Appy Hippie: The Unsung Hero Battered by the Bigotry of Mainstream Culture

Abstract

Cartoonist Toms’ mischievous characters Boban and Molly are two domestic names in the households of Keralam for over 50 years, chiefly through the pages of the Malayala Manorama Weekly. He introduced the character Appy Hippie for the first time in “Bobanum Mollyum” in the Malayala Manorama Weekly in 1971. Appy Hippie is a village hippie portrayed as a jobless youth who is quite obsessed with the ‘company of women’. Hippies distinguish themselves in their appearance from social etiquettes of attire and grooming. Consequently, a binary opposition is created between the hippie and the mainstream society. Toms portrays Appy Hippie by keeping the norms of moralism intact and projects him as a laughing stock. This portrayal is problematic because as a hippie, he is reduced to a womanizer, pickpocket and kidnapper. This paper attempts to claim that in the trajectory of Toms’ cartoons, Appy Hippie is the scapegoat of mainstream bigotry and usually considered as a person with no more significance than as a comic character. As such, it attempts to see the character from the perspective of a liberal minded one-man army standing against the norms of an orthodox society.