- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
The test is named after the American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, in whose 1985 comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For the test first appeared. Bechdel credited the idea to her friend Liz Wallace and the writings of Virginia Woolf. Originally meant as “a little lesbian joke in an alternative feminist newspaper”, according to Bechdel, the test became more widely discussed in the 2000s, as a number of variants and tests inspired by it emerged.
See also: tvtropes
Funny how the two leads in Ghost World pass the original iteration of the test, yet are essentially little different than teenage dudes in terms of their personalities and discussions. Also funny how Scott McCloud, that famous teacher of comics technique, arguably fails the test with his semi-magnum opus The Sculptor.
@[email protected],
The bar (and maybe its next level up) really is super-low, and yet it’s failed so often.
Meanwhile, I really need to find a Bechdel work that I can dig in to. The last two attempts involved books about her dysfunctional family, but I found them both pretty morbidly dry. And not with that Morrissey / Daria type of lively humor lurking underneath…