Page 52, or the Ghost of Bechdel Past

The concern of Fun Home is the relationship between Alison and her father: his particularity in the style adorning their home, his demeanor towards his children, his homosexual affairs, and his alleged suicide that occurs highly coincidentally with Alison’s coming out to her parents. There are indications that the Bechdel children suffered trauma from their father in life, but his essence lingers in his children even after he dies, which makes their behavior at his funeral something to inspect and scrutinize. On page fifty-two, the frames reveal the funeral for their father as Alison and her siblings may have seen it The top two frames on the page split an image of Alison looking at her father’s corpse and are loaded with subtext. The frames split the image in such a way that draws the reader’s eye in a personal way, such that we are seeing what Alison might have seen in that instant. The somber, shaded background emphasizes the focus on Mr. Bechdel’s corpse. His face has dour lines and a small, stiff scowl, characteristic of his demeanor in life. If it remains on his face after death, the idea is that the effect of his personality on Alison and her brothers would remain as well: a ghost of Bechdel Past. The largest, and arguably most significant frame on the page, is an image of the three Bechdel children before their father’s coffin. The background was unimportant to the overall idea of the frame, as the quintessential information is on the faces of the children, particularly in their eyes. A reader may note that none of the children seem to be looking at their father’s face, with uncomfortable expressions on their faces. It is as if they wanted to be done with the wake and bury the man before them, to leave him in the past. If the significance of this frame should be underscored, look no further than the next frame where Alison’s eyes point right back at the large frame. Another interesting detail in the next frame is the striking likeness of the “pinch-funeral director” to Alison’s father, recalling him from the grave in appearance and profession. This detail, paired with the final frame on the frame in the bottom-right corner with the subtextually charged touch that this ghostly likeness of the father awkwardly carries out to Alison’s arm. This could be argued to be the father’s persistence to haunt Alison made incarnate. The process of tracing, omitting, and annotating the frames without the text of the page illuminated a lot of what is present and understood inferentially from the images even without the text. Noticing the small details available through the pictorial representation in “Fun Home” is as important as analyzing the text that makes up the other portion of the story, for the frames give a sharpness to the spaces and faces of the story that words would not have. It gives the reader a greater ability to enter the story and to scrutinize the dynamics therein.