The Surprising Importance of Newspaper Comic Strips
When something becomes routine it is all too easy to overlook its significance. For so many, reading the newspaper comic strips became just that, a routine. But why? What in these strips, besides simply their placement in the newspaper, made them become such an integral part of life for so many people? What purpose did they serve and what does this say about their power? I wanted to find out.
To that end, I am conducting an ethnographic qualitative study on newspaper comic strips to answer these inter-related research questions:
1.What made Newspaper comic strips so popular with the United States public?
2.What role do comics play in people’s daily lives and what does this say about the power of comics?
3.What role do comic strips play in family lives?
In terms of methodology, I am asking four to five people a series of primarily open-ended questions about their memories of reading comic strips, their favorite strips, and how these strips relate/related to their life and family. I will then examine these answers and compare them answers to each other, utilizing the main themes greatest overlaps to answer my research questions.
I will, of course, also express the limitations of the study due to my very small sample size and show how further research could improve on the valuability of my findings. With this in mind, I decided to ask the age and gender-identifications of my interviewees to see if any interesting patterns emerged that might be grounds for further investigation.
I am also conducting research, which will take the form of a literature review in my study, to support the meaningfulness of comic strips and the massiveness of their readership both in the past and today. So far, I have found several essays analyzing comic strips and their potential effects on the public as well as looking in-depth at the meaning behind certain strips.
I have conducted three interviews as of now, all of individuals in their late 50’s and above. Though there were distinct differences in the answers each interviewee gave, there were also extremely striking similarities. Two out of three of the interviewees discussed a direct relation between the comic strips and their family life, all talked at length about the humor of the strips, and
My most interesting finding from these interviews so far is how important the political aspect of newspaper comic strips were to people. Even before I asked about how they felt these strips related to their own lives or current events, each had mentioned politics several times.
In fact, each interviewee expressed that newspaper comic strips appealed to them, at least in part, because these of the way they dealt with politics. In particular, they liked how comic strips utilized humor and satire to talk about current political events. In fact, the word satire or satirical was used six times by one interviewee. Furthermore, and perhaps most surprisingly, the same interviewee said that he’d had a comic strip force him to re-evaluate his political or societal views.
Interestingly, out of the vast different comic strips published over the years, all three interviewees also claimed that Doonesbury was one of their favorites. The reason they each gave was some variation of how it was radical and illuminated/gave voice to the parts of politics that people didn’t want to or didn’t know how to talk about. One interviewee said that it “did a great job of lighting up the dark spots.”
These answers are swaying me towards the conclusion that the main role that newspaper comic strips played in people’s lives was providing a more comfortable and even pleasant way to approach difficult, complicated and often upsetting, topics.
I will be very interested to see if the next two interviews I conduct continue this trend and support this conclusion.
