“Ndine Puludzu”: Haswell Kunyenje’s political cartoons and the art of social criticism

Satire and Politics: The Interplay of Heritage and Practice

Political cartoons in Nigerian society serve as tools for political commentary and social critique. This research investigates the socio-political impact of visual and linguistic strategies in selected Nigerian political cartoons, addressing a significant gap in the existing literature concerning the role of visual media in political discourse. Despite the prevalent use of political cartoons in Nigerian media, there has been limited scholarly attention to how these cartoons utilise visual and linguistic elements to critique socio-political disputes. This study aims to bridge this gap by employing Kress and van Leeuwen’s Grammar of Visual Design and Roland Barthes’ Semiotic Theory to analyse seven selected political cartoons. The study's primary aim is to explore how these cartoons communicate complex political realities and influence public perception. The objectives include identifying the visual and linguistic strategies used in the cartoons, examining the socio-political issues they address, and evaluating their impact on public discourse. The findings reveal that Nigerian political cartoons employ a sophisticated blend of visual and linguistic strategies to convey powerful socio-political messages. The analysis demonstrates that these cartoons effectively highlight issues such as corruption, economic hardship, political neglect, and the disparity between the ruling elites and the suffering masses. The study also found that these cartoons effectively depict the disparity between the ruling elites and the suffering masses, employing salience, framing, modality, denotation, connotation, and myth to engage and challenge public perception. The research underscores the significance of political cartoons as tools for socio-political engagement and discourse, demonstrating their role in reflecting and shaping public opinion on critical national issues. In conclusion, this study underscores the importance of political cartoons as a medium for socio-political engagement and discourse in Nigeria. It highlights the critical role of visual semiotics in political commentary and the necessity for further research into the impact of visual media on public opinion and political accountability.

MLR, .,   and plurality of the Solovki camp experience, preserving the many voices of the camp for future generations of historians and researchers. S F J D Z Graphic Satire in the Soviet Union: ‘Krokodil’’s Political Cartoons. By J E. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. .  pp.;  ill. $ (pbk $). ISBN –––– (pbk ––––). is is the first monograph in English on the highly popular and important satirical magazine Krokodil, which was born in the same year as the Soviet Union and outlived it by more than a decade. A monograph in English devoted to Krokodil is long overdue because the journal’s history can shed additional light on the intricate history of Soviet media, satire, and censorship. John Etty’s book, however, focuses on the aw period of –, with occasional references to other epochs. e first three chapters are dedicated to the context of the study, in which Etty goes on a self-assigned crusade against ‘inadequate’ existing interpretations of Krokodil (p. ) and—as he calls it—‘structuralist’ approaches to Soviet media that promote a ‘propaganda paradigm’ (pp. –). Instead, Etty adopts a ‘poststructuralist ’ approach that seeks ‘multiple interpretations and ambiguities in cartoon texts’ (p. ). Leaving aside the unorthodox usage of both terms, the main problem of this otherwise interesting study is that, while repeatedly attacking ‘binarism’ and the vast—but perfectly valid—body of research on state-sanctioned satire, Etty’s own analysis is presented in a contrived and obscure style which leads to misinterpretations and very far-fetched conclusions, not backed up by any archival evidence: for example, ‘eatricalism and the façade, the metaphors that Krokodil employed to satirize official discourses, were explored in ways which highlight the value of subjective observation, rather than official rhetoric or Soviet ideology, as a guide to interpretation’ (p. ). Etty identifies three graphic ‘schemata’ of Krokodil’s visual language: ‘contesting ’, ‘affirmative’ and ‘becoming’ (p. ), the latter referring to the everyday life of ordinary Soviet people. Adopting Bakhtin’s concept of Menippean satire (with all its fourteen characteristics!) (p. ), Etty argues that the ‘becoming’ schema allows for more ambiguous and ‘dialogic’ readings. For example, when discussing cartoons about Soviet bureaucrats, he claims that these satires ‘might be read as more significant political critiques’ (p. ) and that they do not really fit into the ‘propaganda paradigm’ (p. ). is is quite inaccurate because, since its comeback in  as a ‘comrade-in-arms of the Party’, satire was used as a necessary instrument of ‘critique and self-critique’, and ridiculing bureaucracy, inefficiency, and carelessness was officially sanctioned and even encouraged. Furthermore, Etty’s understanding of propaganda (and a few other theoretical concepts) is too narrow, especially considering Krokodil’s genetic connection with agitprop and its didactic and enlightening function. Sometimes Etty’s analysis is disengaged from its context. For example, the  Reviews Kukryniksy’s cartoon ‘Progress’ (p. ) was a satirical comment on Robert Ardrey ’s book African Genesis (), which was briefly summarized in a caption above the cartoon in the following way: ‘[Ardrey] sees gangsters and robbers as the ideal of modern man, the peak of civilization.’ It is therefore evident why the cartoon depicts a prehistoric couple who perplexedly observe a fight to the death between two well-dressed capitalists, thus reinforcing the cliché of the inhumanity of Western civilization, a frequent topic in Soviet satirical cartoons and feuilletons. is context is omitted by Etty, who instead interprets the cartoon as a criticism of capitalist modernity and offers the Bible as a possible referent. e book could have benefited from a comparative analysis of the aw period with, at least, the s (when satire as a genre was under attack) and the late s (when censorship was gradually relaxed). Such a comparison would elucidate much more in terms of the magazine’s engagement with propaganda, norms, ideology, and subversion than Etty’s ‘poststructuralist’ analysis, which turns out to be seriously undercontextualized. Finally, of the devil found in the details. ere are a number of misprints, especially in Russian names; some references are given with a wrong year (Bird et al.); Elem Klimov’s film Welcome, or No Trespassing is incorrectly dated and titled, and there are quite a...

