Queer Cultures, Essay Example

Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel “Fun House” can be read as an auto-biographcial narrative that examines fundamental issues of sexuality and gender. In principle, the work may be understood in terms of how queer sexualities interact within a society defined by heteronormativity. This interaction takes the form of a certain conflict, most explicitly demonstrated in the various traumas that are experienced by Allison throughout the narrative. Although this trauma can be understood from a diverse number of perspectives, for example, issues of neglect, suicide, abandonment and sexuality, perhaps these various perspectives on trauma may be interpreted as Bechdel’s presentation of the complex number of factors that constitute our individual gendered subjectivities.

The figure of Alison is above all defined by a certain epistemology of the closet, whereby her view upon the world is above all determined by a position of exclusion: Alison is trying to think through such exclusion and what it means, for example, in her careful analysis of both her and her father’s sexuality. This exclusion is consistent with a notion of compulsory heterosexuality, such that the sexuality based traumas of the story are a product of the tension Alison experiences in regards to being different from the norm. Following Sedgwick’s account of epistemology of the closet, the binary oppositions of homosexuality and heterosexuality must be overcome, insofar as such oppositions are products of speech acts that are entirely determined by the heteronormative. Accordingly, the queering of these definitions from the position of exclusion is a fundamental gesture of Bechdel’s work: her narrative occupies the queer position of the excluded, as she attempts to examine how heterosexual and homosexual binary oppositions sustain each other. The epistemology of the closet is a position beyond this binary to the extent that it is the position of total exclusion: this is a certain epistemological freedom that allows one to understand how the binary of homosexuality and heterosexuality is socially constructed.

The story itself is an expression of this process of understanding Alison re-writes and her-examines her life in Fun House. This examination is a fundamentally queer creation, whereby she attempts to re-define her existence away from this binary opposition. This can explain the narrative’s usage of comedy and tragedy, creating a form of humor that is entirely her own. Furthermore, the aim of the text may also be an attempt to create a queer environment that surpasses a society that has very strict rules of gender performance. By telling her difficult personal story in a narrative form Alison essentially undergoes a self-therapy, reconciling the difficult incidents of her life by primarily understanding that these incidents are socially constructed. That is to say that Alison begins to understand that the exclusion she feels is primarily the result not of her own character, but rather the result of a society whose norms are radically different than her own.

In this regard, Alison’s narrative reflects some of the key Freudian concepts of sexuality on a multiple number of levels. Firstly, there is a sense in which Alison relies on a Freudian account of homosexuality. For Freud, homosexuality is not a product of the biological, but rather a product of social narratives. For this reason, Alison’s expression of her sexuality can only be realized as an expression of her own life story and the social relations that formed her.

Secondly, Alison’s narrative and putting her story into words and pictures suggests an attempt of making conscious her unconscious experiences within the story. This will allow her to better understand them, such that the entire process of “Fun Home” becomes a therapeutic act.

Thirdly, some of the primary conflicts in the novel are products of the constant interplay between sex and death, or between Eros and Thanatos. The reliance on these two themes in Fun Home suggests a wholly Freudian view of existence, as the relation between Eros and Thanatos are constantly mentioned in the story, such as in the figure of her father, who is essentially defined by Alison in terms of his sexuality and his death (suicide).

Despite these clear Freudian influences, it is nevertheless apparent that Bechdel wants to give a fairly complex account of gender roles. That is to say, Bechdel does not merely want to define gender roles, but through art, allow these gender roles to express themselves autonomously, without any expression of shame.