After reading Christian Davenport’s piece, I believe that comics offer stereotypes as they pertain to race. Generally comic books offer stereotypes to all characters chronicled, but racial stereotypes seem most prominent as they can shape [unfortunately] the characters. Davenport states, in his piece Black is the Color of My Comic Book Character: An Examination of Ethnic Stereotypes, “A way of speaking, a look, a personality trait, an emotion is given to a character that allows readers to label, and recognize, and identify them. As a consequence of this process, individuals from Brooklyn would speak with an accent and make gestures with their hands; intergalactic pirates would drink some alcohol- like substance and plunder unsuspecting vessels; bikers (from any planet or microverse) would wear tattoos and dark glasses; and Blacks (whether they appeared on a street corner or on Mars) would be represented by characteristics that were/are usually associated with African Americans, such as threatening demeanor, high levels of athletic prowess, low intellectual capabilities, exotic and mysterious backgrounds, residence within an inner city, and menial employment or unemployment” (Davenport 22). I feel as though Davenport was able to depict the topic of this blog in a way better than I ever could attempt. Stereotype is defined as a 1widely held but fixed and oversimplified or idea of a particular type of person or thing and 2a person or thing that conforms to such an image. Comics is just one of countless media outlets that succumb to the use of stereotypes.
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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