Understanding Comics & Fun Home: Non-Visual Self Awareness

Chapter Two of Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud, discusses the Vocabulary of Comics.  In this chapter, McCloud references the phenomenon of Non-Visual Self Awareness in relation to our whole bodies, he states that we are aware of ourselves, our facial expressions, etc even when we cannot see what we look like.  This can be something that is picked up by the body language and expressions of those around us, but is also something that we are constantly aware of.  McCloud also mentions another form of non-visual awareness, wherein people utilize inanimate objects and those objects become an extension of the person (McCloud, p. 37-39).

In Alison Bechdel's, Fun Home, this use of non-visual awareness is present in the father with his obsession with rebuilding antiques into shiny beautiful things to be admired like objects in a museum; and the family's ability to be "ideal" like the house and objects in the house.  The family has become an extension of the father's "ideal home" and all are simply a cover up for the family's dark secret.  If outwardly, people see a perfect family, and a perfect home, they are less likely to believe anything could be amiss.

Bechdel, A. (2006). Fun home: A family tragicomic (pp. 16-17). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

McCloud, S. (1994). Understanding comics: The invisible art (pp. 37-39). New York: HarperPerennial.