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Resource type: Journal Article Language: en: English Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1080/21504857.2012.718286 BibTeX citation key: Clementi2013 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details |
Categories: General Keywords: "Need More Love", Autobiography, Ethnicity, Kominsky-Crumb. Aline, Satire, Stereotypes, USA Creators: Clementi Collection: Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics |
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Abstract |
This article scrutinizes some anti-Jewish stereotypes and traces their presence, together with their devastating effects, in the graphic memoir Need More Love by Aline Kominsky Crumb (2007, MQ Publications), thus questioning and problematizing the use of self-loathing humour by the ‘insider’ within a minority group. Agreeing with Sigmund Freud that laughter enlists the audience as ally with the humourist by accepting the truth of a (satirical) statement, my study shows how through Kominsky Crumb’s graphic anti-Semitic humour, readers are made complicit, through their laughter, to the crime of hatred, misogyny, oppression represented in the graphic memoir. I propose that, in virtue of its visual enactments, the graphic medium – especially when at the service of minority/ethnic imaging – has the powerful potential of turning witnessing (implicit in any autobiographical act) into ‘eye witnessing’. My work focuses on how Kominsky Crumb deploys this potential to establish and disestablish hateful stereotyping.
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