Week 8 - Stereotype and the Ethics of Representation

To me stereotypes in comics is an example of an artist who is not creative enough to come up with compelling characters. Stereotypes are easy to do because we see them all the time. They are what we "expect" to see. But because we see them so often they start to become very unoriginal. At the same time I believe that stereotypes do not really help anything. Yes it allows the artist to be able to create characters very easily but for what? It does not do anything for the reader when we have these shallow small depth characters. By having these stereotypes incorporated in our pop culture it only reenforces them. This is not the mindset that the artist should be giving people who view their work.

We should be using our medium to making people see past the typical stereotypes. Art can be used and I think should be used as a way of communicating positive messages to the world. Stereotypes only exists I believe because they are similar to viral videos, in that once there's the image of a stereotype, some people just seem to buy into it and believe it.

Looking into the future I hope that comics will throw away the stereotypes and enforce the use of not having any stereotypes. It's possible with the newer generation who for the most part, we seem to be more open to things such as this, will be the ones to rid the stereotypes. But at the same time it is hard to predict what will happen because I believe that the stereotypes have become somewhat ingrained into our society, even if the majority of the people do not like them.