Til daglig koncentrerer The Rubin Museum of Art på Manhattan sig om at udstille kunst og genstande fra Himalaya’s kulturer, men nu har de åbnet en udstilling, der viser regionen som sét gennem massemediet tegneserier, gennem snart 70 år. Det var James Hilton’s bestseller roman, “Lost Horizon” (da. “Tabte Horisonter”) og film bearbejdningen fra 1937, der satte bølgen i gang i Vesten.
I 1940’erne drog tegneserie figurerne på ekspeditioner til Himalaya for at finde “Yeti’en”, den Afskyelige Snemand. Donald Duck og Bugs Bunny lærte mærkelige, ofte opdigtede, Tibetanske traditioner at kende. I “Mickey Mouse in High Tibet” ser man Tibetanere hilse på folk ved at stikke tungen frem. Eller har tepotten på hovedet når de skal servere te.
“Om Mani Padme Hum…”: I 1940’erne var der også superhelte serien, “The Green Lama” af veteranen Mac Raboy, der siden er blevet genoptrykt i sh på AC Comics og i farve archive hc på Dark Horse; en serie om en mand, hvis visdom hentet i Tibet hjalp ham til at få overnaturlige evner.
fra http://www.theworld.org/2012/01/tibet-through-comics/
Some of the comic books in the exhibit do seem to actually get Tibet. Tsering Lama, also at Columbia, grew up in a Tibetan community in Nepal. She was a huge fan of Western comic books like “Archie” and “Asterix,” and remembers the joy of discovering the comic “Tintin in Tibet,” where one of her favorite characters travels to a familiar landscape.
“He’s kind of walking around the streets where I grew up,” Lama says. “It’s humorous–he’s making fun of some of the clichés a little bit, like a Tibetan lama floating in the air, then there’s Nepali people drying peppers on the street, and there’s cows walking around, and stuff like that. But mostly it was like a visual thing—to see Tibet portrayed in a visual way by someone I love, like Tintin, walking around in Tibet and Nepal was really, really cool.”
Lama thinks that part of the west’s enduring fascination with Tibet, on clear display in these comic books, comes from the fact that the country has, for so much of its history, been closed off. It allows imagination to run wild.
And she says there really are some things to be fascinated by. “There are elements about it that are kind of strange—ideas of reincarnation, ideas of monks being able to dry an icy-cold sheet wrapped around them just because of their mental power. Things like that. Those are things my parents believe in, and those are things I wrestle with too.”
She finds it ironic that Westerners so often look to Tibet for peace and strength, when the current reality there can be pretty bleak.
fra http://www.rmanyc.org/nav/exhibitions/view/1286
Hero, Villain, Yeti
December 9, 2011 – June 11, 2012
Characters as diverse as Mickey Mouse, the historical Buddha, Tomb Raider Lara Croft, and the Green Lama have something in common: Tibet. For more than sixty years Tibet has figured in comic books from around the world, at times creating and at times perpetuating notions of an otherworldly land roamed by the yeti, inhabited by wise and powerful lamas, or full of dark magic.
Hero, Villain, Yeti features the most complete collection of comics related to Tibet ever assembled, with examples ranging from the 1940s to the present. More than fifty comic books from the Belgium, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, and the United States reflect on the depiction of Tibet, tracing the historical roots of prevailing perceptions and stereotypes and their visual and narrative evolution over time.
Tibet—both real and imagined—appears across comic book genres, including fantasy comics about superheroes and villains, mythical creatures, and the search for mysterious lands, people, and objects; biographies of holy figures like the Dalai Lama and the Buddha; political comics; and educational comics.
Visitors are invited to read dozens of original comic books—a number of which have been translated into English for the first time—at a reading station in the exhibition.
This exhibition was funded, in part, by The Achelis Foundation
Curated by Martin Brauen
