Fun Home is a memoir written by Alison Bechdel, Alison like her father grew up with complicated feelings. They both were were attracted to the same sex. Knowing this, they have a lot of the same problems and are almost polar opposites, because they were attracted to their own gender. This also made them very similar.
From this point in the graphic novel we explore much of the later portion of Alison's life. While is does continue to skip around a bit. Chapter 5-6 seem to focus on her diary entries where she reflects, but the end of Chapter 6, her entries stop.
Chapter 7, Alison talks about how for the first time when she is visiting her mother's friend Elly in New York with her dad and brothers, she notices gay people all around her for the first time. Later on in College Alison finally embraces her sexuality and joins the gay union club on campus. Finally, she learns about her father.
What do you think of Alison's relationship with her father? She tries to make a connection with him and he is just not willing to open up with her.
What do you think of Alison's reaction to the news? What do you think this symbolizes?
What do you think of her choice to use art in her work instead of doing a traditional memoir? What does it add and/or take away from the work?
Bruce's death strikes me as particularly grotesque. I discussed in the previous discussion how allusions to Icarus destabilize the relationship between father and daughter. One of effect of this destabilization is the emphasis on horizontal over vertical time. The relationship between father and daughter is not biological (I'm thinking of the scenes which allude to Joyce) but a relationship which deals with progress, with moments in transition.
ReplyDeleteSo in thinking about the reversal of poles, and the progress beget by death consider the Fun Home. This is a classic grotesque turnabout. A space of somber death is depicted as common, brought into the private realm, lowered from its dogmatic or unaccessible regions, death is made laughable. Alison laughter at Bruce's death fits into this lowering. Her father's narrative is made accessible. She enters and explores this narrative and compares it to her own and with allusions to other works create a new narrative, a grotesque thing in its own right, which opposes the official (or perhaps in this case, provincial) narrative.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI think her relationship with her father is very twisted. I almost feel like her observing gender at a young age is a direct reaction from her fathers lack of manliness. In the earlier chapters she clearly is questioning why her father is the way she is. And she almost wants to make up for it, in a way.
ReplyDeleteAlison doesn't seem terribly surprised once she put the pieces together. At first it was a bit shocking to hear, but she evaluated and realized her father was leaving breadcrumbs the entire way.
The art adds a nostalgic twist which is fitting because her story is basically an entire reflection from her adolescent years. At times I felt it would of been better with less visuals because the pages were super jammed and not easy to read.
I personally think her relationship with her father is very captivating, and very real. I think if we look at it in terms of societal acceptance, she was much more likely to be successful in her same sex relationships than her father in the sense that it was acceptable for her in ways it wasn't acceptable for her father at the time he began experiencing same-sex relationships. She was in college, where the resources were there, and she was able to join the gay union. Her father, being older, did not live in a society where things like that were readily available. He lived during a time when the American dream was still very much a realistic way to live your life, and where same-sex relationships were still somewhat shameful.
ReplyDeleteI think that it makes sense as to why the two react the way they do. Her father cannot accept his sexuality, whereas Alison can. I believe it to be societal.