A comic titled "Suburbia is scary (3)". A character with a T-shirt colored with a French flag pattern is seen sleeping peacefully in a bed at night, surrounded by speech bubbles of sound effects and people shouting. A narration comments: "Back when I lived in the city, I was surrounded by human noise 24/7. Drunk people going home after parties, vehicles passing by quickly, parents with kids, people crying all night after getting dumped... I thought I could sleep to anything." The second panel then switches to the same character now in a bed next to another character wearing a T-shirt with a USA flag pattern. The multiple sounds are now completely gone, replaced with an overwhelming rumble shown in all caps and large characters in a red-colored speech bubble. The character with the French flag T-shirt is now wide awake, livid, with bloodshot eyes. The narration continues: "But clearly, I wasn't ready for suburban reefer trucks idling by the window all night."
A continuation of the comic in the previous image. The French character is sitting at her apartment complex's leasing office, talking to a representative. She says: "Reefer trucks keep idling all weekend under our window! It's clear noise disturbance! Can't you put up a sign?" The representative answers with an apologetic smile: "Sorry, it's out of our hands..." She then adds, looking more serious: "Besides, it could be worse, you know... You could have transients." The French person, surprised, goes: "Wha-? What does that have to do with-" The representative cuts in: "We had some here a couple years ago... Took forever to get rid of them." In a muffled voice, losing her composure a bit, the French character tries to answer: "But like... They're not physically capable of making as much noise as a reefer-" The representative cuts in again: "They kept going through the trash cans... Residents were terrified." The French person, now upset and panicking, tries to weigh in, in an increasingly small and shaky voice: "Well, people throw out a lot of thigns here... And they leave the trash cans open all the time... If they're worried-" The representative continues: "We were all so nervous about the rats they were gonna attract!" The comic then cuts to the French character loudly crying, seeking refuse in the arms of her partner (the person in the USA T-shirt from the previous image), who's trying to comfort her by petting her hair. Panicked, she cries on: "What just happened?! Seriously, what just happened?! I'm telling her about the reefer trucks and she starts being cruel to homeless people totally unprompted! What's wrong with people here?!"
Let's be clear: I'm not exemplary by any means when it comes to helping homeless people. But where I came from didn't prepare me for the sheer level of callousness for them I see here in the US.
#usa #cultureshock #aporophobia #classism
