This is very much a draft. I ran out of time due to work today. I will continue working on this over the weekend.
A Historical look at Political Cartoons
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Running head: Political Cartoons: Past, Present, and Future
Political Cartoons: Past, Present, and Future
Abstract
This is the first of a two part paper. In this first section I will examine the history of political cartoons. These works have been a mainstay of the editorial pages in our newspapers and magazines for over 200 years. In the United States, the best of this genre is honored with the Pulitzer Prize. We use the political cartoon to quickly capture key emotions that are not as easily conveyed through the printed word. The primary methods and purposes of political cartoons are:
· Satire
· Caricature
· Symbol
· Metaphor
· Irony
· Sarcasm
· Stereotype
I will examine how these methods and purposes have been achieved through the years and then provide a transition to examine the present state and possible future for political cartoons. As the future and fortunes of mainstay print media dwindles, how will the political cartoon transition and thrive in the world of digital media?
Political Cartoons: Past, Present, and Future
The history of the political cartoon surely predates written history. This is speculation on my part but it is not hard to imagine that some of the first efforts to cartoon were charcoal caricatures of tribal leaders lampooned on the cave wall. Rather than guess, however, I will move my investigation to begin in a time that is rich with examples that you can examine today. In this paper, I will begin my historical examination of the political cartoon within the Age of Reason, which began in the 17th century.
Many examples of cartoons and caricatures predate this time. A cartoon (from the Italian “cartone” and Dutch/Flemish word “karton”, meaning strong, heavy paper or pasteboard) is a full-size drawing made on paper as a study for further drawings, such as a painting or tapestry. Cartoons were typically used in the production of frescoes, to accurately link the component parts of the composition when painted onto plaster over a series of days. Such cartoons often have pinpricks where the outline of the design has been picked out in the plaster. Cartoons by painters such as the Raphael Cartoons in London and examples by Leonardo da Vinci are highly prized in their own right[MS1] .
Beginning in the 1720s, William Hogarth, an English artist, produced many satirical works which were widely circulated. Hogarth lived in an age when artwork became increasingly commercialized and viewed in shop windows, taverns and public buildings and sold in print shops. Old hierarchies broke down, and new forms began to flourish: the ballad opera, the bourgeois tragedy, and especially, a new form of fiction called the novel with which authors such as Henry Fielding had great success. Therefore, by that time, Hogarth hit on a new idea: “painting and engraving modern moral subjects … to treat my subjects as a dramatic writer; my picture was my stage”, as he himself remarked in his manuscript notes.
He drew from the highly moralizing Protestant tradition of Dutch genre painting, and the very vigorous satirical traditions of the English broadsheet and other types of popular print. In England the fine arts had little comedy in them before Hogarth. His prints were expensive, and remained so until early nineteenth-century reprints brought them to a wider audience.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:William_Hogarth_-_Industry_and_Idleness%2C_Plate_11%3B_The_Idle_%27Prentice_Executed_at_Tyburn.png 11/07/07 Public Domain [MS2]
In North America, the cartoon began to be used as a tool of the press. Benjamin Franklin’s Join or Die (1754) supported the French and Indian War and was later recycled for the Revolutionary War. While newspapers carried reports of French and Indian attacks throughout America, along with warnings from colonial governments, printers also banded together behind Benjamin Franklin’s ideas of union. Franklin, in conjunction with a call for a congress of colonial and Native American leaders to be held in June 1754 in Albany, New York, produced the now-famous “JOIN, or DIE” editorial cartoon. Throughout America, printers either reproduced the woodcut or mentioned it in articles supporting the congress.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/us.capitol/one.jpg 11/03/07[MS3]
Satire
Satire uses humor to lower something or someone in the reader’s or viewer’s estimation. It is not mean-spirited and its point is not to harm. It exposes human folly to make room for improvement. This convention has been used to great effect throughout the history of the political cartoon. The first to use this convention extensively was the British publication Punch.
Punch, a magazine of humor and satire, ran from 1841 until its closure in 2002. A very British institution with an international reputation for its witty and irreverent take on the world, it published the work of some of the greatest comic writers (Thackeray, P G Wodehouse and P J O’Rourke among others) and gave us the cartoon as we know it today. Its political cartoons swayed governments while its social cartoons captured life in the 19th and 20th centuries. The world’s finest cartoonists appeared in Punch: such great names as Tenniel, E H Shepard, Fougasse, and Pont.
