Hey, do you know that feeling of hitching up a long skirt so you don’t fall on your face when walking upstairs, and then you immediately become a wretched yet resolute Jane Austen character? It’s a universal thing, right?
It’s like resting a laundry basket against your hip and suddenly you’re a long-suffering peasant woman, wondering if you’ll survive the winter.
I’m super not-okay with that Mike Dawson “Why Did They Come” comic. If you’re a graphic artist in the U.S.? You know damn well what Maus is. Goyische graphic artists do not get to use the mouse-cat analogy for people fleeing their countries due to oppression, especially if those people aren’t Jewish, and certainly not if the text of the panel that does involve Jews absurdly downplays what was actually happening.
Like, you can make the exact same point without appropriating a seminal document of the Shoah’s aftermath.
Oh, it’s even worse than I thought. It says “Apologies to Art Spiegelman and Don Bluth.” Nope. Nope nope nope, you don’t get to rip this off. Make the same point and just change the fucking mice/cat thing – it’s not that hard.
Goyim don’t get to use incredibly important allegories of Jewish oppression at will. This shit needs to stop.
“Apologies, but plagiarism and also a barely veiled appropriation of the Shoah”
This is SO AWFUL. When I first saw the comic, I didn’t get a chance to read it, so I just glanced at it and the subject matter, and I ASSUMED it was a Spiegelman piece I hadn’t seen. It’s that freaking similar. (And I’ve studied his work fairly intensively if that furthers the point.) I just … why are my fellow non-Jews like this? This is fucking disgusting and absolutely unacceptable, and I expect to see other allies reblogging this, dammit. Stop. Doing. This.
Oh g-d. I thought it was a Spiegelman piece too.
Welp, I will be pointing out it’s appropriation and plagiarism on every future reblog I see.
Yeaaaaah I saw people reblogging it and wondered why no one had pointed it out yet. Thank you OP
I didn’t know this, so here’s for the people who didn’t know
I didn’t reblog “Why did they come” because I immediately recognized how much Dawson plagiarized Spiegelman, and the consequent trivialization of the Holocaust didn’t sit right with me, but I didn’t realize that the context wasn’t clear to everyone who saw the comic.
So, here’s a signal boost: “Why did they come” is heavily plagiarized, Dawson appropriates an important cultural work and in doing so he trivializes and downplays the Holocaust. The entire comic is done in extremely bad taste and Dawson should feel bad about his life and his choices.
If it crosses your dash, don’t reblog it. If it is in your queue, remove it. If you really want to reblog it, add a note/tag saying why it’s bad and a link to the op’s post.
