Political cartoons
Posted on December 6, 2005 by John WebsterAfter reading In the Shadow of No Towers, I’m questioning whether Spiegelmen’s comic is an appropriate medium for dealing with 9/11; he’s literally caricaturing these events, and I wonder if he’s doing what certain politicians – who he opposes – did in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. Remember how Bush told the world that they were either with us or against us? Or when the president said that the terrorists attacked the U.S. because they hate freedom? Bush’s characterizations were laughably simplistic; though the situations are incredibly complex, the president caricatured them for his own purposes. When Spiegelman depicts President Bush as a cowboy, with a gun in one hand and a sword in the other, leading a band of Bible- and flag-toting reptiles and capitalist fat pigs in top hats, he’s creating humorous, though clearly exaggerated, representations of Bush and his evangelical and big business allies. In effect, Spiegleman is doing something quite similar to what Bush and political hawks have done in previous wars: demonizing the enemy. On the next page Spiegelman presents Bush in a red-tinted hue with a sinister expression, suggesting the president is devilish, and in the process, reducing Bush to a laughably simplistic caricature. To believe Bush is simply an oil-hungry, crusading imperialist is as deluded as believing Bin Laden is simply a freedom-hating psychopath. Bin Laden may hate the Western ideal of freedom, and he may even be a psychopath, but he obviously has other motivations, which anyone seriously trying to counteract him needs to consider. In Bush’s case, if Spiegelman wishes to counteract the president’s agenda, these demonic caricatures are for the most part unproductive; they’re only going to appeal to people who already dislike Bush. What Spiegelman is doing is similar to what Michael Moore did in Fahrenheit 9/11. Todd Solondz made a good point about Moore’s “documentary” in an interview in The Believer a few months ago. Referring to the scene at the beginning in which we see former Deputy Defense Secretary (and current president of the World Bank) Paul Wolfowitz spitting on his comb and then running it through his hair, Solondz pointed out that Moore included that clip just to be mean; the scene served no useful purpose in countering Bush’s political agenda. These caricatures of those who Spiegelman disagrees with may be cathartic for the author, but I’m not so sure they’re productive if he wishes to make effective changes in society.