Mr.
"The Legendary" Joe Garden and Chad Nackers of
The
Onion gave a hilarious presentation oN some of the
most
poignant political headlines the Onion has
featured
in recent months. The Onion has
a
great way of putting our nation’s leaders in stories
that
reveal their petty, inane, and ludicrous
personality
traits. My favorite recent headlines include
"Rumsfeld
makes jerk-off motions as Powell speaks at
Cabinet
Meeting," "Ashcroft Silences Reporters with a
Warning
Shot," and "Bush asks Congress for 30 Billion
Dollars
to Help Fight War on Criticism."
Robert
Smigel & J.J. Sedelmaier,showed their TV
Funhouse
version of the old ABC "School House Rocks"
educational
cartoons. This one didn’t show us how to
exercise
our choppers (with some good hard food) or
give
lessons on how a bill goes through Congress but
broke
down just how the FCC and media monopolies work.
It
looked just like the original except, re-written by Noam Chomsky on acid.
Tom
Tommorrow’s presentation of his strip "This
Modern
World" focused on the recyclable quality of his
strips
from 12 years ago when Bush senior was in
office.
Exposed in cartoons from yesteryear were strange parallels between the
ambiguous language of right
and
wrong, good vs. evil that both father and son have used in
their
rhetoric. Tom’s deadpan delivery of
lines
he’d written for his characters kept me chuckling for
minutes.
Also
on display: A Jessica Lynch mocking piece from
Comedy
Central’s hit The Daily Show with John Stewart,
new
art from Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art
Spiegelman
(Maus), some previously published work from
Ward
Sutton’s "Schlock and Roll," Peter Kuper of MAD’s
"Spy
vs. Spy," Ted Rall of "Search and Destroy," and
David
Rees of "Get Your War On."
The
blurry lines between information, news, and
entertainment
were illuminated and mocked but, like
the
"War Culture" Show presented in the spring, some of
the
video and performance work was
heavy-handed
and overly dramatic. Jim Stanzo’s video
piece,
where the artist superimposes himself wailing
over
newscasts of Senate hearings, C-Span and CNN
Desert
Storm coverage, made me wince. And the
performance
where the dude cut himself and bled all
over
this glass table which he then broke karate-style
(Ouch!)
had an almost cult-like ominousness in the
confines
of The Judson Church’s Auditorium.
Nevertheless
the stART team once again put together an
event
that had energy, great cartooning, and a
delightfully
harsh, left-of-center sense of humor. |
