Allison Bechdel's graphic memoir, Fun Home, reads rather phlegmatically. Bechdel seems to react to life with the same stoicism she does in reaction to her father's death. The unambiguous narration and drawings allow the story to stand on its own. The reader is never led into a reaction, there is no unnecessary psuedo-suspenseful foreshadowing, nothing hyper emotional, no appeals to the reader, no real surprises. In this tactful lucidity, Bechdel establishes herself as a reliable narrator.
Throughout Fun Home, Bechdel incorporates various points of view, using her father and mother's letters as well as passages from books and her childhood diary to fortify her truth and narration. In a similar way one uses quotations and analyzes them in a literary paper, these moments of insight serve as "proof" that Bechdel then puts pressure on in order to make meaning.
On page 211, Bechdel includes a letter from her father that she receives shortly after telling her parents she is a lesbian. In this letter her father writes, "but then, who are cop outs for? Taking sides is rather heroic, and I am not a hero. What is really worth it?" In the following frame, Bechdel is shown reading the letter while interacting minimally with her new friends. She appears absolutely absorbed in analyzing her father's words. Bechdel shows how she uses her literary analysis skills to uncover the/a truth about her father when she writes in the narration box, "what, reduced to their simplest reciprocal form, were Dad's thought about my thought about him, and his thought about my thoughts about his thoughts about me?" (Bechdel 2012). Here, Bechdel's thought process is anxious and investigatory. The Bechdel family dynamic excludes any space for direct dialogue.
Fun Home is, in fact, an investigation. Everything in Bechdel's family goes unsaid forcing Bechdel to read between the lines and take note of what the unspeakable. Bechdel investigates a sort of familial crime scene, in which she must use evidence (letters, pictures, books) to piece together a comprehensible family story in order to understand her identity as an adult. The cooccuring Watergate scandal parallels Bechdel's own process of inquiry as Fun Home impeaches, or calls into question the integrity, validity, and conduct of the father.
Where is the stoicism most evident?
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that proof is a major theme in Fun Home and that the story involves an investigation to uncover a/the truth, to use your wording. i'm interested in comparing how the investigation that Laurie launches in Imposter's Daughter is different from/ similar to that of Bechdel's and how each narrator reconciles the scarcity of proof they are faced with. I thought it was interesting how Bechdel includes all kinds of circumstantial material: newspaper articles, or items of news that may have influenced her father, letters, passages in books, photographs, etc. It seems to me like she's grasping at straws. At the same time, however, Bechdel seems pretty content with the evidence that she has, circumstantial as it may be. She seems convinced that her father committed suicide and that he was a gay man, despite acknowledging that there's no way to confirm either of those things.
ReplyDeleteyou're right,about the silences Anna, but i think (her words) that you might find some push back on her reliability as a narrator (i'm guessing here )
ReplyDeletePhlegmatic is a great description of her work and the implosion of material in the page.
The investigation is introduced early and seems to parallel her own investigation in relationship
to her own identity.
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