both tendencies in language: the positive search for truth, preservation, remembrance, evidence, and knowable signifieds on the one hand and the negative dispersal of meaning in fits of uncertainty and multiplicity on the other.
Final Paper Notes/Outline
Thesis: Something about using the medium of a novel (text and language’s role (both as a signifier and signified) to per petuate Bechdel’s story and reveal plot of her dad’s motive motive for killing himself
Fun House
Explore the medium of a comic
Fact that she wrote everything herself, does this relate to self realization, etc.
Notes from Youtube Video:
Words don’t illustrate pictures… writing in a drawing program.
Can say that my hypothesis for her motives, including the literature was this… but actually only she (as the author) can know
Role of Literature in Alison’s coming out…
Handwriting all the poems, what does this have to do with memory, and can she fully replicate her father’s signature?
Daedalus mytch and Ulysseus…starts out book with it

Passage 1:
Page 140: Because of her obsessive-compulsive spell she started a diary… But, because of the questioning of memory, the words “I think” popped in her comments.
Page 141: How did I know that the things I was writing were absolutely, objectively true?
She’s doubting what she writes down to be true…
Specfic kind of text: the kind that’s in the boxes, speech bubbles bring you back into the moment, Square ones are superimpositions, narratively offering her own interpretation
Two different times: reflecting back she’s interpreting the events as a crisis
The “curvy circumflex as a symbol” helps her get closer to the truth, what actually is happening but leads to more indecision on her part
Relates to Phaedrus, moves from her decision to use shorthand, we wouldn’ know what that symbol means
In between sentences, to between sentences to nouns: Connect to arbitrary nature to language, The symbol doesn’t have any intrinsic meaning , doesn’t mean anything.
OCD – grasp for control, clearly senses there’s something deeper that’s happening… obscession for her to, wants to control objects around
Simulacra:
Writing I think as a way to get to truth: her interpretation of reality/truth as something that’s unstable… how does she know what actually happened happened, her experience of something may not be what other people did, calling that into question by I think.
Through this she is testing her memory, and obviously she is doubting her abilities. This relates to writing’s ability to document and record memories forever. But the problem is the multiplicity and signifers – signifieds lets her doubt the events she has been tracing. As Plato discusses, writing allows the signifier to repeat itself mechanically (good phrase) but doesn’t necessarily convey the truth because there’s no living soul there
Through these symbols and text Her OCD is revealed to the reader, then supplemented by photographs, or her father’s nature to try to renovate and make things perfect
Passage 2: 202-204, 208, Chapter 1 Page, 12
Mythical Literature: There are lots of books shown by the panels, but it seems like the one of greatest importance is Ulysses… that is actually the novel Fun Home is modeled after. Ulysseus which is a modernist tale of a young man and an older man, a father and son (though they aren’t actually related) traveling through their lives in pursuit of (meaning/purpose). Ulysses itself is shaped after the Odyssey which itself is shaped from greek mythos, INTERTEXUALITY. Problems of love, life, and understanding are all reflective of James Joyce’s novel. Even homoeroticism, gender and sexuality are all there, which mirrors a 1918 fiction novel to a 2006 graphic narrative (non-fiction). precise allusion to Daedalus, the architect in Greek myth who was contracted by King Minos to build the Labyrinth in which he would imprison his wife's son the Minotaur
Title of first picture is from the Ulysses
Page 12. Obviously trying to remember something before she knew about Ulysses, but yet structures the panels around the story of Odysses. The text speaks of Daedalus, but the panel shows the silhouette of a looming, monstrous Bruce. Half-bull, half-monster, the minotaur and a labrynth
Dad givers her Odysseus, does this symbolize their relationship as well. It brings about a sense of reconciliation between her Daedalus father and her Icarus self in the closing pages of the book
Also confuses the reader on the relationship between her and her father
The importance of literature in her and her father’s relationship, significance. Why she does it the way she does? Can easily family members relate to fictional characters
Odysseus: epics were originally to meant to be told in song, Ulysses was in text, then comics for Fun Homeg
Literature examples: The Fell62-63owship of the Ring Pg. 198
Passage 3:
Analyze handwritten letters, she decides to reproduce them as written, which makes it harder for the reader to understand
Wastes a lot of time and readers can’t decipher them
By not scanning, and rather hand writing everything, she’s preserving his memory in a paper medium that is known last last/live. But also, the duality of her goal is to also refresh the memory of her father, someone who has passed away. She is able to stimulate memories of her father through embodying her father
Work is focused on how the story is told, and not the story itself
Inscribes his identity in the text. Something’s handwriting is personal, a part of them
Style of handwriting , physical process, physical inscription of him in the book, by virtue of process of going through detail in every single word, she was able to get meaning from it Process of writing his writing evokes interpretation… aura – feel of a presence, way art is reproduced, the more copies you make of art the less connection it has with , connection to a moment of time to an individual who wrote it (her father). Historical letters, reproduction of a primary
Purpose of physically writing them versus just photocopying them?
Bechdel preserves elements of her past. Nothing was scanned in the 7 years it took to make this book, and instead she learned how to copy her dead father’s handwriting. This relates to Whitehead, who says it may be easy to replicate a word, but copying a whole line/passage is hard because the “feel” just wouldn’t be the same
Something very visually striking about idea of readers trying to decode what she says
Handwritten letters as a way to preserve the perfect moments? But wouldn’t scanning it in be a better preservation. Perhaps she’s trying to gain personal meaning from replicating it… relates to Penal Colony, inscribing text to give a more embodied meaning. Maybe she wants to be different from photography, who was interested in photography as a true preservation of the moment. Instead, she utilizes this method to gain more than just the signified, but rather wants to use this text as signifiers for own personal stimulus of memories?

