Tag Archives: art

Format Only Reinforces Literary Status

I think that Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home most definitely qualifies as literature.  From a basic perspective I don’t believe its Tragicomic standing removes its literary aspect, but actually enhances it. On one basic level, children’s lit is full of comics and pictures, but it remains literature. I think the only reason that anyone would be hesitant to award literary qualification is if they believe comics cannot aid in telling a story, and a true one at that. Fun Home tracks one woman’s exploration of her identity within the confines of her father’s death/suicide, in an insightful thought provoking manner. The visual aspect of the piece functions as a form of symbolic words, it sometimes conveys something that would be too difficult to explain. On the first page we see a young Bechdel interacting with her father, in what would take more than a page to explain we see and understand when our eyes meet page. Their relationship is one of reluctance, her father lays on the floor reading, and is hesitant to lift his daughter up above him and play. Bechdel’s face is obscured the whole time, which hints at come sort of coming complexity, while their physical parallel position hints at their later similarities in life.

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