Gothic Pallor

The man went to the library and walked over to the online catalog. The weather had chilled, so the leather jacket he wore for warmth hissed as he sat on the chair. It felt good to sit down, he thought. Typing a few words into the keyboard, he found what I was looking for, a book called When The Emperor Was Divine, and wrote down where the novella was located and went to retrieve it promptly. The library's floorboards crackled in time with the rustling of his leather coat.

Do I sound like Julie Otsuka yet?

Forgive the patronizing tone, because I absolutely love Otsuka's minimalism, but just look at the bottom of the first page: "She no longer had to squint but she squinted out of habit anyway. She read the sign from top to bottom anyway and then, still squinting, she took out a pen and read the sign from top to bottom again. The print was small and dark. Some of it was tiny. She wrote down a few words on the back of a bank receipt, then turned around and went home and began to pack." Of course, to say I'm on par with Otsuka is ridiculous. She's a baroque wordsmith, and I am not. This is writing intended to be read aloud. Between the many lists - "There were things they could take with them: bedding and linen, forks, spoons, plates, bowls, cups, clothes" - enunciated syllables, and journalistically short sentences, the story stays in the audience's head freshly and readily. You know Japanese wood carvings? Otsuka's writing is the cerebral equivalent, lotus blossoms, pallid faces, willowy, depressive figures, all etched simply.

Speaking of pallor, the color white makes frequent appearances in When The Emperor Was Divine. "She crossed California Street and bought several bars of Lux soap and a large jar of face cream at the Rumford Pharmacy." Lux soap is of great significance to Asian culture; specifically in regards to skin lightening. Asian women apparently go to ridiculous lengths to achieve the whitest skin possible because it is seen as immensely attractive by their society as a whole, that ivory pallor, and when you consider the 1940s setting as well as the American backdrop, the woman's desire to have whiter skin is much more understandable. She may just want to be seen as an American, to blend in or be accepted without issue, rather than viewed as a Japanese-American or, at worst, a foreigner despite living in America for over fifteen years. We ultimately don't know what the woman's motivations are, however. What I do know, though, is of Lux's strong connection to the goth subculture. It may seem ridiculous, but on the advice of some friends, I ordered Lux whitening soap from the Philippines last summer under the pretense it would make my skin bone-white. Well, it didn't exactly do this, but that doesn't stop the Lux brand from advertising itself as a skin lightener nor being commonly accepted as the best way to achieve lighter skin by mainstream Asian society (in my opinion, never mind the whitening aspect; it's capabilities as a moisturizer are overlooked and if Lux had a stronger presence in the US Dove would more forgotten than Ozymandias). The heavy presence of the color white goes way beyond just skin tone, as well: White Dog, dresses, frocks, soap itself, films, Dorothy Lamour (who, despite having olive skin, looked Irish-pale in pictures and movies during the time), moonlight, teeth.

"Teeth don't count."
"Teeth are essential."

Names are usually seen as essential, too. Names are fundamental to identity. "Thank you, Joe." Then the door slammed behind her and she was alone on the sidewalk and she realized that in all the years she had been going to Joe Lundy's store she had never before called him by his name. Joe. It sounded strange to her. Wrong, almost. But she had said it. She had said it loud. She had wished she had said it earlier," remarks the woman. Why is it that the Japanese-American family is never named - indeed, the woman doesn't even call her children anything other than "the boy" or "the girl" throughout the novel - yet the untitled woman calls others, people outside their family, by their first names with little hesitation? Even White Dog, an animal who is killed like an animal, is technically named. Otsuka may be trying to say something here, whether it's a comment on Japanese culture as a whole, or simply a remark about the family's tenacity and modesty, as their reluctance to attach names to themselves speaks loudly when juxtaposed against outside influences.

