Fun Home's Color Palette
In Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home, Alison uses a blue-gray monochromatic color palette throughout the book. This color palette represents Alison’s world and her perspective in the story. A notable aspect where the concept of colors arises is on page 130-131 where her dad notices her coloring the canary-colored caravan a midnight blue. This call to attention of the colors shows Alison and Bruce’s different takes on life with Alison wanting to just enjoy herself using her favorite color and Bruce adhering to strict societal norms by coloring the caravan with the actual color it should be. This scene also helps establish the blue color that the book is being drawn in as Alison’s and yellow as her dad’s.
Another scene that reinforces this idea is on page 123 where in Alison’s dream she’s telling her dad to hurry up so that they can go see the sunset. In the first frame of the page, there’s a break in the line-art of the trees showing the sun which is drawn without color, leaving a faint gray outline of the sun. This lack of color represents Alison’s inability to understand her dad as shown by the lack of warm colors that sunset usually have in the drawing. In fact, the whole book lacks any warm colors which means that Alison doesn’t know what her dad was thinking in the past and that further shows how these snapshot moments in her past are purely from her perspective.
Another aspect that’s interesting is in the evidence that Alison presents throughout the book such as the photos; they are black and white monochromatic. They completely lose the shade of the blue that is prevalent throughout the rest of the book. This suggests that these pieces of evidence are neutral, untainted by Alison’s perspective and more candid to their original meaning. Her interpretations though are still up to debate as while the pictures themselves are void of blue, Alison’s blocks of text interpreting the images reside in a blue space, Alison’s territory, which means that the intention and context from Bruce’s perspective are lost.
With the loss of color comes the loss of detail, which relates to the loss of information as time passes between the events of Alison’s past and the retelling of the story. Alison’s reliability as a narrator becomes more prevalent on page 41 where she depicts the mailman who found her dad stuck in the mud as a milkman. This depiction raises the question about whether the other drawings in the book are accurate or if they are artistic interpretations of Alison’s patchy memory. While the events of the story are subject to a grain of salt, Alison nonetheless manages to tell a compelling narrative about her and her father’s lives.
This is a really interesting post! I never gave any thought to the color palette of Fun Home, although it completely makes sense that Alison would choose this specific aesthetic of muted blue and greys to represent the impact Bruce had on her. In a way, it feels kind of empowering for Alison to use blue text boxes to show that she still has her own identity and is separate from Bruce's fear of standing out in society. On the other hand, I agree that by erasing Bruce's narrative, Alison erases any confirmation of her theories about his earlier life. I think it's sweet though that she keeps the color blue as the theme after mentioning it was her favorite color as a child.
ReplyDeleteI like how you connect the color palette to the story of fun home. I like how connect the limited color to Allison's own shortcomings as a narrator. The absence of warm colors could offer the idea of the loss of warmth in the life of Bruce, Helen or even Allison. Creative post!
ReplyDeleteThese are excellent, original observations about the limited use of color in this book, and how that relates in particular to moments in the text when color is the explicit topic. I've never noticed the unshaded/strict monochromatic photographs before, which further sets off their visual style from the more obviously "drawn" images (which highlight the subjectivity of the artist's memory more explicitly). I've always found that scene with the sunset (in a dream) to be quite sad and moving, and I agree that there is something odd about depicting the effects of a beautiful sunset in monochrome--and I like the idea that by NOT depicting the full-color image of the dream-scene, we get a reflection of Alison's ongoing inability to fully understand her father, or to have him somehow "catch up" with the story she's so eager to tell in this book.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog!! I honestly really enjoyed the monochromatic approach to Fun Home, but that was more visual than metaphorical. But anyway, your connection with the absence of blue is something I definitely agree with. I think it was probably a detail made to be subconscious. At least from a design perspective, color helps liven and realize things, so its absence help separate and dull her more patchy and fuzzy memories.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was just black and white. But even if I had seen the color scheme, I would never have thought to analyze the palette used for the art. The connection between the absence of blue and objective evidence is really interesting, and I'd have never noticed it.
ReplyDeleteHi Alyssa! You have a really good point about Alison's use of color in Fun Home, which is one that I didn't notice before, especially with how the pictures are in black and white. I think the way that it's monochromatic and only blue adds to the somber feel of the book, and leaves more for the reader to fill in. Great blog!
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