Looking into Bruce Bechdel

 




    In the book Fun Home, we go over the life of Alison Bechdel and the life of her family. Mainly being Alison's father. What makes Fun very different from what most of the coming of age novels that we are reading, is that fact that the protagonist "Alison Bechdel" is actual the real Alison Bechdel. While most of the other coming of age books have protagonists that are not the real authors, but they have similar experiences to the authors. That detail I always though was interesting and cool about the book. Back to the book, I think that Alisons dad (the person we mainly focus on throughout the novel) is one of the most complex and interesting characters in the story. Furthermore, one of the most important pages in the book reflects on Bruce's decisions, and adds a lot more to his character. All it took was just two pages. In this blog post I am going to talk about mainly the roy picture as well as talk about the information we learn about Bruce Bechdel.

    I want to first talk about the depiction of the roy picture in the novel. We can see from Alison's depiction of the image, her fathers skill in getting the right position. Alison says and I quote: "The Blurriness of the photo gives it an ethereal, painterly quality. Roy is gilded with morning seaside light. His hair is an aureole. In fact, the picture is beautiful. As most of us know since we read the novel, Bruce Bechdel was a man who is gay but he is closeted. While the picture is "beautiful", it is also real disturbing since we learned about Bruce being a closeted gay person and the picture of and almost nude 17 year old Roy doesn't give us the most reassuring thoughts in our heads. The very interesting part of this picture is that the pages of this picture are right in the middle of the book. In addition, it takes 2 pages, no other image in this book two pages. It is like Alison Bechdel is shoving it into our faces, trying to make us at it. What is even more interesting is that normally a picture that is this disturbing, well me personally I wouldn't share it with the public. 

    This section won't be a long as the last, but I want to continue with a bit of the description that Alison gave. I want focus predominantly on this part I quote: "But would I be assessing its aesthetic merits so calmly if it were of a seventeen-year-old girl? why am I not properly outraged. When reading this part of the description that Alison gave, I had two thoughts on why she was not completely outraged. The first reason why is because, she has some sympathy for her father and she kinda off understands why he did this. She understands the situation of living in a place that is very Homophobic. Like Alison says in the end of the novel. It is a failed "Hero's Journey", Bruce was about to leave his hometown and then he came right back and was closeted. While Alison was able to come out as a Lesbian. My second thought was more a social thing, and it is a social idea that is still here to this day. It is that men getting sexually assaulted is seen as less of a big deal than women getting sexually assaulted. It is unfortunate, since most men who get sexually assaulted don't speak out because of the embarrassment and social norms. 

I don't really know how to conclude such a very heavy and very disturbing scene in this book. I think just overall, this was one of the most heavy but also the most important scene in the book. It honestly leaves you with more questions than answers. I guess to conclude, the scene just shines a whole new light on Bruce. I mostly feel upset by this picture, but, I do feel a bit of sympathy understanding the pressure that Alison's father had to go though.



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