then where people don't have to ship, you know,
Speaker 4: two women together for example, because that does happen on
Speaker 4: screen now. So yeah, that's on all that.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, yeah, there's been a huge amount of progress.
Speaker 1: I'll put that in quotes, because yeah, there's tons of
Speaker 1: representation now, but not all of it is great, you
Speaker 1: know for sure. And also I just at a certain point,
Speaker 1: I just started feeling like, man, I missed the battle
Speaker 1: days when like we were in the shadows and no
Speaker 1: one knew what we were up to and like we
Speaker 1: were just free, you know, it didn't have to be
Speaker 1: representing or performing. I don't really want to go back
Speaker 1: to that those days, although I don't really have much
Speaker 1: say in it since that's whoever're all headed on a
Speaker 1: grease pole. But yeah, things improved somewhat.
Speaker 4: Do you have any favorite movies in particular?
Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing. I am not like a really
Speaker 1: a movie person, so I get really embarrassed when people
Speaker 1: ask me, like, what films passed the Bechdel Test? I
Speaker 1: don't fucking know.
Speaker 4: And really do the math yourself. Yeah, that's our job.
Speaker 4: That's literally our job.
Speaker 1: So yeah, no, I'm so glad you guys are on it.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I always laugh because literally Groundhog Day
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite movies of all time and
Speaker 1: it totally doesn't pass the test. And I was just
Speaker 1: listening to your episode on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean so many of our favorite movies. That's
Speaker 2: like sort of what, I don't know. It's interesting like
Speaker 2: having guests on the show over the years and having
Speaker 2: the discussion of like it's okay, like your favorite movie
Speaker 2: is your favorite movie. We're not here to yell at
Speaker 2: you about it.
Speaker 1: And also sometimes you just want to check out. I
Speaker 1: don't want to watch something totally relevant to my life
Speaker 1: when I'm trying to relax. That would just not be soothing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love escapist media.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we to continue the spiral of weirdness. We
Speaker 2: call that taking off our Bechdel goggles, when we just
Speaker 2: watch a movie and don't think about Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: It was actually you know, that strip came out of
Speaker 1: the weird cognitive dissonance that I started to experience as
Speaker 1: a young woman when I was getting woke, when I
Speaker 1: was suddenly realizing, oh my god, the world is like
Speaker 1: this huge power play and this half is oppressing this half.
Speaker 1: I realized that I couldn't just watch a movie and
Speaker 1: enjoy it, that everything was like really racist and oppressive
Speaker 1: and rape and you know, you couldn't just you couldn't
Speaker 1: check out and watch a movie. So I understand why
Speaker 1: you would want to take off your Bechdel goggles.
Speaker 4: I do it every time I go to the movies, and.
Speaker 2: You gotta watch Indiana Jones.
Speaker 4: Somehow that's there. It must, Yeah, And then I put
Speaker 4: them on when we record episodes of our podcast.
Speaker 2: So that another question we're curious about. Have you heard
Speaker 2: we've over the years learned more about sort of other
Speaker 2: media metrics inspired by the Bechdel Test. Have you encountered
Speaker 2: any of these ye over the years?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I don't know if if they have
Speaker 1: names and stuff, but I know there's ones like are
Speaker 1: there two people of color in the movie? Do they
Speaker 1: talk to each other about something besides racism or a
Speaker 1: white person? But my favorite one is this new climate
Speaker 1: one have you heard about that?
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 4: Tell us.
Speaker 1: It's called the climate reality check, and a movie passes
Speaker 1: if in a movie that's set in the present or
Speaker 1: remotely around the present, climate change has to be acknowledged
Speaker 1: and the main character has to be like cognizant of that,
Speaker 1: which I think is awesome for sure. Hacks Hacks is
Speaker 1: a great example of a show that passes that test
Speaker 1: with flying colors, because they're constantly definitely talking about that awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does feel like, there's like it has to
Speaker 2: be escapist media to happen now and not feature climate
Speaker 2: anxiety to some extent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's yeah, it's it's just you can't
Speaker 1: not mention it or it's just really bad.
Speaker 2: I mean, but you've been writing about it for literally decades.
Speaker 2: I mean I was going back and reading some old stuff.
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, this is she's been on this.
Speaker 1: Lesbians were on the cutting edge. We knew everything back
Speaker 1: in the day.
Speaker 2: Always well, you're talking about about sort of how dicks
Speaker 2: to watch out. There was a lot of things you
Speaker 2: were writing and as you were, you know, getting woke
Speaker 2: in your early twenties and throughout your twenties. Yeah, and now,
Speaker 2: I mean there is a huge fan base for you
Speaker 2: that are you know, queer people of the next generation
Speaker 2: and what is it? What is it like sort of
Speaker 2: I guess this is a big question. But having those
Speaker 2: that role kind of reversed and watching new generation of
Speaker 2: people awakened to these issues that you've been talking about
Speaker 2: since eighties.
