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Observations on a Theory of Political Caricature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

W. A. Coupe
Affiliation:
University of Reading

Abstract

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Type
Debate
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1969

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References

page 79 note 1 Streicher, L. H., ‘On a Theory of Political Caricature’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, IX, 4 (1967), 427–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 79 note 2 George, M. D., English Political Caricature, 2 vols., Oxford, 1959.Google Scholar

page 80 note 1 Coupe, W. A., ‘The German Cartoon and the Revolution of 1848’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, IX, 2 (1967), 159.Google Scholar Cf. also the examination of the derivation of the imagery of the political cartoon in seventeenth-century Germany in Coupe, W. A., The GermanIllustrated Broadsheet in the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. (Baden-Baden, 1966/1967), I, Ch. 7.Google Scholar

page 80 note 2 Nevins, A. and Weitenkamp, F., A Century of Political Cartoons (New York, 1944), p. 16.Google Scholar

page 81 note 1 PI. 1. The reference is to the repeated allegations that Liibke was knowingly involved in the building of concentration camps, an allegation supported by documents and drawings apparently signed by him. The President in a recent television broadcast sought to invalidate the ‘evidence’ by asserting his innocence and remarking that in any case he could not be expected to remember every scrap of paper he had signed over twenty years ago.

page 81 note 2 PI. 2. Cf. Hill, Draper, Mr. Gillray, The Caricaturist (London, 1965), PI. 90, 92, 103, etc.Google Scholar

page 81 note 3 The Punch ‘Table’ presents a permanent example of a ‘collective cartoonist’ at work, as did the Wednesday sessions of the staff of Simplicissimus (See Price, R. G. G., A History of Punch (London, 1957), p. 32Google Scholar and Roth, E., Simplicissimus (Hanover, 1954),Google Scholar no pagination, sections ‘Geselligkeit’ and ‘Aus der Schule geplaudert’). The caption of the Zee cartoon mentioned in note 1 on p. 83 was the work of the columnist Cassandra. Similarly, ‘Trog’ (PI. 6) is the signature of a two-man team (George Melly and Wally Fawkes).

page 81 note 4 Punch, 29.3.1890. Rep. Price, op. cit., p. 73.

page 82 note 1 PI. 4.

page 82 note 2 Low, D., British Cartoonists, Caricaturists and Comic Artists (London, 1942), p. 15.Google Scholar

page 82 note 3 George, op. cit., I, p. 196; Draper Hill, op. cit., pp. 67, 73 ff.

page 82 note 4 Price, op. cit., pp. 72 ff; Low, op. cit., p. 20.

page 82 note 5 Low, op. cit., p. 44.

page 82 note 6 Nevins and Weitenkamp, op. cit., p. 9.

page 82 note 7 Butterfield, R., The American Past (New York, 1947), p. 206.Google Scholar

page 83 note 1 The most celebrated example of conflicting interpretations is provided by Zee's cartoon ‘The Price of Petrol has been Increased by One Penny—Official’ (.Daily Mirror, 5.3.43), which reflected on the war-time losses amongst merchant shipping and the recent increase in the price of petrol by showing a sailor clinging to a raft. Although intended to exhort the public not to waste oil by pointing out its real price, the cartoon was interpreted by the Churchill Government as an attempt to hamper the war-effort by suggesting to sailors that they were risking their lives for the enrichment of the oil companies. The paper was threatened with closure and only saved by a Parliamentary furore. See further Cudlipp, H., Publish and Be Damned (London, 1953), pp. 175 ff.Google Scholar

page 84 note 1 Butterfield, loc. cit. Boss Tweed was, of course, in his own crude way only expressing a general truth which, centuries before, had been given a more dignified formulation by Pope Gregory the Great in a letter to Bishop Serenus of Massilia, who had opposed the ecclesiastical use of pictures: ‘Quod legentibus scriptura, hoc idiotis praestat pictura cernentibus, ut hi qui letteras nesciunt, saltern in parietibus videndo legant, quae legere in codicibus non valent’.

page 84 note 2 Cf. the way in which during World War I Le Rire Rouge reproduced German cartoons from Simplicissimus, Fliegende Blätter, etc. which showed the French in an unfavourable light as evidence of the malice and misguided stupidity of the Germans. In much the same way, as late as 1918, the German censors helped the learned Dr. Ferdinand Avenarius to ‘turn the trick’ on Allied cartoonists by allowing him to publish in his Das Bildals Narr (Munich, 1918)some 300 anti-German and anti-Imperial cartoons which are often of positively hair-raising ferocity.

