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Psychoanalysis, babies, and the theater
Feb. 3rd, 2022 06:12 pmNow that I have become an Alison Bechdel stan I decided to read the graphic novel that nobody really seems to talk about, Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama.
On the one hand, I can certainly see why it’s not talked about as much as her other works. It doesn’t have the same kind of “hook” as “growing up in a funeral home with a repressed gay dad”; the premise is a much more straightforward one of the difficult relationship between a neurotic daughter and her neurotic mother. There’s a lot in it from Freud and the other early psychoanalysts. The basic subject matter has been done, in short.
I liked it anyway, although not as much as her other memoirs. I particularly liked the art style–where Fun Home was black and white and The Secret of Superhuman Strength was fully colored, this one is illustrated in black and white and red, my absolute favorite color scheme. The red in question isn’t too warm–it’s a purplish-mauve sort of red in varying tints and gives the whole thing a sort of dark Victorian-drawing-room air that appeals to me. Also, while familiar names like Freud and Virginia Woolf show up a lot, the predominant academic referenced here is one Donald Winnicott, who I wasn’t familiar with, so I got to learn some stuff about early child psychoanalysis.
But overall it wasn’t quite as good as the others and I’m not sure I’d really have enjoyed it if I weren’t already emotionally invested in Bechdel’s family life because of the other books. Since I was, it was interesting to examine it again from another angle, and to look more closely at the character of her mom and the relationship between them. But it really is a very navel-gazy sort of book (it is honest to god mostly about going to therapy).
Like a lot of books about dysfunctional families it made me appreciate that, somehow, my immediate family is not that dysfunctional, all things considered, and especially that my own mother was committed to not recreating all the same dysfunctions that plague both of my extended families, which I will not be relating in detail on the internet for free. I should probably go back to therapy for a number of reasons but “to exorcize my parents from my brain” is not really one of them.
On the one hand, I can certainly see why it’s not talked about as much as her other works. It doesn’t have the same kind of “hook” as “growing up in a funeral home with a repressed gay dad”; the premise is a much more straightforward one of the difficult relationship between a neurotic daughter and her neurotic mother. There’s a lot in it from Freud and the other early psychoanalysts. The basic subject matter has been done, in short.
I liked it anyway, although not as much as her other memoirs. I particularly liked the art style–where Fun Home was black and white and The Secret of Superhuman Strength was fully colored, this one is illustrated in black and white and red, my absolute favorite color scheme. The red in question isn’t too warm–it’s a purplish-mauve sort of red in varying tints and gives the whole thing a sort of dark Victorian-drawing-room air that appeals to me. Also, while familiar names like Freud and Virginia Woolf show up a lot, the predominant academic referenced here is one Donald Winnicott, who I wasn’t familiar with, so I got to learn some stuff about early child psychoanalysis.
But overall it wasn’t quite as good as the others and I’m not sure I’d really have enjoyed it if I weren’t already emotionally invested in Bechdel’s family life because of the other books. Since I was, it was interesting to examine it again from another angle, and to look more closely at the character of her mom and the relationship between them. But it really is a very navel-gazy sort of book (it is honest to god mostly about going to therapy).
Like a lot of books about dysfunctional families it made me appreciate that, somehow, my immediate family is not that dysfunctional, all things considered, and especially that my own mother was committed to not recreating all the same dysfunctions that plague both of my extended families, which I will not be relating in detail on the internet for free. I should probably go back to therapy for a number of reasons but “to exorcize my parents from my brain” is not really one of them.