BENGALURU: Humour is enjoying a quiet chuckle in the corner. Graphic artistes in the city, who are known to tackle uncomfortable topics such as thuggery by political goons and homophobia, say that they don’t feel the need to tone down their cheek. They say that their targets are often too dumb to inspire self-doubt or fear.
Three graphic artists, on Sunday, met at Mind Manifesto Society at Sly Granny in Indiranagar. The topic of discussion was Deconstructing Nation and Society through Graphic Novels.
“I would describe my humour as tongue -in-cheek rather than careful,” says Kaveri Gopalakrishnan, a published artist who runs a mini comic series titled #NewAgeWisdomEtc and UrbanLore along with Aarthi Parthasarathy. “I’ve been able to express my views on moral policing without having to mince my words. I don’t care about ‘getting into trouble’ because the dumbest thing I ever heard was ‘you are cheapening feminism’ which is just funny and does not deserve a response!”
Appuppen, who has three graphic novels and the Rashtraman series to his credit, says that his brand of humour is not confrontational. He says that he is not in any kind of trouble because he can always rely on the target’s stupidity. “Though I would rather rely on their intelligence,” he says.
Though he says this lightly, he says that he decided to create Rashtraman because he felt that his craft was under threat. Superhero Rashtraman is a spoof on conservatives, who fight every radical thought in sight, and he has a Man Friday in Cowboy. “We are moving towards a totalitarian society, we don’t see it yet,” says Appuppen.
Sreejitha Biswas, who runs StripTease the online magazine, says that it is “too late to mask our terrible sense of humour” with a name like the one they have. Sreejitha had created the Beginners Guide to Indian Homophobes and Shit People Tell Lesbian/Bi Women.
“I was a queer teenager who used to hang out with some of the biggest idiots on this planet,” she says. “As a queer adult, I realised that like my 14-year-old self there are many, many young queer kids out there who need to be told that it’s okay to be queer. They also needed to know that the things homophobes tell us are actually rather funny given how dumb, misinformed and bovine these bullies are.”