Perhaps the family's namelessness was intended to twist cultural statements, which are not usually seen as malleable, into something else entirely. "She took The Gleaners out of its frame and looked at the picture one last time. She wondered why she had let it hang in the kitchen for so long. It bothered her, the way those peasants were forever bent over above that endless field of wheat," says the woman. In either a darkly ironic statement, or a boldly defiant declaration, Otsuka plays around with Asian typicality: that women are wilting flowers, banded feet, well-poised objects of subservience. Considering Otsuka mentions "the woman, who did not always follow the rules, followed the rules" when describing her thoughts towards moving into the internment camps, in addition to emphasizing her individualistic streak with phrases like "sitting down on the landing with her dress pushed up above her knees and lighting a cigarette," (a woman smoking and wearing a dress above the knee during the 40s virtually spells out a lack of adherence to social mores) using The Gleaners painting and the woman's reaction to its realism is symbolically defiant - as well as foreshadowing the station, that of chattel, which the woman and her family will later occupy in the internment camp. Further imprisonment symbolism appears moments after the woman releases the family macaw from its cage. "Without the bird in the cage, the house felt empty," muses the woman, with deafening irony. In addition to being an obvious allusion to internment camps, the irony - that a house would feel empty without a captive soul within it - is biting. Cloak-and-dagger irony seems to be Otsuka's favorite vehicle to convey imagery and emotion, because the woman's emotional responses to outside events, nor her own inner thoughts, are rarely described in detail. Instead, they are shown to the audience, leaving meaningful interpretation of characters up to the readers.

Classroom Savagery

Mr. Wicher and Precious have a bizarre relationship. Though both characters share little screen time together, the few pages where they do interact with one another explore a unique dynamic, with malleable Precious fulfilling the noble savage stereotype to Mr. Wicher's cultured European.

For a child like Precious, who wants little more than to "change my seat to the front of the class," one would assume she'd be something of a teacher's pet, trying her best to please Mr. Wicher by whatever means necessary. Of course, assumptions don't even work for the status quo, which is definitely something Precious doesn't belong to. What the audience sees instead is a combination between classroom enforcer, willing but unable learner, brown-noser, and adversarial disruption. She creates a classroom persona around her intensely mercurial emotions. How many students could one second claim to confront the teacher angrily - "his face is red, he is shaking" - to genuinely exclaiming "shut up mutherfuckers I'm trying to learn something" to her classmates moments afterwards? It seems like most of the moments in Precious' math class are equally full of these dualities. "Mr. Wicher look at me confuse but grateful," says Precious, proudly, after "keeping those rowdy niggers in line" during math class. It's behavior more fitting for a warzone than a math classroom. Furthermore, Precious elaborates her defined role within Mr. Wicher's classroom to the audience by saying she's "like the polices for Mr. Wicher, I keep law and order," and of course, here is where the reality lines start to blur together. "I like him, I pretend he is my husband and we live somewhere in Wesschesser, wherever that is," muses Precious. Although Mr. Wicher "don't come to school looking like some of those nasty ass teachers," it is probably incredibly odd to the audience to imagine a teenage girl attaching herself to a math teacher who isn't particularly attractive-looking instead of someone like, say, (generic choices ahead) Brad Pitt or Orlando Bloom or some other hunk-of-the-month seen on the covers of girl-mags. What's most interesting to me, though, is that Precious makes no remarks about the physical attractiveness of any of the (admittedly few) male characters she comes in contact with throughout Push. For a teenager living in an increasingly image-based society, it's not only expected but even encouraged peerwise to make remarks about hot guys or people she'd love to crassly fuck, but she shows little signs of real shallowness. She justs wants a man to love her, regardless of what they may look like. It's touching and realistic, as depressed people generally lack an interest in sex, if a little jarring to an audience expecting to read the equivalent to a rambling teenybopper's diary throughout Push.

According to Precious, Mr. Wicher says she "has an aptitude for maff." This is confusing. Is Mr. Wicher mistaking Precious' class enforcer role for "maff" skills? Doubtful. Does he just feel bad for the girl, like he owes Precious some blase compliments in return for protecting him? I mean, pardon the excessive vanity of my language and everything, but how the hell does Mr. Wicher know Precious has any latent math talents if all she does, by her own admission, is sit down and shut up in class? Precious doesn't even recall the last time she wrote anything down the first time Miz Rain asks the class to keep a journal in Each One Teach One. In fact, she panics - she cries, wondering if she even belongs in Miz Rain's class because she can't do nearly everyone else can. Mr. Wicher really doesn't know Precious. He doesn't know Precious at all beyond whatever front she chooses to present in class that particular day. These empty compliments are all said to placate her, a "troubled student," from interrupting his teaching, and it's a common affront I absolutely have an issue with. Mr. Wicher is an enabler. Mr. Wicher leads her on. Mr. Wicher is just like all of the other professionals who have failed Precious, only his special brand of caring but not really caring comes in "a dope suit." I find it fitting that Sapphire chose to make a Mr. Wicher a male instead of female character, like the rest of the more important characters in Push, to illustrate how Precious' - and on an even grander scale, any "problem childs'" - welfare falls not on just one sex, one gender identity, one parent, nor one ethnicity. Blaming the mother? Well, what about the teacher who pity-passed a struggling student because he was too lazy to help out, or the counselor who didn't intervene when she knew a client was being beaten by her father? These parties are all equally responsible for passing the child's problem on to another person. It should be everyone's burden to bare, because it does take a village to raise a child - as well as a village destroy one unequivocally.

