This one's going to be about religion related comics in Newspapers.
QOTD:
Does the fact that something is cartoon/comic allow it to get away with more?
Is this (and if so, why is it) a bad thing?
Do cartoon/fictional depictions in any way desensitise people to what's offensive in the real world?
We had a guest lecturer at uni last year who talked to us about the rise of Islamophobia. As part of this, he discussed ways in which the rise is evident amongst the general public and one of these was through the 'funny' little comics in general newspapers. These started off innocent enough, but he showed how people got braver with their 'prejudice' and how that was shown in this way- people seemed to be more ok with poking fun at Muslims. Having said that, this has been happening with Christianity for many years, however it is assumed to be much less controversial to poke fun at Christianity, presumably because Christianity is larger and more prominent so it is perhaps assumed to be immune.
Here is a great little article on the history of Christianity related comics in the papers.
Here is a great little article on the history of Christianity related comics in the papers.
Some are gentle fun and I'd say relatively harmless, such as:
Or:
Some, though are not nec supposed to be offensive but although are cartoons seem to be trying to get a genuine religio-political (I think I just made that up) message across like
which is based on real events and includes charicatures of the real people involved. This is what keeps it current rather than what comics usually do, which is create characters to represent real figures.
However, some comics are downright Danish... and not taken so lightly. You can read about that on the next blog! (Shameless plugging going on here)
I think cartoon/comics don't necessarily get away with more because of their form. Instead it depends on what is being portrayed and the way, the people who are most likely to be offended by it, generally react.
ReplyDeleteAs for desensitisation studies have shown that this occurs. For example some are against holocaust images being shown as they believe this would desensitise the viewers. However it is difficult to say to what extent.
That's true, I guess offence is offence when it comes down to it, whatever the means. Perhaps things like cartoons are generally easier to ignore though?
DeleteOh really, that's very interesting. However,besides the holocaust we see pictures of tortured bodies etc from documentaries and recent times and I guess we have become somewhat desensitised as it is a lot less disturbing and difficult to look at each time. With cartoon however, I think its less to do with how disturbing the IMAGE is, as the message.