Through her attention to the
details of her father’s home décor in her childhood house, Alison Bechdel uses the
graphic novel genre to show the oppressive and lonely hobby of her
father and its effect on people within the home. Many of the panels stand as isolated depictions of rooms, fractured from each other through the graphic novel form. I attempted to recapture these feelings in
poetry by translating three panels of Bechdel’s first house into three
coordinating stanzas.
First Home
In the mirror, she could see herself
but she never looks—hard gold wood,
cloth & can & will it always
be like this? It won’t always be.
but she never looks—hard gold wood,
cloth & can & will it always
be like this? It won’t always be.
Others, old, kind, wander
through and almost smash
into her father’s walls of silence.
through and almost smash
into her father’s walls of silence.
“The Library.” “The Library.”
Don Quixote, windmill-lost,
gilt too high to touch,
velvet holds back the sun,
as the devil watches us
read to keep our minds lit.
Don Quixote, windmill-lost,
gilt too high to touch,
velvet holds back the sun,
as the devil watches us
read to keep our minds lit.
--
In the
same way I choose what images to put in my lines and what to leave out when I
write poems, it seems that comic writers and artists have to make the
same decisions about what is represented in their panels. I tend to write one
complete image, often multi-faceted but still independent, per stanza, so I
feel as though I could “translate” my poems into comics. This inspired me to
try to write stanzas for some of Alison Bechdel’s panels.
Bechdel was able to use the static, isolated panels in her graphic novel to represent the different rooms in her house and the funeral home in a way that reflected her feelings about them. I decided to focus on her family house in particular and attempted to render in verse both the opulence and loneliness of the rooms her father so painstakingly furnished. Each stanza coincides with a specific panel in Fun Home.
The first stanza is based on the panel where a young Bechdel polishes a large mirror (16). I tried to illustrate her disconnection from the furniture her father chose (“she never looks”) even as she is forced to clean it (“cloth & can”). I also wanted to capture her wish for her own future home to be different through the last two lines of the stanza (14). I ended it with the word “be” to sound more ominous and to represent the loss of her father and her original family dynamic.
Bechdel was able to use the static, isolated panels in her graphic novel to represent the different rooms in her house and the funeral home in a way that reflected her feelings about them. I decided to focus on her family house in particular and attempted to render in verse both the opulence and loneliness of the rooms her father so painstakingly furnished. Each stanza coincides with a specific panel in Fun Home.
The first stanza is based on the panel where a young Bechdel polishes a large mirror (16). I tried to illustrate her disconnection from the furniture her father chose (“she never looks”) even as she is forced to clean it (“cloth & can”). I also wanted to capture her wish for her own future home to be different through the last two lines of the stanza (14). I ended it with the word “be” to sound more ominous and to represent the loss of her father and her original family dynamic.
The second stanza is after the panel where an older lady visiting the house nearly runs into a large mirror (20). Bechdel says the house was designed to hide her father’s “shame,” thus I represented the idea of his shrouded life by calling the mirror “walls of silence.” I chose this panel because I felt it illustrated how deeply entrenched Bechdel's father's self-consciousness was in their home's design, and how it even affected those outside of the family.
The last stanza deals with the library as captured on the large panel on page 60. I found it interesting how she said that usually “only landed gentry” could refer to a room as “The Library” without sounding pompous, but her father’s study could go by no other name. I tried to capture this by repeating the room name in italics. I represented the Don Quixote statue as lacking his windmill, which served as a symbol to his delusions of grandeur in Cervantes’ novel. Bechdel’s own voice does not possess a quixotic outlook, and so I felt it would be fitting to draw attention to the statue’s missing windmill. The gilt and velvet descriptions both represent the untouchable and oppressive quality of her father’s décor. Mephistopheles is the devil from the Faust story, so I represented the statue of him as a grim guardian of the family’s books.
Through her panels illustrating the opulence of her father’s interior decor, Alison Bechdel is able to use the graphic novel form to draw attention to specific details of the home and how isolating they were. By adapting three of these panels into verse, I hoped to draw further attention to some of these connections between physical detail and emotion.
Wow, this was a really unique/personalized and interesting analysis. I never would've considered translating panels into poems, or vice versa, but you captured the feel and distance really well. I like how each stanza correlates to a specific panels; it further reflects the parallels of stanzas making up a poem while panels make up a comic. Sometimes it's easy to skim over each essential part of a work in deference to looking at it as a whole, but each panel in Fun Home can be seen as important.
ReplyDeleteI especially liked what you said about the mirrors, how "it illustrated how deeply entrenched Bechdel's father's self-consciousness was in their home's design, and how it even affected those outside of the family." I hadn't considered before how not only the house affects the family itself, but those outside it as well. There's another scene where an aunt comes over showing the house off to her friends, and it's interesting to think how no one else can see the strange disjointedness of the house and family because they're too caught up in the maze-like structure of the home.
That line about the library "but her father would go by no other name" is so monumental when seen in the foreground of Fun Home. I see that as Bruce's lifetime motto. Whether it is trying to figure out the old patterns that were used on the house. Or try to "adjust" Alison into the perfect daughter that he wants her to be. In Bruce's world I think he reigns supreme above all others. I think this is the reason for the silence and for many of the things that come into his life. When the care and consideration of others is taken out of a persons life, things can go astray. This is possibly where the molestation of the little boys comes from. Doesn't seem like he's really thinking about their well being in those moments.
ReplyDeleteThis is such a creative way to approach the assignment, and I loved your poem!
ReplyDeleteAt first I had a hard time getting into the graphic-novel style of "Fun Home." I never thought to compare its structure to another writing form. It is very similar to poetry. When I took my poetry class we used a form where we took the first line of another poet's work and then continued from there. This reminds me of the way Bechdel uses illustrations from Charles Addams' Addams Family comics. At first the inclusion of these images really distracted me, but now that I have another style to compare it to, it doesn't seem unusual at all. Lots of literature alludes to other works, so it makes since that Bechdel alludes to another cartoon artist's work.
Again, really great comparison!
Wow, all I can say is bravo! As I am an incredible fan of poetry and poetic-prose, I love how you have associated the artistic selection of Bechdel's Fun Home with the artistic expression of poetry. Also, I can see that you were very meticulous in how you wrote your stanzas to coordinate with the the panels from the graphic novels. Of note though is that the lines of your stanzas are more disjointed in their cohesion than Bechdel's panels. Where I would agree with you that Fun Home does depict some degree of isolation, I would say that it does so in a manner that is more fluid. When using just words it is hard to express a feeling of isolation without directly speaking the word or without conveying the idea through choppy wording or with a choppy sentence structure. Regardless, I think you have done a wonderful job in articulating the idea of isolation in your poem.
ReplyDelete