"Pictures" speak louder than words

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HEY YOU!

Are you tired of reading those regular, old, ordinary memoirs? 

Look no further! We have JUST the thing for you: a graphic memoir!

“A graphic memoir?!” You ask. “What’s that?!”

Well, a graphic memoir starts off just like any other memoir: it’s a personal account describing a significant part of the author’s life. But wait- there’s more! A graphic memoir is chalk-full of PICTURES! That’s right. The author tells its readers a great deal of important information through pictures, rather than using those boring old words. 

Alison Bechdel’s National Bestseller “Fun Home” manifests the saying, “pictures speak louder than words!” (Isn’t that the one??)

#1. (PAGE 107) Bechdel draws herself doing a “double take”:

Would you rather read something like this:

I had to look twice to believe she was talking to me.

Or look at a picture like this:

#2. (PAGE 97 & 75) Bechdel subtly sets the mood of her era:
Would you rather read something like this:

We listened to The Seekers on the radio. Those big spheric chairs were popular.

Or look at a picture like this:

#3. She shows rather than tells.

Would you rather read something like this:

I began inventing little symbols to write in my diary, to allow for the possibility that I had remembered the events in my day incorrectly.

Or look at a picture like this:

#4. (190) Some things are much easier to describe with a picture than with words. 

Would you rather read something like this:

They wore tight pants that showed off their ‘package’.

Or look at a picture like this:



#5. She juxtaposes what she was thinking with what she was actually saying. 

Would you rather read something like this:

I wanted to tell him exactly how I felt, but all I could say was ‘no’. 

Or look at a picture like this:

You look at the examples, folks! And tell me which memoir you would rather read...

Biography - Part 4

 Interviews

In Alison Bechdel's memoirs, there is an extreme honesty in her recollections and realizations of her past, and when asked about these traumas in interviews she is very open.

In this interview, Alison goes in depth about her methods when creating her comics. She shows a step by step process with images and even goes as far as saying how she wouldn't be able to work without 'google image search' which is interesting. Even in a memoir research and reference is still really important.

 Here Alison discusses Fun Home and also reveals that she has no inhibitions about writing about her past, though her family wishes she weren't so in depth.

Also, Fun Home is currently being adapted in a theatre performance!

In The Guardian, Laura Miller describes Alison's newest work Are You My Mother?,

  "Like all of Bechdel's work, Are You My Mother? is furiously literary, full of citations and quotations, and crafty symbolic parallels to the books its author is so often depicted reading with furrowed brow. The presiding genii of this particular work include Adrienne Rich, Sigmund Freud, Alice Miller and, above all, Virginia Woolf and the British psychoanalyst DW Winnicott. ("I want him to be my mother," cartoon Alison says.) The concepts Winnicott contributed to object relations theory (the "good enough" mother, transitional objects, the true and false self, etc) provide themes for each of the book's seven chapters, but its swirling, circular structure derives from Woolf."

Source

Biography - Part 3

                                                 Works
-A series of compilations of her comic Dykes to Watch Out For (1983-2008)
-Fun Home (2006)
-Are You My Mother? (2012) *Companion to Fun Home*
As well as stories for various media (mostly magazines)

Awards

Fun Home won:
-2006 Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award
-Lambda Book Award
-2007 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based work
-Stonewall Book Award-Israel Fishman Nonfiction Award from the American Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table
-Nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award
-Also topped multiple "Best of the Year" lists in magazines/papers/online
The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For won the 2008 Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction

Career Lows and Highs

A considerable high for Alison would have to be when her first work was published in the 1983 issue of Womannews. From there she built up her collection of comics in the DTWOF series, which eventually included repeating characters and a more direct storyline, eventually becoming a full time cartoonist in 1990. Not that it was exactly a career low point, but Alison kept this up for 23 years before publishing her graphic memoir Fun Home, which had massive mainstream success in comparison. Her companion memoir Are You My Mother? seems to be continuing Alison's previous success, though only published a little earlier this year.

An interview of Alison Bechdel with Wall Street Journal editor Chris Farley, discussing Are You My Mother?