Dear Mr. Fantasy

Precious' life is as fantastical as her name would suggest. She's married to a white math teacher, lives in Westchester, is well-loved by both of her parents, and lights up the Apollo Theater as the best dancer the venue has ever seen. Of course, none of this is actually real. It all takes place inside her head.

I was struck immediately by the allegorical comparisons Sapphire creates between rape and dancing. Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz," a famous poem which compares a father's abuse of his son to a dance, a waltz, where the father's "whiskey stained breath" clings to his son like fists choking the life out of the child, runs paralellel to Push. Sapphire's uses Roethke's imagery and comparisons, that of a child retreating into a dance-like fantasy whenever they are abused by their father, throughout much of her novel. "Then I change stations, change bodies. I be dancing in videos! In movies! I be breaking, fly just a dancin'! Uhm humm heating up the stage at the Apollo for Doug E. Fresh or Al B. Shure. They love me! Say I'm one of the best dancers ain' no doubt of or about that!" However, unlike "My Papa's Waltz," which humanizes the father to some extent so we can understand why he is so abusive towards his child, none of this is present in Push. Instead, the audience is shown a father who basks in sleazy dualities. Dad compliments Precious (if it can be called a 'compliment') with "I'm gonna marry you," only to follow it up with "you as wide as the Mississppi" in the same sentence. Precious doesn't only retreat into fantasy when her father rapes her, either, as seen when she is "walking down Lennox when bad thoughts hit me I space out" to her first day at Each One Teach One. Additionally, fantasy is one of the few ways Precious copes with what she feels is a lack of intelligence - a disconnect from normalcy - on her part.

"Push the button, stupid, I tell myself. I push the button; I'm not stupid, I tell myself." There is abundant indecisiveness in nearly all of Precious' actions and reactions. Precious is shown projectig the same "mixed signals" her father thrusts onto her; it's all portrayed as a cyclical experience. Her self-image is topsy-turvy; she is at once confident and tough, but uncertain and vulnerable at the same time. In contrast to Precious' near-bullying attitude in Mr. Wicher's class, her reflections regarding her father - or lack thereof, really - approach gingerly stated levels of regret, uncertainty, and misunderstanding. "If he did he would I was like a white girl, a /real/ person, inside," muses Precious, noting how her father cares little for his daughter beyond shallow sexual gratification. Additionally, the 'white girl' symbolism, the dualities between black and white, is a repeated theme in Push. Although Precious boastingly says she believes Louis Farrakhan's stance that "crackers is the cause of everything bad," her actions, even the majority of her words, signal an altogether different (as well as confusing) opinion. While doting upon Mr. Wicher, she curses out Mrs. Lichenstein, for seemingly arbitrary reasons. To Precious, Mrs. Lichenstein is a "fat-ass bitch" irregardless of her being one of the few professionals who expresses an interest in helping her. It doesn't matter; what I noticed about Precious is her tendency to lash out at most of the women in her life, aggressively and defensively tossing around words like "bitch," "cunt bucket", and "whore" without consideration. With a mother like hers, should he even have a high opinion of other women in general? White men are barely even addressed throughout the book, but white women? At every turn. White women, black women, Jewish women, Spanish women; excepting the Spanish nurse who delivered Mongo, Carl, and Mr. Wicher, there is no such thing as a male presence in Push. Precious constantly makes demeaning remarks regarding how light-skinned certain black women are, especially in relation to the nurses at the hospital and her psychiatrist. Sapphire intentionally made nearly all of the characters in Push female. In addition to giving herself freedom to explore women's issues amongst African-Americans in Push, the all-female cast centralizes Push's main concepts - gender, incest, rape, racism - onto a singular, funneled identity. It serves to make the novel more easily digestible (i.e. more enjoyable for men who prefer not reading about "women's issues") as a whole. A more male viewpoint is given through Jermaine who, while a lamentingly underdeveloped character, stands out as a deviant amongst the cast appearance and personality-wise. Gender and ethnicity are two of the few aspects to Precious, her "black queen" self, which she can be unquestioningly proud of, while an ethnically-charged inferiority complex towards her intelligence guides much of Precious' other interactions with the rest of the world: Miz Rain, the principal, Mr. Wicher, her classmates. Sapphire tastefully captures the whirlwind reactions minorities may feel towards the majority like the author has experienced significant racial prejudice herself. I say tastefully, because Sapphire doesn't take the easy out and make her main character an Uncle Tom, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, a carbon copy of Louis Farrakhan's draconian politics, a follower. Precious is complex: while in the beginning doubt is integral to her character - awkward moments in Mr. Wicher's class, such as "his face is red, he is shaking, I back off, I have won, I /guess/" when she challenges the teacher - she begins to grow independence while in Each One Teach One. "I look at Miz Teacher's long, dreadlocky hair, look kinda nice but kinda nasty too," says Precious, initially with learned distaste until she quickly follows the statement up with the open-ended "I don't know how I feel about people with hair like that." In any one else such an unsure attitude would signal a lack of conviction or at worst, extreme flightiness, it's a much more meaningful action coming from Precious, to break away from her mother's coercive brainwashing, and a step in the right direction.

