I take slight issue with Bechdel’s determination that “Fun Home” is a tragedy. While reading it, there was something about the story that I couldn’t quite peg, but kept me from really considering it a tragedy. After we watched the interviews with her in class, however, it became clear to me what that issue was. In the story, Bechdel (as the main character, moreso than as the writer, and even less so as the artist) never truly expresses saddness; rather she spends the story circling the drain of melancholia. In order to be a tragedy, something truly tragic must happen, and she just never truly convinces me that her father’s death affected her. Upon seeing the interviews with her, I realize that that is because of her general disposition, which has her displaying a very limited range of emotion. Without access to this point of reference while reading “Fun Home,” the standalone story is hard to catagorize as a true ‘tragedy.’ As the main character, Bechdel is very passive, unlike Marjane Satrapi of Persepolis, who tends to overreact in an animated fashion. As the writer of the story, however, Bechdel offer’s an almost mechanical analysis that is peppered with references; the powerful feelings associated with the characters from those references allows her to express a wider range of emotion than her character is typically capable of. Also, as an artist, her painstaking attention to detail fits perfectly with the melancholic; the clean lines and complex detail sanitizes the appearance of her world. However, it is the art where Bechdel expresses a fuller ranger of emotion, as the attention to detail shows her loving passion for the history that she captures in the graphic novel. Ultimately, as a standalone story, “Fun Home,” simply can not stand up as its own tragedy; the beauty of the graphic novel medium, however, is that through the artwork we have access to other means of interpreting the story. I daresay that even with all things considered, Bechdel’s story is simply not dynamic enough to be truly called ‘a tragedy.’
Author Archives: Alex Flores
Searchers – “Persepolis 2.0”
http://www.spreadpersepolis.com/
Well, I’ll be the first to admit that it isn’t much, but it is, at the very least interesting. It is like Persepolis, in a way, but without the autobiographical elements; just historical account of the regime change. It uses pictures from the graphic novel, but they are re-contextualized in order to convey new meaning. It isn’t incredibly well done, but it seems that it was created more as a way of informing people who may support change in modern Iran. It’s also rather short, but even with the altered meanings of the panels, its somewhat impressive that there is a cohesive narrative.
A Place to Belong
(I am unclear on whether we are supposed to have read the whole book, so I am going to, for purposes of this blog, only respond to the first half so as not to spoil anyone.)
It may be a little obvious, but all of the main characters are basically looking for a place to belong. Jin is mostly lost in his quest for Amelia. The Monkey King is looking to be ‘the great sage,’ when he is quite plainly a monkey. “Danny” is pretty much fully integrated into where he feels he belongs, but is thwarted in that attempt by his cousin; and even “Chin-kee” is trying to fit in, even if it doesn’t mean changing who he is at all (That may be a stretch. I get uncomfortable even trying to think about how to address Chin-kee, to tell you the truth).
The real catch is that none of them are very good at it. Which I suppose is the very catalyst for the story, the thing for them to overcome. An important lesson early on, for the Monkey king, is when he flies beyond the veil of reality, and relieves himself on a golden pillar, only to discover that he has peed on the hand of his creator. What the Monkey King wants is impossible, because there is simply a way things are; and he is not the great sage, he is just a monkey. Maybe a monkey that is an awesome martial artist, but, really, he’s basically just a monkey.
…
Don’t tell him I said that.
Responding to “Alone and Detached”
Not only does the overall character of Jimmy cause the reader to be detached from his state of being, it makes him a downright alien life form. I don’t think Jimmy is meant to be relatable; I think that the reader is meant to perceive Jimmy with the same disdain that everyone in his world shows towards him. Amy is super-sweet, and considerably innocent (well, as innocent as anyone can ever be in a “raw around the edges ‘cuz that’s how real life is!” indie work…), yet she frequently loses patience with Jimmy, only to subtly reassert patience in order to progress the dialogue. That loss of patience is something I greatly sympathize with; as a reader, I continually realized that everything Jimmy does, I would do differently. Not a little differently, in a “matter of taste” kind of way, but rather in a “I wouldn’t even get myself into that situation, and even if I did, I wouldn’t react to it in a creepy, sexually repressed, yet still completely inert” kind of way. Jimmy simply glides from situation to situation, without truly acting or reacting. His decision to go see his father, which is a rather large deal, is made with a minimum of emotion, reflection, or any kind of thought at all, really. And how does he feel about his father’s revelation of Amy? Well, after lingering on his father’s word choice (“mistake”), his feelings mostly subside. If they are there at all when they meet, he doesn’t act on them in any degree. Like every other dialogue in Jimmy’s life, he mutters semi-incomprehensibly when he does manage to speak, and leaves the other participant to assume what they may about him; Jimmy’s father was left with the assumption that he had a girlfriend, for example.
Either Jimmy is secretly a brilliant yet covert conversationalist who expertly deceives others into a false sense of security, or he’s one concussion short of a coma, if you know what I mean.
My final verdict is that he is detached and unrelatable, as an artistic choice on Chris Ware’s behalf, and it is ultimately up to the reader whether or not it is their cup of tea to read several hundred pages about someone with whom they secretly (or not so secretly) hate.
Searchers: “Getting in Touch with My Inner Racist” and “Random Educational Suppliment”
Wow.
So, I found two sources that seemed applicable, and they could not be more different.
First, lets go with The Random Educational Suppliment!
It is a presentation that was arranged to coincide with a lesson for a 100 level course from a college in Canada. It goes into a lot of depth about the various stylistic choices of Maus. It is long, but has some pretty cool points. If you’re just going to skim it, check out “The Beast Fable” section; it talks about the representation of humans as animals, and the precident for such in other fiction.
Now, I found that one, because this next one I found is really interesting, but almost completely irrelevant to our topic…
Art Spiegelman wrote an article entitled “Getting in Touch with My Inner Racist” for a publication called Mother-Jones. It is worth reading, but has very little connection to Maus. The article is a rather candid, albiet cursory, look at Art Spiegelman’s perception of his own (sometimes subconscious) racism. Like I said, this one is a really interesting.
Check it out!
~ Alex Flores
First Readers – Charlton and Watchmen
The characters in Watchmen are all based on those of a publisher, Charlton, that (at the time) had been newly acquired by DC. As Alan Moore’s original draft would have left many of these characters dead or indisposed, he was asked to create new characters instead. Although they didn’t get used in Watchmen, many of the Charlton characters are still in use by DC today.
In context to my current rereading of Watchmen, I am incredibly happy that The Blue Beetle, The Question, and Captain Atom (their doppelgangers are Night Owl, Rorschach, and Dr. Manhattan, respectively) did not find their way into the story. Although this is partly because of a sort of protectiveness I have for the characters, it is also because would also ruin the integrity of the work itself. Alan Moore brings these new characters to life (if it can be called that) in a cold, dark world, which requires them to behave a certain way; if they had even a tiny bit of back story prior to page 1 of Watchmen, it would be hard to take this attitude for granted. By choosing to use fresh characters, Alan Moore is granted infinitely more control over his entire universe. As a result, there is a cold underlying feeling that runs through the story, and each of its characters. As a reader, this ‘chill’ is constantly reinforced by the characters behaving as if something major is about to break; we believe this sentiment so much so, that when it actually happens, it isn’t completely out of left field (even if it is in the form of a space squid).
Ultimately, the DC comics, Alan Moore, and the readers got so much more from his creations than they would have if he had chosen to keep his original roaster of characters. For the Charlton characters, their purity was kept intact even as they all got to live another day, while Alan Moore got to make his world as dark and gritty as it absolutely needed to be.