Fun Home is a tragic comic that explores the coming of age story of the author Alison Bechdel and her struggle to come to grips with her sexuality. The novel starts with what must be her first memory of her father. The graphic novel covers many issues within queer theory, self discovery , and self identity. There are a few scenes and elements of the story that stuck out to me that I thought would be good discussion points for this blog.
The scene above is on page 58. Alison's mother uses the fact that the father was molested when he was young to explain his homosexual tendencies. Is this a valid argument? Why or why not?
Alison includes many boxes to describe things in the environment. Do you find this helpful in your reading? Or is it a distraction? Discuss.
I don’t think she is making that kind of argument. Later on she mentions that while stereotypically this is how lesbians and gay men are suspected to behave it is not how all gays express themselves but she and her father did behave this way. In terms of others not all lesbians are masculine and not all gay men are feminine. The same can be said of heterosexuals in that not all straight women are exceptionally feminine and not all straight men are masculine. There are people of every sexual orientation who may prefer the roles of the opposite sex while just as many do not think there should be roles at all not just lesbians and gay men.
ReplyDeleteIt’s hard to say whether that actually affected his homosexuality at all. I have heard of people who have struggled with their sexuality after molestation but certainly isn’t the case for everyone. In some ways I wonder if her mother was being completely honest and wasn’t making an excuse for having a “defective husband.” It could also explain why he isn’t “normal” as the idea of homosexuality being biological rather than the results of trauma.
I think they are helpful particularly when describing things like her childhood home in which arrows are needed to understand where everything was located and their importance.
ReplyDeleteI think that Alison is merely illustrating the way in which her father's compensating for her femininity encouraged her in some ways to become more masculine. She learned from her father how to compensate for one's lack of their appropriate sexuality, and she takes initiative when she begins to detect his lack of traditional masculinity. However, I do see some evidence that Bechdel supports the idea that a homosexual person has a certain inclination to take the traditional roles of the opposite sex in order to justify their attraction to the same sex. Bechdel seems to take the role of the more masculine woman in her homosexual relationships, and even prefers this. In her fascination with the Eisenhower-era butch woman, we can see that Bechdel sees this kind of woman as the ideal woman. Although her father seems to support her lifestyle, Alison as a child is afraid of her father seeing her as butch, even though she appreciates and embraces her brother's seeing her this way. Perhaps this is just more evidence that Alison believes that she should compensate for her father, but without his being aware.
Bruce Bechdel's homosexual tendencies as a result of having been molested as a child is a valid argument as there is significant scientific and psychological evidence to show that a vast percentage of victims of child abuse struggle with a sexual identity and often develop homosexual tendencies. Further statistics show that a large percentage of homosexual persons have been abused in some way or another. It could even be argued that Alison Bechdel suffered from verbal and perhaps even physical abuse from her father.
The descriptions of the environment help me to better understand the novel. The description of the city and the funeral home just give the story more power as the reader is better able to envision the life that she and her father suffered. Without these descriptions, we might not understand Alison's desire and decision to leave, nor would we understand the reasons for her believing that her father took his own life.
I don’t think that’s what she was getting at. These are activities that were excepted from females (still expected from females in place) and how she felt/what she thought about the process.
ReplyDeleteThis is like the debate of “Is being LGBTQ a personal choice or a genetic decision?” Yes, no, maybe? Each person is different and it comes down to their choice if they want to follow their instinct.
It was interesting. Being in Cincinnati you do experience these smells together or individually. It’s not a distraction and it fits in the style of writing. Focusing more on the story view word than image. In the way these boxes are being used it’s natural to see them there while at the same time she could probably get away with not having them there. She probably feels the need to over explain instead of worrying and leave the audience in the dark.
I don't think that all homosexuals dress and act the way opposite to their gender. There are multiple cases where lesbians do act feminine. Let me address something the I learned in my Media & Identity class, there is a difference between gender and sex. Sex is the physical aspect of a person that determines if they are a boy or a girl (private parts, not appearance), and gender is how the person can display the sex. A person can act feminine even though he is a boy an not be a homosexual. The same thing works switched around. With this in mind, Bechdel wasn't trying to make a case. She was tying to state what her life was like. The molestation of her father had nothing to do with her homosexuality and her mother was making a very poor argument.
ReplyDeleteNo, i do not think that she is arguing a homosexual absolute. In that passage she's merely exemplifying the fundamental differences between her father and her. Furthermore, she's pointing her father's causality in making her the way she is, rooted in resentment. I don't think that the validity of Alison's mother's argument is really an issue that can be answered within and through the text. I think that, more importantly, it just shows her mother trying to write off her husband's infidelity in order to preserve the marriage, family, and image of him. This contribute's to the graphic novel's theme of preservation, also found in the family's trade (embalming) and the father's obsessive decorating/restoration.
