Vol. 6, Issue 2, Part C (2024)

The paper discusses the deeper levels on which Alison Bechdel represents and questions gender and sexuality with visual languages unique to comics in her “Fun Home”. Through the analysis of Bechdel's visual symbolism, panel composition, and interplay between text and image, this study reveals how the format of the graphic novel conveys complex queer identity and bodily experience in ways unique to this format. The graphic representation of the body—Bechdel's own and those of her family members—acts as a headstrong aspect inseparably tied to the medium through which issues of gender, sexual orientation, and identity are constructed but also deconstructed. It focuses on how Bechdel portrayed her coming-of-age process to self-realisation and coming out as a lesbian, while her father was concealing his homosexuality and the event of his death. In a peculiar way, the graphic narrative does an intricate look through its performance at how gender and sexuality are performed, hidden, and revealed within a family environment. This paper argues that “Fun Home” does a lot more than just a traditional memoir by using forms of visuality to express the fluidity and complexity of queer identities in ways written text alone simply could not. The paper that follows explores the broader stakes of Bechdel's work for an understanding of the intersections between visual culture and queer theory more generally. “Fun Home” challenges normative representations of gender and sexuality through the portrayal of the body as a site of personal and political meaning, offering a compelling visual narrative that implicates contemporary discussions on identity and self-representation.