American Born Chinese and stereotyping.

This week we addressed stereotypes in comics. It is funny, as an animation student I was taught to follow tropes in order to make my audience understand a character. "If he's a heroic character, his torso should be in the shape of a V." "Your character should be slouched if you want convey..." "Her legs are too skinny to be athletic." It is because of this that I am on the fence about stereotypes in comics. I understand the practical use of these stereotypes in character design; the audience has no idea who your character is, and sometimes you don't have a lot of time to teach the audience who the character is, therefore stereotypes are a quick way to give your audience a sense of who that character is, so that you can move on to actually telling the story. For me "what is not okay" ultimately depends on what stereotype is being exploited. I can understand and justify certain physical attributes, such as "A strong man would have a V-shaped torso, because that makes sense if he has more muscle than the average joe. However if that characteristic is exaggerated to the point that it sticks out like a sore thumb, distracts you from the character's role and story, and makes the audience uncomfortable, that is where I would disapprove.

Though there have been instances where I was the victim of stereotypes, it didn't seem that they came from the visual representations of cartoons.
There have been representations of Asian people which didn't sit well with me, but I tried to overlook it so that I could continue with the overall story. For example, when I read "Tintin goes to Tibet," I wasn't very pleased with the way Herge illustrated some Asian characters. But they were only background characters that Tintin encountered, so I tried to forget how bothered I was. I also tried keeping in mind that Herge lived in a time where racism was a little more prevalent and accepted. Of course that doesn't justify his representations, but I have more understanding for why it is so.
American Born Chinese also featured some chapters where there was one character, "Chin-kee," who was the utmost unflattering portrayal of a Chinese person. However, this was done intentionally, for the main character was trying to separate himself from his heritage. He was embarrassed to be Chinese, and therefore this super stereotypical unflattering portrayal of an Asian character made sense for the narrative. I could not avoid the initial discomfort I felt every time I saw this character. However, understanding its purpose in the narrative helped a lot, and I actually think it was a very clever way to portray an American-born Chinese with identity issues.

As I had said with Maus, I suppose where I "draw the line" with racism and stereotypes in comics depends on the intention of the author and the context of the story and the world's status quo.