ReplyDeleteThe example you give is directly referring to the "fragrance and stunning richness and complexity," so I find it hard to argue as anything except complementary. The labels always correspond to the narration, which isn't distracting but effective as a conceit that our previous assignments have not utilized.
I don’t think Alison was trying to convey the message that all homosexuals prefer roles of the opposite sex and I don’t feel as if this is realistic in general. Yes, homosexuals prefer those of the opposite sex but just as heterosexuals, people have different preferences in what kind of person they prefer. I think that would be too holistic to say that is what her message is. I feel as if Alison’s mother’s argument is valid because there could be some psychological factors that can lead to homosexual tendencies from molestation. I find the boxes a bit distracting at times. I find that they have a bit of comedic relief but overall I find them pointless and distracting. For example in the photo that you posted, what is the point of including “urine and electricity” in the subway, or “shit” where the dog is taking a shit on the sidewalk? Sometimes funny but mostly pointless.
ReplyDeleteHmm... These are hard questions. Honestly, I think she was just showing how broad gender roles are. I know plenty of straight and gay people who don't fit their gender roles in various ways. I think that paint it that black and white is to do the history of Alison and her father a diservice.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree that molestation makes someone gay. After reading this, I actually looked up studies that were done that do say that a higher rate of homosexual males and females report being molested as child. However, to say this is a causal realtionship would have to mean that EVERY person who was molested as a child would need to identify as LGBT and that just isn't so. It sort of bothered me that her mother needed to "explain" it, and I don't know why she felt it was ok to tell their daughter his deeply personal bizz. I guess no one is perfect.
The signs were neat. Its a different approach and I found them to be pretty appropriate. In the panel you posted, I felt like all the boxes were describing really gross things that you would expect to smell and see on a hot day in the city. Whenever I see a city landscape illustrated I always forget those nasty bits, so I sort of appreciated the boxes in that way.
I think Bechdel is prodding at a commonly held misconception about homosexuality and gender. Because the "traditional" relationship is male and female, many people have assumed through the years that even if two men or two women are in a relationship, one must be masculine and one must be feminine (this is, of course, a completely erroneous assumption.); furthermore, many gay men are perceived as being more feminine and lesbians as more masculine (as this is perception, one can't really say this is right or wrong). While this perception may seem valid to many, there is no psychological reason that gay men should be feminine or women masculine. Again, I think this is just Bechdel using wordplay to make the reader think about the preconceived notions we all tend to adhere to.
ReplyDeleteI don't buy the father being homosexual because of the molestation because I firmly believe that sexuality is something you are born with. But this argument does bring up an interesting point. Many people who have difficulty accepting their sexuality look to their past for a catalyst that could have changed them. While this incident undoubtedly changed the father, I don't think it would have changed his sexuality because the brain simply doesn't work that way. The one exception is the fact most child molesters were themselves molested as children. That being said, I do think that the incident in question could have left him feeling very confused and unsure of his sexuality, with questions that would never be answered.
As for the description boxes, I find them mostly useful. They are occasionally distracting, but most of the time, they are fairly amusing. They also often help to explain something that is drawn so small that you might not be able to see it.
I never agreed with typical gender roles. Just because someone was born one sex or the other doesn't mean things like only boy's bedrooms can be painted blue and girls must wear pink. When I viewed these scenes with the father picking his daughter's clothes and other similar scenes as being normal and not scenes where the characters were having issues fitting into their gender roles. I would never agree that if a person is homosexual that if means something about their personality. Not all homosexual men are girly and not all lesbians are manly. To say that they are would be saying that there must always be a masculine dominate partner and a feminine submissive partner and that in a normal man/woman relationship that a woman is always the submissive partner and if she is not then their relationship does not fit proper gender roles.
ReplyDeleteHowever I understand that this story was created based on the author's life prior to society being as open as it is today.
Today we are more understanding that people are just simply born the way that they are and not all sexual orientations can be given a simple answer. Some people are born that way while others may not be. Taking the time in which the story is set, I can see that the scene when the mother used the excuse of her husband being molested as a reason for his orientation as a desperate person reaching in order to explain away what her husband was. For her, his orientation was shameful. I think that for her, as his wife, it was harder for her to except his orientation because he painted himself as a certain person and she fell in love with that person. Then once she realized that the person that she fell in love with and had a family with was a lie it was harder for her to except than if he was a stranger or some other person.
