Turkish president Ergodan - he doesn't like it up 'im. Photo: Getty Images
The power of poking fun is not to be underestimated. A reporter might
craft a stunning first line, a sub editor put together a powerful
headline, but the impact of a cartoonist’s sarcastic pen is often more
powerful, and often underestimated.
Long after the headline is forgotten cartoons are kept and framed. The
art, humour and the political message live on. As weeks pass a cartoon
still carries its power onwards while many a text-heavy article remains
unread, much to writers’ chagrin.
Not surprising then, that in times of conflict, and national stress,
authorities can decide that cartoonists should be cut out, closed down,
and in some cases locked up.
Punitive action against cartoonists is ramping up, and crossing
continents. Recently Turkish cartoonist Musa Kart faced the wrath of
President Erdogan, and a possible nine-year jail sentence, for drawing
something the president didn’t like. Cartoonists in other countries
rallied to his defence, creating edgy cartoons that called out Erdogan
and what was happening. After being acquitted, Kart recognised the
contribution and said it made him feel part of the “world cartoonist
family”.
Across the other side of the world, two of South America’s leading
cartoonists, Rayma from Venezuela and Bonil from Ecuador, have had to
face up to particularly nasty pressure. Rayma lost her job at
Caracas-based El Universal newspaper after drawing a critique of her
nation’s health system, while in Ecuador one of Bonil’s cartoons,
telling a story of a raid by the police on the home of a journalist and
parliamentary advisor for the opposition, resulted in a $92,000 fine for
the paper at the instigation of President Correa.
Both South American cartoonists have drawn about the threats to freedom
of speech and expression for the upcoming issue of Index on Censorship
magazine, as well as writing about the responsibilities of cartoonists
in times where the media is under pressure to mute its criticism. Bonil
writes: “I believe that humour is the best antidote to fear and the best
defence against abuses of power.” While Rayma says: “Cartoons are like
mirrors in which governments can see themselves, and that’s why
authoritarian regimes don’t like them.”
Fantasy writer Neil Gaiman has a long affiliation with cartoonists, and
illustrators, and a history of fighting for them, partly because he
spent 12 years on the board of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
Gaiman, who is interviewed for the upcoming Index magazine, has
said in the past: “A nice easy place for freedom of speech to be eroded
is comics because comics are a natural target whenever an election
comes up.”
Gaiman, who was put on the banned list of the American Family
Association, worries about the way the idea of offence is used to close
down conversations. He says: “I think that comics, because of the
capacity of offence that an image can give will always have a foot in
the gutter.”
He adds, on the subject of stories that offend: “As long as people are
getting upset, then a medium is not dead.” And that must also be true of
cartoons, there is no question that the medium is dead, it is very much
alive, and kicking pretty hard at subjects that don’t like the
pressure.
At a time when we are remembering the First World War, it is worth
remembering cartoonists place within it. Cartoons passed through the
German and British trenches often as part of the myth making of the one
side against the other, accentuating the enemies’ failings, while others
poked a sarcastic pen at the decisions of the powerful. Visual arts
were used to incredible effect in that war, with the famous Kitchener
posters issuing a call up cry and the official posters of the global flu
epidemic urging the public not to panic, while failing to reveal the
real and present danger of a disease stealing across borders to kill an
estimated 50 million. In WWII, official cartoonists were hired by
governments to work on their side, their power acknowledged.
Cartoonist and illustrator Ben Jennings, who draws for Index among
others, believes the power of the cartoon is that “they can remind
those who seek ultimate power that they are only human”. And there are
plenty of national leaders who would rather not be reminded of that.
Cartoons can also be the valve of opposition in nations where little
opposition can be heard or seen. Sometimes cartoons get in under the
wire, where a written article would have been pulled, or never even
written.
Humour is a leveller, a chance to bring those with massive power down
to size, or blow them out of proportion, comedy with a kick is something
that those with no sense of reality, or with an inflated sense of their
own importance fear. But a lesson for those who fear comedy, or
cartoons, should consider is that throughout history, movements to build
popular support or take a pop at the powerful have used art, drawing
and caricature. But when you ban something, or create massive fines to
stop cartoonists being published, then you often create a sense of
mystery of what can no longer be viewed. Tell a small child not to look
behind a curtain and they instantly want to take a peek. And adults are
no different.
Banning things gives them more power and mystique than they had
previously. Tell someone they can’t see something, and you can be sure
as soon as you do they will be far more motivated to seek it out and
find out about it than they ever were before.
Rachael Jolley is editor of the quarterly magazine Index on Censorship. View Bonil and Rayma’s cartoons in the next issue. Find out more:www.indexoncensorship.org/magazine
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét