Wax On, Wax Off

Gay men aren't supposed to be hairy...are they?

From the opening airplane scene, something hit me before any of the words did: Alison's father is one hairy man. Springy and dense, it coats Bruce's arms like a poison. I feel like Bechdel even emphasizes her father's hirsuteness in certain frames, such as the numerous shots of a shirtless Bruce or a reclining Bruce in bed, to make him look more like a neanderthal than a father. It's all part of Bruce's dualities. His distant attitudes towards his family, his hairiness embodied, juxtaposed against his love of fashion, aesthetics, and art, his delicate facets. Alison certainly doesn't view her father as a paragon of warmth, and his hairiness reflects this attitude which is surprisingly prevalent even outside the Bechdel home. Beyond the gay bear culture, hairy men - especially in the 2000s pop culture rift - are generally stereotyped as slobs, simpletons, sleazeballs, "funny men" (but never as desirable men), or just all-around unattractive male figures. I mean, look at Robin Williams, The Diceman, Steve Carell, Danny Devito, and James Gandolfini. These actors all make a living playing characters fulfilling at least one of these personality traits, and in the case of Gandolfini and Devito, even have the unfortunate double whammy of being balding and overweight in addition to furry. How many children grow up wanting to look like them? Unfortunately, while Gandolfini is an exceedingly talented actor, he probably isn't an object of lust to "average" people. Though Bruce might have been as hairy as he is depicted in the graphic novel, I think it's primarily Alison taking artistic license with her character, albeit in a subtle and wholly relevant way (just look at the gay subtext involved in Bruce's hairiness alone - bears vs. twinks, hairy vs. waxed, it's a common topic within the LBGT community). Bechdel sets up her novel with these dualities, and it's a frequently visited theme, these contrasts, in just the first chapter alone.

Alison wastes no time in describing her father as "libidinal, manic, martyred," for example. In addition to the libidinal portion foreshadowing his sexual dalliances with students and the nanny, each word Alison uses to describe Bruce appeal to an entirely different portion of his personality. These dualities have been a common theme in everything we've read thus far. What I really latched onto was the word 'libidinal,' however. For someone who looks like a conservative blowhard, it's hard to imagine him sleeping around, at least in my mind. And then we are even presented with the dualities between Alison and her father, as well as their relationship and, in my opinion, Alison's hypocrisy. She criticizes her father for being emotionless and cold when she even describes herself as the "spartan to his Greek" in comparison to her father. "This is the wallpaper for my room? But I hate pink! I hate flowers!" exclaims Alison, as the comic depicts her eyes sinking to the back of her skull - in tandem with her heart, most likely. "Tough titty" is the only reaction Alison provokes from her father. "What's the point of making something so hard to dust?" questions Alison while buffering a citadel-shaped chair (note the irony: the top of the chair has three crosses on the top, and I don't it has something to do with anything as lightweight or as obvious as the fact that the next scene shows the Bechdel family in church). "It's beautiful," replies her father, stoic-faced as usual. Does her father have more than one facial expression? It doesn't look like it. His face doesn't even change after Alison, "having little practice with the gesture" of kissing, "grabs his hand and busses the knuckles lightly as if he were a bishop or an elegant lady." In fact, Alison's father is both of these things. A bishop and an elegant lady. His coldness is nearly clerical, and his interests, his "designer cologne," his caring "if the necklines don't match," are like a debutante's. The religious undertones in the chair Alison was polishing is bizarrely indicative of her relationship with her father, as well. Though her father is strong and rigid like the chair is, appearance-wise, he needs Alison - other people, his male students, the nanny, even his wife - to maintain these appearances. He needs to be cared for. He needs to be polished himself. He's really like a child inside. His self-loathing, too, is even dependent upon the attitudes of other people in their relation to himself. The father's children and wife keep up the image that he Like Alison alludes to, everything falls into place like an elaborate jigsaw. Not even the church has a more difficult to understand hierarchy. Speaking of religion, religious themes seem to pop up throughout the book, but perhaps the most prevalent involves Bechdel's incorporation of classical myth into her story.

The Daedalus and Icarus myth is featured prominently in the first chapter when Bechdel describes the relationship between her and her father. "Then there are those famous wings. Was Daedalus really stricken with grief when Icarus fell into the sea? Or just disappointed by the design of failure?" Icarus is an overdone myth to namecheck in art at this point, but it isn't here where Bechdel applies a totally unique spin to one of the most famous pieces in the Metamorphosis. She approaches seemingly overdone topics like gender issues as if no one had ever tackled them before her. When both were prepared for flight, Daedalus "warned Icarus not to fly too high, because the heat of the sun would melt the wax, nor too low, because the sea foam would soak the feathers." Whether intentionally or not, Ovid's piece on Daedalus and Icarus is easily broken apart by deconstructive literary theory, because what Ovid doesn't mention through Daedalus' speech is the most important part of the myth when parallel to Fun Home. It's Icarus, of course. Daedalus doesn't want Icarus to fly too high, for the sun would melt the /wings/, nor to fly too low, as the water would soak the /feathers/. What about Icarus himself? If the sun could melt a pair of wings imagine what it could do to supple human flesh. Likewise, don't pores soak water the same way feathers do? However, Daedalus doesn't mention anything about Icarus when he's actually warning his son. The wings are Daedalus' only concern. The artifice themselves; /his/ artifice, not the artificee. That's not to say Daedalus doesn't care about his son (for all we know their relationship could be a whole lot more complicated than what is presented by Ovid, and it most likely is considering Daedalus' reaction to Icarus' death), but deconstructionist theory is all about what isn't shown rather than what is, and what isn't shown is any indication that Daedalus recognizes his son beyond the created wings strapped to his back.