Dr.
Vincent Filak of Ball State University recently completed
a study of the 9/11 cartoons on our site and wrote he following
piece for us. Vincent writes:
If there's any way to convey
to the folks on your site how truly grateful Scott and I are
to them for their help in all of this, I'd appreciate that opportunity.
The people I've exchanged emails with around the world have been
nothing but polite and incredibly helpful. I've really enjoyed
these exchanges.
Click on "War on Terror"
in the navigation column to see the 9/11 cartoons. Here's what
Dr. Vince gave us on his soon to be published study.
In the days of the gold rush in the United
States, people flocked to areas of the country that were rumored
to have streams lined with so much gold, the riverbeds had turned
yellow. They arrived and were sorely disappointed, discovering
that it would take a great deal of sifting to produce even a
few small flakes of the valuable metal.
Endeavoring in academic research is a lot like panning for gold.
It's highly unlikely that any set of findings will leap out of
the data and radically change the landscape of a field. However,
there is still value in panning for those few small flakes. That
was our way of thinking when we began studying cartoons after
the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Neither Scott nor I had any experience in studying this form
of communication. We were drawn (pardon the pun) to the cartoons
by a quote we found from Doug Marlette about the impact this
kind of work can have. He compared cartoons to "a monster
slam, a Scud missile, a drive-by shooting" as well as "a
poem, a prayer, (and) a religious experience." He talked
about how cartoons can change the way people think and feel.
As researchers, we couldn't ignore a form of communication with
that type of power.
We examined several aspects of the cartoons, including the use
of symbols and the sense of mood they conveyed. Some expected
patterns emerged, including the prominence of vengeance, shock
and sadness in many cartoons.
Other
patterns were a little less expected. U.S. cartoonists seemed
less likely to deal with the issue of fear. World cartoonists
tended to make that panic about the unknown more prevalent in
their work while U.S. cartoonists appeared to be more reticent
to deal with it. We also noticed that resolve was more likely
to come through in the U.S. cartoons. Cartoonists here were more
likely than those in other countries to draw images of Uncle
Sam "standing tall" or Lady Liberty unwilling to let
the torch of freedom be extinguished.
Another pattern involving those two symbols also emerged, which
gave rise to the study we recently published. When dealing with
either sadness or vengeance, it was far more likely that Lady
Liberty would do the crying while Uncle Sam would be looking
for payback. Using theories and studies created by grief specialists,
we reexamined the cartoons and found stereotypical grieving patterns
were present. A smattering of other patterns also came through.
So what does this all mean?
In my mind, it's little more than a point of departure for discussion.
Some of these findings might seem obvious, while others might
appear less so. I'm hopeful that no one feels criticized or attacked.
That was never our intention.
The
point of research is to demonstrate that patterns in the data
do exist, thus allowing other research to either confirm or disconfirm
them. Research builds with small bricks and thin slices. The
golden ring is built one flake at a time.
For academics, the study presents an opportunity to look deeper
at this often overlooked form of communication for deeper issues.
The cartoons we studied here covered the gamut of human emotions
and thus were likely to reflect the state of this country immediately
following the attacks. The importance of this form of discourse
cannot be understated. In researching this topic, we found shockingly
few studies on cartooning. This might provide individuals interested
in research with another medium to study and perhaps continue
to add to what should be an interesting body of work.
For cartoonists, I'd like to think we provided some evidence
pertaining to issues that professionals have been batting around
anecdotally.
Maybe it gets people talking about the role gender issues play
in cartooning. In several articles we read, we found a few minor
discussions about the small number of women cartoonists and the
impact that this gender imbalance has on the field. This study
might reinvigorate that discussion.
Maybe it gets editors to understand the important role cartoons
play in expressing the mood of our country. If research directs
some attention toward cartoons, perhaps newspaper officials will
be less likely to marginalize these artists. It became clear
to Scott and I that the artwork we were studying indeed had the
power that Doug Marlette spoke of.
Maybe it does none of those things. Both academics and professionals
could dismiss the study, leaving it to collect dust on a shelf
with thousands of other bits of research. Still, our goal was
attempt to add to the sum of human knowledge and stimulate discussion.
To that end, I think we found our speck of gold.