Stereotypes

Even though, Allison was always more interested in masculine things growing up, rather than feminine things, I do not believe she ever actually wanted to be a man.  I think she was proud to be a woman even though she was interested in more masculine things. I think this is an interesting and empowering view, just because she was interested in masculine things I do not think this should label someone as wanting to be that gender, or even being bi, or gay. I think it is a simple matter of interests, and being more interested in something that men generally are interested in should classify what a person is. This is one thing I kind of disagreed with, is how Allison started to realize she was gay. I do not think it should have been all the small things she liked for example, dressing in her dads clothes, that made her realize she was gay. She should have realized that when she felt attracted to another woman, not by her interests.  I just don’t think those stereotypes are always true, and drawing conclusions on them seems kind of…wrong. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aymmiResC38&feature=relmfu

This is a video I think is well suited for this post. It’s about a girl that dressed up as a man for over a year and then wrote a book about her experience.

Ties of Sexuality Between Bechdel and her Father

The issue of Bechdel's father's concealment of his homosexuality was a stark contrast from Bechdel's own revelation during her college years. While Bechdel was able to explore her newfound sexuality and, although she was on her own, took initiative to go to her college's gay alliance meetings, Bechdel's father was not so lucky to openly experiment with his gayness. The generation that he was born into simply considered it taboo, and so his lovers were kept in secret, solidifying his need to closet himself and let his feelings of internalized homophobia fester and project onto his children, namely Bechdel herself.

This also plays into the house as a whole -- Bechdel's father pours his heart and soul into the old funeral home; a product of his upbringing and the era he grew up in. They were times of duty, not choice, and now that he was able to free himself of those confines, he could focus his energy into his own choices. The house was the haven of his immaculate nature, all embellished and decorative, in order to hide something else, something that, to Bechdel's observant eye, was made much more obvious as she continued to explore her sexuality.

I stumbled upon a very interesting article about internalized homophobia and heteronormativity that totally hit the nail on the head. While reading the entry, I instantly thought of Bechdel's father, and how, in his society and era while growing up, was probably instilled with the very same notions that only a woman and father could join together and raise a family together, and that there were very clear and separate gender roles that were designated to each parent. It made me wonder how this sort of mindset may have conflicted, and ultimately, caused him lifetime unhappiness.

Themes and understanding

When further examining the theme of fun home, these 3 really stand out; gender roles, homosexuality, and fatherhood. And what is really interesting to me is the way she talks about these issues. Bechdel tells her story joining these entire themes one graphic novel that’s equally as complicated as her childhood. I think through writing this book Bechdel was able to draw connections and realize things she was never able to as a kid. While reading the book you get clear visuals and I understood her childhood, but only in the way that she herself was able to come to understand it. We only truly understand Her father and her own struggles with gender roles near the end as it all clicks in, and how because they were both struggling with realizing their homosexuality; homosexuality which caused her father to act the way he did when she was a child. In the end we realize, in the culmination of everything, her father offered an unconventional shade of fatherhood that she too was able to finally understand.

 Allison's father trys to assert his power and masculinity, and at the same time tries to repress Alison's masculinity. 

"Timbits" of Information

      Alison Bechdel’s drawings contain little ‘tidbits’ that provide a tremendous amount of subtext. What is "subtext"? I personally like to think of them as ‘timbits’ because, like those small spheric pastries, they give you a little taste of what the larger doughnut is like.) Bechdel often points out these significant elements of a drawing that otherwise would go unnoticed. For example, on page 16 she draws an arrow pointing to her furniture polish which reads “incipient [def’n: in its initial stage] yellow lung disease”. Though passive, this comment gives the reader an insight into Bechdel’s attitude towards her youth of polishing antique collectibles... I personally gained a lot of insight about how Bechdel felt through this ‘timbits’ of information.

 

Bedchel also points (tongue in cheek) the value of several pieces in her living room.

   

       If I drew a picture of my bedroom (or perhaps took a picture of it, knowing my artistic abilities), there are several things I would point out to give people a better understanding of me/my attitude towards the people and events in my life.

