Donkey, Elephant, Roadkill.
SCOTT BATEMAN
Editional cartooning-why
does it suck so much ass these days?
First, can
editorial cartoonists maybe come up with a better, more contemporary system of
symbolism? I mean, most of us are still drawing talking donkeys and elephants
in suits. Now, when Thomas Nast came up with these symbols for the Democrats
and Republicans back in the nineteenth century, they were entirely appropriate
and accurate. But now? Woefully out of date. Geez, you might as well draw a Snidely
Whiplash guy twirling his mustache, shouting, “Accursed Mountebanks!”
I mean, what the fuck? How are these symbols supposed to resonate for a 21st
century reader?
Come on,
guys—how much imagination does it take to come up with your own system of
symbolism for your work? Just sit down and say, “OK—from now on, I
draw the Democrats as prairie dogs and the Republicans as naked mole rats.”
Or maybe bison and badgers, or Sonic the Hedgehog and that Pets.com sock puppet.
See? Was that hard? Now you try it!
And the Uncle Sam hat? It dates back at least as far as James Montgomery
Flagg’s original Uncle Sam poster, from the First World War. Can our nation’s
political cartoonists not come up with a more contemporary symbol, like maybe
a T-shirt that reads, “George W. Bush lied his ass off about Iraq and all
I got was this lousy budget deficit?” And can we please do away with labels
in editorial cartoons? Why draw a caricature of Bush and then write the word
“Bush” on his lapel? Do you think your readers are too dim to figure
out he’s supposed to be the President or what?
A now-infamous
bit of labeling came in a cartoon a few years ago by Steve Kelly, now at
the Times-Picayune in New Orleans: I forget what issue the cartoon was actually
about, but it featured the stork delivering a baby to a happy couple. Kelly helpfully
wrote the word “stork” on the stork’s body, in case, you know,
readers thought it was that other long-beaked bird that delivers babies to peoples’
houses.
Talking animals,
silly hats and labels aren’t just pet peeves of mine—by relying on
such old tricks, mainstream editorial cartoonists in the 21st Century are in
danger of becoming completely irrelevant. Most of your them play it safe these
days, simply making a timid little joke about the news that you might see in
Jay Leno’s monologue. If I wanted that, I’d just watch Jay Leno.
Political cartooning in this century exists in an environment with more and better
options for political humor—for instance, The Onion and The Daily
Show. And when’s the last time anyone laughed at an editorial cartoon as
hard as they laughed at say, “Area Man (fill in headline)?”
It’s called “editorial cartooning” for a reason—there should
be some editorial content in there with the humor. I should be able to tell where
a cartoonist stands on the issue he or she’s cartooning about. But look
at the cartoonists that Newsweek uses all the time. Where does Luckovich fall
on the whole left-right spectrum? I have no clue. Does Mike Peters have
a political conviction any deeper than, “Ha ha! Bush is kinda dumb?”
Not that I can see.
Cartooning,
like any artform, is much more interesting when you can gain some insight about
the artist from their work. All I can glean about say, Pulitzer-winning cartoonist
David Horsey from his work is that he has a creepy affinity for breasts.
Oh, there
are a few people out there who are trying to push editorial cartooning forward
into a new century. The cartoons of Tom Tomorrow and Ted Rall feature honest-to-God
jokes and actual opinions, and Ruben Bolling (“Tom The Dancing Bug”)
is doing some amazing work. But for the most part, these cartoonists are relegated
to the alt-weeklies rather than the daily papers, which prefer the safer, old-style
cartoons, with all those dusty symbols and labels.
What would
editorial cartooning pioneer Thomas Nast do about the state we’re in? Get
mad as hell and invent a new political symbol — like, say, a roadkill raccoon.