Vincent F. Filak, Ph.D., Ball State University, vffilak@bsu.edu
I have come to this profession
late in life having spent most of my career as an illustrator.
My small local paper hired me out of pity I think. My editor
is a poorly dressed but learned man named Pierre Noth. He is
also a man who, I was surprised to find, maintains an unwavering
belief that all editorial cartoonists -if not blatantly stealing
from each other, at the very least just swap ideas. This pisses
me off. Along with the cartoons he forwards me illustrating his
point, he recently forwarded an article from some publication
(copy provided on request) written by a Warren St. John on the
new blood of cartoonists at the New Yorker magazine and the redefinition
of New Yorker gag cartoons.
In brief, there is at the New
Yorker an unwritten moratorium on gags featuring fedoras, puns,
women holding rolling pins and the tried and true, "man
on a desert island". (No mention of downhill skiers tracks
passing either side of a tree.) We, as editorial cartoonists
might need a similar set of moratoriums or some way to know when
to give it a rest.
Obviously, there is required
some context to editorial cartoons to which gag cartoons are
blissfully exempt. Therefore, as we all know, a certain news
cycle on which to be commented is sometimes going to illicit
the same idea from more than one cartoonist. A cartoonist trying
to meet a deadline must say something clever about duck hunting
with a Supreme Court justice. It happens. But after seeing a
perfectly good metaphor done and walking away, there seems to
be an undeniable urge to draw yet another "man on a desert
island". There's "yahtzee" and there isn't.
Case in point: We just handed Iraq back
to Iraq. Big news. And, there's no shortage of cartoons of a
broken down autos labeled Iraq, w/ Uncle Sam handing a bewildered
Iraqi national the car keys -or a derivation thereof.
Before you think I'm stepping
on toes, I've done a version of this joke when the handover deadline
was announced. It was big news ON APRIL 15!!! (Daryl will probably
insert link to my cartoon here) That's better than two months
of broken down Iraqi car jokes. Don't get me wrong, I love any
joke starting with "guy walks into a bar-" but most
of the time the guy will at least ask you if you've heard it
before.
My editor is right. Because of
the serendipity of simultaneous inspiration we are doomed to
overlap one another on occasion. But we are wasting our time
if we don't explore new ways of talking and new ways of walking
and junk the use of seen and tired cliché's. (Note: I
am not referring to theft. Theft is another matter entirely and
should be dealt with harshly.)
If I've made you mad, tough.
If it means I get to see better cartoons, great. After all. Nobody
uses rolling pins anymore anyway.
Now, if you'll excuse me I've
got some down time and don't want to be caught off guard with
no Pearly Gates drawing for the next dead guy.
I stand corrected. There WERE
other "Pop-up" book cartoons. So mine was not only
crap, it was, indeed, TRITE crap. I pledge to try to keep my
crap in the future trite-free!
I'd write more, but I have to
go draw this cartoon of Clinton's book with a centerfold falling
out of it.....
Nick
Anderson
Editorial Cartoonist
The Courier-Journal
Which brings me to the issue
of gag cartoons. There is a running debate in the cartooning
community about these. Certainly there are too many of them,
and some cartoonists make a career from them. I view them like
I view hot fudge sundaes; reveling in an occasional indulgence
is fine as long as most of your diet consists of real substance.
I have no apology for taking
refuge in sophomoric silliness from time to time. It helps recharge
my batteries and come back the next day ready for something serious.
This has been especially true the last few years when I've needed
a little escapism every couple of months to remove myself from
the overbearing gravity of world events; to keep my creativity
from going into burnout.
Incidentally, the Clinton "Pop-Up
Book" cartoon was reprinted in Newsweek. The only other
cartoon of mine Newsweek has used in the last four years was
another Clinton sex joke I drew soon after he left office. I
hold these cartoons of mine in pretty low regard in the grand
scheme of things. Newsweek seems to view them as two of the only
worthy offerings that have managed to ooze from the dreck that
spills off my drawing table every day. I like to think this says
more about Newsweek than it does about me. I don't regret doing
these cartoons, I regret the recognition they receive at the
expense of more worthy submissions.
