Oxymoron? Not at all. Some are funny. Some resonate. Some are touching. Some are frightening. Many play on language familiar to those well versed in the topic. Worth reading.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/hnigatu/comics-that-capture-the-frustrations-of-depression?bffbuk
I think the way these strips deal with a difficult subject is very interesting - it reminds me of the feminist article we looked at last year, which also dealt with a topic that some find difficult to talk about. I think it would be interesting to compare the ways in which different topics of varying severity are dealt with, and how readers are manipulated into thinking more deeply about the issues.
ReplyDeleteI think that depression is such a sensitive topic that the way it is portrayed in most of these comics, is an attempt to describe or explain it in a way in which people would understand or connect with. Some of these do seem direct or blunt, however i find that the simpler comics seem to have so much more of an effect as it engages people to create their own interpretation of depression.
ReplyDeleteI really find the second comic rather powerful due to the way it uses a rhetorical question 'what if we treated every illness the way we treat mental illness?' because it is true. I agree with Shahira, depression is a sensitive topic and these comics help people understand more but many people don't treat it as serious, which is why this comic is so powerful to me. I would definitely not expect someone to say 'I'm getting very tired of this "cancer" of yours' to a cancer patient but I can certainly imagine someone saying 'I'm getting very tired of this "mental illness" of yours'. I think that they are treated exceptionally different and this comic is trying to prove that they are to some extent similar.
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