CMLIT 415: World Graphic Novels
Created as a special project for Dr. Jon Abel's CMLIT World Graphic Novel course, this project sought to give a different visualization of the world organization, FEMEN, a radical feminist group, who protests crimes against the female body by demonstrating nude. If you haven't heard of this group before, I highly recommend reading up on what they stand for and the controversies surrounding their organization, before reading the comic. No matter personal opinion on the group's tactics, Femen nonetheless have occupied the European news circuit for quite some time. For a project in my French news course, I followed the coverage during a specific time period. The degree of censorship depended on the news organization, but brought up really interesting questions: Why, specifically, did the female form as such invoke such radical response? How does the movement rely on such shock value (and does this then reinforce the things they protest?)
The concept of changing mediums (from photography to comics) was my own attempt to portray their cause in a different way, a way that is less likely to result in being censored or used for pornographic purposes. I wanted to raise the question of how the visuality of female bodies changes between mediums, and thus, experimenting with forms that may be more effective. As photographs, they negotiate a space of precarious grounding when those images are proliferated, later censored or sexualized by viewers. But as comics, the symbolic abstraction has the potential to give the movement more power somehow, while not running the risk of the very objectification that they are in part, protesting. It provides a solid visualization, while also allowing a platform to create written content, enabling the group to more precisely address the public. Femen does use one panel comics occasionally and follower fan art on their social media platforms but has yet to organize a graphic novel. As part of the class project, I created a few pages of how such a comic could look like. Enjoy.
The concept of changing mediums (from photography to comics) was my own attempt to portray their cause in a different way, a way that is less likely to result in being censored or used for pornographic purposes. I wanted to raise the question of how the visuality of female bodies changes between mediums, and thus, experimenting with forms that may be more effective. As photographs, they negotiate a space of precarious grounding when those images are proliferated, later censored or sexualized by viewers. But as comics, the symbolic abstraction has the potential to give the movement more power somehow, while not running the risk of the very objectification that they are in part, protesting. It provides a solid visualization, while also allowing a platform to create written content, enabling the group to more precisely address the public. Femen does use one panel comics occasionally and follower fan art on their social media platforms but has yet to organize a graphic novel. As part of the class project, I created a few pages of how such a comic could look like. Enjoy.