Speaker 1: I love that young people are still reading my work.
Speaker 1: I think that's so cool and it doesn't always happen,
Speaker 1: but of course it's for a tragic reason. Which is
Speaker 1: that they're still dealing with the same shit my generation
Speaker 1: was dealing with. But I hear from a lot of
Speaker 1: young people that they find it heartening and helpful to
Speaker 1: see these people, you know, trying to do what they're
Speaker 1: trying to do. So I love that. I've recently learned
Speaker 1: something funny, which is that I had this whole bunch
Speaker 1: of unintended readers of my comic strip when I was
Speaker 1: doing it, which was the children of lesbians. I hear
Speaker 1: from so many young or not even so young adults
Speaker 1: these days, like people in their thirties who say, you know,
Speaker 1: and they're just totally straight, regular people who know my
Speaker 1: work intimately because they read it as small children stealing
Speaker 1: it from their mother's shelves.
Speaker 4: I love.
Speaker 1: So that's really cool too, that I had no idea
Speaker 1: those kids were doing that. You never know who's gonna
Speaker 1: read your stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you truly never do. I love the characters and
Speaker 4: spent Jr. And Badger who are I guess it would
Speaker 4: be gen Z. Yeah they're gen Z and they come
Speaker 4: to less track of all.
Speaker 2: Those gens yeah blurs.
Speaker 1: But I love these kids. God, I love JR. And Badger. Jr.
Speaker 1: Is the daughter or the child. They're non binary. Jr.
Speaker 1: Is the daughter of my characters Sparrow and Stuart, and
Speaker 1: back in the day they were just a little kid
Speaker 1: like I think there were five when I last had
Speaker 1: sight of them. So I had to imagine, how is
Speaker 1: j are going to grow up? And what are they
Speaker 1: doing now? And she's there at Oberlin, which is where
Speaker 1: I went to college. They're they're in a non binary
Speaker 1: asexual polycule with a bunch of people, and they are
Speaker 1: especially close with Badger this other friend, and the two
Speaker 1: of them drop out and come home and move into
Speaker 1: Alison's yurt. And it's just my fantasy of wanting to
Speaker 1: have children because I never had kids, and I'm always
Speaker 1: envious of my friends with children, not really not so
Speaker 1: envious that I'm they're going to wish I haven't done anything, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it would be like it. It'd be kind of
Speaker 1: cool to have some like grown up kids hanging around.
Speaker 1: So I got to play with that idea. And they
Speaker 1: come live in the yurt and do their podcast.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that way we are, yeah, podcasting from I
Speaker 2: guess what we're asking is can we move in?
Speaker 4: Can we move into your at your definitely real goat sanctuary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I definitely don't have a yurt, so you
Speaker 1: just got to like live in my office.
Speaker 2: Right, that won't be disruptive at all. I am curious
Speaker 2: about the character Sheila. I had a lot of fun
Speaker 2: sort of because I had just recently reread Fun Home
Speaker 2: and then as I as you know, you're sort of
Speaker 2: eased into the some Israel some is not of spent,
Speaker 2: I was like, wait, did I miss a sister? I
Speaker 2: did not miss a sister. I had to check Wikipedia
Speaker 2: and I felt at ease. But yeah, there's there's this
Speaker 2: conservative sister character. Where did that come from?
