So almost a year ago, British cartoonist Dave Brown caused a stir with a cartoon showing a King Kong sized Ariel Sharon eating Palestinian babies (the image was riffed from a Goya painting). It’s back in the news new, because the British Political Cartoon Society has just given it the cartoon of the year award.
Sheesh.
A few folks have asked me what I think. My opinion hasn’t changed since I wrote about the cartoon in January. The cartoon still strikes me as anti-Semitic; and like Trish Wilson, I make a distinction between the cartoon and the cartoonist, and suspect that the anti-Semitism was unintentional.
I also think this is a mediocre cartoon; the award is apparently given for controversy, not for quality. As Dirk Deppey writes on ‘Journalista!:
Raznor of Raznor’s Rants (and frequently of Alas’ comments) disagrees about the quality of the cartoon, and also with charges of anti-Semitism:
I don’t follow Raznor’s argument here; because the image is based on Goya, he is saying, it can’t also be anti-Semitic. Why not? It’s as if Raznor believes that it is impossible for a work of art to reference two things at once; the cartoon draws from Goya, therefore (Raznor concludes) it cannot also draw on the anti-Semitic blood libel myth.
My guess is that Raznor is confusing the cartoonist’s intent with the cartoon itself; if the former isn’t anti-Semitic, then the latter must not be anti-Semitic either. But I don’t think this is always how things work. As I wrote back in January:
So does that change anything? Well, it brings up the possibility that this may have been accidental anti-Semitism; perhaps the cartoonist was just tasteless, insensitive, ignorant. But I never said that the cartoonist himself (herself?) is an anti-Semite. I don’t know or care what was in the cartoonists’ heart; all I know is what was drawn in the cartoon. And what was drawn was one of the most pernicious and vicious anti-Semitic myths in history; a slander that is still current in parts of the Arab world.
(It’s on a par with an American newspaper editor printing a cartoon showing Colin Powell raping white women. It’s not just tasteless; it’s drawing on a specific, deeply-felt cultural image of bigotry. And it draws on that racist imagery regardless of intent.).
In this case, the cartoon was drawn by the cartoonist and approved by an editor. If it was by some miracle an innocent mistake, then it is still a mistake that shows a staggering tastelessness, ignorance and insensitivity. And regardless of motive, the result was the printing of an anti-Semitic cartoon.
Look, I hate Sharon; I think he’s a war criminal, a bigot, and an enemy of peace. I’ll gladly call him terrible names and draw him doing horrible things. But I will never draw him eating babies; because that’s a traditional way anti-Semites attack Jews. It’s fair game to criticize Sharon for being a warmonger or even a murderer; but bringing in “blood libel” imagery turns the cartoon into a criticism of him for being a Jewish warmonger, and that’s anti-Semitic.
Why not? It’s as if Raznor believes that it is impossible for a work of art to reference two things at once; the cartoon draws from Goya, therefore (Raznor concludes) it cannot also draw on the anti-Semitic blood libel myth.
Outstandingly put.
Though I still disagree with your opinon on the anti-Semitism of another cartoon.
On one side you have the pro Israeli lobby who equate anti Israeli with being antisemitic.
Look again at the cartoon. Where is the Jewish reference? The reference is clearly Likud and and Sharon. Now if Israel wasn’t killing children, it might be wrong, but they are.
I am aware of the blood libel myth. However, I don’t read that into this picture. Look at the facts, Israel is killing children directly as ‘colateral damage’ and also because of health problems in the ghettos of gaza.
Its a fair attack.
Nick
Why do you disagree with me about that cartoon, Joe?
I’m still not sure if I’d call it anti-semitic. Sharon is the centerpiece of the cartoon, and the fact that he’s Jewish seems incidental. I’m not sure, I have class pretty soon. I’ll probably post a response some time later today.
I’ve read a fair amount about this cartoon, on both sides. My $0.02: trying to say that people who get smacked by the anti-semitism the moment they see the central image are wrong, if they only knew a Goya painting it doesn’t mention, makes me imagine a debate about how The American Spectator’s blackface cover on Affirmative Action was not offensive. Art belongs to its consumers.
I hate Sharon.
The power of cartoons lies in the huge number of cultural references that may be drawn all in one cartoon.
When I see the Goya paintting, and now the cartoon is I always imagine the artist is trying to communicate the cruelty and the ultimate humility of Saturn’s abominable act. The cruelty is obvious even to those who don’t know the story.
