"Little Nemo in Slumberland" dated March 29, 1908:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (OCTOBER 3, 2020):
Well, here begins the Shantytown series… and boy! Does it start with one heck of a turn of events… - 1/15
As Nemo arrives in the ramshackle town, something (an angel? A muse?) brings down a magical staff that she hands to Nemo totally out of the blue; one that allows him make his wishes come true. - 2/15
While it certainly says something about the type of child Nemo is that he wants to begin immediately helping people with his magic, I wonder why he didn't just wish to be reunited with his friends and the Princess? - 3/15
Anyway, as the strip progresses Nemo begins to "help" the people of Shantytown by transforming their dirty clothes into beautiful, clean garments and healing all sorts of ailments like blindness (he even wishes a leg back onto a person in panel 9)! - 4/15
All of these wonders, for they certainly are wonders, have the positive connotation of Saintly behaviour; helping the poor and healing the sick are sort of the go-to's in the bag of saintly tricks, right? - 5/15
And, certainly, the people seem incredibly happy to have this magical boy amongst them healing them and bettering their lives. They exclaim their excitement in panel 10 and one of their number yells, "let's follow him!" - 6/15
I'm sure Freud would have a field day with this dream because it really seems to me that our little Nemo might have a bit of a God complex… I don't mean that negatively though; who amongst us hasn't dreamed of being able to make our wishes and desires reality? - 7/15
Of course, there is also a reading here about gentrification… not only is Nemo transforming the inhabitants (at least visually) of the "worst town" he's ever seen into a more acceptably middle-high class status, but he's also displacing them… - 8/15
Isn't this exactly the problem with gentrification? The people who have lived in the communities being gentrified are often displaced because they can no longer afford to live there. - 9/15
Here, we see Nemo as an agent of displacement even before the gentrification truly begins… Admittedly, it's not like he's doing it forcefully (they're leaving of their of volition), but the next step (spoiler alert) is for Nemo to begin "fixing" up Shantytown itself. - 10/15
One point of interest for me is that Nemo's wishes jump the middle class entirely and go from low-socioeconomic (dirty, ripped clothes) to high-class (beautiful, clean clothes). - 11/15
Is there a connection Nemo's life in the waking world, here? I've always thought that the emphasis on palaces and beauty within Slumberland might be a reflection of Nemo's unconscious desire to elevate his socioeconomic status & this sort of reinforces it for me, I think. - 12/15
He doesn't wish just to clean and fix the peoples' clothes, he wishes to improve them far beyond the station in which they currently reside. A move to middle-class sensibilities might have been more reasonable, but it also might have been too realistic for his dreams. - 13/15
I'm very interested in the perspectives that others will bring to this strip, and this series in general, because I'm not positive that I have a good grasp on the nuances of what it's doing. I think together though, we can create some very cool readings. - 14/15
This is my reading of "Little Nemo in Slumberland" #129. What's yours? - 15/15
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