Editor Chris Duffy’s Fairy Tale Comics (2013) partners two crucial mediums in contemporary, popular American children’s media: comic books and fairy tales. The popular culture duo is current, representative of the return of fairy tales to the folk and showcases comic books as a new literary art form. In the Fairy Tale Comics collection, Cartoonist Joseph Lambert utilizes unique and impactful artistic choices to tell an old story to a new generation in Rabbit Will Not Help (2013). This comic book interpretation of the Br’er Rabbit Tar-Baby tale is refreshingly neither didactic nor romanticized, especially since it is meant for juvenile audiences. Significantly, Rabbit Will Not Help represents an African-American wonder tale in a collection of mostly standard, Americanized European fairy tales, such as Snow White (2013). Not only does Rabbit Will Not Help address American influence in the adaptation of wonder tales, but also the recognition of African-American storytelling in the now standard fairy tale tradition. But socio-cultural evolution is only part of the conversation: Lambert’s technique when demonstrating Rabbit’s guitar music illustrates the comic book possibilities therein. Lambert not only touches on music’s crucial role in American society, but also the expansion of language offered in the visual content of comic books. Engaging scholarship on redefining African-American identities in American media and the effects of adapting stories through comic books, Kacey Doran seeks to answer the following questions: How does the comic book format affect the translation of the Tar-Baby tale? How effective is the visual interpretation of music? Utilizing cultural studies alongside scholarly work on visual music representation, Doran will investigate the classic, American trickster tale in all of its glossy-paged glory, and elucidate on how this riff on culture and literature invites innovation, and not just reproduction, from the creators of contemporary, popular American children’s media.
About the presenterKacey Doran
Kacey Doran holds PhD in Childhood Studies from Rutgers-Camden and is the Esports Lecturer at Rowan University. She helped create and develops Rowan’s esports curriculum. She holds an M.A. in Children’s Literature from Hollins University and a B.A. in Women’s and Gender Studies from West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation focused on alternative perspectives of The Legend of Zelda franchise through feminist humanist and qualitative research methods analyzing videogames, visual and material culture.