Nowadays, the debate of homosexuality has become a very controversial topic
among people, creating different points of view about many aspects that play an
important role in the lives of homosexual and not homosexual people. Aspects like,
the legal recognition and acceptance of same-sex marriages, civil unions,
domestic partnerships and adoption are the most controversial requests by
homosexual people today.
The book Fun Home, subtitled A Family Tragicomic, is a 2006 graphic
memoir by the American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, author of the comic strip
Dykes to Watch out For. It chronicles the author's childhood and youth in rural
Pennsylvania, United States, focusing on her complex relationship with her
father. The book addresses themes of sexual orientation, gender roles, suicide,
emotional abuse, dysfunctional family life, and the role of literature in
understanding oneself and one's family. Fun Home has been both a popular and critical success, and spent two
weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. In The New York Times Sunday Book
Review, Sean Wilsey called it "a pioneering work, pushing two genres
(comics and memoir) in multiple new directions. On the other hand, Fun Home
also generated controversy from different public libraries developing a rejection
from people who do not feel identify with the main topic discuss in the book
that was homosexuality.
Another example when we talk about homosexuality and comic can be Batman
y Robin. They were the first cartoon characters accused of homosexual
superheroes for living together and wear capes like a couple.
Fredric
Wertham afirmó en su libro Seduction of the Innocent (La seducción de los
inocentes) que:
“Las historias
de Batman son psicológicamente homosexuales. [...] Las historias del tipo de
Batman podían incitar a los niños hacia las fantasías homosexuales, de una
forma de la que serían inconscientes. [...] Solo alguien que ignore los
fundamentos de la psiquiatría y la psicopatología del sexo puede no darse
cuenta de la sutil atmósfera de homoerotismo que domina las aventuras del
maduro Batman y su joven amigo Robín”
As we notice since many years ago, homosexuality has become in a hard
topic where the society is always attacking it as something immoral, unnatural
or inappropriate for many people that condemn
homosexuality as an abomination, as a sin. In spite of Fun Home has many important aspects to talk, homosexuality
is the trigger among the participants of the family and at the same time it
reveal behaviors, ideas opinions and thoughts never mentioned among this
peculiar family.
Another important aspect in the book Fun Home is the father like a
representation of repression, pain and frustration about many points in which
Alison had to hide ideas, opinions and other aspects about her life as a child,
teenager and adult developing different behaviors in which Alison had to live
different emotions like her homosexuality and the death of his father.
To sum up, Fun Home is a good example of a graphic novel and the use of
comics as a tool of a representation about the Alison life. Each image has a
real emotion in a specific time in which the family was the principal
character. On the other hand, we can noticed not only the negative aspects
about it, also Alison shows positive situations in where maybe in some cases
her family was funny, sarcastic and happy.
REFERENCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fun_Home
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2015/08/28/essay-experience-teaching-fun-home-and-why-graphic-novel-ideal-college-students