Saturn, a Titan, ate his own children to save himself and the keep the Titans in power. His kids, the Gods, were eventually vomited back up, led a rebellion, and overwhelmed him and nearly all the Titans. ( Prometheus switched sides and lived to be tied to the top of a mountain where his liver would be consumed every day. ).
So…. when I first saw the cartoon, I assumed the cartoonist was saying: “Sharon is horrid, civil war is horrid AND this will backfire!”
Is the cartoon anti-semitic? I don’t know. I wasn’t familiar with the “Jews eat Gentile babies” slander, so the idea that the cartoonist was suggesting that Jews eat babies didn’t occur to me.
Amp:
Hard to say; in this case it’s largely a gut instinct type of thing … hard to put into words.
With something like intent, that has to be inferred, there’s room for interpretation. For example, Rush Limbaugh didn’t say “I hate niggers”, he said “no one lives in East St. Louis” and Donovan McNabb is overrated because he’s black. To me, that’s plainly racist, but it’s difficult to prove.
I’d say that the “Star of David as divider” cartoon strikes me as anti-Semitic and that’s how I interpret it.
It’s no use to reiterate the debate on the Magen David cartoon, but we always go back to the same fundamental divisive line: depending on whether you see it as a symbol of “all-time Judeity” (Seppla’s Nazi cartoon drawn before the creation if the Israeli state) or the flag of a recognized state (Tony Auth’s “post-1948” cartoon), you will find Auth’s cartoon anti-semitic or not.
By the way, it’s funny that Amp, Raznor and I (in a comment to the latest “What Amp’s reading”) linked to “Journalista!”‘s post almost at the same time.
In any case, I added a response on my page. One thing I note is the copy of this cartoon seems like it’s of higher quality on my page than what Amp posted. I think Amp just has a lower quality scan of it that takes out the details, as such Sharon looks like less of an intimidating presence, which is essential to the cartoon IMO.
And Jimmy, that’s not such a coincidence. I just followed your own link to the “Journalista!” post.
My recollection of the blood libel, shallowly reinforced by a brief Google search, is that a Christian child is sacrificed for the sake of his blood. Eating the whole child is more of a Greek thing than a Jewish thing. (See House of Atreus.) Are kids even kosher, and if so, up to what age?
The cartoon only recalls the Goya painting to me. Of course, if Sharon had been instead been depicted eating a matzoh dripping blood, I would, as usual, have missed the point.
Humans are by definition unkosher, according to the dietary regulations laid out by Numbers. But then the blood libel myth isn’t based on logic or observation but ignorance and fear. Good point on the specifics of blood libel, but then it’s easy to generalize the idea of blood libel to eating babies rather than sacrificing.
My thing is that Sharon just doesn’t look very Jewish. Someone who Dirk Deppey quotes mentions the hook-nose, but besides that, I’m pretty hard pressed to find any sterotypically Jewish traits in this caricature, leading me to once again conclude that Sharon’s religion is entirely incidental to the comic.
Sharon is labeled in the text balloons.
Who doesn’t look Jewish? Noses grow as one ages. Alone among my siblings I have my father’s small, trim nose. The rest have big Swedish honkers. But, since I have a beard, I’m generally the putative Jew.
Yeah, you might want to be careful about determining whether or not someone “looks Jewish.” That’ll derail your arguments.
The thing about the blood libel is that it really got its start in Europe (France, specifically) in the middle ages. As such, I would think that it would be enough a part of European history that the cartoonist, if not intending a specifically Jewish slur, should know better. I don’t think someone in the US would be able to pick up on it exactly, and I’ll admit that the original controversy surrounding this cartoon’s original printing is how I learned about the blood libel. I then stumbled across some examples, by reportedly respected scholars in the Arab world (full disclosure: I don’t exactly trust the source) o the blood libel being perpetuated to this day, using the original court transcripts from the middle ages as proof.
And I think the fact that the cartoon won an award speaks volumes, and not necessarily about the (quite obvious) injustices perpetrated by Israel. The question is, were there any other cartoons that did it better and with more insight?
Ah, I shouldn’t insinuate, it’s too personal for me…
By “look Jewish” I mean the cartoonist didn’t seemingly add any stereotypically Jewish features to the Sharon caricature. As such Sharon being Jewish isn’t central to the cartoon, so there’s reason not to assume a blood-libel interpretation.