Use of Image and Text in Fun Home - Essay Example

Use of Image and Text in Fun Home Introduction One of the most fundamental and intriguing aspect of art is its capability to project reality from the most insignificant paraphernalia or event. And it is not only because of the reality that is projected, but it has lot to do with the way the truth is projected. It is in the extra-ordinariness about an ordinary thing. It is the way some people appear to be chosen to dissect beauty from simplicity. The blend of text and images in Fun Home by Alison Bechdel nails home the point that some people are born with traits honed to excellence with natural flair and cursory training. The Preamble Use of images and texts are techniques and tricks of trade for academic and business applications. The nature and extent of their use and application is decided on the basis of the end users who comprise readers and viewers. In Fun Home, images and texts are simple tools in the hands of a genius. Alison has crafted purity out of the ore about the same way an oyster conceives pearl involving internal and external forces and elements. Actually, Fun Home is the presentation of an individual and her family through the multi-media mix of texts and images. The choice and mode of the presentation are by themselves well thought out strategy and scheme conceived out of a mind possessing an array of personal and professional resources delectably executed with the characters and the end users in mind. The result is clarity of purpose, vision, mission and consummation. Alison has all the raw material in place borne out of her own familial experiences including tragic ones. She has this rare desire to portray the dilemma of man’s raison d’être through the eyes of her own family members. She nurtures the desire in silent secrecy for one full year, using the time to weave images and texts in her mind while recollecting and choosing incidents in the family from the past and present. It is not the form of images and text she is concerned with in the formation stage. As a seasoned comic artist with twenty years experience behind her, it is not so difficult to organize style and sequence. The difficult part is to convince her family members why they must come under the gaze of the cartoonist. She is brutally frank about her own role in the story. In her own words, “It was a relief to go back to the comics and get my head out of my own ass, because there's only so long you can obsess about your own childhood.” (Shauna Swartz) Having buried her own past and proclivities, she is in better position to empathize with her parents and siblings. Empathy is a strong feature in cartoons and characterization. Without empathy, one descends into an abyss of criticism and blame. Image and text This is the information age where people do not have time for details. Alison is generous with her visuals and economical with details. The characters in Fun Home are familiar to the reader because they happen to be the writer’s family and develop rather quick rapport with readers who readily accept the “tragicomic” element in the book with a combination of amusement and sympathy. To Alison, it was important to strike the right balance between fact and fallacy. Facts were important because they exist, although sometimes it was difficult to explain why they existed in the first place. Fallacies also were placed side by side with facts as otherwise it was difficult to do justice to the script. She took the blatant truth out of her life and that of her deviant father and deftly organized them side by side to highlight the paradox common to both fact and fallacy. Ultimately, the redeeming feature in the image and text is the bungling humor of the comic world where everything, every one, and every event find place and acceptance. Fun Home is based on lucid images of the past in the writer’s life and organized with a flourish combining the best rules in graphics. The images and dialogues or monologues/pantomime are self-explanatory and appealing. The reader is moved to laughter or tears without being overtly emotional. The reason is simple. One must learn to be logical. Logistics are props and platitudes and both play vital roles in the process of healing. Laughter is the best medicine. Props and platitudes can disappear one fine morning. But life goes on, leaving its indelible footprints. The young Bechdel has extraordinary craving for details in their purest form. In the process of presenting her images and text she does not allow herself to be swayed by her own judgment and opinion. She draws her images through the eyes of the third persons. Every piece of object, every memorabilia, souvenir, picture, photograph, old records, etc. that served as an eye opener or a reminder of an event inevitably became one of the numerous centerpieces for Fun Home. It is not easy to weave fun out of tragedies. But it was necessary to do so. Especially, if one was an artist. Art is meant to be sublime. And, also specially, if that someone turned out to be Alison Bechdel with a zest for life Techniques and talents What is it that moulds young, impressionable minds?  What factors make them behave the way they do now or later on in life?  Why do many child prodigies fail to attain the best that life has to offer? Why do many promising children fail to rise to their own expectations stagnate or turn social misfits?  Could parental care, companionship and regular counseling shape up a child's future and make him a better human being tomorrow?  Somewhere in her discordant childhood and adolescence, Alison appears to have struck the right chords. She shared a love-hate sort of relationship with her father although she prefers to present a more tolerant outlook about their relationship. Her relationship with her brothers is communicative and respectful although there are hints that they did not see eye to eye in certain matters. However, on the whole it was normal family whose head meets a tragic end that quietly causes Alison to introspect. When penning graphic novel on the basis of one’s own family experience, it is necessary to mold techniques with talents, personal details and professional attitudes, and communication skills with due respect for privacy of other members in the family. Alison has already earned a name for herself with her two decades old association with the ubiquitous comic world. Her tryst with publishing houses, especially those turning out the regular Dykes to Watch Out For has put her in a place of pride and has raised her visibility. She is in a position from where she could call the shots and have her requirements sorted out with the best in business. Nonetheless, her insistence on painstaking research, dogged belief in herself and her family, inclination to characterize her whole family for the purpose of one book, sets her apart as someone capable of doing full justice to her vocation. For someone capable of mixing professionalism with personal lives, there can be no hindrance or shortcoming in fusing images and texts for achieving the desired effect. In the ultimate analysis, mastery over use of images and texts is only one criterion that counts in the success of a graphic novel. There are other criteria like personal caliber, an element of humor, willingness to subject oneself to long period of seclusion, etc. that combine to give any technology the gilt cutting edge. Source: Douglas Wolk, Fun Home, Salon Book, http://www.salon.com/books/review/2006/06/05/bechdel/index.html Shauna Swartz, Alison Bechdel’s Life In the Fun Home, 8 May 2006, AfterEllen, http://www.afterellen.com/archive/ellen/Print/2006/5/bechdel.html Read More