Beyond the digital humor

ABSTRACT Romanos, R., & Tiongson, F. (2016). Beyond the digital humor: Re-introducing the image of female historical figures in the Dead Balagtas webcomics, Unpublished Undergraduate Thesis, University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication.

This study describes how the Dead Balagtas Facebook webcomics re-introduced female historical figures. It involves analyzing the historical, webcomics and over-all images of the 14 chosen female characters, and classifying these characters into archetypes. Penetrating the social media, the (web)comics is still seen as informative and entertaining. Anchored by the semiotics theory and postmodern feminism, content and textual analyses were used. Narrative, language, graphical representation and nonverbal communication were the elements used in analyzing the webcomics. Physical description, personality, contributions/roles and relationships were the concepts used in decoding the underlying meanings in the historical accounts and webcomics. In interpreting the data gathered, the female characters were categorized into the four Jungian archetypes (mother, virgin, witch, queen). As the Jungian archetypes weren’t able to completely grasp the female characters, two emerging images were created: the Ideal Juana and the Fighting Heroine.

Keywords: female historical figures, webcomics, semiotics, postmodern feminism, Jungian archetypes, emerging typologies

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