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Bunnies, Robots, and Activism, Oh my!

By ShockeronShockSt

Bunnies are terrorists! Alien robots who poop gold are devouring the world! The president is wiping his ass with letters from social activists! Well actually, I’m reading As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can do to Stay in Denial by Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan. This book really does have all of these things in it. The creators were definitely passing along a message of “stop screwing up the world!” in their book and did it in a very entertaining and even sometimes adorable way. The authors were able to implement a message that is hugely important to the world today and make it entertaining, instead of being from a politician’s speech or some other droll way of conveying information to the public. I mean if someone tells you that we need to stop animal testing you’d probably roll your eyes in anticipation of a political argument, but what if a really cute one-eyed bunny tells you? I mean it definitely made me listen. That’s something incredible about a graphic novel. Using a graphic novel as a medium for social activism is something new and unique to me for sure. I would never have thought about using a graphic novel to convey my opinions on a social issue, but Jensen and McMillan do it so well! Giving me a story about an adorable bunny blowing up dams and breaking his friends out of a lab before the fight the machines that are “consuming” nature, birds, and trees really gave a different view of what is going on this world. Using this tool means that the public is hearing about these social issues from someone other than a political figure or the CEO of some major conglomerate. When I read this book, it made me feel like I was hearing about this from someone like me. Using the two little girls to discussing the destruction of the environment at the beginning of the book made it seem like it was a friend. And I got to see them because of this being a graphic novel, not just hear about them. I saw their stress and the destruction that was going on in the world as the story of As the World Burns unfolded. The use of simplistic illustrations really made the message of the book easy to understand even though they were discussing complex topics like global warming, carbon dioxide usage, etc. I feel like using graphic novels to portray social activism is a great tool that would be widely accepted for the younger generations to understand what is going on in our world. I hate watching the news because I hate hearing the politicians tell me what’s happening. I feel like the world deserves all sides of the truth, not just the view of the politicians.

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