Week 2

According to Horricks (2004), how have perceptions of comics as a media changed?

Horricks (2004) points out major changes that have occurred over time in New Zealand with comics. For instance the issue of whether comics could potentially impact on youth negatively was concerning for the general public, especially those with strong antagonistic views. Such views are that of conservatives and other less obvious anti-comics campaigns because of “violence and jingoistic anti-Communism found in many American comics”. The writer continues to show that regardless of comics being frowned upon in the past, it has come a long way to be considered over tie as a more serious literary canon. For example “there are courses dedicated to comics in English and Art History university departments in America, Britain and here in New Zealand”. We are told, however, that mass concerns such as this have in fact not vanished. Instead it has just moved on to other forms of media hat raise the same concerns. That includes gangsta rap, television, the internet or video games” to name a few. Contemporary commentators have considered these art forms as unworthy of looking into. It is also these kinds of views that caused the novel among other things to be a “target of moral panics at various times in the past”.

Horricks, D. (2004). The Perfect Planet: Comics, games and world-building in Williams, M. (Ed.), Writing at the Edge of the Universe. Christchurch: U of Canterbury Press