The queerest of the queer.

Boys in the girls room
Girls in the men's room
You free your mind in your androgyny
Boys in the parlor
They're getting harder
I'll free your mind and your androgyny

No sweeter a taste that you could find
Than fruit hanging ripe upon the vine
There's never been an oyster so divine
A river deep that never runs dry

The birds and bees they hum along
Like treasures they twinkle in the sun
Get on board and have some fun
Take what you need to turn you on

Behind closed doors and under stars
It doesn't matter where you are
Collecting jewels that catch your eye
Don't let a soul mate pass you by
Garbage - "Androgyny"

The 1980s was an androgynous renaissance: Annie Lennox rocked a crew cut better than most men on daytime MTV, enormous shoulder pads were in, the pageboy dominated, and a defiant Grace Jones blended gender mores to a distorted paste in mainstream films like Conan the Destroyer and A View To A Kill. Although published in 1996, Push is set during the 1980s, and infused with a strong relevance to the time period it lives through. Push is as a much a product of the era it swims in as it is a testament to the intolerance which overwhelmed 1980s popular culture.

Precious is unquestioningly the novel's main character, but what about her classmates at the alternative school? While one of my biggest gripes over Sapphire's novel is the stifling lack of detail given to characters other than Precious, Mama, and Miss Rain, this could have been done on purpose. Rita, Consuelo, Jermaine - these characters are all carbon outlines for the audience to fill in however they wish. However, with all of the classmates and their unique (if underdeveloped) personalities taken into consideration, it is Jermaine who I find the most interesting and substantial. Jermaine is first described by Precious as a "a girl my color in boy suit, look like some kinda butch." It's a minimal but evocative description. Perhaps intentionally, Sapphire's self-portrait on the back of the book's jacket was the first image that popped into my head here. Between the angular, squared-off haircut and jagged expression Sapphire even looks like a dead ringer for the aforementioned Grace Jones. I would not be surprised if Sapphire inserted herself the novel as a composite of both Miss Rain and Jermaine, using distinct parts of her personality to embody these two characters. It would certainly complement the duality-heavy characters found in all of the readings we have analyzed in our class so far. Each character represents two sides of the lesbian stereotype: the butch, male-aversive Jermaine - she responds with a blunt "good" when Consuelo makes the observation that there "ain' no guys in our class" - versus the "straight-acting" lipstick lesbian embodied by Blue Rain. However, Blue Rain is by no means a 'weak' character. For example, she has no problem reasoning against Precious' homophobia when the latter expresses her Louis Farrakhan-informed prejudice: "Miz Rain say Farrakhan is jive anti-Semitic, homophobic fool." Finally, Blue Rain attempts to even change Precious' attitudes through calm reasoning, a move that is somewhat successful thanks to Precious' respect for her teacher. "Ms Rain say homos not who rape, not homos who let me sit up not learn for sixteen years, not homos who sell crack fuck Harlem. It's true. Ms Rain the one who put the chalk in my hand, make me queen of the ABCs." Unlike the relatively foppish gay and lesbian characters portrayed throughout mainstream media, Sapphire's Blue Rain is confident, strong, and intensely passionate. She doesn't resort to meekly backing into a corner nor violence when her personality comes into question. Considering the rampant ignorance and prejudice surrounding the LBGT community during the early 1990s, when "Precious" was written, Miss Rain is a rare mainstream example of a positive lesbian role model.

