Anti-heroes of the Desamericanization? - The bandes dessinées of the Franco-Belgian school as actors of the popular cultural Europeanization of the comic culture in the long 1960s

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Comic is often used in research as a counter-narrative for the Americanization of European societies in the second half of the 20th century. This subproject "Anti-Heroes of Deamericanization?" has a twofold objective: on the one hand, the story of the triumph of Franco-Belgian comics must be presented in a (West-) European context; on the other hand, the hypothesis of successful Europeanization, especially in the long 1960s, has to be questioned.The Franco-Belgian school as an example of a popular cultural Europeanization. This hypothesis has first been formulated by Pascal Ory in the 1980s in his work on the "de-Americanization" of French comics. Numerous studies have continued this thesis, e.g. Middendorf 2012 and Gabilliet 2005. According to the aforementioned authors, comics are a genre that not only successfully opposed the Americanization trends, but has designed a counter model. This working hypothesis, which has hitherto mainly been presented in national framed studies should be deepened in a transnational approach.European comic heroes: A very specific interest is the translation strategy applied to the central works of the French-Belgian school. Comics circulate beyond language boundaries, their translation allows insights into different phenomena: the relationship between different countries and cultures; the difficulty to unravel the circulation of cultural goods outside of their production area; the role of cultural mediators; the complexity of intercultural (mis)understandings; the translators as a professional group, their working practices (Heilbron 1999).Americanization in response to conservative comics? The hypothesis of Europeanization is to be questioned critically. On the one hand, America remained as a projection space for all the classical Western European comics (for example in the Western genre). On the other hand, the upheaval of the market in the 1960s was also due to American influences. Increasing market concentration, production stabilization, and the emergence of regular brands in the United States provoked a new genre, the underground comics, from the mid-1960s onwards. They had numerous influences in Europe. While current (western) European bandes dessinées were increasingly being characterised as conservative, new interesting forms of hybridization were emerging, in which West European comic culture intermingled with American underground comics.The tension between the contradictory hypotheses - successful Europeanization and/or hybridization - is the motor for this project on the history of comics in the 1960s.