4
street roots
May 23, 2014
m
J
BY ROBIN LINDLEY
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
In his new
book, Victor
S. Navasky
traces the
radical roots
o f political
cartoons a nd
their power
to provoke
hroughout modern history, political
cartoonists have been threatened,
censored, jailed and even murdered
because of their a rt
In his book, “The Art of Controversy:
Political Cartoons and Their Enduring Power”
(Knopf), writer and editor Victor ^./Navasky
examines the elusive power of political
cartoons and includes a rich array of notable
examples. In this wide-ranging study, Navasky
ponders the unique effect of this art form
that has provoked reactions from amusement
to outrage to violence.
Navasky examines the work of his artist
friends and colleagues, includihg David -
Levine arid Ed Sorel, as well as artists such as
Francisco Goya and French satirist Honoré
Daumier. The book reveals how cartoons and
caricatures have exposed lies and stupidity
and influenced the public discourse, for good
and for ill.
Navasky is the George Delacorte Professor
a
University’s Graduate School of Journalism,
where he directs the Delacorte Center of
Magazines and chairs the Columbia
Journalism Review. He is also the former
editor and publisher of The Nation, and • -
before that was an editor for The New York
Times Magazine. In the 1960s he was
founding editor and publisher of the satirical
magazine Monocle. His other books include
“Kennedy Justice”; “Naming Names,” which
won a National Book Award; and “A Matter of
Opinion,” á prize-winning memoir.
Robin Lindley: How did you come to write
your book on the history and power of political
cartoons?
Victor S. Navasky: I came to write it
because, in more than 30 years at The Nation
— first as the editor-in-chief and then as
publisher — only once did my staff march on
my office and demand that we pot publish
something in advance: David Levine’s
caricature of Henry Kissinger. It shows
Kissinger screwing the world in the form of a
woman with a globe where her head should
be, with Kissinger on top and the world-
'woman on the bottom.
At the time, Í called a meeting. The
objection to the cartoon was that it was
politically incorrect, [and] I thought this was
another example of the left’s obsession with
political correctness.
The obvious didn’t occur to me until about
10 years later with the Danish Mohammed
[cartoons]. The Muslim world reacted
violently to the cartoons of Mohammed.
Everyone talked about it as a phenomenon of
Muslimism and its forbidding reproduction {of
images of Mohammed]. But it made me think
back to when the staff marched on my office.
I asked myself why was it, in this bastion of
word people_who object to many things, the
only time they took physical action was over a
cartoon?
I then started some research of my own,
and of course discovered they threw Daumier
into prison, and the most powerful
cartoonists were the ones who caused the
greatest emotional reactions, which is not
unexpected.
The
Levine cartoon of Kissinger came to The
Nation because he called me one day and
asked if we’d be interested in the Kissinger
caricature because he had done it originally
for the New York Review, and it wastoo
strong for them. I said, “Of course I’m
interested, but it will get me in a lot of
trouble.” He asked why. I said, “I don’t know,
but it will.” We certainly published it, and we
got a fair amount of mail on it. All of the
cartoonists supported our running it.
R.L.: From the history you relate in your
book, ifs striking that time and again, in the
past five centuries or so, political cartoonists
have faced persecution for their images.
V.N.: It’s not just [political cartoonists].
Artists and writers who were dissenters have
been persecuted over time.
The leading Palestinian cartoonist Naji
al-Ali was murdered on the streets of London
[in 1987]. They never solved the crime, but
there were two theories. One was that the
[Israeli Iritehegince Agency] Mossad did it
because his cartoons against Israel were so
powerful. The other was that Arafat
commissioned it because be also took out
after Arafat. The point is that there was no
disagreement that the reason he was killed
was because of his cartoons. He was coming
ouf of the office of his magazine when he was
shot
R.L.: The violence may surprise some
readers. You write that, in response to the
Danish cartoons of Mohammed, more than 100
people were killed in protests around the world.
V.N.: Yes, and it goes all the way back in
time and comes right up to the present I cite
the literature in neuroscience and social
psychology, [and] I found some experiments,
but, for«me, they were inconclusive.
My own. working hypothesis is that one of
the reasons people get so upset by cartoons
and caricatures - especially the victims or
people who identify with the victims - is that:
See CONTROVERSY, page 5
Bill Mauldin’s
iconic World War
Ilcharacters
Willie and Joe
humanized the
war experience
for families back
home.