Though the audience learns enough about Jermaine from the character herself, it is through Precious' observations on her classmate which sheds the most light on androgyny, sexuality, and mainstream attitudes towards the two controversial ideas, especially in relation to the novel's time period. In fact, Precious has a strong aversion to Jermaine from the beginning, when she moves away from the woman when her lesbianism is thrown out into the open because Precious "don't want no one getting the wrong idea about /me/. To Precious, lesbianism is "freaky deaky," and even though her and Jermaine are the same color, they are not (and might never be) on the same plane of existence: "We about the same color but I think thas all we got the same. I is /all/ girl. Don't know here." There is a sense of learned elitism Precious extols towards Jermaine solely due to the latter's sexuality and aesthetic; it's ironic considering Precious has an extreme inferiority complex as far as almost anything else is concerned, owing to her abusive upbringing. Sapphire, who is bisexual herself, uses Precious' ignorance allegorically to represent the prejudice deviant sexualities faced in the 80s . Likewise, this same ignorance is used by Sapphire to point out and criticize the discrimination African-Americans exhibit towards people of their own ethnicity. Sapphire even wishes she had a "light-skinned" boyfriend throughout the novel, indicating there are certain shades of all-inclusive prejudice directed /towards/ blacks, /from/ blacks. On an wider scale, Precious' attitudes are essentially a microcosm for the rest of the world's behavior towards the LBGT community.

An early insight into Jermaine's character comes through in Precious' observation over the androgynous character's name. "Jermaine, which I don't have to tell you is a /boy's/ name, say, "It's who you know and I know too many people in the Bronx baby." Names are an exceedingly important component to one's self-identity. Is Jermaine even her real name? Sapphire keeps this ambiguous. Ultimately the audience has no idea, because even Jermaine's story at the end of the book mentions nothing about how she was named. Furthermore, her full name is Jermaine Hicks. It's an ironic last name; I don't really need to point out why (Jermaine's distaste for "honkies", an integral part to her character, as she so often reminds the audience, plays a big part in the blackly humorous but subtle wordplay over her name), but let me just say that with a surname like that, I could certainly understand why she might have changed her first name.

Eros and Botany

Chapter 4 ends with a striking image of a house divided: a daughter and her father, engrossed in their personal paths, seen by the audience through two seperate windows. It's vivid imagery, not only from a symbolic point of view (windows alone are generally a pretty loaded symbol; just ask Hitchcock), but on a purely aesthetic perspective as well. We are seeing Bruce and Alison through unobfuscated windows to their personalities, and it's an allegory for Fun Home's concept. Bechdel's graphic novel is an intimate look into her relationship with with her father, albeit only viewed from inside her 'window', with illuminated insight into contrasts between the two characters. Since we are only given Bechdel's point of view, I feel like the novel is unfairly balanced towards her interpretation, biased; doubly so because Bruce is not alive to provide the audience with opinions to the contrary. This throws off the book's impact and validity somewhat. However, when Bechdel indulges moments of judgmentality and hypocrisy herself, the audience are (whether Alison realizes this or not) given a snapshot of her personality to clash against Bruce's. These differences in personality, whether perceived or actual on Bechdel's perspective, are blatantly illustrated during Alison's Easter memory with her father where the audience can see dynamics in motion. What she shows is pretty unflattering.

