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On Representation in Comics
By
nixsight
–
22/05/2012
Posted in:
Comics
,
Commentary
[
View the story "On Representation In Comics" on Storify
]
On Representation In Comics
Nick & Chris_TOMP talk about representation in comics, and Milan Matejka drops in his experience too.
Storified by MOMBCOMICS · Tue, May 22 2012 10:47:40
There are always a few conversations going around about representation of gender, sexuality or ethnicity in comics, and whether or not they are fair.
A few days ago it was our buddy Andrew Tunney taking some frankly bizarre – and some slightly less bizarre – flak about his wonderful book Girl & Boy. Yesterday, it was all about DC’s maneuvering and hedging on the subject of which legacy character they are going to reboot as gay.
Nick says:
The only thing worse than under-representating minority groups in comics is arbitrary token representation of those groups.Nicolas Papaconstant
…I mean in comics, obviously. There are LOADS of things worse than those two things in the real world. Rape, for example. Famine.Nicolas Papaconstant
…If you don’t think there’s a natural place for an ethnicity/gender/sexuality in your story, you probably shouldn’t be writing them in…Nicolas Papaconstant
…If you KEEP not finding a natural place for any of those things in your stories you might want to gently examine yourself & work out why.Nicolas Papaconstant
@nixsight Well said!Christine
@nixsight It made writing my screenplay tricky, because I was expected to bring formula, but I am proud of making characters, not types.Milan Matejka
@Chris_TOMP I don’t have TOO much of a problem with the idea that some people write middle-of-the-road stuff. Firmly believe in:Nicolas Papaconstant
@Chris_TOMP BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD when it comes to creativity. But still, always good to check yourself.Nicolas Papaconstant
@nixsight Right. I think one "problem" (or fact of life) is that people are always better at writing what they know than what they don’t…Christine
@nixsight If people who don’t naturally engage with people who differ from them in terms of "category" then writing such characters often…Christine
@nixsight … ends up being clichéd.Christine
@Chris_TOMP I don’t even see that as a problem necessarily. About the stuff you know, you can be insightful. The other stuff, not so much.Nicolas Papaconstant
@nixsight If I have five gay friends and they’re all very different (which they are) then my idea of "gay character" is less constrained.Christine
@Chris_TOMP Exactly, that!Nicolas Papaconstant
Tags:
Christine Hanefalk
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comics
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nixsight
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On Representation in Comics