These three passages represent 3 ontological properties of text, list them…
Calls into question what she knows…this isn’t only just text but also is image, the way it comes into… the way she chose to put the narrative in this form
Mentioning the style form of this narrative?
Tragedy versus comedy
Focused thesis, clear in terms that I use, don’t use aura without defining, ambibuity – unclear, whose concept of if? Saussure?
Don’t call things interesting? Why is interesting?! Just stay away
How she takes advantage of being able take advantage of images amd text ontological duality of text and image
79/211 – she’s thinking about the same scene, not chronologically * The duality of text and image are incorporated together for Bechdel to remember her childhood and her relationship with her father * Combination of writing and archival images allow her to manifest her memories and let readers to experience these memories, especially her relationship with her father * Evidence would include: The passage that appears twice (reference of time in the book), but also the fact that memory doesn’t necessarily produce linear recollections of the past * Bechdel says in an interview that the narrative is organized thematically rather than chronologically * Different narration but same pictures… shows potentially she’s thinking about that scene differently * Power of the novel in reproducing signifieds (a whole story) which although isn’t detailed in Fun Home actually structures the entire work * Ex. Passage in the beginning * Uses language, which initialy frames the strained relationship between Bechdel and her father, but in the end is a menas of establishing a more personal relationship. Especially in the last page, she contrasts her life with that in a text by her father being there to save her * Beyond a title producing signifieds, another form of media is handwritten documents/archives – although similarly represent a section of Alison’s memory, does much more in stimulating memories of her father, in a sense embodies the presence of her father in a book, because handwriting is something very personal – using this to embed her father into the paper of a medium that lasts a long time * Other option could be scan the things in, but by that she wouldn’t * Yet, language also fails in this sense because according to Whitehead, a passage can’t be fully duplicated, although words can singularly * Also, language fails because the actual “Author” of the letters is dead, so perhaps the actual meaning is lost * Her alternatives for physically copying the letters * Perhaps incorporate the fact that she’s trying to embody all the people in her memory as well by posing in them? * Yes, although this may stimulate some good memories, as shown by the upside down V shape, memory is imperfect, like the mythical writing pad, and certain parts of her story may be obscured

* She says in interview her story-telling process is exemplified by copying down a newpaper (offers glipses of people’s lives) section… structure could easily be some other story * Why not just scan newspaper pages into the page? Such a text heavy page, what does it mean to be redrawing it? * Don’t like the mix of photographs and drawing, likes everything to be uniform… * SHE says IDK why she’s doing it * Bechdel’s been fascinated with reproduction of print. “I just like reproducing things” How inner realities get externalized through the medium of print * Perhaps this way, knowing that she physically wrote everything it’s easier for the reader to connect to her? * Idea of time and psychic time. Freud’s idea that the unconscious is timeless * Going in and out of so many different moments in time, one second she’s 27 in her first therapy session, and next she’s 50, and next she’s 3 having a childhood experience * All of those things are in us simultaneously * Organizing: Doesn’t think it comes across as rambling, can see some coherence * Following a psychic strand, not really a story * The only way to tell the story is through a lengthy exposition of words and pictures together, can’t really talk about it * Sig of drawing versus writing it: doesn’t know how she’d be able to jump back and forth in time and space, could write about that. Don’t have to read lengthy discriptions of each scene. TO MAKE IT COHERENT TO THE READER * Even the text heavy pages are imagistic, words are reading as images!!! - not just normal black text on a white page, but includes shading, crinkles like an archive * Making movies: are always actors, physical and emotional transmission of these images (PEOPLE) gives them a verisimilitude that you wouldn’t get with actors. Using a actor wouldn’t have the same emotional resonance * She says that after Fun Home, she didn’t actually have feelings for her own house, the physical entity of it. Rather she felt an emotional attachment to her drawn resemblance of it * Fact that she made the thing (has pride in it)