Eisner’s comic Fagin the Jew deals with anti Semitism, but is set in Dickensian London.
In the 22nd century I wonder if it’d be possible to “pick a pocket or two” other than electronically. Of course I always assumed if Fagin lived today he’d be a pimp.
@Sampiro: There are still cases of the occasional fence using children in jobs. As for pickpocketing being done electronically I actually have a variation of that:
The kids have chips and other implants in various parts of their bodies (ie in their palms to allow them to easily steal someone’s credit card information.
@Alessan: The difference is that the person using the stereotype as shorthand may not actually hate the group they’re stereotyping or actually believe in the stereotype. I don’t know if Dickens was actually anti-Semitic but he was certainly exposed to anti-Semitic stereotypes. I’m exposed to Chinese stereotypes; does that make me a self-hating Chinese Australian?
Not so sure. The effect is the same or perhaps greater when used by the artist than by the person motivated by hate: perpetuation and promulgation of negative stereotypes throughout a general population.
Then you could actually say (and in fact I *do *think this) that both are equally bad but that the artist has a higher risk of being offensive.
Actually, would you mind it if I emailed you some of the story to check for any possibly offensive/stereotypical portrayals?
Also here’s a link to a sensational pamphlet about Ikey Solomon.Half the stories in it were made up.
bump
Sorry if this seems less than very helpful, but how fast of a read are we talking about? I doubt a sample of a few pages would be very useful as the context is the point in my mind but honestly I for one cannot commit to reading much more than that at this time.
Maybe you can flesh out how you intend to use the stereotypes “to comment on institutionalised racism and anti-Semitism” …
From your sample I am getting the idea that the idea is to retell the story from the perspective of the other characters, playing Oliver and those of the upper classes as stereotypes and giving the Artful Dodger and Fagin a more full and sympathetic or at least Heisenberg and Jesse antihero treatment.
Is that correct?
@DSeid: Partly. It’s told from the perspective of the Artful Dodger but I was actually thinking of making all the characters more complex and adding an extra layer of complexity to Fagin by giving him a family alongside of and including the gang of pickpockets (eg: Nancy becomes his biological daughter)
Actually I’m still working on this thing so I don’t mind if you can’t read the whole thing.
bump
bump again (have no actual idea why)
Morwen Edhelwen, sometimes topics just don’t become a big discussion. When this happens, bumping it once or twice is fine…but over 3-4 times starts to become more along the lines of annoying, post count padding or even spam (which usually stands for Silly, Pointless, Annoying Message–it doesn’t always have to be advertising, per se).
So let’s not make this topic live forever, hopefully. If nobody else has discussed the topic between 2 bumps, you should not bump the topic again.