"At Easter, dad would paint goose eggs with twining tea roses," relates Alison, atonally misunderstanding, while her dad, eyebrows furrowed and expression even more stoic than usual, handpaints an enormous egg. The background, on the other hand, shows a disinterested, even aloof, Alison dipping /chicken/ eggs into a tiny paint vat. Dipping. Chicken eggs. Not goose eggs, not handpainting. She's depicting herself in an unflattering fashion: for a bookworm, Alison acts more conforming, less creative, and ultimately far less individualistic than she probably should be, especially in relation to her father. Dipping chicken eggs is considerably more impersonal, as well as rotely trivial, than handpainting a goose egg. While Alison says "if there ever was a bigger pansy than my father it was Marcel Proust," Bechdel is only talking about one aspect to the many aspects of her father. She's disregarding his other personality traits in favor of an easier target. I disagree with her opinion on Bruce, naturally. "I was just about to grab a beer, and then we'll get to work on the flagstones," says her dad, smiling coquettishly, to Roy. You know, maybe I just have no idea what a pansy really is, but considering how much beer Bruce guzzles throughout the story as well as how hard he works physically (the latter can not even be disputed by Alison who shows him working on some 'home improvement' project in numerous scenes), the word 'pansy' does not give us an accurate representation of her father's character. Additionally, what of her father's response when Alison's eyes fixate upon the masquiline-looking woman in the diner? "Is THAT what you want to look like?" he probes his daughter, words rolling off the tongue like a recoiled snake. For all his supposed pansiness, that sounds like a typical 'straight male' reaction to seeing a bulldyke, with all the repulsion and shallow judgmentality that comes along with it. What Alison totally disregards are her father's dualities. Bruce must balance both of his sexualities on a precarious, precipice-esque vantage point, manifesting itself in numerous personality traits which seem at odds with another. Drinking cheap beer versus reading Camus, and so on. It's part of his conflicted character. I don't want to say Bruce is androgynous, because he absolutely is not, but the principal is similar. His traits borrow equally from the masquiline and feminine sides of the spectrum. It's just a matter of which sides he decides to show at any given point in the story.

There's another dimension to Alison's use of the word 'pansy', however. Pansies are also a type of flower. Saying her father is a pansy is an enormous double entendre. "Eros and botany are pretty much the same thing," says Alison, which is an apt summary of Bruce's personality, dualities and all. Since Bruce can not express himself fully and truthfully in his life, he needs to semi-substitute (not completely as evidence by his various dalliances with teenagers) his deviant sexuality for botany, an acceptable alternative socially with a remarkable connection to each other. It reminds me of the infamous 'fucking flowers' scene from Pink Floyd's The Wall. Barely constrained sexuality and sensuality anthropomorphisized through flowers. Flowers are erotic enough on their own - when terms like budding and seeding are commonly applied to describe flowers you know there has to be something bubbling beneath the surface, but they are given an entirely new veneer in The Wall, which is pictured to the left. Stamen and pistil even /sound/, speechwise, like their anatomically human counterparts. Bruce's ideal is represented by the flowers in Pink Floyd's film.

However, though I feel like Alison is too damning towards her father, I do not think her judgmentality is not without merit. Living with such an outwardly emotionless person, especially one who was so unpredictable and occasionally physically abusive, will change one's impression of everything around them. In essence, Bechdel's personality is justifiable to some degree. The hypocrisy and judging nature are like a defense mechanism. Just look at the scene where Alison brings her rough-looking lesbian friends to Chumley's - she's judged immediately and shallowly, as her own father did to the bulldyke in the diner. It was a man's world in the sixties. It's a man's world even now. Though Alison says "the vision of the bulldyke sustained me," going through life as a woman, a lesbian, and a daughter in her family has colored her perceptions, increased her weariness despite, I'm assuming, the strong person she is on the inside.It's hard to blame Alison for her occasionally unfair impressions of others when she has been subjected to an abundance of unfair impressions herself.

Scaly Flowers

Bechdel is a talented writer, a talented artist, and if her looking too deeply into her father's death is any indication, she'd make a pretty ace conspiracy theorist, too.

It's great Alison is interested in getting to intimately know the details behind her father's death, especially considering the rest of her family doesn't seem to care how or why Bruce really died. Likewise, the thoughts going through Bruce's head those weeks before he passed is an even more esoteric component to her father Alison does not overlook. These are all oft-neglected, but important pieces of information the rest of her family, whether through preoccupation with grief, apathy, or simply not caring enough, do not zero in. According to the truck driver who hit him, Bruce "jumped backwards into the road as if he saw a snake" when the truck neared the pre-occupied dad. In addition to the snickering phallic reference behind the snake (if anything could get her father to 'jump' it'd be a penis, right? Even his supposed way of dying involved his homosexuality literally creeping up on him) mention, Who else actively pursues the truth beyond the eyes of a truck driver? Only Bechdel, at least to our knowledge. What isn't great, however, is Bechdel's presumptuous idea that she had something to do with Bruce's passing. This is the kind of thinking I'd expect out of an adored, only child trust fund baby; not someone with two equally neglected brothers. "For a wild moment I entertained the idea that my father had timed his death with this (Bechdel coming out) in mind, as some sort of deranged tribute. But that would only confirm that his death was not my fault. That, in fact, it had nothing to do with me at all. And I'm reluctant to let go of that last tenuous bond," muses Bechdel, self-determinedly, towards the end of chapter three. Well, at least she's honest. She knows she's reaching pretty far in her theories, as well as admitting that part of her presumptuousness stems simply from wishful thinking on her part. Since their father-daughter relationship was not strong in life, who says they can't become closer through death? Bechdel certainly doesn't. However, Bechdel this is all cyclical. Like I mentioned at the start, I still feel like Alison has already decided in her mind . She so desperately wants Bruce's death to have involved her in some way that she's willing to jump to unfortunate conclusions. This narrow tunnel thinking is as dangerous as the 'snake,' the metaphorical and literal one, who supposedly sent Bruce to his grave.

