Fun Home: A Tragicomedy

Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel, is a memoir graphic novel that depicts her relationship with her father, and how despite her feelings that he was always someplace else mentally, and that they had very little in common, that in fact the two were very similar.

What we see in the second half of this graphic novel is more development and a better understanding of her stressed relationship with her father. The two bond over literature, and have this very emotional connection on that level, while still feeling that sense of detachment, as her father is repressing his sexuality.

We also see Alison's development, sexually and physically. She struggles with her identity, knowing that she has certain masculine qualities, and at a young age wishes she could identify as a boy, not understanding that sexuality and gender are two different things (at such an age, it would be rather confusing).

My question for you all is: when do you think Alison first discovers the difference between sexuality and gender, and when does she first have an inclination that perhaps her sexual attraction is to women? Hint: I would look to page 118; this is where I felt I saw it. Please discuss Alison's development and how you feel that affected her relationship with her father positively or negatively.

I would also like share, just for fun, the beginning/ending parallel of Icarus. I have attached the photo from the beginning, and now that we have finished the graphic novel, I challenge you to search the story of Icarus if you don't know it already, and try to relate that back to her relationship with her father considering the ending.

Alison Bechdel and Fun Home

 Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic was named one of Time magazine's 10 best books of the year in 2006. Prior to the publication of her graphic novel-cum-memoir, Bechdel was best known for her comic strip, "Dykes to Watch Out For," which was syndicated in a number of alternative publications throughout the country. In Fun Home, Bechdel persists in exploring some of the themes she first examined in her strips, particularly gender and sexual orientation, as well as the trials and tribulations of a smart and witty young woman in America. However, Bechdel's memoir is an even more personal and poignant account--both of growing up gay and simply growing up. Bechdel's book asks us to look at the future of contemporary American literature. Will the "great American novel" be something other than a traditional novel? Have we moved past the genre of the novel onto more hybrid literary forms, such as the graphic memoirs of Spiegelman and Bechdel?

See below for resources on Bechdel:

Comics Journal interview

All About Women Festival interview

Book with great chapter about Bechdel

Announcement of MacArthus Genuis grant award

Dykes to Watch Out For strip

Musical version of Fun Home

Cvetkovich article on the queer archive in Fun Home

Extra Credit Assignment

Extra Credit Project!

 Due on April 20, close to the end of the term, your extra credit optional assignment asks you to draw your own comic of approximately one to two pages, inspired by the work we've read this semester.  You might write something autobiographical, like Spiegelman's Maus or Bechdel's Fun Home, or entirely made-up, like Gene Yang's American Born Chinese.  You can use black and white or color images.  I only ask that you submit one copy to my mailbox at McMicken and upload one copy to the blog (we can make sure those entries are private if you request it), so we can discuss your work with the class.  I also ask that you include a 1 page write-up, explaining your work/ experience making the comic.

 I know some of you are better artists than others.  The assignment is more about seeing the ways in which the work you've read have influenced your use of panels, space, and narrative structure, rather than your artistry.  If you can only do stick figures, do stick figures.  If you want to use digital tools to make your images, that is okay, too (see example). The author of "Hyperbole and a Half"  (pictured above) uses Paintbrush.

There's a lot of information online about creating comics.

Look at:

rules for drawing comics

making a comic

this youtube video on making a comics page.

how to draw comics 

this WikiHow on making comics

how to make a comic book

online comics tool

Mar. 18 Discussion Post, Ho Che Anderson, King, 101-228

Anderson's visual style ranges across the abstract through realistic depictions and into photos. With the help of Chaney we've thought of how that juxtaposition corresponds to a complication of history. How does the shift to color effect your reading - whether you're reading with Chaney in mind or not?
   
Anderson's narrative advances certain ideas about how memory and history related. You might try making sense of quotes like these:
          "I think sometimes we orchestrate these things as though they were no more than elements in a           story...it's easy to forget that these events will have real meaning in people's lives..." (104).
          "Something you said offhandedly and forgot about is written down and becomes part of your               story. People who don't know you fomr opinions of you, become your chroniclers..." (202).
In what ways do such statements both facilitate and destabilize biography?

