Stereotype and the Ethics of Representation

This week was all about Stereotype and the Ethics of Representation and how comics utilize the function of a stereotype and may even be dependent on them.  In class we studied how often stereotypes are used in comics and other mediums, and in my mind often this is to get a character or message across to the reader most clearly and effectively,  despite the opposing view points that were expressed during the class discussion.  These stereotypes had to have come from some where to begin with and working with people at my job, everyday I see these generalizations or more often than not true.  I have thought about the fact that because my pre-existing knowledge of these stereotypes I may be subconsciously looking for them to be true, but I don't think this is the case as I'm not really biased towards one way or the other so why would I bend what I'm seeing to be a specific way.  Anyways that being said I did read a comic for this week! One that I quite enjoyed in fact, American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang.

Yang has crafted a brilliant graphic novel that relies heavily upon a complex narrative that consists of 3 separate and compelling stories that all run parallel and eventually tie together by the end of the book.  Each one has similar themes of self-awareness and how the characters look at themselves to form their own identities.  I have some what of a bias towards anything that includes the story of the Monkey King, which has been used in countless things through out history, from the animations of "Journey to the West", to things a little more subtle but still obvious like Akira Toriyama's Dragonball(One of my favorite manga of all time by the way).  So Yang's graphic novel instantly had me hooked when I saw his use of the Monkey King's story as a sort of parallel story to the main protagonist Jin Wang.

Jing Wang's story is still compelling, it's interesting how Yang is able to weave all the little subtle issues a young chinese person would have assimilating into American culture.  He does this in a light hearted way such as when the teacher mispronounces his name and then he corrects and then she corrects.  Just this little scene it was easy to identify with the situation because I've watched this exact occurrence happen a ton of times to my friend Rani growing up because of his different ethnic background.

Finally we come to the all-american Danny who's fed up with his super blatant chinese stereotype of a cousin Chin-Kee.  I think Chin-Kee was a super funny character and kind of shows the reader that the overly ridiculous chinese stereotype is a huge contrast to the much more realistic portrayal of an actual person of asian decent living in America.  It's interesting to find that Danny is actually what has become of Jing as he tries to deny his Chinese heritage to avoid any more harassment.  Here is where the reader should have a recollection of the foreshadowing that Yang uses in the beginning of the novel where Jing wants to become a “Transformer” and all he has to do is sell his soul; This is a spectacular use of foreshadowing.

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel and I'm glad I read it, I didn't quite care for the ending as much as I had hoped, because I just wanted to keep reading, but it didn't ruin the experience for me.  Next week is manga! Definitely my favorite form of comics!

Maus

I went into Maus by Art Spiegelman expecting a complete masterpiece, and though I did enjoy it throughly, I wasn't blown away.  I think what's most interesting about Maus is that it joins something that's typically thought to be lighthearted, the comic book(graphic novel), with a story of pure evil, the holocaust, and makes it work almost perfectly.  The first half of Maus was interesting and kept me reading, though there were a few dry spells, but the entire second half of the book from Auschwitz and beyond kept me thoroughly entertained without question.

The story is without a doubt the reason one would read Maus.  The story is broken up into 2 stories really, one the father's and the second, the author's own story as he's gathering the actual info in order to write the book.  I feel like the seamless play between the 2 stories is a clear highlight of this novel.  Both stories are incredibly well-written and interesting on their own accord and Spiegelman is able to weave them both together to create one smooth flowing narrative that entertains the reader through out the novel. I found the use of foreshadowing to be pretty interesting how for instance the author's father is revealed to have died, but it continues to show their in-person conversations and then finally reverting to the rest of the novel being created through tape recording. Not only is each part well written, but I think there are quite a few pages that really inspire the reader and give them a reason to reflect upon life, like this one:

This page really shows both the determination of humans to live and what gives them this strength, and at the same time human's total dependency on others.

Spiegelman is absolutely an awesome story teller that much is for sure, but I can't say the same for his art which is far too crude for my tastes and I often found myself not knowing which character was which.  This could probably be attributed to the fact that the characters were depicted as animals based on there nationality, giving them all a much more similar look than that of humans.  I'm not saying that I didn't find this an interesting and unique decision, but I think it came off as more of a novelty in my eyes, rather than an innovation.  I say this because not only did I have trouble distinguishing characters half the time, but other than some specific cases of extreme emotion, the characters showed hardly any, which really made some of the scenes lack the feeling and emotion I think the reader would get with more realistic human expression.  This kind of makes me question Spiegelman's reasoning behind the use of animals and the only conclusion I can come to is the need to simplify and still give it that comic book feel.

Overall I found Maus to be an enjoyable experience, not my favorite graphic novel by any means but definitely time well spent, and pretty educational for someone that isn't well versed in the history of the Holocaust.

...And here's a final panel to give you nightmares for the rest of your life:

Underground Comics

Underground comics, definitely not my cup of tea.  I struggled through some of the awful ones on the course resource page to find out that none of them really caught my attention.  Most of them were littered with extremely poor illustration and juvenile storytelling with not much of a purpose other than to make a disgusting sexual reference or throw out a racial slur and then move on to the next one.   I noticed from the class blog that most of our study would be centered around Robert Crumb.  So, I took the initiative and gathered up some of his comics, mostly “Mr. Natural” and got to reading.  Come to find out Crumb wasn't much better than the rest.

I say this because though he has relatively better craft and illustrative quality in comparison to most of the other underground comic illustrators, his material never says anything more than cheap blatantly racist and extremely immoral sexual references and acts.  I found this to be completely uninteresting in pretty much every aspect.  Come to find out he was taking hard drugs the entire time he was writing/illustrating these comics, which I can't personally respect either, as I'm much more of a hard working person that believes in full coherent understanding of your work and surroundings rather than relying on a substance to do the work for you.  I'm not even sure how some of these were thought to be acceptable for publishing as some of the acts just seemed so outrageous that I don't feel comfortable reiterating them on my blog.

I know I'm generalizing a lot when I write this, because I'm sure not every underground comic is like this, though from what I've looked at, it seems the majority is. During class I “read” one that I thought was interesting, it had decent art that had obviously been inspired by traditional comics but still had a sort of amateurish feel.  But, what made it interesting was not the art, but the fact that it contained no words, but it was really easy to follow panel to panel, and even included some memory scenes. I respect the scene for the fact that it put comics back into the hands of readers during a time when the industry was lagging.

Anyways, I think that's about all I can say about Underground comics, but I've already began reading “Maus” for next week and I'm really enjoying that one, so look forward to my thoughts on that!