Speaking of snakes and more phallic symbols, Bechdel drops a hidden reference to not only the male organ, but pedophilia (or at the very least toleration for a naked child's form) and its relation to the phallus halfway through the chapter. The reference is highly fitting considering both Bruce's homosexuality and sexual relationships with boys. Bechdel knows how to chose her pop culture references well. However, the reference is one only rock n' roll history geeks would probably pick up on without researching the band. "I got the Blind Faith album," announces a working mode Bruce - is that a smile toying with his lips for once? - on the front porch to his children and babysitter, although his attention towards Roy during this scene is obvious and barely constrained. He lives through teenaged boys by proxy - or vicariously, as you described during our class discussion today. His kids might as well not even be in the same scene. You know how children love winning their parents approval? Imagine Bruce as the child, and Roy as the parent. Call me judgmental, but I just can't see Bruce enjoying Blind Faith behind the provocative album cover's "artistic" value. Though Blind Faith is musically well-known for including guitarist Eric Clapton and having a few minor hits in the UK and the US (again because of Clapton's presence), their fame extends mostly to the album cover of their only proper record. It'd be controversial today, if not even more so: a topless, redheaded twelve year old girl holding a toy airplane. The young girl, the daughter of friends' of the band, was given explicit permission by her parents to appear topless in the photograph. The band was attacked as "assaulters on common decency" almost immediately after their self-titled album was released, with some record shops refusing to sell the record, and an alternate cover was issued for stores who wouldn't stock the original artwork. The plane the girl held, in particular, was attacked as an obvious phallic symbol, which Either way, I feel like Bechdel's inclusion of the Blind Faith album isn't coincidental. She clearly chose to showcase the album as an allegory for not only her father's phallic concerns, but his homoerotic, pedarasty-esque fascination with boys, as well. The only difference is that the album cover is far removed from real life, especially since it is (in my opinion) inexplicit other than showing undeveloped breasts in addition to the girl sporting a (most likely ironic or signs-of-the-times-like) spaced-out expression on her face, while Bruce's attraction to boys is like steam. Expose him to an attractive boy and watch Bruce's inner conflicts play out through his tormented facial expressions. Blind Faith's girl has no such concerns.

Bruce's sexuality has been well-developed for years while the girl shown on Blind Faith's album cover is undeveloped, 'budding', much like the "silk flowers, glass flowers, needlepoint flowers, flower paintings, and where any of these failed to materialize, floral patterns" in the Bechdel home. The word I homed on in specifically was needlepoint - a /needle/point flower is like a double dose of phallic symbols thrown together. Although they are sometimes cheap plot devices, phallic symbols can be, and are in Fun Home, an effective method of showing how Bruce copes with his sexuality: through proxies. Through expression. Through creativity. "What kind of a man but a sissy could possibly love flowers this ardently?" disagrees Bechdel.

A repressed one, I answer.

Mind-Numbing Phallacy

Chapter Two opens up with a loaded illustration: a grassy knoll with a human silhouette standing over Bruce's gravestone. It's an image Bechdel created to bluntly diffuse her emotions onto the reader. It's immediate. And then there's that obelisk leering over the grave from its vantage point in the background. It's tall. It's proud. It's strong. It's obfuscating. It's mind-numbingly phallic.

