Alison Bechdel’s autobiography of Fun Home creates a space for critical controversies about what it means to be a family member and what they do for each other. The readers of this comic book debate about whether they identify with the author or not. They also argue as to what social changes imply about sexual orientation acceptance and they give an insight of the barriers and solitude a person with a very “traditional” American family can face with the rest of the members in their family for acceptance. Some of the arguments created include what it means to be a good father and what it means to be a good daughter, and what that relationship should look like. As we now know, Alison’s father was very cold-hearted and emotionless with his children; or appeared to be. We get this from the colors of the pages in the book and also the fact that he never once smiled.
He was never the “fatherly type“ but when it came to supporting Alison in her sexual decision, he gave her more help than she would have ever guessed. So, what is more, important in the terms of the family? Affection or support? Although he may have not been the most affectionate person with her, he still loved Alison and gave her the support that she really needed; even if it was something she did not well understand. Then we have the simple concept of “Father” and we realize that her father was also gay, and when we find this out, it could mean that he not only supported her because he understood what she was going through but because she was his daughter. Many scholars have looked into this subject and have also risen questions and debates about it; and if this is what Alison was referring to in her autobiography. She saw things in real life and what that meant for her personal development and lack of family support based on the page colors, small dialogue and extensive captions, Anne Elizabeth Moore, wrote a review on Alison’s perspective of.
The Father, the Daughter, Fun Home: AFamily Tragicomic based on the autobiography and how the graphic novel gives an insight of a typical father in America. Anne introduces the graphical choice of Alison’s book to demonstrate how smaller more graphical details in the novel truly convey her message of solitude throughout her life before getting into college, She writes that, “ “Fun home ” is what Bechdel and her siblings call the funeral home where they live. While their father obsesses about redecorating and their mother seems incapable of relating meaningfully either to them or to her husband, the joke is one way they cope with the family business”.
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Now, it is not normal for a child to grow up in a funeral home, and the fact that she did gives us an insight of the cage that she felt she was in. Alison’s “Fun Home” is a pun and about the irony of her life. When we think about why she chooses that meaning, and what that says about her family we see that Alison’s life was full of loneliness—she lived in a funeral home. Moore also notes: “Her method was to photograph herself in the positions of her characters, then to compose panels that appear to be raw, anmediated, unstaged fact Over the line drawings the artist, who usually works only in black and white, applied a grey- green wash, a perfect hue that is the book’s mast bittersweet feature”. This color segment that Alison choose also has a literary meaning because it wasn‘t the typical black and white which could come to show that her life wasn‘t as straight forward and simple as we could imagine.
The fact that her statements and talks were not dialogues but statements of facts is also that can be almost interpreted to mean that her life wasn‘t lively but it was monotone in the way that she had no real change throughout it and things werejust dull; no emotions. This also adds to the notion that Alison’s family never changed and was always going to be permanently cold with her because never in her life did they support her. Just like her father never changed and was never a black and white image, her comics come to show that her father was just like the drawings: cold and washed away like a distant memory; but, we also have to consider that there were times were he was not as cold as she thought but this came only when she was finally in college and came out about her sexuality.
The National Council of Teachers of America also have to say that this graphic novel serves to show how well accepted a person’s sexual orientation is in society, and what that says about controversies even inside a classroom. In that analysis they question what the topic of sexual orientation in classrooms actually means, not only for the teachers but for the identity of the students. Some great English philanthropy, like Wendy Morgan suggest that: “effective work in the English classroom around sexuality and sexual identity has: “Two complementary aspects: ”One is analysis: scrutinizing the ways language and image are used to give us a position for reading and desiring, for taking up a position as sexual beings. The other is imagination: understanding something ofhow the ideologies ofour society are lived out in individuals in specific time and place”.
