How not to draw a cartoon
For what the opinion of a washed-up cartoonist is worth...
Everybody's blatherin' away about this "stimulus chimp" cartoon, in all the usual ways: some people go "OMG RACISM!!!11!1!!!" and pitch a fit, the cartoon's editors defend it and deny there's any racism intended, and various media will squawk about it until it gets replaced with something else and just fades away. This is lame, for many reasons.
The first reason is the one that Michael Cavna makes an excellent point about in the Post's Comic Riffs blog. We're not actually having a conversation here. The five-point structure of cartoon-complain-defend-blather-fade, that cycle of outrage and eventual denouement until the next outrageous thing comes along and starts it again, doesn't allow for discussion, let alone progress. People get riled up and just make noise. No one talks about the rules of political cartooning and how they're evolving or must evolve, no one talks about the evolution of race, perception/depiction of race, racism/privilege, or any of the other stuff we're too scared to talk about that would break that cycle of media outrage beginning anew. We could be discussing what's outrageous and why, what's unacceptable, how the caricatures that political cartoons ride on read, or even just what's happening in the subtext of such an image so that the supposed clueless goober drawing this doesn't make the same mistake twice.
That brings me to my second point -- supposed authorial intent. Authorial intent has always been a point of contention for me, as there's a prevalent belief (mostly in academia) that if you can provide even the merest shred of contrived evidence that there might be some idea present in the text, you can present a completely valid argument that the author meant that all along. Even if you take it back to the author and they give you a blank, uncomprehending stare before politely informing you that this is just a three-line poem about a tree and has nothing at all to do with the oppression of women in modern American society. But there's obviously a spectrum of believability when it comes to authorial intent. You can set out to express one thing and have someone read another into it. That's the beauty of art.
Take The Scream, for example. (How I love The Scream.) Munch wanted to express existential terror, "nature's great scream". There's your authorial intent. Now say you go to the museum and you look at the painting and see, say, the oppression of women in modern American society. You can cite evidence. You can say "well, that figure looks kinda feminine, and the sky is oppressive and threatening and dangerous, and there are two men behind her oblivious to her suffering, look, their backs are even turned, and she's on a bridge, that's got suicidal overtones, even," and so on. (Or you could look at the painting and say "I see a giraffe." You're probably going to get bonked upside the head by whoever you're at the museum with.)
The flip side of authorial intent vs. audience interpretation is that you, as the author, have a little bit of control over that interpretation through what images, metaphors, devices, etc. you use, and their connotations. Why, after all, would our hypothetical viewer see female oppression in The Scream and not a glorious celebration of the feminine form? Because Munch's images/colors/etc. were chosen with a negative connotation in mind. He paints the sky orange. Orange carries connotations of fire and thus of fear and danger, and orange is the complementary color of blue, which sets off a good old mind-screw in the viewer when they see the sky is the exact opposite of the color it should be. It's a loaded image, and he picks it for that reason.
Back to our hero the cartoonist and his handlers. Using a chimp in a cartoon that's ostensibly about something passed during a black president's administration? That's an absolutely loaded image and no amount of arguing about authorial intent is going to change that. There's no way you can duck responsibility for the choice of this image. Why do you even say that? Are you supposed to as part of this cycle? Are you obligated to provide a counter-backlash just to give the media something to talk about? Or is it a symptom of our failure as a community of artists, of media, or even as a nation to discuss this that you even end up at that sort of half-assed and obviously disingenuous retort? Someone accuses you of something offensive, and rather than confront it, your reply amounts to "Nuh-uh!"?
And finally, my personal opinion on why this is lame: the cartoon just plain sucks. When I first saw it, I didn't see racism. I'm still not sure I see overt racism. (That doesn't mean it isn't there.) What I see is an honest-to-god bad cartoon. What's it even about, really? Did the artist put any thought into it? Was he late on a deadline? It looks like he was thinking "hey, somebody shot a chimp! oh, and I totally hate the stimulus bill." And it reads no better. Where is the relation, even, between these two points? A political cartoon is supposed to say something, at a glance, and this... does not.
I also think that the New York Post should be shuttered and burned to the ground for its daily assault on the integrity of journalism as an institution, and the appearance of this cartoon only reinforces that point, as nothing can more openly demonstrate the willingness of the Post's editors to accept outright shoddy work. Anything for an audience, Murdoch?
