These comics are truly a mirror of the time they were written in. The clothing, colloquialisms, and hair styles all match what we think of today as the cliché 1950's American life (except that June Cleaver has the capacity to kill). Another unsurprising 1950's aspect in these comics is the absurd white-washing. Obviously this is a product of its time. The only POC is the magician in "Partially Dissolved" on page 171. The Great Ventar seems to be written and drawn like the machine with the head of a middle eastern man wearing a turban that you put 25 cents in and get your future foretold. Ventar is characterized as Middle Eastern for the mystical connotations, which is slightly problematic.
It could be worse though. In Tintin, we saw outright racism on multiple occasions. Through so many vignettes in Crime SuspenStories, POC could have been included in a racist manner (other than Ventar) like in Tintin. It's not perfect, and by no means admirable, but I suppose it is slightly better that there is no inclusion of POC instead of rampant racist inclusion like in Tintin?
In the case of Crime SuspenStories, I feel that the exclusion of POC from the narrative has two main effects. First, it seems that crimes are never committed by POC. It has been argued that today's media over-reports on crime by POC. On this front, the exclusion seems almost better than today's representations of crime.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, a complete exclusion leads to a sort of ingrained segregation. While reading, we do not sympathize with any narrators of color. As far as we know, they are completely alien. This lack of discourse between the different racial narratives is always harmful.
On the whole, I would say that exclusion is usually bad, even in the case of Crime SuspenStories, which seeks to turn readers against characters.
I agree that comics have been rather slow in becoming diverse and inclusive. In including people of color or women, comics have taken their sweet time. In class we discussed the creation of the femme fatale character, and it's inclusion in Crime SuspenStories. Although this kind of character wasn't very positive, or enlightening in the least about anything but one small part of the gender, I still appreciated the inclusion of women in the comics. Ty may be right that the inclusion of POC in this comic might not be the greatest, but I still think that inclusion of POC is better than no inclusion at all. I wonder if the comics code, in the rule about no racism, encouraged comic artists to ignore the problem entirely by excluding POC?
ReplyDelete