Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel is an autobiographical graphic memoir that correlates her coming of age with her discovery of her homosexuality. Bechdel is also battling her inner fears that came along with her upraising but is baffled by the unearthing of her father’s own homosexuality. Her artistic decisions are affected by her homosexuality because she chooses to add stereotypical gender roles. Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic develops a proper story line by breaking stereotypical gender roles by portraying her father and herself as wanting to be opposite. Therefore without Bechdel’s fantastic artistic decisions the story would not work well as a graphic memoir, and would not be able to portray her life effectively.
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Bechdel has chosen several family photos to portray the hard concepts in her life. The first photograph that is of some important is the front cover of the 2007 edition of Fun Home has her father and herself. She has short hair and is slouching with her legs open while her father is sitting cross legged with his head facing away from the frame. She is imposing gender stereotypes on her father and herself but is imposing the opposite of societal views. “He’s wearing a women’s bathing suit. A fraternity prank? But the pose he strikes is not mincing or silly at all. He’s lissome, elegant,” (Bechdel 120.1). These words accompany a picture of her father dressed in a woman’s bathing suit. She is trying to contemplate how this could be, but decides that her father is graceful, thin, and supple. “But the creation of an image through a camera lens always involves some degree of subjective choice through selection, framing, and personalization” (Sturken and Cartwright 16). Sturken and Cartwright’s view of photographic truth lead us to question why Bechdel chose these pictures and placed them where they are in the memoir, but with portraying them as actual photographs we are more able to believe that these are the real reason behind the
Bechdel has chosen several family photos to portray the hard concepts in her life. The first photograph that is of some important is the front cover of the 2007 edition of Fun Home has her father and herself. She has short hair and is slouching with her legs open while her father is sitting cross legged with his head facing away from the frame. She is imposing gender stereotypes on her father and herself but is imposing the opposite of societal views. “He’s wearing a women’s bathing suit. A fraternity prank? But the pose he strikes is not mincing or silly at all. He’s lissome, elegant,” (Bechdel 120.1). These words accompany a picture of her father dressed in a woman’s bathing suit. She is trying to contemplate how this could be, but decides that her father is graceful, thin, and supple. “But the creation of an image through a camera lens always involves some degree of subjective choice through selection, framing, and personalization” (Sturken and Cartwright 16). Sturken and Cartwright’s view of photographic truth lead us to question why Bechdel chose these pictures and placed them where they are in the memoir, but with portraying them as actual photographs we are more able to believe that these are the real reason behind the