Cartoons 2002 Conference, SAS Visions Theatre, National Museum of Australia December 7-8.
What does a Cartoon Conference look like? Raked blue seating. Black lectern and twin microphones. Overhead projector, laptop slide presentation, big screen. Just another board room. But in this case never a bored room.
Look, there's Little Johnny and Big Kim both trying to pretend to be Winston Churchill. Here's a photo of Maggie Thatcher's eyes, proving that Steve Bell's impression (in The Guardian) of her half-hooded malevolent right eye and her wild artificial-looking staring left eye was the truth, and not just his satirical warped view. Then wasn't it surprising to see how Tony Blair's eyes are just like Maggie Thatcher's. No wonder he goes for privatisation and war on whomever.
Starting with a UK perspective put the Aussie experiences of 2001 and 2002 in context. Where Bell's work draws so easily on Britain's long comic history from Hogarth and Gilray, producing complex absurdist fantasies, Australians drew so many spare and direct cartoons, about refugees especially. Here's a picture of lots of water, no land in sight. From the distant horizon to the foreground is a row of children's heads barely showing above the surface. A cheerful John Howard treads firmly along the "stepping stones". Only at this point do you notice that the heads behind him are sinking to their deaths, while those ahead await their destiny. Vale Siev X.
What's upsetting is to learn from academic Robert Phiddian that cartoons of "tough" politicians, meant to be satirical, serve only to immortalise the very image the politician seeks to impress us with. The polls prove it when large numbers want refugees turned back, despite sympathetic cartoons in every newspaper, tabloid and broadsheet, around Australia. The picture of Howard with regularly extended use-by dates will not make him retire at 64. After all isn't he proposing pushing the retirement age for everyone out to 70 or even 75?
As Fiona Katauskas put it in a neat little illustrated table: LIES Illegals, terrorists & queue jumpers (Ruddock); DAMNED LIES They throw their own children overboard (Howard); & STATISTICS 77%.
Political cartoons particularly rely on the use of irony - the contrast between what someone says, thinks or maybe even believes is the truth compared with reality. The problem is, despite what we like to think about Australians as against Americans, most people don't recognise irony when it stares them in the face. Dean Alston's 1997 cartoon in which Yagan's head yearns for "a warm beer in a quiet Pommy pub" rather than face the divided opinions regarding his return to Australia, is likely to be taken to the Full Bench of the Federal Court now that Justice Nicholson, while agreeing that this was a "demeaning portrait of Yagan", has found that it was published "in good faith" (Canberra Sunday Times, December 8). The irony is that the court case itself diverts attention from the real divisions among the Nyoongar community and possibly sours relations between the Aboriginal and white communities.
Cases like this are ripe for education, and perhaps the best way to set this up is by running a Schools Cartoon Competition. Lyn Beasley and David Arnold from NMA have done exactly that. Freelance cartoonist Fiona Katauskas, our own drive-time Rod Quinn, and NMA's Guy Hansen (who has organised the annual Cartoon Conferences since its inception in 1997) chose "Federal Politics" by Anderson Clarke of Willetton Senior High, WA (3rd Prize); "The Wizard of Aus" by Callum Padgham of Lyneham High, ACT (2nd Prize); while 1st Prize went to Pete Bramley of Scots School, Albury NSW for "God Bless America". Prizes are $1000, $750 and $500 to the schools and smaller cash amounts to the individual winners.
You can visit the Cartoons 2002 Exhibition at the National Museum for $7 Adult, $5 Concession, $3 Children. There you will not only see a large selection of the 250 Schools Competition entries, but also the best 100 cartoons of the year from newspapers across the nation covering the full range of political issues, videos of television satire and work by Peter Nicholson (of Ulysses fame), and the special exhibition Leunig Animated, opened last Friday by a favourite of cartoonists, Peter Costello, who complained that his ears are actually much higher up.
As a diversion to entertain myself, I surveyed 2 conference attendees. 100% supported keeping the old name for the exhibition, Bringing the House Down. 50% supported returning to the original venue at Old Parliament House. Like me, some people had not realised that the Cartoons each year are collected and exhibited by the National Museum, so I suppose they've come home now.
My conclusion from the Conference was in tune with Sydney Morning Herald's Mike Bowers who saw cartoonists as rather like court jesters: the only people with the licence to criticise the king. But then I remember King Lear's Fool. He died for his art, and the King learned the lesson - but too late to save the world.
But Sean Leahy (Courier-Mail) gave me hope that cartoons and education, hand in hand, may lead us to a new dawn when he said of readers: "They want to be provoked, entertained and to think for themselves". At the NMA, of course, it's the Dawn that may lead us.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
No comments:
Post a Comment