I like your point of view on gender roles. This really helped put into perspective on the difference between gender roles today and when the graphic novel was written.
DeleteBechdel definitely is not making the case that homosexual gender roles lean toward the opposite sex; she explains that on page 97: "It's imprecise and insufficient, defining the homosexual as a person whose gender expression is at odds with his or her sex." This is the case for her father and herself, though, it seems.
ReplyDeleteI think it is fair for a wife to use that as an excuse for why her husband is attracted to young men. It could be a contributing factor to the ways in which he expresses himself, but it would not be part of why he is attracted to men, I'm sure. But as his wife, the woman he is cheating on, this is a valid argument for her position. She does not want to confront the truth or accept it, she wants to stay as far from the truth as possible, no doubt. She is just upset and we have to give her that excuse as a way for her to cope with the upset.
Her boxes of word/phrase descriptions are funny to me. I would not say they are either helpful or distracting, they just add another level to the story. They bring the audience out of the scene into seeing the actual disgust of the environment, something she cannot portray adequately in drawings.
I don't think that Bechdal is saying that all homosexuals favor the opposite traits of their own gender (whatever that may be), but that when gender barriers become less defined or stringent, traits can be assigned on their own merit. Alison's father doesn't care about her dress *because* of whatever homosexual tendencies he might have, but by not attributing himself to the "traditional" sexual roles that were prominent at the time, he has a realm of trait acquirement that might otherwise be hidden by a male.
ReplyDeleteBroadly, I don't think that molestation necessarily equals homosexuality. Human sexuality is far more nuanced than that. A man or woman who is molested as a child has just as much a chance to conform to a heterosexual lifestyle, as a man or woman who was *not* molested has a chance to conform to a homosexual lifestyle. That being said, there is a long history of molestation being used as a way to "explain" LGBT lifestyles, especially in eras that were far less tolerant of them. I think that in the case of this particular novel, Alice's mother is of a generation that has to find concrete reason behind the father's behaviors, and molestation makes for a handy scapegoat.
I thought the boxes were enjoyable, and effective as a means of keeping character voice present throughout the story. That being said, they didn't necessarily hinder or help my reading of the text.
I think the wife is using a coping mechanism when she says the dad was molested as a boy. Honestly, there is very little to go on to draw a conclusion as to the author's intent, but I (like many others here) do not take this to be a valid point (in regards to 'turning' the father homosexual).
ReplyDeleteI believe I'm also echoing the sentiments shared with many here by stating Bechdel was not making an argument that gay people embrace roles of the opposite gender. I think the author is drawing parallels between her father and herself. The question reminds me of politicians and pundits on cable news blabbing about "the gay agenda." Not that your question was blabbing, mind you. There is a danger - especially in a college Literature course - of trying to delve too deep into the text. In doing so, we can fall into the trap of not taking the story for what it is and instead try to find deeper meaning that isn't there. I guess it's like trying to decode combination lock that we already know the sequence to.
I believe Bechdel is saying nothing to define what being a homosexual is. She is just investigating and dissecting her own life and the parallels between her and her father.
ReplyDeleteAllison's mother explaining Bruce's molestation as a means to his homosexuality is an easy way to cope with the reality. Yet, using it as a means to reason his sexuality is followed with a lack of realistic support.
As for Bechdel's information boxes, I found them intriguingly irrelevant. They didn't necessarily add much to the text in terms of story, but helped view a psychological aspect of Bechdel's thoughts.
I would first like to address Bechdel's prolific use of dialogue boxes used to describe the environment. For me it is not an overwhelming amount of information, if anything this style of storytelling aids the viewer to fully understand the overload that our senses experience when first coming to a big city. There is so much to take in and observe that her style of illustration reflects the anxiety that she experienced. I particularly enjoyed these added text like "menthol" and "Putrefaction". Even her choice of words are not reminiscent of an adolescent instead she uses a rich vocabulary to enhance the scene.
ReplyDeleteAs for the gender roles topic I think she is treading on very thin ice. There no right or wrong way to typify how homosexuals and lesbians should act and by assuming there is a "right" way puts these people in guidelines that are generally non-existent. From what I observed I think Bechdel's masculine tendencies stem from wanting to overcompensate for her father. Her father is generally more feminine and I think the lack of that masculinity has left Allison attempting to rectify it. As for the notion that her father has changed his sexual outlook because of being molested. I like to believe in that nature over nurture debate when it comes to sexuality. It is too disheartening to think that someone could have altered her fathers life in such a drastic way due to his decisions. No I believe that his tendencies may have changed but his sexual orientation remains the same.