This highly demonstrates that sexual readings in a classroom has a key aspect to how people in our society view sexual beings and orientation, Morgan also states: “[T]o point to the fact that there are no innocent, normal, or unmediated readings and that the representations drawn upon to maintain a narrative or a selfas normal, as deviant, as unthinkable, are social effects of how discourses ofnormalization are lived and refused. This notion of being normal and what normalization refers to also adds to the impact that education can have in the development of students. We have to remember that Alison’s father was also an English teacher He knew that there was no way of being normal and the social effects that would arise if Alison for some reason would become identified differently Maybe, for that reason he always tried dressing her up like a girlt Building her into this “social construct” of what she should be.
Also, the entry notes, “And when I work with teachers on these questions ofsexuality, sexual identity and English, I continue to emphasize the vital contribution our subject can make to the personal growth of all young people “. If for some reason, Alison’s dad could have shared some of his experiences (when she was of age) and could have tried to connect more with his daughter, I would agree that Alison came to have that special father—daughter bond. But she didn’t get it, Instead she had a car ride conversation with him once in her life, and that was the most she ever was able to understand about her father and what he could do to help We also have to consider that this is a comic. And what that speaks about and to. In the entry of Defining Comics, Aaron Meskin talks about how they can be used as art to convey a meaning, He states, “Comics are among those media-like film and photography- that can be used to make art, but can also be used no artistically.
So Mc- Cloud suggests that comics are “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, in- tended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer. What this refers to, is that Alison‘s comics have a special way of conveying that there was an expected response from the readers. The emotions, and lack of them throughout the text makes me personally upset because I realize that she must have never had those days where her belly hurt from laughing too hard We also have to bring to our mind the idea that this is a very one sided story. Alison’s perspective of her life could be very different from her brother‘s and even her father‘s In the entry of The Entangled Self: Genre Bondage in the Age ofthe Memoir, by Nancy K, Miller, she talks about why we can’t believe Alison to a full point. She says: “How can you tell for sure that the autobiographer isn’t lying? You can’t, or maybe you can to some degree, on small (or not so small) verifiable items.
The point is, the author doesn’t have the energy or, more important, skill, to fib about this being anything other than him telling you about things, and is not a good enough liar to do it in any competently sublimated narrative way, At the same time, he will be clear and up—front about this being a self~conscious memoir, which you may come to appreciate “. When we talk about Alison‘s point of view and what she thinks of her father and the relationship that she had with him, it is important to note that there was no possible way that we can ever know if this is the only way things were.
There are always 2 sides to the story and in this case we may not ever know her father’s perspective and can only assume based on what she said. Though we have a very negative connotation of her father, I still think that her father loved her tremendously and that they had a bond Though it may not have been the way that she wanted or needed, he still tried to connect with her at some points Alison writes, “Indeed, daddy croaked of black lung disease a few scenes late, before she got back to visit. I would see my father one more time after this But we would never discuss our shared predilection again, We had had our Ithaca moment. Did they have a hard relationship?
Yes, maybe they did But in the end, I think that Alison shaped this book to be centered on her dad I think she loved her father more than any other person and she may not be over the fact that he is gone and she knows that he had a huge say in the construction of her characteri In the end, Alison was content with the way her life turned out to be. She might have also written to express the confusion she left throughout her life and how lonely she felt without her mother’s love or her father’s care, To me, her parents are static people for most of the novel but there was some growth. They remain the same throughout all of the journey that she has taken, throughout her Odyssey she was never able to find peace with her family until she was able to understand herself better.
And at the end, the real journey she was able to have was that one talks with her father when they connected; which was a onetime experience and thing since he passed away soon after. In conclusion, it’s hard to tell what mattered the most to Alison’s development. She definitely did not have as much affection as she may have wished for, but she still had that support when she declared her sexuality I think that even though it was hard for her family to accept her desires and what she was, in the end they came around. Despite the fact that her father was never that support growing up, as an adult (in that short amount of time) he was able to give her more support than she could imagine He helped her be okay with the decision she took because she finally understood that he could never be open with anyone. Being able to understand herself was able to lead Alison to understand why her family was so peculiar and why her father also never showed emotions as a child.