Speaker 1: Uh? Kind of an amalgamation of you know, I do
Speaker 1: have some trump bites in my some consent circles of
Speaker 1: my family, and it was a way to write about
Speaker 1: that without pinning it on anyone in particular, since it's
Speaker 1: about my imaginary sister. But that was very cathartic. You know,
Speaker 1: she's trying to get my book banned. She joins this group,
Speaker 1: like what's that group called? In real life, they're called
Speaker 1: Moms for Liberty, but in my strip, I call them
Speaker 1: Liberty Mothers. And she's very envious of Alison, and she's
Speaker 1: also writing a counter memoir, because when Alison wrote her
Speaker 1: memoir about growing up with their father, the taxidermist, she
Speaker 1: totally left her sister out of it, thinking that, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's all just exploring all these different aspects
Speaker 1: of the kind of work I've done. And yes, writing
Speaker 1: a memoir is a very one sided kind of thing
Speaker 1: to do. I thought when I was writing Phone Home
Speaker 1: that I was telling like the truth of my family,
Speaker 1: but I was just telling my version, And so Allison
Speaker 1: is having to grapple with that, like Sheila had a
Speaker 1: whole experience that Alice and knew nothing about when they
Speaker 1: were young.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's the beauty of this book and your
Speaker 4: work in general. There's there's there's so rich, there's such
Speaker 4: rich texts. They explore so many things. There's so many
Speaker 4: also just relatable and comfortingly familiar moments, Like there's a
Speaker 4: scene where the Alison character and her partner go to
Speaker 4: their friend's place and they like it's during the pandemic
Speaker 4: and they test they do those like by next yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: COVID tests before anyone can enter. And I was just like, exactly,
Speaker 4: I did that. Yeah, that was like the first time
Speaker 4: I'd seen each other's stoops, right, and I was like,
Speaker 4: I haven't seen that in all the you know, post
Speaker 4: pandemic media that's come out. I was like, I haven't
Speaker 4: actually really seen anyone do that or acknowledge the Well,
Speaker 4: it's just that simple, very familiar thing. Yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: About drawing stuff. You know about comics, you can and
Speaker 1: and must show things, show the details of things. And
Speaker 1: I just find that also interesting. It was, how do
Speaker 1: you do a COVID test? And I would, you know,
Speaker 1: got the things out and unwrap stuff and took pictures
Speaker 1: and like, it's important to document these things even though
Speaker 1: we all don't want to think about it.
Speaker 2: It's nice having it between covers. But but but it's
Speaker 2: it is really cool. I love your memoir work. But
Speaker 2: it is really it was like such a fun way
Speaker 2: to like return to your work by saying you comment
Speaker 2: on things basically as they're happening, like you used to
Speaker 2: do in a weekly strip.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I miss that. It's just fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's incredible. The thing that I really appreciate about
Speaker 2: Spent that I also loved about Digs to Watch out
Speaker 2: For is like Kaitlyn was just saying, the details of
Speaker 2: the world are so specific to when you're writing it,
Speaker 2: and the fact that you know a media trend that
Speaker 2: we talk about a lot that I think comes from
Speaker 2: a good place. But it's like, you know, this is
Speaker 2: the book that will solve late capitalism or there are
Speaker 2: these you know, broad solutions, and it's like, if everyone
Speaker 2: did everything right, then this wouldn't have happened to us.
Speaker 2: And what I love about your work is you don't
Speaker 2: shy away from any of the problems that are plaguing
Speaker 2: everybody to different degrees. But you also are like and
Speaker 2: it's very stressful to be a person, and you know
Speaker 2: you're not always going to be totally successful and you're
Speaker 2: not going to be a perfect anti capitalist every day
Speaker 2: because it's hard.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, one thing I feel very grateful to young people
Speaker 1: for teaching me is that it's not on us. My god.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, Mike generation grew up thinking, Okay, if
Speaker 1: I stop eating meat, my one tiny gesture is going
Speaker 1: to change the world. And yes, that's good and useful
Speaker 1: to do, but it got turned against us, you know,
Speaker 1: the fossil fuel industry, the meat industry, they would love
Speaker 1: for us all to be torn up with guilt and
Speaker 1: anxiety about our personal behavior and that's just ridiculous. They're
Speaker 1: the bad guys, not us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I god, I'm I could go on an
Speaker 2: infinity tangent, but I was just reading about how like
Speaker 2: mobile gas created the idea of carbon footprints to make
Speaker 2: people feel bad and adjust them to the planet's dying.
Speaker 2: I'm like, you're sick. Oh yeah, because there are, I mean,
Speaker 2: and you're you're the world of your books are populated
Speaker 2: with them, like people who want to do right by
Speaker 2: the people around them, but feeling so futile in those
Speaker 2: individual gestures.
Speaker 1: I just love those people. I love how earnest and
Speaker 1: good they are, you know, And I want to I
Speaker 1: want to. I feel like leftists, progressives in general get
Speaker 1: such a fucking bad rap, Like what what is everyone
Speaker 1: so exercised about? All we want to do is make
Speaker 1: the world a better place? What is the problem? And
Speaker 1: so I just wanted to try and really show them
Speaker 1: some love.
Speaker 4: You nailed it, thank you, and.
Speaker 2: Then sort of to start wrapping stuff up. I mean,
Speaker 2: you've in the last ten years your work has been
Speaker 2: adapted in all of these different ways. I know that
Speaker 2: there was a podcast, there's obviously the musical, and the
Speaker 2: book is to some extent about your character navigating TV.
Speaker 2: Are there other mediums that you're interested in working in?
Speaker 2: Are there like stories you've had on the back burner
Speaker 2: that you want to come back to. What are you
Speaker 2: excited about right now?