ETA: Sandi likes this. So do I. And so should you! Go watch it.
Everybody's blatherin' away about this "stimulus chimp" cartoon, in all the usual ways: some people go "OMG RACISM!!!11!1!!!" and pitch a fit, the cartoon's editors defend it and deny there's any racism intended, and various media will squawk about it until it gets replaced with something else and just fades away. This is lame, for many reasons.
The first reason is the one that Michael Cavna makes an excellent point about in the Post's Comic Riffs blog. We're not actually having a conversation here. The five-point structure of cartoon-complain-defend-blather-fade, that cycle of outrage and eventual denouement until the next outrageous thing comes along and starts it again, doesn't allow for discussion, let alone progress. People get riled up and just make noise. No one talks about the rules of political cartooning and how they're evolving or must evolve, no one talks about the evolution of race, perception/depiction of race, racism/privilege, or any of the other stuff we're too scared to talk about that would break that cycle of media outrage beginning anew. We could be discussing what's outrageous and why, what's unacceptable, how the caricatures that political cartoons ride on read, or even just what's happening in the subtext of such an image so that the supposed clueless goober drawing this doesn't make the same mistake twice.
That brings me to my second point -- supposed authorial intent. Authorial intent has always been a point of contention for me, as there's a prevalent belief (mostly in academia) that if you can provide even the merest shred of contrived evidence that there might be some idea present in the text, you can present a completely valid argument that the author meant that all along. Even if you take it back to the author and they give you a blank, uncomprehending stare before politely informing you that this is just a three-line poem about a tree and has nothing at all to do with the oppression of women in modern American society. But there's obviously a spectrum of believability when it comes to authorial intent. You can set out to express one thing and have someone read another into it. That's the beauty of art.
Take The Scream, for example. (How I love The Scream.) Munch wanted to express existential terror, "nature's great scream". There's your authorial intent. Now say you go to the museum and you look at the painting and see, say, the oppression of women in modern American society. You can cite evidence. You can say "well, that figure looks kinda feminine, and the sky is oppressive and threatening and dangerous, and there are two men behind her oblivious to her suffering, look, their backs are even turned, and she's on a bridge, that's got suicidal overtones, even," and so on. (Or you could look at the painting and say "I see a giraffe." You're probably going to get bonked upside the head by whoever you're at the museum with.)
The flip side of authorial intent vs. audience interpretation is that you, as the author, have a little bit of control over that interpretation through what images, metaphors, devices, etc. you use, and their connotations. Why, after all, would our hypothetical viewer see female oppression in The Scream and not a glorious celebration of the feminine form? Because Munch's images/colors/etc. were chosen with a negative connotation in mind. He paints the sky orange. Orange carries connotations of fire and thus of fear and danger, and orange is the complementary color of blue, which sets off a good old mind-screw in the viewer when they see the sky is the exact opposite of the color it should be. It's a loaded image, and he picks it for that reason.
Back to our hero the cartoonist and his handlers. Using a chimp in a cartoon that's ostensibly about something passed during a black president's administration? That's an absolutely loaded image and no amount of arguing about authorial intent is going to change that. There's no way you can duck responsibility for the choice of this image. Why do you even say that? Are you supposed to as part of this cycle? Are you obligated to provide a counter-backlash just to give the media something to talk about? Or is it a symptom of our failure as a community of artists, of media, or even as a nation to discuss this that you even end up at that sort of half-assed and obviously disingenuous retort? Someone accuses you of something offensive, and rather than confront it, your reply amounts to "Nuh-uh!"?
And finally, my personal opinion on why this is lame: the cartoon just plain sucks. When I first saw it, I didn't see racism. I'm still not sure I see overt racism. (That doesn't mean it isn't there.) What I see is an honest-to-god bad cartoon. What's it even about, really? Did the artist put any thought into it? Was he late on a deadline? It looks like he was thinking "hey, somebody shot a chimp! oh, and I totally hate the stimulus bill." And it reads no better. Where is the relation, even, between these two points? A political cartoon is supposed to say something, at a glance, and this... does not.
I also think that the New York Post should be shuttered and burned to the ground for its daily assault on the integrity of journalism as an institution, and the appearance of this cartoon only reinforces that point, as nothing can more openly demonstrate the willingness of the Post's editors to accept outright shoddy work. Anything for an audience, Murdoch?
ETA: Sandi likes this. So do I. And so should you! Go watch it.