Thanks to one of
our industrious readers who did an online search I have posted the
latest, online, legal stuff in Rall vs. Hellman. It looks like the wheels of justice
grind slowly. Rall's libel claim survived a motion for summary
judgement and may be going forward, or the case may have settled
(which would explain the unusual quiet on the web about what
used to be a noisy story.) Even so, the legal rulings make interesting
reading for cartoon wonks.
Koterba's
cartoons are syndicated to over three hundred fifty newspapers
and Rall's cartoons are distributed to over one hundred. Rall
is a frequent guest on Fox News and often gets a lot of publicity
for cartoons that his own subscribing newspapers refuse to print.
E&P
quotes Ted as saying:
It's a free country. Unlike
Mr. Koterba, I believe that the First Amendment affords cartoonists
-- not just apologists for the Bush and Reagan administrations
-- the right to comment on any topic they like. I do, however,
find it odd that he chose to criticize a fellow cartoonist in
a cartoon. Not wrong, but odd. Almost as odd as his punchline,
considering how dull and unoriginal his work is day after day.
I like controversy on our site
and I used to run Rall's cartoons (I currently run no cartoons
from his
syndicate) -but dropping Ted hasn't stopped the flow of hate
mail about his cartoons. Ted's
cartoon calling Pat Tillman an "idiot" ran on MSNBC
and I received plenty of hate mail as readers assumed that our
site was somehow associated with the cartoon. MSNBC
pulled Ted's offending cartoon when they heard about the controversy
and Ted's cartoons no longer appear on MSNBC.
When I dropped the other cartoonists
from Ted's
syndicate, readers of our site didn't seem to notice -at
least, I didn't get any mail about dropping those cartoonists,
except for Ted. I got about a dozen e-mails thanking me for dropping
Ted.
Ted seems to have a business
plan where he draws a controversial cartoon every so often so
that he can get on TV and have Sean Hannity yell at him. Cartoonists
know that Ted also finds controversy in his own community of
cartoonists. Ted wrote a cover article for the Village Voice
dissing fellow cartoonist, Art Speigelman. According to Time
Magazine:
It (Rall's article) presented
Art Spiegelman, author of the Pulitzer-winning "Maus,"
as a kind of New York cartooning Nero - made more of luck and
self-promotion than talent, who bestows plum favors upon an elite
coterie of cartooning acolytes. Somewhere between iconoclastic
and a hatchet job, the piece ended up costing Rall more goodwill
than it did Spiegelman.
The article rubbed a lot of Ted's
colleagues the wrong way, including cartoonist Danny Hellman,
who responded by spoofing an e-mail to about thirty people, posing
as Ted, which led to more web battles and pranks. Rall sued Hellman
for libel and $1.5 million in damages. Hellman organized his
cartoonist friends (including Spiegelman, Robert Crumb and Tony
Millionaire, among many others) to publish an anthology comic
book as a fundraiser for his defense against Rall. The comic,
"Legal
Action Comics," continues to be published by Hellman.
I never heard how the Rall
vs. Hellman case was resolved, and I couldn't find it on
the web. If anyone out there knows how it finally ended up, send me an e-mail.
I enjoy these controversies. Ted is "spice in the cartoonists
stew." Maybe I'll get him back on our site someday. I can
never get enough hate mail.
JUNE 12, 2004
YAHTZEE!
We had a nifty Yahtzee this week, tearing down the metaphoric
wall around stem cell research. I thought I would share it here
in the blog. Great minds think alike.
Mike
Keefe, The Denver Post -- Mike's award winning work has
appeared in the Post for more than 20 years --visit
Mike's web site. E-Mail
Mike. Click on the cartoon to e-mail it to a friend. Want
to run Mike's cartoons on your web site or in your publication?
Just e-mail us here: cari@cagle.com
Thanks to one of
our industrious readers who did an online search I have posted the
latest, online, legal stuff in Rall vs. Hellman. It looks like the wheels of justice
grind slowly. Rall's libel claim survived a motion for summary
judgement and may be going forward, or the case may have settled
(which would explain the unusual quiet on the web about what
used to be a noisy story.) Even so, the legal rulings make interesting
reading for cartoon wonks.
JUNE
22, 2004
Mike
Keefe, The Denver Post -- Mike's award winning work has
appeared in the Post for more than 20 years --
