Alison Bechdel: "Everything is Getting a Bit Sinister, but Laughter Remains Essential"

Vermont is quite a unique territory: bordering Canada, it produces half of the maple syrup in the entire United States, is famous for the autumn that colors its forests, has a low population in its cities, and the people are hardly religious. Also, if we ignore the district of Washington D.C., it is the state that voted most for Kamala Harris. Alison Bechdel (Pennsylvania, 1960) lives there, and in these lands, she plays with characters disheartened by the world's direction in her new comic, 'Consumed' (Reservoir Books).

Unlike in some of her more well-known comics, where one can speak directly of autobiography, in 'Consumed', Bechdel has decided to opt for autofiction and change some key details. If in real life her family owned a funeral home, as shown in her acclaimed 'Fun Home' (2006), in this comic her father was an animal taxidermist. The protagonist is named Alison, but she is not exactly her. "I have a very curious relationship with the character; for me, it has been very refreshing not to have to tell the exact truth of my life," Bechdel comments via video call. "After having written so many vulnerable and sincere things and having met strangers who know even the last of my intimacies, now I disguise myself a bit, erase my tracks." At first, the character Alison is obsessed with the news, powerless in the face of political change in her country, and unable to concentrate on her creative work. "She is very distracted and angry. She doesn't know what to think or do, and during the book, she understands, although the message is a bit simplistic, that she has to reconnect with the real world, with her people."

Many of the secondary characters are an exaggerated vision of the most progressive people imaginable, whom Bechdel knows well. Activists who see how their decades-long struggles are reversed in weeks, but they have to continue with their lives. "Since I started writing about them in the eighties, they have been very consistent people and have worked hard to try to make a fairer world. But now many of them are in a kind of shock. What is happening is very difficult to process. They are old, they are tired like me, but we have to keep going."

In the comic, Alison's sister has fully entered the opposite mental territory, the Trumpist one. "I see many families suffering from this division, also in mine we know there are topics we shouldn't enter because it won't end well," Bechdel comments. "What I wanted to show is that they still have a lot in common. They share a family history, their personalities are similar... Here, much harm has been done by each side demonizing the other and stopping seeing each other as people. Trying to meet in real life with people different from us is very important." The author is clear about who bears part of the blame: "If social media hadn't had this mechanism of exaggerating the opinions of very marginal people, none of this would be happening." Even so, she knows that humor is her thing: "Everything is getting a bit sinister around here, but laughter remains essential."

The direction her country is taking even makes her question one of the left's flags, that of taxes. Curiously, in a recent comic by Joe Sacco, the author also imagined how his money traveled a direct path to become bombs and kill children. "Many years ago, I decided I would always pay, among other things, not to be pursued by the authorities. But yes, you consider that it is a way in which you are supporting everything that is happening. If we all, in a great collective action, did some kind of tax strike, it would be fantastic. But I don't think something like that will happen."

Now she teaches comic classes at Yale, but Bechdel's career began in 1983, publishing her then-classic 'Dykes to Watch Out For' in small feminist magazines, talking about topics that were outside the public discourse. "I was simply trying to make visible the people who were like me, to be able to recognize ourselves, to be able to talk about my own life." In one of those strips, and with comedic intent, appeared what later became known as the Bechdel Test, which denounced the null space and importance given to female characters in fiction until very recently. Even so, she did not publish the most complete story about her adolescence until 2006. 'Fun Home', already a classic, talked about that atypical family business: having a funeral home at home.

Besides the vicissitudes of daily contact with the dead, it talked about her discovery of culture and her sexual identity. "Certainly, I have talked a lot about the book these 20 years, and that addresses a very remote past. In the 2000s, people were already open to hearing a queer family story. And it was also a moment of great openness for the comic as a medium, everyone was very excited about graphic novels. I have changed a lot, but I still think 'Fun Home' is a very precise document of that moment in my life."

After 'Are You My Mother?' (2012) or 'The Secret to Superhuman Strength' (2021), this 'Consumed', which has nods to Marx, Amazon, or Netflix, takes place in that idyllic Vermont. "I feel fortunate to live in a democratic and rural state. There are no very large cities, and that forces us to relate more. I know the local politicians, I see them on the street, I appreciate that." The relationship with Holly, her wife in fiction and reality, is one of the book's axes. Together they run a goat sanctuary farm. "20 or 30 years ago, I couldn't have written like this about my relationship with Holly. The LGBTQ rights movement has given us that space, to be who we are and live our lives. Although the timing is a bit ironic now, it has been a real pleasure to write about the real life of a lesbian couple, and simply show how routine and banal it is."