Speaker 1: I guess well, I'm perpetually trying to get an animated
Speaker 1: version of Dikes to watch out for happening. But this
Speaker 1: hasn't happened yet. But I'm really excited right now. I'm
Speaker 1: in the middle of making the audiobook Have Spent Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is such a funny project. Like it's all visual
Speaker 1: humor and jokes. How do you translate that to something
Speaker 1: where people can't see anything, it's just all sound. So
Speaker 1: that's been a really fun project, like thinking up sound
Speaker 1: effects to tell the story sound. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And I mean, speaking of those visual jokes, they're
Speaker 4: one of my favorites. Was they're gearing up for they're
Speaker 4: like anti colonial, anti Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was like, oh, yeah, we did that.
Speaker 4: We do that. And they're not sure how many toe
Speaker 4: Ferky's to get, and so they get one to Furky
Speaker 4: and that's on the like cashier conveyor belt, and then
Speaker 4: they get another one that's faux Turkey. So it's toe fergyho.
Speaker 4: I'm like, genius, perfect, amazing.
Speaker 1: Oh good, thank you for noticing.
Speaker 4: But there's so many of those similar jokes that populate
Speaker 4: the book, and it's awesome. Yeah, is there any anything
Speaker 4: else you want to talk about? Tell us share?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I always go blank when people ask
Speaker 1: me that question because I I don't know why, but
Speaker 1: I just do. It's like, at this point it's a
Speaker 1: Pavlovian response. My mind was completely blank. But feel free
Speaker 1: to ask me anything, Ask me anything, anything you've been
Speaker 1: wanting to know.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. I'm like, I feel like when we
Speaker 2: found out we were going to talk to you, we
Speaker 2: had a million questions and then we were going through
Speaker 2: them and they were like, this is stupid.
Speaker 1: No, what's the stupidest one? Ask me the stupidest one?
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's Caitlyn.
Speaker 4: What do you what do you think? I don't know
Speaker 4: if this is stupid necessarily, but what I am, let's
Speaker 4: say curious about is and we've already kind of touched
Speaker 4: on this, but maybe to sum it all up, like
Speaker 4: I really want to know about your feelings about like
Speaker 4: the legacy of the Bechdel Test, especially just considering that
Speaker 4: it wasn't originally conceived to be used the way it's
Speaker 4: used now, and how there are often, I would say,
Speaker 4: kind of misinterpretations of the test where people will say
Speaker 4: this movie passes the Bechdel Test for it's a feminist masterpiece,
Speaker 4: or sort of the opposite of that, of like, this
Speaker 4: movie doesn't pass, and that means it's misogynist trash, you
Speaker 4: know that kind of thing. So yeah, I mean, I'm
Speaker 4: just curious about your thoughts on its function in culture
Speaker 4: and its overall legacy.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I got over my ambivalence about it because
Speaker 1: I feel like it's a great thing to have be
Speaker 1: my legacy. It sums up in a way what my
Speaker 1: work is all about, which is whose stories count, whose
Speaker 1: subjectivity matters? And this I feel like our real fundamental
Speaker 1: issue as humans is our inability to see outside of
Speaker 1: our own little, diminished, puny self and to understand that
Speaker 1: other people have their own agency and motivations and drives,
Speaker 1: and we don't. Even even in our intimate relationships, we
Speaker 1: want to like neutralize that other person so that they're
Speaker 1: not in pinging on us. We have to learn to
Speaker 1: live with others, to see other people, to actually have
Speaker 1: mutual recognition with other people, and to me, that's kind
Speaker 1: of what the test is about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, And what I love about it is, Yeah,
Speaker 2: for those kinds of conversations that we've had over the
Speaker 2: years where it's like it's a jumping off point and
Speaker 2: your work is uniquely like sending people to your work.
Speaker 2: You're talking about all of that and have been and
Speaker 2: it's just Yeah, it's it's like such an honor to
Speaker 2: be able to talk to you well.
Speaker 1: Back at Yeah, and thank you so much for doing
Speaker 1: this whole project. I love that you're doing it.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, eight years strong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 2: It's longer than any relationship I've ever had. We're podcast
Speaker 2: common law.
Speaker 4: Married, love you Jamie.
Speaker 1: Let me where are you in the same city where.
Speaker 4: We're both based in La Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh cool.
Speaker 4: So if you ever come out to pitch a ta
Speaker 4: as your character does and spend look us.
Speaker 1: Up, that would be awesome.
Speaker 4: I will do that and we'll speaking of cities and
Speaker 4: going places. You are about to do a book tour, Yes,
Speaker 4: I am tell us about that.
