The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
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Thursday, February 15, 2018 — 5B

“My dad and I both grew up in 
the same Pennsylvania town. And 
he was gay, and I was gay and he 
killed himself.”
This is the line that sums up 
the plot of the critically acclaimed 
graphic memoir and musical 
“Fun Home,” a riveting story 
based on the life of cartoonist 
Alison Bechdel.
I first read Alison Bechdel’s 
2006 
graphic 
memoir 
“Fun 
Home” 
when 
its 
musical 
adaptation was nominated for 
Best Musical at the 2015 Tony 
Awards. 
Discovering 
“Fun 
Home” was one of the most 
interesting and intimate reading 
experiences I’ve ever had. It is a 
heartbreaking and truthful and 
beautiful depiction of a unique 
experience that has the ability to 
transcend its specific narrative, 
making it relatable in a way I 
would never have expected. 
Although I don’t identify as a 
part of the LGBTQ+ community, 
I never expected a graphic novel 
about the experience of growing 
up with a queer identity to speak 
to me on such a personal level. 
But just as the queer community 
is constantly asked to suspend 
their own disbelief to relate to the 
hundreds of thousands of straight 
protagonists in all mainstream 
literature, it shouldn’t come as a 
shock that as a straight person, I 
could relate deeply to the queer 
narrative Bechdel shares with us 
through her cartoons.
When the book was published 
in 2006, “Fun Home” headlined 
nearly every best of the year 
book list, but it took a transition 
into a musical and garnering 
an immediate popularity in the 
world of musical theatre to find its 
way to my bookshelf. Praised for 
breaking the boundaries of any 

definition the world previously 
held of “memoir,” the story 
follows Bechdel’s childhood in 
rural Pennsylvania and tells the 
journey of both her own sexuality 
and her relationship with her 
closeted gay father. The memoir 
is laid out in a series of comics that 
chronicles her relationships with 
her parents and grapples with the 
past and the present — telling the 
stories of her life before and after 
her father’s suicide.
The graphic novel is seen as 
a turning point for the world of 
graphic novels — after its massive 
success, more people began to 
write and share graphic novels. 
But more importantly, after its 
publication, the greater theme 
of 
queerness 
became 
more 
mainstream in the world of art 
and literature. The story came at 
a time where the world was ready 
to celebrate this narrative and 
bring it into a dialogue that had 
been on the precipice for a very 
long time. The honesty of the 
novel makes reading it feel like 
looking directly into the house 
that Bechdel grew up in, the one 
described intricate in the memoir.
After being received as a smash 
hit in both the queer community 
and society as a whole, talk of 
a musical based on the memoir 
began in 2013. “Fun Home” 
opened on Broadway officially in 
2015, and the theatre community 
— 
more 
importantly, 
the 
mainstream theatre world that 
is Broadway — have never been 
given such a gift.
Historically, 
musicals 
and 
plays that make it to Broadway 
aren’t always the ones that look 
to make a statement, but rather 
those that look to entertain. 
“Fun Home” was able to do 
both, creating a beautiful and 
captivating 
moment 
for 
the 
world. After falling in love with 
the novel, I bought tickets to the 
show when it took home the 2015 

Tony for Best Musical, among 
other accolades. The LGBTQ+ 
narrative needed to hit center 
stage Broadway; I sat in the Circle 
in the Square Theatre in early 
2016 and I don’t think I breathed 
for a full two hours. By the end, I 
was sobbing with a joint feeling 
of heartache and awe. The most 
beautiful and inspiring part of the 
performance was seeing a queer 
protagonist not limited to just a 
coming-out-narrative. The story 
is about so much more: memory, 
relationships, connecting with 
others, 
growing 
up, 
finding 
yourself and coming to terms with 
the life that you have been given. 
All of this is surrounded by and 
framed in Bechdel’s struggle with 
her sexuality — both the graphic 
novel and the musical are unique 
in that they are multifaceted. I sat 
in that theatre, right in the center 
of Bechdel’s pain and ecstasy and 
was refreshed to see something 
so needed on a mainstream stage, 
being shared and celebrated 
by the queer and non-queer 
communities alike.
Since its original publication, 
“Fun Home” has become a 
cultural phenomenon. It is the 
gift that the world needed, it is the 
musical Broadway needed and it 
is the book my mind and heart and 
soul needed. Despite closing on 
Broadway in 2016, the show has 
completed its first national tour, 
produced regionally in the United 
States as well as internationally 
in the Philippines, with its 
future sights set on Japan and a 
second national tour. Its ability to 
continue to captivate and affect 
audiences is a great testament to 
the universality and prominence 
of the story. It is a beautiful 
moment for the queer community 
and the world — one that inspires 
thoughtful discussions and opens 
the door to more mainstream art 
that is rooted deeply in the theme 
of queer identity.

