For this blog post I wanted to focus on Fun Home’s biggest quality that differentiates it from other Coming of Age novels: the fact that its a graphic novel. Bechdel deciding to tell her narrative through almost entirely visually adds an extra layer of conveying emotions than any other book. This is through Bechdel’s unique choices when it comes to color. The use of color can be very powerful and descriptive- even the lack of color is just as strong. Bechdel’s Fun Home maintains a very dull, green-toned color palette throughout the story that symbolizes her emotional distance, nostalgia, and the subtle tension all related to her relationship with her father.
Emotional Distance
Bechdel choosing the color green to portray her narrative is very impactful and evokes a feeling that contrasts all other colors. Green itself is associated with analytical views, nothing like choosing red, blue, or yellow which invoke stronger emotions (such as happiness, sadness, anger). Green is one of those colors that isn’t commonly used in terms of feeling. Relating to Fun Home, the choice of green reflects Bechdel’s analytical approach to recounting her childhood and relationship to her father. Its a color that because its not commonly used, can have a lot of meanings. Its complicated, just like Bechdel’s relationship with her father and the circumstances that he died in. Not only is the color significant, but the tone of the green as well. Bechdel chose to tell her narrative in a desaturated tone and restricted herself to only green hints towards her restricted and hidden emotions from her childhood.
Nostalgia
Expanding on the dull green tone, there's a theme throughout the book specifically when Bechdel recalls deep memories from her childhood that use a more faded green. This faded green during memories from her childhood gives these panels a more dreamlike-nostalgia feeling that really sets it apart from other sections of her novel. Focusing on Bechdel herself, the hazy green during her childhood memories could be a hint towards her inconsistencies and unreliableness as a narrator, because the story is told from entirely her perspective. It gives the whole novel a feeling of uncertainty, which I feel reflects Bechdel’s own moments of uncertainty. She questions herself throughout the book, both specific details but also her own emotions towards the bizarre circumstances her father died to. This dull green tone feels very neutral, like a safety net for Bechdel to make assumptions and mistakes.
This is such an interesting way of interpreting the pictures in the book. I honestly didn't notice any of these things in the moment, but looking back it seems like this is really purposeful. I think it's interesting that the main emotion that you saw that coincided with certain colors were ones that reflected the deep and complicated feelings Bechdel had. It seems like she used these to show the reader feelings that even she isn't fully aware of. Awesome post!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad someone had enough knowledge about art to write a blog post about the art in Fun Home, because I sure didn't, but it's such an important part about the novel that it would be a shame not to talk about it. I think you make a really interesting point about the fact that green isn't a color that is often used to convey emotion (at least compared to red, yellow, and blue, which are very clearly evocative of certain emotions), and how this represents Alison's unemotional perception of her childhood. This was a really interesting blog!
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought of the color palette in this novel as associated with "nostalgia" before, with a more "faded" green attending the frames that depict distant, hazy memories. It is interesting that so many of these memories seem NOT to be fond or particularly "happy," but nostalgia doesn't necessarily depend on an idealized view of the past. This book is all about trying to understand and recapture a faded past *in light of new information and context*, and the drawings are not "the past" in some unfiltered way but actually the artist's subjective and emotion-injected reconstruction of that past. The color palette might be seen to reflect that element of subjectivity--these frames do not show "what happened" in some objective sense but rather "how Alison remembers it" AND "how Alison has now revised those memories in light of recent revelations."
ReplyDeleteThe color to me reads more of a dull blue (in sort of an aqua range!), but nonetheless, I think all your points still stand. It's far from a vibrant sky color, and I think that sort of ties into your point of her using dull tones to create a dream-like vibe. I think it's also similar to how we see depictions of reality looking quite a lot more colorful than in real life. She sort of draws this back and uses dull, muted tones to keep the book more real, and also just emotionally more grounded with its consistency.
ReplyDeleteReally amazing post! I thought about the colors in the book before reading this, but I had a completely different idea about it. I saw the book as a dull blue (Like Sandaru said) and thought that it had to do with the anecdote where Bruce wouldn't let her color her coloring page with the color blue. But I 100% think that your analysis makes significantly more sense because it's gives us a feeling of coldness and lack of emotion.
ReplyDeleteHi Alyssa! The color palette is quite interesting as the pages never change from their gray and green hues. It gives the book a somber feeling and the usage of green as the primary color used in this novel is fascinating how it can change the reader's perspective and really transport them into the story. Alison recalling her childhood in these hues also stuck out to me as describing the hidden feelings from her adolescence and the theme of identity in this story. Great job!
ReplyDeleteThis was a super unique post Allysa! The book's literary elements are so powerful and its story is so immersive that sometimes I forget it's a graphic novel. However, your post made it really clear how much of an impact the small details in the visual elements impacts the experience and feeling in this story. I didn't know that small changes such as shading could have such a huge impact on emotion.
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