Sci-Fi & Squeam

26 Jun 2016

The Horror of Hatred and The Power of Comics

Comics, cult, Horror Films, Music, Society & Culture, TV & Film

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The Horror of Hatred and The Power of Comics

Episode #326 Tuesday June the 21st,2016 at 10pm in the JOY studios Melbourne Town. Sonja Hammer goes it alone in this episode with two interviews: 1. Milo Cawthorne from Deathgasm and Blood Punch and 2. Safdar Ahmed who is a comics artist and creator of Islamophobia,Night of the Muslim Zombie:

‘If vampires are the silky aristocrats of the horror genre (an anaemic class of privileged, morbid, night-dwellers, condemned to live eternally), zombies inhabit a lower rung of society. They are the ‘great unwashed’, the lower classes, whose naïve and uninformed attempts at civic participation threaten to overturn society’s rules and norms. They evoke the fear of contagion that metropolitan discourses frequently associated with subaltern and marginalised groups, such as the homeless, migrants, indentured workers, slaves, refugees, gypsies and indigenous communities. They are the bearers of physical illness transmitted through blood and saliva. Their need to violate Western society’s deepest taboos, against murder and cannibalism, strike to the heart of this unease.’

Excerpt taken from Safdar’s essay on Islamophobia.

We also dedicate this episode to the late Anton Yelchin who passes away suddenly this week.

“How many different people can I play, and how different can I make them every time.” Anton Yelchin.

Below : One of Safdar’s ‘Muslim Zombies.’

‘The overwrought prose found in right-wing scholarship, news media and the blogosphere has normalised such expressions as: ‘Islamo-fascism’, ‘the threat of Islamisation’, ‘Islam has bloody borders’, ‘creeping sharia’, ‘sharia by stealth’, ‘Unholy terror’, ‘Muslim rage’ (think here of the zombie ‘rage virus’), ‘cult of death’ and so on. Such rhetoric plays upon an existing (albeit imaginary) fear.’

In 2015 Safdar won a Walkley Award in the Artwork category for his documentary webcomic, Villawood: Notes from an Immigration Detention Centre.

‘Muslim zombies are my response to the ludicrous myths and conspiracy theories that all too frequently enter into discussions about Western Muslims and secular democracy. These creatures offer no safe alternative. No clear path to redemption.’ Safdar Ahmed.