Lalo Alcaraz: Political Cartooning in the Latino Community

The Cuban missile crisis was a moment during the Cold War when rhetoric, brinkmanship, and politics intersected with notions of masculinity, empire and colonization to nearly disastrous ends. The crisis occurred at a moment of transition in Canada in which Canadians were profoundly concerned over the state of Canadian–Cuban relations and Canada’s place in the world. This article examines how previous understandings and preconceptions of “Cuba”—such as feminized and infantilized images of Cuban leader Fidel Castro in political cartoons and editorials in newspapers – influenced how Canadians understood the crisis, their nation and how the Canadian government should interact with other powers. While both negative and positive images of Castro and Cuba were present in Canadian public discussion, Canadians utilized the same imagery to argue that their government should act in its own best interests after the missile crisis.

The effectiveness of satirical political cartoons, especially in times of strict censorship, may be explained through their use of linguistic quips that complement the brevity and immediacy of the visual medium well. Several techniques within linguistic quips may be understood through the theories of Henri Bergson and Arthur Koestler that are drawn upon in this paper. However, it is through an analysis of the subjects and objects of these linguistic quips that we understand the subversive nature of the laughter produced through these quips. Linguistic quips, in addition to providing at least a minor, though inconsistent, protection from censorious authorities play a more vital role of exposing social and political hierarchies of power in the society. This paper locates the subversive potential of political cartoons and specifically of linguistic quips in exposing these hierarchies. The subversive laughter with its pin-pointed target, often asks for the participation of the readers/viewers in such a way as to create a space for the degradation of the target and vindication of the participant viewer. This paper demonstrates these ideas through an exploration of the cartoons of Abu Abraham during the Emergency Years in India (1975-77) when major restrictions were imposed on the freedom of the press by the government. In doing so, the paper tangentially comments on the role that satirical political cartoons play in the public sphere.

There is a widespread concern that the print newspaper industry across the world and in Ghana particularly faces an uncertain future and a long-term decline in readership and circulation due to the prevalence of internet mediated News websites, making print newspapers obsolete in their present format. This paper is an assessment of the circulation and readership of printed newspapers in the northern regional capital, Tamale. It investigates preferred News sources among newsreaders and examines consumption pattern of newspapers in the metropolis. It discussed the challenges the print media industry faces in the wake of News websites’ proliferation in the Ghanaian media landscape. The paper is based on exploratory research design. It sampled four leading print newspapers in Ghana (Daily Graphic, Daily Guide, Ghanaian Times and Business and Financial Times) as reference points for data collection. Four newspaper vendors who vend these newspapers in the metropolis were sampled through simple random sampling. The paper finds a sharp decline in circulation and readership of printed newspaper in the metropolis in favour of internet powered News websites. The paper concludes that although newsreaders prefer sourcing News online, they still find the traditional printed media as the most credible and reliable sources for News. The paper recommends that the traditional print media take advantage of the reach of internet powered platforms to create online presence and ensure that they innovate to get newsreaders subscribe to their brands since print newspaper readership is gradually declining in the metropolis. Key Words: Assessment, Online newspapers, Newspaper readership, Print newspaper, Tamale

Complementing studies on the representation of political cartoons which apply metaphorical representation in the portrayal of societal ills, this study explores a multimodal metaphorical representation of selected political cartoons in Nigeria to investigate how cartoonists employed metaphors to represent the current political situation in the country. In the face of the ongoing election petitions and handover of office to the President, among other activities within the political domain in Nigeria, a number of political cartoonists have flooded the online platform with cartoons depicting visual metaphorical representations of happenings within the nation. Such metaphorical representations are semiotically showcased via such cartoons as Go to Court, the Scape Goat, Buhari’s Pet, Corruption, and Original Wahala Received by Me in the portrayal of reality that Nigeria faces today. Given the foregoing, this study combines linguistic and visual modes to form a multimodal representation of the metaphors used in the selected political cartoons. The study adopts a qualitative analysis of 10 political cartoons in Nigeria. It uses Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006, 2020) approach to multimodality and Forceville’s (1996, 2016) view of visual realisations of conceptual metaphor in constructing meaning to investigate how visual images are constructed to cue conceptual metaphors. The results of the study suggest that Nigerian political cartoons rely mainly on visual metaphors as a means of communicating their messages. In addition, the metaphors used often rely on comic, exaggerated and simplistic depictions to convey their meaning effectively and to stir a strong emotional reaction from the readers. Furthermore, the findings of the study emphasise the importance of metaphorical representation in political cartoons and its implications for public discourse. The results reveal ways to improve the power of the metaphorical messages and the impact of the cartoons on public opinion. The study contributes to the multimodal metaphor research field and reveals the Nigerian public’s underlying beliefs and ideologies.