Biography - Part 2

Historical Context 

-Gay Rights movements throughout the 1900's and continuing on today, picking up pace in the 1970's
-Throughout Alison and her father's lives there were varying levels of homophobia/gay rights
-It was taboo for her father to come out as a homosexual, but Alison seemed to have embraced her sexuality from a young age
-It was only in 1973 that homosexuality was taken off America's list of psychiatric disorders
-Alison claims that,"The secret subversive goal of my work is to show that women, not just lesbians, are regular human beings"Source She believes that men can be generic and almost everything is catered towards them, but when a woman is clearly the audience the message is for the woman to serve or impress men.
-She was personally affected by removal of her rights when her same-sex marriage license given by San Fransisco was revoked
-She wrote for a feminist newspaper, inspiring many people
-Her strip "Dykes to Watch Out For" was one of the longest ongoing representations of lesbians in pop culture

"Milk" is about Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay politicians in America

Influences

-Chas. Addams
-Mad Magazine
-Norman Rockwell
-Edward Gorey
-At 22 she, "picked up a copy of “Gay Comix,” an anthology comic book edited by Howard Cruse. It was seeing his work there, along with stuff by other early gay and lesbian cartoonists like Mary Wings, Jennifer Camper, and Jerry Mills, that made [her] realize [that she] could draw cartoons about [her] own queer life." Source
-Cartoonist idols are Hergé and R. Crumb
                                                      

                                                        Tintin by Herge

 Fritz the Cat by R. Crumb

More Themes on Sexuality

At one point in the novel, Bechdel recalls several moments of her childhood which piqued her curiosity and made her aware of her sexuality, in a more innocent sense.

Bechdel and her father sit in a diner  and a rather masculine-looking woman enters. She is a truck driver, and young Bechdel can't help but stare at her in wonder and in awe. These are the years in which she's uncomfortable with her feminine roles and expectations pushed on her from her father. She refuses to wear dresses and partake in conventionally feminine roles, such as cleaning the house. She becomes interested in playing dress up and wearing her father's clothes, and at one point, insists that her younger brother call her "Albert". So, it is inevitable that Bechdel would hold such a close, fleeting bond with this rather "butchy" truck driver, and that it's a memory that stays with her so clearly throughout her entire life.

Interestingly enough, it would seem that Bechdel's father already sensed the connection from Bechdel's fascination with masculinity and her chance exposure to lesbianism in the diner. Surprisingly, in today's world, female truck drivers are not so uncommon. Although back in Bechdel's time as a child, women who were more masculine and, as such, not much of a threat to mens' sense of entitlement, now this isn't the case, and more women are seeking jobs as truck drivers. Here's an article outlining the history of truck drivers and where gender comes into play.

Voice and Tone Regarding Bechdel's Sexual Orientation

Bechdel's recollections and discovery of her sexual identity and orientation are a major theme of Fun Home. Although the memoir focuses mainly on the complicated relationship with her closeted father, it is also a pinnacle step in which Bechdel discovers that she is attracted to women. In certain instances throughout her life, Bechdel begins noticing her own peculiar behaviour when it comes to her sexual identity. For example, from a young age, she is open about her disdain for dresses and, much to her father's chagrin, her disinterest in aesthetics and anything considered traditionally "feminine". 

Throughout the graphic novel, Bechdel keeps a very frank, almost detached way of describing many events that would typically be considered "eye-opening", in terms of discovering her sexuality. When she first realizes that she is gay, she is in the library looking at books, and it hits her suddenly, in an almost flippant manner. There is no fancy dialogue for how she feels. Funnily enough, she has had many hints towards her lesbianism, exhibited even earlier on in her childhood. 

In many ways, Bechdel's discovery of her sexuality and her tone and voice of which she writes about it can be dissected and mulled over, in relation to her relationship with her father and her experiences in childhood.

