The art of McTooning

>> Editorial cartoonists are losing their bite in the War on Terror

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

In a cozy room in a small building across the street from Concordia's Loyola campus last Friday, a group of academics were discussing a collection of funny drawings, drawn over 60 years ago. More of an informal egghead gabfest than a formal academic presentation, the discussion revolved around 69-year-old retired English professor Arthur Broes and his examination of editorial cartoons leading up to the 1938 Munich agreement, which carved up Czechoslovakia for the Nazis with British and French collusion. Of course, it failed--but the editorial cartoons of the day reflected more than anxiety, they reflected a different spirit and style of cartooning that is rarely seen today.

"The earlier cartoons were done for magazines, and cartoonists had more time to draw them. And the public was more willing to devote time to studying [the details]," Broes says. "The cartoonists also assume something about the literacy of the reader [one of the cartoons Broes exhibited showed Hitler, dagger in hand, pensively sitting with a map of Czechoslovakia under his elbow, with a quote from Macbeth above his head]. Pop culture references become dated very quickly."

They differed in other ways too. The discussion soon turned to editorial cartoons' racial depictions and overt racism. "Lots of cartoons at every level went very far in demonizing the enemy, especially 'the Jap,'" says Broes. "Barbarism was there and so was a demonization of the enemy that does have echoes today." Racism was out, but, according to Broes "an attitude of respect for the leader during times of conflict" remained. And the War on Terrorism isn't about to buck that trend.

Beanie no more

If ever there was a president whose lack of brainpower was painfully obvious, it would have to be George W. Bush. Cartoonists lampooned him at length, from his mangling of the English language to being propped up by his father, the vice-president and the Republican party machine to his squeaky win in Florida. But all that changed on Sept. 11.

"Since the 11th, there is still a hesitation from American editorial cartoonists to criticize the administration," says Ann Telnaes, the Washington, D.C.-based syndicated cartoonist and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize. "The emotions are still very raw."

For Telnaes, that's saying something. Before Sept 11, her cartoons roasted Bush, depicting him as an idiot child, wearing a beanie, never straying too far from his father. Telnaes now stays her pen from criticizing the president, although she has been carving up U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft over the suspension of civil liberties. But what she has seen much of, even before the attacks, is a timidity among cartoonists to push any kind of envelope when it comes to criticizing the government. "The 11th is part of the reason American editorial cartoonists face a definite division in thought as far as what editorial cartoonists do," she says. "In the last 10 years, cartoons have just turned into a gag."

America the palatable

Terry Mosher, the Montreal Gazette's editorial cartoonist better known as Aislin and co-author of The Hecklers: A History of Political Cartooning (1979), also sees a blunting of North America's sharpest pens. "There are a lot of flag-wavers [among American editorial cartoonists]," he says. "Not everybody, but a lot. But they feel a need to do this. It's legit, it's from the heart. There is a quiet determination that they're not going to put up with any of this bullshit."

The heart-felt determination is also very present among editors, many of whom are afraid running controversial cartoons will not only offend readers, but cut into profit margins as well. "An editor in the morning has a choice between 50 different cartoons, and they'll probably take one that won't cause any problems," says Serge Chapeleau, one of La Presse's cartoonist. "It's a grey zone."

This is a problem that is more American than Canadian, all three agree. "The cartoonists who still have jobs in Canada are more open and critical, that's certain," says Chapeleau.

And the good ones have to be, Mosher says. "Our usual role is to poke fun, and the more you can poke fun at your own, the more healthy you probably are."