Dr. King's extramarital affairs and marital problems are developed and perhaps assuaged in the second half of King. Anderson depicts King in private settings (usually drawn more realistically) and in public settings (usually drawn more abstractly). The difference in depictions lead to a division between King's personal and public personas. What is the significance of such a division? How do personal and public spaces interact? How does Anderson transition between the two?

Michelle Cappel: King, Ho Che Anderson, page 1-100

One thing I found interesting about King was the overall art direction, which to me felt a lot like a film. For example Ho Che Anderson uses a lot of panels with no or very few words, like in page 52. These quite moments have the ability to convey emotion and mood, similarly to quite moments in film. the main difference being it is the readers job to imply a sense of time passing. 

The art style is more realistic, similar to that of Incognegro, but with much more reliance on shadow and implied line. One of the most surprising artistic choices is the use of color, which is sparse (more widely used in the second half of the comic).

What are your personal opinions on the art used in King and how does it differ from the art in Incognegro? Why do you think Anderson made the art choices he did (pops of color, heavy shadows, incorporation of photographs)? What kind of mood and tone does the art style set for the comic?

On another note King is a interpretive biography, meaning it is a mix of both fact and fiction to create a cohesive narrative. What is your opinion of writing fiction into history? In this class we have read Autobiographys that incorporate fiction (Maus, and Persepolis). Do you think there is a difference using fiction in an autobiography versus a biography? Why or why not?

Mar. 15 Discussion Post: Ho Che Anderson, King, 1-100

Hi everyone, 

You might try thinking about:

- Between the scenes in which King is introduced to us and he delivers a sermon there appears a single page bus scene, unrelated to King (14). Discuss how Anderson incorporates this page into the narrative (visually, be repetition of theme or image?) and to what effect?

- Discuss The Witnesses: these panels appear throughout the narrative to offer context and perspective (or dissent). What effect does this have on our reading of autobiography?

- Think about the visual style that dominates this section of King with particular attention paid to the inclusion of photographs. What does their inclusion do for the narrative? What effect does it have on you? How do we read or understand those images differently than the comic panels that often surround them?

- What are your thoughts on the depiction of Dr. King, visually and with regard to your expectations or preunderstanding?

Now, you might make a cup of tea and while it cools, read this article by Michael A. Chaney, Associate Professor of English at Dartmouth College. I’ve highlighted the particularly pressing bits. Chaney expands on the topics above in order to understand King as a postmodern text which juxtaposes images and comics in order to question a number of “binary formulations central to the maintenance of Western culture” (1). Photographs are particularly useful because they implicate the reader in a larger social order – photographs are objects that represent our world at work, they are snapshots of reality. When photographs are juxtaposed with more abstract symbols an uncoupling between photography, social order, and reality; the juxtaposition hints at the invented nature of history and the role of representation in creating facts.

Well, what do you make of Chaney’s reading? Any memorable scenes which support or complicate his analysis? Any problems relating to the “historical record” in this way?

Bibliography:
Chaney, Michael A. "Drawing on history in recent African American graphic novels." MELUS 32.3 (2007): 175+. Expanded Academic ASAP.

Edit: 3/27/16, I removed the link to Chaney's article so that it might resume its proper place behind copyright barriers. Chaney's article is available through UC's library search.

Formal Discussion Post for Second Half of Incognegro- by Ashley Marisa Ansari

I found the art and overall visual aesthetics to be absolutely fascinating in this book, more so than the rest of the books we have read thus far. I say this because of the detail faces, coloring, shading, and wide landscaped dartboards. In Understanding Comics, McCloud mentioned that the outside views from afar and angled are not common across all countries- I found it fascinating that the authors in this book included many of those types. What are your thoughts on the art and overall visual aesthetics of this book?

The story is extremely heavy in this book. From all the books we have read so far, how would you rate this on intensity? Do you think a graphic novel was a good platform to put this kind of story on? Why or why not? The images were even a little more violent and almost surreal than all the books we have read so far, as well (at least in my opinion). Do you agree or disagree?

Finally, even though this was technically a fiction-based book, something a little different than what we have done, it seemed just as real to me and believable as all the other stories we have read. What are your thoughts on this? Would this seem more real if it was in a regular chapter book and not a graphic novel?

Formal Post on Incognegro

Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece's Incognegro is different than many of the graphic narratives we've read this term. For one thing, it is a fiction--even if draws on Johnson's autobiography, as he suggests in his "Author's Note." For another, it is written by TWO people, one who composed the story and dialogue and the other who drew the images--a fact that radically changes our ideas about authorship and the control that the author has over his/ her product.

