--- On Sat, 23/5/09, Lawnun <lawnun+mailingl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Lawnun <lawnun+mailingl...@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [silk] More on India in "Illiad" cartoons
> To: silklist@lists.hserus.net
> Date: Saturday, 23 May, 2009, 10:41 PM
> I'll preface this with "I'm not
> Indian" but...
>
> I must admit, the whole comic screams gross caraciture, and
> not terribly
> funny to boot. That being said, userfriendly ceased
> being entertaining (at
> least to me) about 3 years ago.
>
> By design though, I understand Illiad's need to yank in the
> generalizations
> for an attempt at comedic effect -- he works in a medium
> that falls back on
> such conventions regularly. In some respects, particularly
> in the case of
> the three-panel daily comic, I think you need to employ
> caricature and
> generalization to hit the succinct punchline at the end of
> the third panel.
> That India (and to a lesser extent, Indians, are the brunt
> of this
> particular thread) seem only to serve the current story
> arc, and I'm not
> sure it'd be fair to extrapolate ignorance of India(ns) to
> the creator (and
> even less so, to the comics' readership).
>
> Given that, I'm curious, in an 'across-the-pond' sort of
> way -- do you ask
> the same questions (or generate the same 'datasets' that
> Bonobashi did) --
> regarding Indian comics that exaggerate or generalize about
> the U.S. or
> Canada (or anywhere considered "away" for that matter)?
>
> Carey
FWIW, I only read Doonesbury; used to read Peanuts but haven't got used to
Lucy's primaeval violence and dropped out after a while.
I haven't tried to form a mapping of the Doonesbury world because Trudeau has
explicitly done it already.
I don't think this strip is more or less ignorant than expected, about India
and Indians. That is because Indians themselves are not well informed about
India. I've just finished explaining to a college contemporary who is a Kannada
speaking Bunt, and whom I inadvertently insulted by asking if she spoke Tulu,
that no, I didn't think before moving to Bangalore in 86 that all Southies were
Madrasis.
To find a (well-informed about India) cartoonist in the west is hugely
unlikely. I think. This is the cue for some busybody to refer me to the work of
Nalini Thimayya who cartoons for the Mid-West Patriot and whose cartoons are
about South Asia. Yeah, right.
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