Week 8: Stereotype and the Ethics of Representation

Throughout history, comics have ranged from lacking racial and ethnic diversity to over emphasizing certain physical features to form a recognizable racial caricature. Although it is great that over time comics and graphic narratives have become so much more diverse, however, I believe that characters built arounds heavy stereotypes are not a necessary strategy in characters design and representation. I think that creators find it easiest to build characters off of these stereotypes, but I just think that it makes them lack depth and other qualities that you need to draw in consumers. And not only have comic books included racist stereotypes, but also sexist stereotypes. Comic books have never been ones to shy away from hyper masculinity or enforcing oppressive female gender roles, however, in modern day, it seems to be that breaking stereotypes has become the new stereotype. It is not nearly as hard as it used to be to find comics with leading female and ethnic characters, which is just an example of how we have evolved over the years.