"Little Nemo in Slumberland" dated February 21, 1909:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (NOVEMBER 24, 2020):
Well, I'm convinced this strip is just a reason for McCay to flex some cartoonists muscles and draw all of these amazingly exotic locales for the strip… - 1/15
We find ourselves starting out in New York and working our way through a bunch of cool places from Indiana to the Rockies to Siberia! - 2/15
All of these places offer McCay something fun to mess around with, whether it be animals, like bears and wolves, or scenery like the rocky mountains or the Egyptian pyramids! - 3/15
Alongside them though is a hefty amount of stereotype and caricature… some of it is obvious and has been discussed in previous strips, like the Native Americans and the "savage" cannibalistic jungle imps… - 4/15
…but others are less so. Panels 13 & 14, for instance, presumably depict the Asian continents struggles with opium and the stereotypical depiction of the Chinese and Indians as opium addicts ("hop"). - 5/15
Obviously, these are pretty nasty and continue to perpetuate racial and cultural stereotypes, so you'd be forgiven for walking away from this strip for that fact alone. - 6/15
I will say that the Jungle Imp caricatures are particularly egregious in this strip… we've seen Nemo and the boys chased by all kinds of animals (dogs, bears, and wolves), so the insinuation that the JIs belong amongst that group is front and centre. - 7/15
It falls quite in line with the nasty caricature of the "savage/brute" Black American whom, without the domesticating influence of slavery, is unruly and animalistic (Riggs, 1987). - 8/15
I also have to wonder about the visual coding of these particular "cannibals"… in the Jungle Imps saga, the cannibalistic imps were depicted differently, so what gives? - 9/15
We haven't seen Impy since Thanksgiving 1908 and the first time in months that we get a visual reminder of him, it's from a bunch of cannibals? That's irksome. - 10/15
What's more is that there really isn't much else that this strip offers (aside from artistic brilliance) to redeem itself either… - 11/15
The conceit is quite boring (a marathon… really?) and the conversation isn't really all that exciting either. - 12/15
We do get another example of Flip acting like the "smartest person in the race" or the one whose got it all figured out, but that's nothing new at this point… - 13/15
It's too bad that the strip doesn't do more with it's potential… had it leant heavier into the locales and less into the stereotypical depictions of their people, I think this could've been really near. - 14/15
This is my reading of "Little Nemo in Slumberland" #176. What's yours? - 15/15
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