Ill Communication
I'm reading "The Art of Ill Will: The Story of American Political Cartoons" by Donald Dewey. I love that title. It's a coffee table book that collects cartoons spanning American history, including works by Ben Franklin, Thomas Nast, Theodor Geisel (Dr. Suess), Jules Feiffer and Ted Rall.
How far have political cartoons evolved over the years? Many of them haven't come far at all. Cartoons from a hundred years ago could stand along side today's with their ham-fisted humor and copious labeling.
The front section of the book features a detailed history of political cartoons and I thought this passage deserved scanning in. It is a quote from William Murrell written in 1935.
The imaginations of artists have failed miserably as most still cling to these elderly symbols.
The historical context of using these type of visual cues, beginning with Ben Franklin's snake, is that most people were illiterate at the time. In my view, this makes the Donkey and Elephant symbols more irrelevant.
Cartoonists should assume some intelligence on the part of their readers and ease up with the over reliance on symbols and labeling.
Bill Mauldin's cartoons on World War II were widely celebrated for showing the human face of war in Willie and Joe--while his peers used the old cliché from World War I, Death with a scythe. It never gets old and today's cartoonists simply place the cloaked harbinger of death in the latest conflict zone and win the accolades of editors for creating a powerful cartoon.
Is this simply the language of editorial cartoons or a laziness on the part of creators to never push the craft forward? And by "forward" I mean "beyond the 19th century."
How far have political cartoons evolved over the years? Many of them haven't come far at all. Cartoons from a hundred years ago could stand along side today's with their ham-fisted humor and copious labeling.
The front section of the book features a detailed history of political cartoons and I thought this passage deserved scanning in. It is a quote from William Murrell written in 1935.
The imaginations of artists have failed miserably as most still cling to these elderly symbols.
The historical context of using these type of visual cues, beginning with Ben Franklin's snake, is that most people were illiterate at the time. In my view, this makes the Donkey and Elephant symbols more irrelevant.
Cartoonists should assume some intelligence on the part of their readers and ease up with the over reliance on symbols and labeling.
Bill Mauldin's cartoons on World War II were widely celebrated for showing the human face of war in Willie and Joe--while his peers used the old cliché from World War I, Death with a scythe. It never gets old and today's cartoonists simply place the cloaked harbinger of death in the latest conflict zone and win the accolades of editors for creating a powerful cartoon.
Is this simply the language of editorial cartoons or a laziness on the part of creators to never push the craft forward? And by "forward" I mean "beyond the 19th century."
posted by Matt Bors at
1:10 PM
3 Comments:
It doesn't help that the two major parties have embraced those old symbols, as has the CNN-style coverage of American politics as a "red state-blue state" phenomenon. Symbols can be reductive, meaningless, sloppy ways of discussing politics as a horse race (another awful cartoon cliche) without having to probe serious issues too deeply. If a political cartoonist wants to draw commentary on the behavior of the parties in toto, or group behavior of politicians in either party, the symbols make a good shorthand. But mostly the symbols are corporate logos at this point. Perhaps we should start treating them as such, and render politicians as fast food workers with visors and a little "tm" or "inc." next to the party symbols.
The real problem is that donkeys and elephants are irrelevant. I know a lot of people, especially younger ones, who don't even know what they mean.
The same is true about edittoon allegory in general. It's a language that leaves younger readers stone cold.
What about....dolphins? Have you seen these cartoons of Michael Phelps swimming with dolphins, beating dolphins in races? Today I saw a Phelps body suit being unzipped by, you guessed it, a dolphin. What does this mean?
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