English
Inspired by the short story “Spagetti für zwei” by Federica de Cesco, we have developed another comic: The story focuses on how prejudices can define a young person and lead them astray.
Our – slightly modified – story is about the pupil Marianna, who treats herself to a vegetable soup in the canteen. She puts the plate of soup on her seat and walks away for a few seconds to get a spoonful. When she comes back, a dark-skinned man is sitting at her table eating the vegetable soup. Outraged, Marianna sits down and eats the soup with the stranger. After the soup is finished, the stranger buys a portion of spaghetti with two forks. Marianna and the black man enjoy the spaghetti together. At the end of the story, it turns out that the dark-skinned man had not eaten Marianna’s soup at all, but his own. Marianna’s soup had been sitting next to it. The mix-up led to a long-lasting friendship.
Of course, this was a fitting topic for us. It expresses the fact that there is a lot of prejudice in society against black people and marginalized groups. The story is an example of racism. It appealed to us to transform it into a comic, to illustrate it and write the text. It wasn’t easy at all to recreate the situation with the mixed-up plate. And what else we discovered: It wasn’t so easy to always get the right facial expressions and gestures. This is extremely important in the story, as more than half of it takes place without spoken words. It’s more about what the protagonists are thinking. Of course, this can also be represented in the comic with thought bubbles. Nevertheless, it only works if the appropriate facial expressions can be seen.
But our two main actors mastered it perfectly. Expressive pictures were created in just a few attempts. The result is a comic on our first topic of food/nutrition that is very thought-provoking. It shows how quickly people make judgments based solely on their appearance. At the same time, however, it also makes it clear that with a little courage you can make new friends.
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