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A few days ago, I came across a copy of “Fun Home” (La Magrana 2008, there is a Spanish edition: Mondadori 2008), a graphic novel subtitled "A Family Tragicomic."
Fun or Funeral Home?
Considered one of the best books of 2006 by prestigious media outlets (including Time Magazine, which ranked it number one on their list), it is an autobiographical comic that tells the story of Alison Bechdel's triple discovery as a teenage girl: her sexuality, a heartbreaking family secret, and the terrible distance that can separate us from those closest to us. The reference to tragicomedy most likely stems from this last realization.
But what is more relevant here is the reason behind the main title, “Fun Home,” a play on words between ‘Fun’ and ‘Funeral,’ and is due to the fact that the action is set in a funeral home, a small American family enterprise where the home and business share the same building.
And it is against this background, hardly funeral or mournful, that we see children playing, young people growing up, adults working, and all of them, curiously, constantly reading varied and outstanding books. Inhabiting, in short, the same familiar and intimate space.
Tragicomedy in the Funeral Home
It is at this point that I am struck by an anthropological question.
Is the difference between our cultures what explains this acceptance of death, turned into a companion of a home, to the point of desensitizing it with comic winks?
Or is it simply a stylistic resource of the author Alison Bechdel (who draws, inks, scripts, and stars in a more than solid production)?
Little, Much, Almost Nothing
But what does all this have to do with the blog, you might ask.
Little. If we stick to its main theme.
Much. If we think that funerary art has almost disappeared from our Latin culture but remains more present in Anglo-American societies.
Almost nothing. If we pay attention to the plot of "Fun Home."
Little, much, almost nothing? Now I ask you.