ELI RALLO
Daily Arts Writer

“What kind of music do you 
like?”
When 
this 
question 
is 
dropped on any date/Tinder 
conversation I’ve ever had, my 
heart hits my stomach. There’s 
the safe route containing my 
pop interests: “I adore Carly 
Rae Jepsen and Lorde. The new 
Charli XCX mixtape is full of 
jams. I’ve been a long time 1D 
fan,” etc. And then there’s the 
answer that’s a bit more true to 
form: “I’d literally cut my heart 
out for The Wonder Years. I 
feel a religious connection 
to everything Green Day has 

ever done. I shed a few tears 
during Jawbreaker’s reunion 
set at Riot Fest last year.” As a 
gay man in 2018, I often find it 
hard to reconcile my punk and 
queer 
identities, 
something 
that has bothered me due to 
the closely entwined history of 
these two cultures.
Both 
punk 
and 
queer 
identities share the idea of 
“otherness” — not making 
the cut for normalcy, feeling 
disenfranchised from the state 
of the world and generally 
sticking out. The punk scene 
was 
often 
where 
queer-
identifying people would be 
able to gather to have some 
sense of belonging. Punk is 
literally rooted in otherness, 
in the ability “to stick it to the 
man” and to live however you 
want, not how the world wants 
you to. The first time I heard 
the lyric “So fuck the world 
/ And what it wants me to 
be,” off of “Hoodie Weather” 
by The Wonder Years, was 
the first time I began to have 
hope for any type of agency in 
my life. It was the first time I 
decided to fight back against 
the 
homophobia 
deeply 
ingrained in me from 13 years 
spent in Catholic school.
About a year ago, I read 
an article by Tom Vellner on 
Noisey that lauded the merits 
of punk and “the scene” in 
helping him come out as a gay 
man after also spending years 
in Catholic school. The article 
mirrored my experiences in 
middle school and high school 
with almost startling accuracy. 
I have vivid memories of being 
enthralled by the melodrama of 
My Chemical Romance’s “I’m 
Not OK (I Promise),” and the 

sensual theatricality of Panic! 
At The Disco’s Brendon Urie 
helped me understand that it 
was just fine to be male and 
expressive at the same time. 
Senses Fail’s Pull The Thorns 
from Your Heart taught me 
that a period of self-hatred 
and 
denial 
was 
perfectly 
normal for queer people to 
go 
through, 
and 
hearing 
Billie Joe Armstrong belt out 
“Seventeen and strung out 
on confusion” from “Coming 
Clean” comforted me more 
than anything else when I was 
17 myself. My first real crush 
ever was probably on Pete 
Wentz of Fall Out Boy. This 
music was my first indication 
that I wasn’t an anomaly.
As 
positive 
and 
heartwarming as the article 
was for me, I also find it 
to 
be 
a 
fairly 
uncommon 
experience 
in 
the 
modern 
world and among people my 
age. While I certainly know 
other queer punks, I’m more 
often greeted with surprise 
or a jabbing, “I used to love 
‘Sugar 
We’re 
Goin 
Down’ 
when I was 15” when I tell 
other gays (usually men) about 
my musical passions. Despite 
the shared ethos of punk/emo 
music and queerness, there 
seems to be a disconnect in 
the 
general 
perception 
of 
their relationship by many gay 
individuals in the 21st century.
This could be largely due 
to the mostly indie/hip hop 
obsessed bubble of Ann Arbor 
(the city where I first opened 
up to seeing men romantically), 
but I’d like to propose that it 
could be partly in response to 
the more open social climate 
of today’s world in comparison 
to the ’80s and ’90s. With the 
continuous 
deconstruction 
of social norms like gender 
and 
heteronormativity 
— 
which punk culture was one 
of the first to widely express 
and popularize (i.e. Pansy 
Division) 
in 
the 
last 
few 
decades of the 20th century 
— LGBTQ+ individuals may 
find it less necessary to seek 
comfort 
in 
marginalized, 
niche cultures that used to 
represent safe havens for the 
queer community. More queer 
people might be able to find 
comfort in shinier, more visible 
mainstream genres like pop 
and hop hop, or simply not feel 
the need for catharsis in music. 
While 
these 
are 
freedoms 
I wish I had growing up, 
brainwashed by conservatism 
and religion — I often had 
to sneak my sisters’ Britney 
Spears HitClips because boys 
weren’t supposed to enjoy 
“(You Drive Me) Crazy” — it’s 
a beautiful thing to witness 
an improving social climate 
where more and more LGBTQ+ 
people feel much less pressure 
from society.
Yet, I’m also worried that 
the sparks ignited by the punk 
movement that have burned 
a path for this improvement 
are slowly being forgotten and 
degraded. 
The 
importance 
of 
this 
artform 
in 
queer 
identity 
is 
being 
further 
marginalized even by queer 
people themselves, chalking 
it up to meritless melodrama 

