Fun Home and Lacan's Mirror Stage Anonymous College

The graphic novel Fun Home by Alison Bechdel opens with a series of panels portraying how she and her father used to play airplane. At the same time, Bechdel makes a connection between them playing airplane and the myth of Icarus and Daedalus. It is important to note that what Alison and her father are doing in this scene is role-playing. One of them has to be the support while the other one flies. It is a role-playing game, but nevertheless a game, and both of them appear very serious while playing it. Alison gets to fly, just as Icarus, while playing this game, but that is not necessarily true in their daily lives outside the airplane game. Bechdel says that “in [their] particular re-enactment of this mythic relationship, it was not [her], but [her] father who was to plummet from the sky” (Bechdel p. 4). This puts into question who of them is the father in their relationship. The mixed-up parallels between Alison, her father, Icarus, and Daedalus highlight the unclear relationship of power between Alison and her dad.

The conflicts between them were almost always caused by her father trying to solve his personal problems through her. He wants her to dress very feminine because that is something that he never got to do. He...