Are free-wheeling cartoonists done for in our age of hyper-sensitivity?
Another week, another cartoonist causing offence, this time over at the New York Times where last week Portuguese illustrator Antonio Soares depicted Donald Trump wearing sunglasses and a yarmulke, led by a guide dog resembling Benjamin Netanyahu. From its neck, hangs the Star of David.
The conceit is relatively innocuous: that the policies of Donald Trump’s administration are being directed by Netanyahu. That’s hardly a new observation and, in so far as it’s in the realm of politics, largely uncontroversial. And if that were all the cartoon was about, it would work.
But here’s the rub – the cartoonist has burdened the drawing with something more. The yarmulke isn’t a symbol of Israel but of Jewishness. This is the kind of anti-Semitic elision that happens all too often these days. It is, arguably, the root of the problems around the Labour Party, where the politics of Israel are deliberately or ignorantly confused with ethnoreligious identity. It’s the kind of fault that lies behind US Representative Ilan Omar’s accusation that fellow members of Congress are loyal to a “foreign country” (and, incidentally, exactly the same mistake that Trump made when he himself described Netanyahu as “your Prime Minister” to a group of US Jewish Republicans).
The Star of David, similarly, cannot be casually employed to signify nationality. The star means more than “Israel”. Even if turning politicians into animals has a long tradition, the associated tropes mean that this depiction of Netanyahu as a dog falls inside a deeply anti-Semitic tradition of bestialising Jewish figures.
Did the illustrator know all this when he drew the cartoon? The New York Times was certainly right to issue an apology. Drawing cartoons in this hyper-sensitive age is hard – the caricature of Netanyahu isn’t strong enough to carry the conceit. This is something you quickly learn once you try to draw cartoons. Likenesses are difficult. Sometimes they can elude you entirely and that’s especially true when it comes to contorting a human face to look like that of an animal. Often you get around this deficiency by adding some object that identifies the person. That might be why the cartoonist included the Star of David. The presence of the black yarmulke is not so easily explained. It’s terribly misjudged, turning the cartoon from attack on the politics of the Israeli government to an attack on Jewish identity.
It’s easy to see, then, what’s so wrong with this particular cartoon. Yet that’s not always the case. Back in 2013, Gerald Scarfe drew a cartoon for The Sunday Times in which he portrayed Netanyahu building a wall. The caption read “Will Cementing Peace Continue?” and the heads of Palestinians protruded from the red mortar. This, it was quickly pointed out, might be read as a modern version of the blood libel, that is the accusation that Jews murder Christians and use their blood in religious ritual. The offence was intensified by the timing of the cartoon, appearing on Holocaust Memorial Day. The owner of the The Sunday Times Rupert Murdoch quickly distanced himself from the cartoon, tweeting that “Gerald Scarfe has never reflected the opinions of the Sunday Times. Nevertheless, we owe major apology for grotesque, offensive cartoon.”
In that instance, Scarfe only apologised for the timing. “I am not and never have been, anti-Semitic,” he wrote on his website. “This drawing was a criticism of Netanyahu, and not of the Jewish people: there was no slight whatsoever intended against them. I was, however, stupidly completely unaware that it would be printed on Holocaust Day, and I apologise for the very unfortunate timing.”
Scarfe might well be right to defend the line that politicians must not be above ridicule. If you believe him, he was not aware of the blood libel (indeed, the story might well have been the first time that many of us were aware of its history) and was simply doing what he has always done.
Blood is a major part of Gerald Scarfe’s aesthetic. One of his major collections is even titled “Drawing Blood” and contains cartoons that liberally crimson politicians with the product of their decisions. He has bespeckled everybody from Richard Nixon to George Bush and Tony Blair with red ink (and a considerable few with brown ink).
This need to simplify can, of course, go too far. Just last year, Steve Bell drew a cartoon for The Guardian of Theresa May meeting Netanyahu, with a fireplace behind them burning an image of Palestinian medic Razan al-Najjar, who had just been shot by an Israeli soldier. The cartoon was spiked by the paper’s editor, Katharine Viner, and understandably so. The fireplace could be read in the context of Nazi death camps, an interpretation that Bell, no doubt furious about the wider politics, clearly overlooked.
Consider how, last year, a cartoonist for the Rutland Herald, a Vermont-based daily, was condemned for “body shaming” White House Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Jeff Danziger’s cartoon showed Ivanka Trump lamenting that “all the glamour is gone from the White House”. Next to her was stood Sanders, behind a podium reading “Sarah! Clothes”, and a female figure (who might or might not also be Sanders) modelling ugly dresses that emphasised her figure. As if to underscore the point that he was accusing Sanders of having a more rural aesthetic, a small figure in dungarees played the fiddle.
Just when does stereotype go too far? Is politically correct caricature even possible? Why, for example, might it be okay to emphasise Tony Blair’s grin or Theresa May’s nose but not comment on body shape (unless it’s Jacob Rees Mogg’s say, his ultra-thinness?) What’s the difference between the Danziger cartoon and this week’s wonderful cartoon by Peter Brookes for The Times, with Anne Widdecombe being lifted by Nigel Farage (“I’m standing to prevent Britain becoming an international laughing stock”)?
Take the Australia’s Herald Sun which last year published a cartoon by Mark Knight, depicting Serena Williams after she lost her match at the US Open against Naomi Osaka. Williams was shown jumping in the air to stamp on her racket. Her face was caricatured in the moment of her fury: mouth open and eyes closed. Many were offended by the depiction, noting that exaggerated lips and noses were common in Jim Crow era cartoons. The Australian Press Council subsequently cleared the cartoon but it is notable that they acknowledge that it might still be offensive to some readers.
And that is the essence of the problem: what kind of offence was intended? A cartoon might well be racial but not necessarily racist. Identity is rooted in the stuff of our ethnicity and gender – how then do you capture Serena William’s physicality without capturing her physicality? It’s a tricky balancing act – cartoonists should tread carefully yet, by treading carefully, they should not tread so carefully as to forget what they are there to do.
They have to make sure that the offence they intend is the right offence: cartoonists should be able to condemn an Israeli politician for his politics without using religious or ethnic symbols; caricature an African-American making unsporting behaviour while avoiding the visual language of Jim Crow; and mock the bad rhetoric of a White House press secretary rather than her “bad” body shape.