There's a Tumblr (a blog social networking site) called When I Came Out in which different Tumblr users can share their stories and revelations of their sexualities. Although we live in a different time than Bechdel, I wonder that if these social networking sites were available to Bechdel, or even her father, during their adolescent years, would the tragedy of Bechdel's father's death have happened at all? Would Bechdel have discovered her lesbianism much earlier on, and how would that affect her family?

Fun Home

When looking at the theme of “Fun Home” I could not help but noticing and relating to the relationship of Alison and her father. They are so disconnected, and distant from each other that they have never been able to open up and share things. Even though Alison was gay, and her dad as well, and I do not share this similarity I am still able to relate to this relationship.

Growing up I was a very private and closed off person, and so is my father, we never had any sort of bonding experiences, not until I grew up and we found common interests to bond over.  Just like in Fun Home Alison and her father were pretty distant until they found a common interest to bond over (literature).  Even if the bonding was a bit awkward I think that is a pretty common thing for many relationships with fathers, it definitely was for me

Grappling Graphic Memoir!

        I'm realizing just how exciting memoirs are.

        Rather than absorbing factual information off of wikipedia about Alison Bechdel and her 'unique' (to say the least) relationship with her father, I felt as though I had plunged into that significant time of Bechdel's life surrounding her father's death. I was a fly on the wall during her most intimate moments, an invisible third sibling living through her family's tragic, yet surprisingly understandable story. 

       What made Bechdel's personal account even more compelling were the expounding graphics! Though obviously cartoon, I was given perfect mental images, sounds and even smells of her family (and 'friends') from these detailed drawings. This picture, for example, speaks louder than any combination of words ever could. Her entire childhood is summarized by these telling expressions: her father's unconcealed discontentment, her mother's begrudging eye-roll, Roy's deltoids and Alison's edged-forward, brow-raising curiousity.

       While researching the genre of graphic memoirs, I happened upon this really interesting one-weekend workshop in how to create your own graphic memoir! It is advertised as a crash-course in "preserving the significant moments in your life in a new and exciting way". This to me really captured the essence of what makes graphic memoirs so "exciting": their graphics! Unlike a thick book of personal stories, a graphic memoir is "accessible": since you gain so much information from the pictures alone, you absorb a lot more info a lot more quickly! I think this is why graphic memoirs reach a much wider audience than ordinary ones- they are more accessible. Had this workshop been a little closer to home, I would have loved to go. It is offered by San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum, whose mission is to "preserve, document, and exhibit this unique and accessible art form". Want to learn more about this unique museum? Check out this video tour! Fellow group members- I think you would appreciate this place, especially considering your passion for animation/illustration. :) 

Biography - Part 1

Alison Bechdel's Personal Website

 Early Life

-Alison Bechdel was born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania to Roman Catholic parents
-Her father, Bruce Bechde,l was a high school English teacher and funeral home director
-Born September 10, 1960 (52 years old)
-Musician brother named John
-Her family owned and operated a funeral home
-She attended Simon's Rock College and Oberlin College
-Graduated in 1981
-Came out as a lesbian at 19

Adult Life

-Moved to New York and applied to art schools but was rejected
-Worked office jobs in the publishing industry
-Began her comic "Dykes to Watch Out For"  based off a single drawing that she sent to Womannews
-Gradually began multipanneled strips and other outlets picked up the strip as well
-The comic started off with constantly new characters and no consistent storyline, but over time it began to focus around a core group of lesbians
-In 1986 all her strips to date were published in a book together
-Developed the "Bechdel Test" which is essentially a method used to identify gender bias in fiction. A work is thought to 'pass the test' if it includes two female characters who talk to each other about something aside from a man
 -In 1988 she wrote "Servants to the Cause" about the staff of a queer newspaper
-Written and drawn autobiographical strips and done illustrations for websites and magazines
-Full-time cartoonist in 1990
-Currently lives in Bolton, Vermont
-In 2004 married partner, Amy Rubin, in San Fransisco, but all same-sex marriage licenses at the time were voided by the California Supreme Court
-They separated in 2006
-In November 2006 she was invited to sit on the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary
-Fun Home published in 2006
-

Circus

Just testing out the layout