Arabic Comics and Conflicts: Ideological Indoctrination vs Individual Need for Change

LAU Beirut Campus, Gezairi Building 403

Comics as a genre usually reflects social, political, and economic changes. In our region (Israel put aside since it’s not in our topic), these factors and the players behind comics publications never hid their goals or intentions. A thorough overview of comics’ production, which was and still is for children, leads to an accurate timeline of these developments, with one specific paradox: when inter-state conflicts emerge, comics’ production becomes a tool for indoctrination. It becomes part of the “war efforts” even after the cessation of hostilities. Editors disregard any innovation, creativity, and quality in form and content. In contrast, when a wave of internal turmoil occurs (such as social conflicts, uprisings, civil wars, etc.…), this popular art becomes more liberal in its expression, more open, creative, and in our recent times individualistic and provocative as opposed to the mono-ideological authority.