European Comics and Animation

I was incredibly drawn to the idea of caricature in French animation especially. The Triplets of Belleville being among the most visually stunning movies that I've been exposed to in quite a long time. What French animation seems to do, which I've also seen in the Little Prince, was an absence of fear when designing characters. There was no set design, there are no two characters that look entirely alike. The idea of pushing a character to the extremes of their visual appearances and allowing those ideas and actions to speak for themselves. There was no trepidation in allowing the artists and designers to fully express their stories through all aspects of the animated medium. While the Little Prince is heavy with dialogue The Triplets of Belleville really struck me as a story anyone could grasp easily. Not only due to the caricature but the fact that it was for the most part an entirely silent feature. A person across the world who's never even heard of France could see this and understand it as perfectly as a born and raised Parisian. The way that comics and film can transcend geographic, cultural, and lingual barriers astounds me.
The stories that we tell as humans are universal ones. No matter age, ethnicity, location, or language, our stories are our own and they are human ones, and all people should have access to these ideas and works of art. The concept of a company or group of people having dominion or control over these stories and essentially childhood is detrimental to the growth and production of these mediums, and in my opinion to the development of humans themselves. Everyone has a story, and everyone should have the chance to tell their story in whatever way they believe will best represent themselves and their vision.

Stereotyping and Cliché in the Comic Book

The most interesting aspect of the comic book and graphic medium to me is the way that it seeks to reflect the social climate of our reality as it is in any particular moment. The monkey characters in old Mickey Mouse comics, the sexualization of women in many comics, and the way the hero is almost always white. Stereotypes, which is nothing more than a fancy way of saying clipart, generally attempt nothing more than to coddle the reader into believing that the way they see the world through their own warped eyes is okay, and accepted. Rarely is it the case that a stereotype of an entire group of people is accurate, flattering, or even researched very thoroughly before having it illustrated, printed, and published. This issue of proper representation has always been crucial, but as our society develops to a place where it is increasingly more accepting, in theory, of women or people of color to have the same jobs, homes, lives, and salaries as the traditional white man this issue of representation is brought more the forefront. When a comic book, video game or movie is misrepresenting an entire subsection of their audience it is not only a bad business plan, which we all know can be a death sentence in our economy, but blatantly ignoring the woes and plights of (in some cases more than half) of their entire fanbase. We see these issues of misrepresentation and the harmful aspects of stereotyping constantly in the news. The young unarmed black man who's shot down for little more than walking down the street, and the privileged white male college swimmer who can sexually assault a woman with little more than a tap on the wrist.
The argument that a stereotype and clichés are crucial to story telling is not only misguided but harmful to the medium. It forces us back in time and makes accepting the changes of our society and reality as it is that much more difficult. Rarely is it the truth that stereotypes change as society does, and generally when they do it remains only to tell the more ignorant of us that their uninformed, and often fear driven opinions are correct, and that they shouldn't feel anything but alright for having them, when in fact they are incredibly detrimental to human growth. Especially if you are a member of one or often the case may be more than one of the marginalized people. Representation from observation will always be a more powerful, more accurate, and more interesting form of storytelling, and to believe otherwise is to have your head in the past.