At the center of the book, however, are questions of race, visibility, violence, and passing. One of the myths at the center of American life is that race is visible--that one can tell whether someone is African American simply by looking at them. The other, related, myth--codified into law in the U.S.--was called the one drop rule, and it suggested that anyone with "one drop" of black blood would be deemed black and thus have to suffer the segregation and oppression (and prior to the end of slavery, enslavement) that black people were subject to in this country. Some African American people, whose skin color and features allowed them to be mistaken for white, chose to pass and leave the African American community for the white one. As Incognegro suggests, this decision would lead to being better treated or, as in the case of Zane Pinchback, having more mobility to go into dangerous situations and observe wrongs being done to black people throughout the U.S.

For more on passing, check out:

 this piece on NPR about the history of passing (and a new book on the topic),

this link to a conversation about passing in American film

this book on passing

this reading list on racial passing

Passing has also been a recurring theme in American literature, particularly in African American literature. In James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, a novel published in 1912, the unnamed narrator makes the decision to pass into whiteness after witnessing a lynching. In Nella Larsen's novella, Passing, her main character, Clare Kendry passes into whiteness while her friend Irene cannot.

In more recent American fiction, such as Danzy Senna's Caucasia and Philip Roth's The Human Stain, passing becomes a trope useful for exploring how ideas about race and individualism continue to collide in America.

How does Incognegro contribute to the literature of racial passing in America? Although it purports to depict American during its lynching epidemic in the 1930s, does it have something to say about race and racism today? What about gender and class?

Moreover, many of the images in Incognegro represent violence against African American men and women (primarily men). How do Johnson and Pleece choose to show/ not show violence? How are their choices similar to or different from the choices that Spiegelman or Satrapi make in showing violence. Lynching reached epidemic proportions in America after the civil war--from roughly the 1880s to the 1930s. It was so accepted in parts of the Southern United States that, as Incognegro suggests, people not only photographed lynchings, but they also circulated those images in the form of postcards.

For more on lynching in America, check out:

 this PBS overview

these statistics and images

(NOTE: THESE IMAGES ARE VERY VIOLENT AND DISTURBING.)

Reminder: Midterm Due March 4th! Instructions below.

General Directions: Write a 6-7 page paper addressing one of the following.  Below, please find a number of questions focusing on the works we’ve read during the first half of the term.  It’s important that your readings from Scott McCloud factor into your essay.  Use the terminology McCloud introduces in Understanding Comics to unpack the particularities of the text you choose to explore.  You may also want to use scanned or photocopied images to support your argument.  These images will be in addition to the 6 page minimum, rather than a part of the 6 pages. We can discuss how to “quote” from images. If you would like to use other theoretical sources on comics, I can help you find them.

Some general guidelines:

Handing in your paper late will lower your grade. As a rule, it is good to avoid using the first person in a formal paper.  Be certain to use spelling and grammar check on your computer; I am expecting that I will not have to focus unduly on this aspect of your writing when grading your work.  Back up your arguments with quotes from the reading and properly cite these quotes in MLA format.  If you have questions about citation practice, there are a number of online resources that can help you and I am happy to give you input, as well.  If you wish to work on a topic not listed below, just make sure to discuss it with me before beginning the work so we ensure it is narrow enough to fit within such a short paper.  I would be pleased to meet with you over the course of the next weeks to discuss your midterm paper if it would be helpful. Do not plagiarize! I am expecting that you won’t, but, if you do, it results in an automatic “F.”

Maus:

1. History, both global and personal, plays a large role in Maus. What is the relationship between personal history and global history in this text? How does Spiegelman balance narration of personal history and larger world historical events? How is the loss of his mother’s diary used as a thread to connect these two forms of history? How do the different genres evident in Spiegelman’s text – testimony, oral narrative, maps – work to do the same? Using specific examples, talk about how Spiegelman’s narrative choice to interweave losses both personal and large-scale works in Maus.

2. We mentioned in our discussion online that artists who wish to represent the Holocaust and the havoc it wreaked on its victims and survivors have a daunting task.  How does Spiegelman’s choice to represent the Holocaust in the form of a graphic novel allow him to address/ not address these questions of representation? Does the pictorial form of the graphic novel provide Spiegelman with a way of meditating on questions of representation? If so, how? Give specific examples and explain how they link to the larger issues surrounding representation of trauma.

