Chapter 1: The Dark Figures.
On page 12 the father’s silhouette becomes a solid black figure trapping Alison in the bottom right corner of the frame. In contrast, Bechdel uses the silhouette during one of the few tender moments between Alison and her father. Depicting him in silhouette as both a monster (pg. 12) and kind father (pg. 21) references the complexity of the father being both these things to the main character. (side note: do you think it is Bechdel’s OCD or coincidence that these numbers mirror one another? 12-21? Just sayin’)
Chapter 2: The Black T-shirt
Toward the middle of the chapter, we see Alison in her early teens on page 42 and she appears in a black t-shirt for the first time. As the only solid black image on page 42, Alison’s t-shirt anchors the page and draws the reader’s attention to her. I continued to follow the black t-shirt to the top of page 44 when, also for the first time, Alison is a solo silhouette. With the corpse in the background this frame has monster like qualities and we see Alison watching her dad work, perhaps teaching her his ways. Looking ahead, page 145 offers a rare occasion where the father is wearing the black t-shirt while planting a tree as the young Alison stands next to him, which could be taken metaphorically. The last silhouette of Alison in chapter 2 is shown pushing a vacuum out of the frame on page 50 into a room labeled "private."
Chapter 3: Nowhere To Go.
The frame on the top of page 66 is weighted on the right and left by blackness and the mother is stuck in the middle. She is heading toward the dark staircase, which implies she has nowhere to go, and cannot escape her husband who is shown hitting on a young boy. Three pages later (69) a flashback begins of when the parents met as young thespians. These frames are set against a black background, again, offering no escape.
The black window on page 67 behind the scene of Alison as a child in the kitchen with her family works in contrast to the window on 76. On 76 stack of books titled, “Out of the Closets & Into the Streets, The Gay Report, and Homosexuality” butt up to a clear window with snow falling outside, suggesting that these books offer Alison, who is in the background, a way out.
Chapter 4: Ladies and Gentleman
Silhouettes appear again in chapter 4 on page 104 where Alison is looking over her shoulder at what appears to be the figure of a woman with long curly hair. Her brother looks the opposite direction at the outline of a man with a beard. On 107 an older Alison is depicted in the foreground with people dancing in the background, perhaps referencing the previous party scene she is in on page 104 as a child.
Chapter 5: Sunsets
Chapter 5 is bookended by sunsets; the first is the depiction of Alison’s dream after her father has passed. Although Alison and her father’s similarities have been depicted in a myriad of ways before page 124, I feel the silhouette of them against the rolling blue hills explicitly depicts their similarities. The reappearance of their silhouettes on the last page reiterates this point, while also bringing it out of Alison’s dream and into reality.
Chapter 6:
Blackness plays an interesting roll in chapter 6. It surrounds the father’s car on pages 161 and 175, which is fitting because the family is dealing with his sex scandal in this chapter. It is also fitting that the mother is depicted with jet-black hair by the end of the chapter, worried perhaps (185)?
Chapter 7: Same, Same?
The frame on the bottom right of page 189 depicts a big moment where Alison and her father stare straight at the reader and the text reads, “But this time, at age fifteen, I saw the neighborhood in a new light,” as if to say, the same way my father sees it. On page 198 Alison is not only wearing jean shorts like her father, she is shown lounging while reading and making some sarcastic comment, depicting a full transformation. Alison’s black bathing suit anchors us on the last frame on page 232. (another side note: 189-198? Coincidence or OCD?)
I apologize for the delayed blog. Thanks for reading. ~Margaret Seelie~
ps. no more ugly and confusing chunks of text...thanks Mia!
I appreciate your observation about Alison's father in silhouette. I find it particularly interesting that on page 12, Alison is in front of a circle of light, the source of which is not clear, but it looks a bit like a halo, but brings to mind the sun, which is an important part of the story of Daedalus and Icarus. Her father's silhouette is much bigger than her and her eyebrows are raised and her eyes are wide. She looks afraid, and the next three panels depict her running away. On page 21, the light is coming from the hallway and the darkness of her father's silhouette matches the wall inside her room. The irony in the caption, "His bursts of kindness were as incandescent as his tantrums were dark" is clear because his "incandescent" kindness is reflected in a pitch-black representation of him.
ReplyDeleteIt's entirely possible that these similar, yet flipped representations of her father are on pages that are numbered to mirror each other...I'm not sure, but Bechdel is so deliberate about everything that it does not seem unlikely.
Excellent delivery on this analysis Margaret--especially as you get the angles, the reversal and the overlays. She's almost too intricate to examine, but you found one aspect and ran with it
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I too was thinking a lot about her usage of black throughout the book -- it's a stark contrast between her swimmingly blue-grey choice that dominates the panels. a small moment i noticed was her brother's silhouette as he watched TV on 131, and she (ironically) colored in pages of her Wind in the Willows book. Her brothers were in the foreground for a lot of the book, but definitely in the background more so. They took up physical space, but didn't appear to have much of an emotional impact on her, until John is almost kidnapped by a man in New York at age 11 on 192. This man was also in silhouette for most of his appearance. It's interesting how she uses it to evoke a number of emotions. She's kind of a big deal.
ReplyDeleteAwesome analysis. I'm wondering if you noticed the in the last panel on page 203 the presence of a shadow figure on the other side of the bookshelf as Bechdel is picking out a copy of the Odyssey. That figure looks eerily like Bruce and is seen soon after she writes "For I was begging admission to not just any English class, but one devoted to my father's favorite book of all time." It is as if to say the shadow figure of her father's presence followed her everywhere...
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