masked in aggressive guitar 
riffs and the quick pulse of 
a snare drum. Punk culture 
continues to degrade itself in 
the modern world through 

the perpetuation and almost 
overwhelming 
saturation 
of assault cases, most often 
by cis, straight white men. 
Despite 
today’s 
decaying 
relationship 
between 
queer 
and punk cultures, it should be 
remembered as a forerunner 
and advocator for queer rights 
and expression, as a place for 
those growing up without 
acceptance to go and finally 
turn themselves inside out.
Punk music let me know 
it was OK to ride my sisters’ 
Barbie bike and to play Pretty, 
Pretty Princess with them and 
to love “The Powerpuff Girls” 
and, eventually, to look at a 
cute boy without a second of 
shame.

On the division between 
queer and punk cultures

DOMINIC POLSINELLI
Senior Arts Editor

REPRISE RECORDS ‘Fun Home’ creates art 
from identity and tragedy

Fun Home Broadway

MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW: ‘SISTER CITIES’

 Just a few weeks ago, The 
Wonder Years put up a mys-
terious website with a list of 
coordinates; these coordi-
nates happened to be the loca-
tion of posters spread across 
the globe — from Manhattan 
to Dublin to Sydney and many 
other places — each contain-
ing a letter spelling out a 
password to unlock a teaser 
video for their forthcoming 
album Sister Cities. In the 
video, lead singer Dan Camp-
bell offers a succinct thesis 
for their latest work: “It’s 
a record about distance, or 
maybe how little the distance 
matters anymore.”
 Last week, the band 
released the title track as the 
album’s lead single along with 
a music video directed by Josh 
Coll (formerly of Foxing). The 
song explores this idea of dis-
tance and the interconnectiv-
ity of the human experience. 
Both in composition and lyri-
cism, The Wonder Years con-
tinue to separate themselves 
from other contemporary rock 
bands, relaying emotionality 
that feels intimate to the lis-
tener but is also immediately 
understood to be universal. 
Campbell belts out on the 

bridge, “I was just mange and 
skin and bone / You took me 
into your home / Kept warm 
on a blanket from your worn 
out winter coat,” leaving us 
with a hint of the comfort 
we experience in the people 
around us; reminding us that 
negativity and collapse aren’t 
permanent.
 The video chronicles the 
experiences of people staying 
at the same motel, mapping 
out different emotions in 
their separate lives and fol-
lowing the maid who cleans 
up the aftermath — there’s 
destructive children, lovers 
in the bathtub, a duo dancing 
in a haze, a couple in a bitter 
argument and a family trying 
to cope with their displace-
ment by a 
hurricane. 
Throughout 
the video, 
shots cut 
from delight 
and ecstasy 
to grief and 
anger, a 
breathless 
whirlwind 
of emotions 
as frantic as the track itself. 
Uniting these scenes in the 

common setting of the motel 
unites these emotions and 
experiences 
within all of 
us, conveying 
the cohesive 
essence of 
human nature.
 Toward the 
end of their 
teaser, Camp-
bell adds that 
the record is 
“about how we 
all experience grief and suc-
cesses in these alternating 

tidal waves of joy and devas-
tation,” a perfect summary 
for the theme of their latest 
music video. If the lead single 
is any indication, The Wonder 
Years’s masterful storytell-
ing is taken to new horizons 
and even greater heights on 
Sister Cities, one with a scope 
far vaster than the more per-
sonally oriented narratives 
explored on their past few 
records.

-Dominic Polsinelli, 
Senior Arts Editor

HOPELESS RECORDS

“Sister Cities”

The Wonder Years

Hopeless Records

I’d literally cut my 
heart out for The 
Wonder Years. 
I feel a religious 
connection to 
everything Green 
Day has ever 
done.

Punk music let me 
know it was OK 
to ride my sisters’ 
Barbie bike and to 
play Pretty, Pretty 
Princess with 
them 

COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK
MUSIC NOTEBOOK