3. Framing devices are very important to how we read and understand Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Most significant of the framing devices in the text is Art’s relationship with Vladek, which structures how we, as readers, interpret the novel, comprised as it is of testimony he collects from his aging Holocaust survivor father.  Keeping the importance of framing devices in Spiegelman’s work in mind, what do you make of the epigraphs that begin each volume of Maus? How do they work to introduce and structure our reading of the text? How do they create or disrupt continuity between the volumes? Use Spiegelman’s epigraphs to explore Maus and the role of framing in the text.

4. Art Spiegelman’s choice to portray the conflict between Nazi and Jew in World War II era Europe as a battle between cat and mouse drew much attention when Maus was published.  How does Spiegelman’s use of animals to represent national or ethnic types work in Maus?  Use close readings of a few scenes in the text to explain how Spiegelman’s animal characters allow him to comment on the historical circumstances of the war and the place of racial-thinking in it.

Persepolis:

1.      1. Both Maus and Persepolis are memoirs written in graphic narrative form.  However, Spiegelman and Satrapi’s narratives differ in key ways.  How does Satrapi’s choice to frame the story of the Islamic Revolution in Iran through the eyes of a child affect your reading of her story?  How does this choice contrast with Spiegelman’s more cynical, by-proxy narrative of the Holocaust?  How do Spiegelman and Satrapi use imagery differently/ similarly?

2.      2. Satrapi’s Persepolis proves unique in the comics genre because it is centered on the viewpoint of a female child and, later, young woman.  How does gender factor into your experience of Persepolis?  Does Satrapi suggest something about the ways in which revolutions affect women in particular? How does Satrapi’s focus on female experience challenge our idea about the conventions of comics?

3.      3. Persepolis is very much a narrative about place and the role it plays in the formation of identity.  The characters in Satrapi’s memoir struggle to stay in a chaotic homeland or deal with the complexities of exile.  How does Satrapi use the physical space of the comic to comment on the power of geography during a period of social tumult?

     American Born Chinese

    1. As we discussed on the blog, the history of caricature and comics are intertwined.  How does Yang use caricature and offensive stereotype in American Born Chinese?  What visual and narrative choices does he make that demonstrate to us as readers that he is trying to undermine stereotype? 

2   2.  Yang combines folklore with more realistic, contemporary narrative, as well as sitcom-style storytelling in his book. He also combines Eastern and Western religion in American Born Chinese. What sort of story about culture do these cross-pollinations tell?  How do they complicate or extend the immigrant stories we normally hear?

Daniel Gee American Born Chinese post

In American Born Chinese, a third of the story is focused on Danny and Chin-Kee. It seems strange to have a Caucasian with a grotesquely stereotypical Asian cousin featured in the work. Chin-Kee is embarrassingly offensive in his depiction. He also attends school with Jin, causing constant embarrassment and is the opposite of how Danny wants to project himself. What do you believe Yang's purpose for this was? Do you believe that Danny and Chin-Kee represent anything in regards to Jin?

Is it dangerous for Yang to depict Chin-Kee the way he does in this work? Depicting a race in this manner can have disastrous effects for the artist's career. Being declared a racist in today's society is effectively a death sentence for your career. What makes this work different?

The Monkey King story seems to be out of place in the story. What do you believe the purpose of this third of the story will be? Is it simply a depiction of a Chinese folktale, or is it something more?

Jordan Nehring Discussion Post American Born Chinese 1-130

American Born Chinese is comprised of three different story.

1. The first is a story about the Monkey King.

What do you think of how the Monkey King was acting in this scene? What is the purpose of it? What does it symbolize?

2. The second covering Jin Wang, a Chinese-American who grows up with the struggle of being Chinese in the American schooling system.

What do you think of how the other students treat him and Wei-Chen Sun?

3. The third story is about Chin-Kee and Danny. This story is obviously an over exaggeration of Chinese stereotypes.

What is the story trying to express? What is Gene Yang (the author) trying to do with this story?


4. What do you think the purpose of using a graphic novel as the medium? What were the benefit(s) of doing this instead of writing a novel? What were some disadvantage(s)?