In Terms of Race Do Comic Books Offer Stereotypes? In terms of race comic books do offer stereotypes. But when the comic book characters were first created it was not intentional. The creators were well intentioned liberals, trying to make progressive steps for minorities in comic books. The exaggerated characters created became offensive in most characters. Comic books are very concentrated versions of society. Stereotypes of minorities aren’t created by comics but they were enforced, perpetuated and emphasized. Comic books accent certain characteristics of the character being created. Most often when it is an African American character the comic creator may accent the elements that construct the subject as “Black”. When the creator does this, they exaggerate the elements making the character not only look African American but then also creating the character to “act black” this then creates the “super black.” Because of the heavily embellished elements of the African American character a generality is made. The generality is made because when a black character is created and defined he then represents the race creating or enforcing a stereotype.
Ohhh my goodness... When I decided on trying to analyze the mythological origins and references in superhero comics, I had no idea the can of worms I was opening up... On the one hand, it was awesome to see just how many connections there were between superheroes and psychology/mythology/philosophy, but all the information also made it terribly difficult to distinguish what I should be using and how to tie it all together. When I was talking to one of my sorority sisters about it she said, "Oh yeah, well, research essays are kind of like putting together puzzles..." and I think that really sums up what writing this paper was like for me. Fortunately, I was really interested throughout the whole process and I very much enjoyed writing the paper. Being a psychology major, I was especially interested in reading about the Jungian archetypes that had a lot of parallels with major modern comic books superheroes. I was also able to incorporate Joseph Campbell's "hero cycle...
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