Could Bechdel have been any more obvious about her father's fascination with the male organ? I almost immediately caught on to what the majority of chapter 2 was going to be about - just by looking at the opening illustration for three seconds. I don't know. Maybe I just have my mind the gutter, or it's my own predilections talking, but at least Bechdel presented the potentially crass subject matter in an insightful, humorous fashion. For example, when Bechdel's "mom couldn't convince the monument maker to do it" - that is, create Bruce's obelisk out of "fleshy, translucent marble like the tombstones in the old part of the cemetary" - I snickered pretty hard. What else is abundantly fleshy and occasionally translucent? Not that I'm an expert on the subject, but I'd bet 'fleshy' rivals 'thick' or 'pendulous' for most used adjectives to artfully describe penises in erotica novels. Only the daughter of a phallus-obsessed closeted gay man would use the words 'fleshy' and 'translucent' to describe a tombstone, however. That's not to say it isn't a vivid description, because it is, and Bechdel manages to pull it off without sounding ridiculous, but the connections she's trying to draw between a tombstone and a penis is a little too obvious for my liking. Either way, regardless of Bechdel's surprising lack of subtlety here, there's a lot to be said about Bruce and his connection to various phallic symbols in his life, "a shape in life he was unabashedly fixated on."

Months ago I discovered a religion on Wikipedia called the Church of Priapus. The connections to Greek myth and philosophy Bechdel throws into Fun Home continue here. Named after Priapus, the constantly-erect Greek god of fertility and the male sexual organ, it's a religion predominantly associated with gay men. Bruce would've probably fit in perfectly the St. Priapus Church. According to Bruce, the obelisk "symbolizes life." The Church of Priapus feels the same way. An article from The Advocate says the Church believes the phallus is the source of life, beauty, joy, and pleasure, and is wholly deserving of worship and awe for these reasons. I'm curious to know if Bechdel knows about the Church of Priapus, or if Bruce knew of the church, or was even apart to it - it's an interesting idea to consider. Between Priapus, Daedalus, Icarus, and Sisyphus, Bechdel's incorporation of Greek pantheism into her story is extensive, but accessible and full of allusions and depth which would not be possible without the connections she draws with, for example, Daedalus and Bruce. Her love of mythology deepens our understanding of her perspective regarding Bruce and his death. Bechdel, as shown by the panel of her crying on her girlfriend Joan's shoulder but not really saying anything, would not be able to express her true feelings through raw emotional displays - not without a rationalized veil, like that provided by the linearly written details of Greek myth, to coat them in and act as a sieve. Rationalizing things is something Bechdel has, perhaps even needs, in spades.

Greek myth isn't the only tool Bechdel uses to deepen our understanding, however. She also extends this to literature and pop culture. "Should we have been suspicious when he started plowing through Proust the year before?" says Bechdel. Instead of focusing on the obvious black humor involved in "people reaching middle-age the day they realize they're not going to finish Remembrance of Things Past," a notoriously lengthy work, I homed in on author Proust himself. Like Bruce, Marcel Proust was a closeted homosexual to all but his closest friends. The extent to which Proust exercised his sexuality is unknown beyond unverified accounts, and aside from using homosexual characters in several pieces, Proust never made any known open comments regarding homosexuality - whether his own sexuality, his affairs, nor the affairs of others. In other words, Proust is remarkably similar to Bruce, at least on a superficial level. Neither acknowledged their homosexuality to anyone other than themselves and close friends, although we have no idea why both men chose to do so. We can speculate, however - was Proust just as self-loathing as Bruce is thought to be? His gay characters are remarkably realistic and under stereotyped, especially considering the time they were written, so this doesn't seem like a likely explanation to me. The readers are, with good reason, left totally on the dark here. We're forced to speculate and draw comparisons; Bechdel is encouraging us to think non-linearly. It's not at all like Bruce's noticeably changed appearance on his death bed, for example, which smacks the audience upside the head with its bluntness. "His wiry hair, which he had daily taken great pains to style, was brushed straight upon end to reveal a surprisingly receded hairline," notes Bechdel upon seeing her father's corpse, 'prepared' by a mortician unrelated to the family. Bruce is far more similar than he appears to the previously mentioned "unattractive balding men" Danny DeVito and James Gandolfini from my last blog entry. Beginning his sexual life as a strapping college-aged young man in the military with a full head of hair, he died a balding, hairy middle-aged man who was having affairs with boys. Poetic justice at its cruelest, the loss of Bruce's hair signifies both a loss of attractiveness - certainly of his own self-image and most likely the impression of others - and the death of his sexual existence. Afterall, the frequently namechecked Robert Redford never did lose his hair like Bruce did. Not even death can hide Bruce's lies.