Henry Chaplin, 1st Viscount Chaplin, in a cartoon accompanying a satirical article on Mr. Chaplin’s receiving a deputation on the subject of the Swine-fever last week. From the Project Gutenberg eBook of Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892, by Various From http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14845[MS5]
Caricature
The word caricature comes into the English language from the Italian “caricare”, meaning to charge, load or exaggerate. Examples of Egyptian, Greek and Roman caricature are found primarily in literature, but in its modern definition, caricature is a pictorial representation of a person or thing through the gross exaggeration of its most characteristic features. Its source lies in Renaissance art and its survival was ensured by the printing press. Although Samuel Johnson included the word in his 1757 Dictionary, it was not until the late 18th century that caricature came into its own. In times of social and political upheaval the caricaturist boldly portrays the world as he sees it, in vivid hues of satire and moral purpose. The text, if present, is secondary. For it is the portrait which conveys the meaning, often playing on accepted symbols or repeated imagery and its intent is to provoke a specific response from the viewer.[MS6]
Caricature exaggerates one or more features of a person or thing. It attempts to say something about the person’s character, beliefs, actions or significance. Caricature has been used for political cartoons through the years and is perhaps used most often when lampooning our leaders. Presidents of the United States have been favorite subjects of caricature.
1869 US cartoon about President Ulysses S. Grant, satirically contrasting his elaborate inauguration procession with that of Thomas Jefferson. This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to the United States, Canada, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.[MS7]
Symbol
Symbols represent something else. It is a often a material object that represents something abstract or invisible (for example, the Liberty Bell to represent freedom). In the following cartoon, the symbol of Creative Commons is used to convey the fair use rights of content producers and consumers.
This file is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License (cc-by-sa-2.0). In short: you are free to share and make derivative works of the file under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it under this or a similar cc-by-sa license.[MS8]
Metaphor
Metaphor uses an object to note a similarity to something else. For example, using a tiger to represent one nation invading another. The following cartoon uses metaphor to depict countries exerting influence on China in the form of animals: Russia as a bear to the north; France as a frog to the south; the United States as an Eagle to the east; and, England as a Lion within the country.
This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to the United States, Canada, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.[MS9]
Irony
Irony expresses an idea through a contradiction between something’s literal meaning and the intended meaning, for example, picturing a U.S. president with a crown on his head. The following cartoon places the prolific artist in what to many would seem to be an ordinary, and for Rockwell, an ironic position, lacking inspiration.
This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to the United States, Canada, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.[MS10]
Sarcasm
Sarcasm is a form of irony. The element that turns irony into sarcasm is the appearance of mockery, or bitterness. The following is a commentary on the depressed state of the American economy, particularly in New York, during the financial panic of 1837. Again, the blame is laid on the treasury policies of Andrew Jackson, whose hat, spectacles, and clay pipe with the word “Glory” appear in the sky overhead.
This media file is in the public domain in the United States. This applies to U.S. works where the copyright has expired, often because its first publication occurred prior to January 1, 1923.
Stereotypes
Stereotypes work by taking a real or imagined trait of an individual to be true of the group to which the individual belongs. They express bias and can be unfair and harmful.
References
Paston, G. (1968). Social caricature in the eighteenth century. New York: B. Blom.Craske, M., & Hogarth, W. (2000). William Hogarth. British artists. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Copeland, D. (1998). “Join, or die”: America’s press during the French and Indian War. Journalism History, 24(3), 112-121. Retrieved November 7, 2007, from Research Library database. (Document ID: 39942716).
Blaisell, Thomas C:The American Presidency in Political Cartoons: 1776-1976
University Art Museum, Berkeley, 1976[MS11]
The Image of America in Caricature & Cartoon
Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Forth Worth, Swann Foundation, New York, Lincoln National Corporation, Forth Wayne, 1975[MS12]
[MS1]This is from Wikipedia…need better citation and re-work wording.
[MS2]Fix citation
[MS3]Fix citation
[MS4]http://www.punch.co.uk/historyofpunch.html 11/07/07
[MS5]caption and reference
[MS6]http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/cartoon/about.html 11/07/07
[MS7]http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:1869USG.JPG
[MS8]http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Fair_use_icon_-_Political_poster.png
[MS9]http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:%E6%97%B6%E5%B1%80%E5%9B%BE.jpg
[MS10]http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Rockwell_at_work.gif
[MS11]style to APA
[MS12]style to APA
