QUEERLY
QUESTIONING
Not So Fun Home
| By Juno Parreñas, PhD
I
saved up my pennies to see
the Tony Award winning
Broadway musical Fun
Home, 32,000 pennies to be
exact. Splurging on orchestra
seats seemed perfectly reasonable
to my partner and me so that we
could watch a production based
on the graphic novel that launched
Allison Bechdel to the greater
recognition that she deserved, after
she spent decades documenting
lesbian culture in her much beloved
comic strip Dykes to Watch Out
For. I am certain that I am one
of many who fondly remembers
flipping through the newspaper
print pages of The LN to get to the
back page with horoscopes and
two panels of her comic strip. A
highlight in my personal life for
which I should feel embarrassed
but not really, because I’m an
unabashed fan girl, was when I
got to tell Allison Bechdel to her
face how influential DTWOF was
on my political imagination as a
baby dyke in the sticks.
The event happened at Brandeis
while she was working on her
second memoir, Are You My
Mother? I showed up early
and got to chitchat with her as
she killed time. The audience
mostly consisted of elderly and
distinguished looking straight
couples, which made me think
they were probably donors. So I’m
sure my giddiness in conversing
with her was matched with her
relief at not having to talk to them
just yet!
Flash-forward four years later, I
was super excited to see Bechdel’s
work in a new medium. I giggled.
I cried. I applauded. And then
on the long drive home to Ohio
on the 80, passing by Bechdel’s
childhood home, I realized: I
actually hate musical theatre.
Musical theater is about
amplifying emotion through
performance. Thus, it steam
rolls over nuance with bursts of
song. I remembered the book
had more ambivalence when
it came to her father. Yet the
musical portrays him as simply
abusive. It compelled me to
reread Fun Home.
I felt vindicated as I revisited
the moment in Bechdel’s story
of visiting New York with her
brothers and father. While the
musical described it as “child
neglect in New York,” it was
portrayed in Fun Home as a
magical time where her personal
life brushed up against a historical
moment in gay New York of 1976.
That difference was the least
troubling of omissions.
Rereading the book, I was struck
by what could be presented in
musical theatre and what seemed
to be actively suppressed. Having
sex with a woman for the first time
could gain a delightful song but
there is no song for discovering
masturbation or masturbating
to Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus.
Likewise, there are no songs for
watching polluted sunsets, forests
converted into strip mines nor
toxic creeks.
Of course, the medium of musical
theatre does not readily allow
for a complete reenactment of
the book. Perhaps a reenactment
could take a whole weekend, like
the annual Moby Dick readathon
that happens in the New Bedford
Whaling Museum. [Imagine,
renting the real life childhood
home of Allison Bechdel to do so
with both her graphic novels. The
home is now a vacation rental, so
it is possible!].
Yet, the omissions are telling. We
shouldn’t think of the musical as
a culmination of making it big.
Rather, I hope it encourages us
to revisit the original works that
we love and that continue to
inform us.
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