page 84 note 3 Thus in spite of Boss Tweed's unsolicited testimonial to the power of Nast's pictures, the ‘Ring’ offered the New York Times five million dollars in return for its silence compared to the half a million offered to Nast (Butterfield, loc. cit.).

page 85 note 1 Quoted by Gombrich, E. H. and Kris, E., Caricature (London, 1940), p. 12.Google Scholar

page 86 note 1 Paston, G., Social Caricature in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1905), p. 59.Google Scholar

page 86 note 2 Quoted by Draper Hill, op. cit., p. 6.

page 86 note 3 The Mexican Revolution and the Cartoon’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, IX, 2 (1967), 121.Google Scholar

page 86 note 4 Kris, E., ‘The Psychology of Caricature‘, Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art (New York, 1952), pp. 175, 179, 200.Google Scholar

page 87 note 1 Gombrich, E. H., Meditations on a Hobby Horse (London, 1963), pp. 131 ff. Flora of Die Zeit specializes in such ‘summings up’.Google Scholar

page 88 note 1 E. Kris, op. cit., p. 190.

page 88 note 2 Scarfe, G., Gerald Scarfe's People, London, 1964.Google Scholar

page 88 note 3 PI. 5.

page 88 note 4 PI. 6.

page 89 note 1 PI. 7 and 8.

page 89 note 2 F. Schiller, Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, Werke, XII, i (═ Deut. Nat. Literatur, vol. 129, Stuttgart and Berlin, n.d.), p. 370.

page 91 note 1 Kris, E., ‘Ego Development and the Comic’, Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art (New York, 1952), pp. 212 ff.Google Scholar

page 91 note 2 Op. cit., p. 126.

page 92 note 1 PI. 9. See also Streicher, L. H., ‘David Low and the Sociology of Caricature’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, VIII, 1 (1965), 123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For further examples of Low's work see Low, D., A Cartoon History of Our Times, New York, 1939Google Scholar and Years of Wrath, A Cartoon History 1932–1945, London, 1949.Google Scholar

page 92 note 2 Cf. Raven Hill's ‘The Limit’ (28.10.14), ‘The Innocent’ (9.12.14); Partridge's ‘Unconquerable’ (21.10.14), ‘A Chronic Complaint’ (2.12.14). These cartoons represent only one side of Mr. Punch's anti-Kaiser campaign, of course, but it is the minor cartoons which convey the most savage aggression, e.g. Fairhead's representation of the Emperor as Bill Sikes (4.11.14) and L. Patten's portrayal of him as a gargoyle (28.10.14). For a further example of the love-hate relationship between cartoonists and their victim cf. the treatment of Adenauer by Simplicissimus and Adenauer's reaction, Simplicissimus 6.5.67, p. 147.

page 92 note 3 See Osbert Lancaster's foreword to Home and Abroad-Vicky Cartoons from the Evening Standard, London, n.d. (1964).Google Scholar Cf. also Butler's, Lord foreword to Vicky must Go-a Selection of Vicky Cartoons from the Evening Standard, London, n.d. (1960).Google Scholar

page 93 note 1 D. Low, British Cartoonists, p. 43. The classic precedent for this is provided by the legend recorded by Pliny (Nat. Hist. XXXV, 140). Stratonice, the Queen of Nearer Asia, was ‘cartooned’ by Ctesicles in a painting which showed her ‘romping’ with her fisherman-paramour. Ctesicles was forced to flee for his life, but Stratonice preserved the painting—not, one suspects, simply out of regard for art, as Pliny suggests.

page 93 note 2 See Wartmann, W., Honoré Daumier (London, 1946), pl. 3042.Google Scholar

page 93 note 3 Krokodil, 27/1967; p. 3; 6/1968, p. 10; 25/1967, p. 12; 6/1968, p. 11.1 am grateful to Mr. James Dingley for help with the captions of these cartoons.

page 94 note 1 See Coupe, W. A., The German Illustrated Broadsheet in the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. (Baden-Baden, 1966/1967), I, Ch. 4, pp. 6591.Google Scholar