Remix Project
When thinking of which comic to remix for this project, the first thing my mind jumped to was an old Cracked article I’d read several years ago. The article discussed some of the most homophobic comics ever created, and one really stuck with me. The comic was called Born that Way: The Truth About Homosexuality, and featured a pretty absurd storyline in which a family finds themselves in the midst of a gay rights rally turned violent. In the middle of it all, the younger brother comes out as gay to his family, only to be met with anger from his older brother and judgemental Bible verses from his older cousin. The comic ultimately concludes with the brother that came out believing that he is a sinner and needs to change who he is to get God’s approval again. The comic comes from a Christian anti-gay group and is meant to teach people that homosexuality is a sin in a loving way. It is clear that this comic privileges straightness and also places an emphasis on being Christian, as it does not provide any non-religious arguments
for why homosexuality is wrong.
Growing up in a fairly conservative Muslim environment, many of the messages depicted in this comic were the same messages I heard regularly from both my parents and members of the community. For my remix, the main message I wanted to convey was that God doesn’t have to be the wrathful God depicted in the Bible and other holy books. Topics like homosexuality are usually uncomfortable to talk about to younger people, especially in a religious context. The message I wanted to send through my remix is one that is often either completely ignored or handled very harshly (as can be seen in the comic). I didn’t want to be complicit with the teachings of the Bible, since I believe that religious texts have to be taken in context and be able to adapt to change. When I was younger, I had troubles balancing my faith with my beliefs, and messages like the one I hope to convey through my comic would have been very helpful because both are very important to me.
The intended audience for this is any young person struggling to keep their faith in the context of modern, progressive ideologies that normally clash with religion. This doesn’t necessarily have to be kids struggling with their sexuality, which was the intended audience of the original comic. Instead, the audience is simply anyone who’s found that their religion has clashed with their beliefs and is struggling to choose which to believe.
In my remix, I decided to keep the older brother as he was — -angry and unaccepting of his younger brother. I also decided to keep his older sister the same, since she was accepting of him. I changed the comments of the cousin, who originally quoted random verses from the Bible to support the idea that homosexuality is a sin. Though I haven’t read much of the Bible, I have had experience with similar verses in the Quran, so I was fairly comfortable with the changes I made about what the Bible said.
This is definitely an instance of convergence culture because of the fact that many young people have progressive views that don’t necessarily fit in with the conservative teachings of holy texts like the Bible, and there have been recent movements to show that religion can and should change with the times. Similarly, this fits in with remix culture as well because it is very similar to the Barbie computer engineer remix. The creator of the Barbie remix was unhappy with the depiction of women in STEM, but still wanted Barbie to be a role model for young girls, so she remixed the original book to depict her views. My goal in this remix was much the same as the Barbie remix creator’s because though I love my religion, there are some things that I don’t agree with, and those are depicted in the remixed comic below.