Speaker 1: Am I coming to La? I gotta look at my thing?
Speaker 2: No, I checked, we checked if you're going to San Francisco.
Speaker 1: Yes, I am going to San Francisco and Santa Cruz
Speaker 1: and a bunch of other places. So check my check
Speaker 1: my website and you can find them all. My my blog, sorry,
Speaker 1: my blog.
Speaker 4: And we'll speaking of that. Where can people find your blog?
Speaker 4: What's oh?
Speaker 1: My blog? You guys. I'm like, so, I can't get
Speaker 1: into this social media groove. I have I stopped doing
Speaker 1: it now. I'm all rusty and I just hate it.
Speaker 1: I just hate Facebook, I hate Twitter. But I have
Speaker 1: to do it to get the word out about this book.
Speaker 1: If you go to Alisonbechdel dot com, that's easy enough,
Speaker 1: and then and hit the blog tab and then you'll
Speaker 1: be in the in the Bloggi sphere. I love it,
Speaker 1: and you'll see my latest posts.
Speaker 2: Yeah that was not to keep going back to the book,
Speaker 2: but I also loved the like for promoting a book
Speaker 2: or promoting whatever else. They're like, Okay, you actually need
Speaker 2: to post fifty tiktoks a day and become famous in
Speaker 2: a totally different way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my editor is constantly haranguing me about having to
Speaker 1: do this. And now in real life, my editors and
Speaker 1: the publicity people are saying Allison, have you posted that
Speaker 1: post we gave you. I don't know where to put
Speaker 1: it or what to do with it.
Speaker 2: It always finds the right people.
Speaker 4: The good news is that approximately five billion people listen
Speaker 4: to the Bechdel Cast. So let's go with that word.
Speaker 4: The word is getting out.
Speaker 1: This is all I need to do.
Speaker 4: Then, Yeah, yeah, pretty much? Yeah no, but truly, thank
Speaker 4: you so much for joining us. This has been such delightful.
Speaker 1: Caitlin and Jamie, thank you. It has indeed been a
Speaker 1: delight for me as well.
Speaker 2: Thank you for just like being you. You're so cool.
Speaker 4: Thanks there you have at everybody. Our interview with Alison Bechdel,
Speaker 4: isn't she great? She's so great and we were so
Speaker 4: delighted to be able to chat with her and again,
Speaker 4: grab her book Spent, grab her other books.
Speaker 2: Grab fun Home, Grab are You my Mother? Grabbed Dykes
Speaker 2: to Watch Out For? Go see the musical Fun Home.
Speaker 2: There's so many options. Also, Deux to Watch Out For
Speaker 2: was adapted into a podcast last year. You've got options, yes,
Speaker 2: but start with Spent. It's a really, really terrific book.
Speaker 4: It's awesome.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's I was afraid to keep making comparisons.
Speaker 2: To things, but it also felt kind of like Adaptation Me,
Speaker 2: which is a movie I really love.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah no, because it's it's very like meta and.
Speaker 2: It's about writer's block a lot, and like it's if
Speaker 2: you enjoy the movie Adaptation, and you should, you will
Speaker 2: really enjoy this book as well. Yes, yeah, so we'll
Speaker 2: link to everything that. All the relevant links will be
Speaker 2: in the description as well as the link to her
Speaker 2: book tour. And again, thanks so much to Alison Bechdel
Speaker 2: for her work and for being cool enough to come
Speaker 2: on this show. Yeah, we're obviously big fans.
Speaker 4: We were so grateful, and we'll post the links on
Speaker 4: our link tree as well. So go to link tree
Speaker 4: slash Bechdel Cast and then you can also follow us
Speaker 4: on Instagram and our Patreon aka Matreon and all the
Speaker 4: good stuff. But I'm just so grateful to have been
Speaker 4: able to talk to her.
Speaker 2: I know it's it was truly. I still I believe
Speaker 2: it happened. I know it was worth waiting nine years for.
Speaker 2: And thank you to our listeners for supporting the show
Speaker 2: so that it exists for this episode to have happened.
Speaker 2: We're very grateful to you, and yeah, we will see
Speaker 2: you next week, we will return to your normal programming,
Speaker 2: but savor this moment. It probably won't happen again.
Speaker 4: Uh lovey bye, bye bye. The Bechdel Cast is a
Speaker 4: production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis,
Speaker 4: produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mola Board. Our theme
Speaker 4: song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Vosskrosenski.
Speaker 4: Our logo in merch is designed by Jamie Loftis and
Speaker 4: a special thanks to Aristotle Assevedo. For more information about
Speaker 4: the podcast, please visit linktree slash Bechdel Cast