Gay Narratives in Graphic Form

[marmar]

from the American Prospect:



Gay Narratives in Graphic Form

In Alison Bechdel's comic strip "Dykes to Watch Out For" -- collected in a recently published anthology -- the personal is political, the political gets personal, and history "bends toward justice."

Emily Douglas | January 23, 2009 | web only



The long-running comic strip "Dykes to Watch Out For," now collected in the hardcover volume The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, (Houghton Mifflin, $25), inhabits a political world beguilingly, and disturbingly, like our own. Cartoonist Alison Bechdel's characters may be fictional, but two decades of recognizable American history are threaded through the panels, providing a sardonic backdrop to, and engine for, a fully-realized constellation of friendships, courtships, and never-ending breakups among a collection of lesbians and their friends.
Bechdel started drawing cartoons of lesbians in 1982; her first recurring characters, repressed, earnest Mo and her best friend, irreverent thrill-seeker Lois, appeared in 1987. Mo and Lois were soon joined by law student Clarice (Mo's first lover), Lois's housemates Ginger and Sparrow, Clarice's partner Toni, and an ever-expanding circle of friends, flings and exes. Put on "indefinite hiatus" by its creator this past May, the strip ran for two decades in gay and alternative papers around the country. The Essential includes about three-quarters of the DTWOF collection, giving the characters plenty of time to turn all things seemingly innocuous –--lawn signs, Prozac, commitment ceremonies -- into the politically problematic. They analyze; they perseverate; for almost 400 pages, they can't stop talking.

Bechdel's characters debate politics of all kinds, but they have the most to say to each other about the tactics and strategies of the gay rights movement. As they watch the gay movement gain prominence, the strip's characters wrestle with ironies inherent in a world of Log Cabin Republicans and gay National Review editors, of a movement turning into a niche market. Mo observes of gay neocons: "A bunch of white gay men trying to convince the homophobes to like them because they're just normal, sexist, racist, God-fearing, profit-driven boys next door!"

City Council member Ellen (of course, she's Mo's ex's new girlfriend) begs to differ: "I dunno, Mo. Street activists and dykes on bikes are great, but it takes all kinds! If some starched, straight-acting gay men and lesbians want to suck up to the Republican Party, it can only help!" It's enough to whip Mo into a frenzy: "They probably eat veal! They probably don't recycle! They probably have wet dreams about skinny-dipping at the Bohemian Grove with George Will!" The characters may be talking shop, but there's always more at stake than just ideas – their very identities are fashioned, in part, from their arguing. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=gay_narratives_in_graphic_form