The twentieth century saw newspapers replace journals, magazines and pamphlets as the most common vehicle for dissemination and consumption of political cartoons. The Internet has brought gradual but inexorable decline in newspaper circulation and readership. Imagining how political cartooning might evolve in the present century, this chapter examines two inter-related aspects: socio-technological forces challenging newsprint media; and new media strategies available to practitioners (both professional and amateur). Digital media bring a paradigm shift in how the public consumes news-media and engages with associated imagery such as political cartoons and videos. By facilitating access to image-production tools and audiences, digital technology may alter the socio-cultural impact of political cartoons. A computer and an Internet connection provide the tools needed to participate creatively—not just consume—in a mode of democratic discourse previously difficult for amateurs to penetrate. Participation does not necessarily equal meaningful dialogue with a substantial audience. Examples discussed include amateur and professional cartoonists in Australia, the USA and the UK like Rocco Fazzari (Sydney Morning Herald), Walt Handelsman (New Orleans Advocate) and Matt Pritchett (Daily Telegraph), who have successfully transitioned from print-media to digital media via animation and social media. All political cartoonists must embrace this challenge if they are to maintain their traditionally significant input to the democratic conversation.

Political cartoons can function as a means of monitoring the level of press freedom, of government’s tolerance of free speech, and their resistance to challenges posed by opposition. It may also be argued that in this digital age the aforesaid barometric utility can extend to other satirical visual forms like memes and videos. Singapore has a long reputation for its strict media control, iron-grip on the mainstream media, and zero-tolerance for any form of spontaneous public protest. However, the arrival of the digital information age effectively eroded the government’s hegemony over the public sphere, resulting in a revitalisation of democracy and the empowerment of a traditionally docile and acquiescent citizenry with regards to politics. As with most socio-political struggles in the past, political humour can be seen playing once again an important role in the expression of dissent and criticism of the establishment in the island-state. However, unlike in the past when such political humour was the domain of a small group of professional artists and writers, the new media with its immense capabilities like powerful search engines, social networks, YouTube, Twitter and various computer applications like Photoshop and Macromedia Flash, has for the first time provided tools for ordinary people who hitherto may have lived in fear of voicing their dissatisfaction all their lives, but are now empowered to create their individual and personalised expressions of protest through the use of Internet memes and other techniques, sometimes within hours of a piece of news breaking. This paper presents a case study that demonstrates how political humour “of the people, by the people” helped fuel a public outcry against the incompetence and negligence of a Singapore public transport provider that had resulted in a series of major breakdown that brought great embarrassment to a country known for its ability to “make things work”. The public’s demand for accountability has led to the unprecedented resignation of the Chief Executive Officer.

What impact, during the modernist period, could a writer, writing as an artist , hope to have in the public sphere? In the mid-nineteenth century, Alfred Lord Tennyson was able to write a profoundly personal poem that simultaneously engaged some of the most troubling controversies of his time: the challenges posed by the developing geological and biological sciences to the very foundations of a society based on religious faith. In Memoriam was not only immensely popular throughout the full spectrum of the Victorian reading public; the poem itself made a significant and influential contribution to the debates. By the modernist period, not only had the reading public become more fragmented and diversified - a phenomenon Virginia Woolf confronted in her essay 'The Patron and the Crocus'; in addition, literature itself had moved, due in part to the increasing predominance of scientific discourse, into a more private, and hence less socially influential, space. In consequence, most discussions of modernist public engagement focus on genres that directly and transparently target communal ears: non-fictional writing disseminated through periodical essays, newspaper journalism, letters to editors and radio broadcasts. But can we meaningfully divide Virginia Woolf's writing into two generic and locational halves? We have before us a writer whose total œuvre , as Anna Snaith has cogently argued, negotiated and contested the nineteenth-century division of male and female into gendered public and private separate spheres. Furthermore, lingering in that putative separation threatens not only to lose the public significance of Woolf's fiction; it also, I suggest, generates readings likely to miss the full public import of her non-fictional works as well.

Mass media uses political cartoon as a strategy to convey opinion regarding an issue with humour or satirical approach. This research aims to understand the meaning of caricature artwork published in newspapers during Demokrasi Terpimpin (Orde Lama) that criticize Indonesia’s foreign policy. During the era, President Soekarno implemented a confrontative Indonesian foreign policy. To understand the meaning of those foreign-policy-themed political cartoon, an Iconographic theory by Erwin Panofsky using descriptive analysis method is used. The research conducted through several steps which include pre-iconographic description, iconographic analysis, and iconological interpretation. The discussion begins by describing the visual aspects of political cartoons. The next stage explains the visual analysis and ends by interpreting the visual metaphors of political cartoons.From the research, Indonesia’s foreign policy during Demokrasi Terpimpin era showed assertive and critical attitude towards (neo) imperialism and colonialism. The benefits of this research is to give a deeper understanding about Indonesia’s foreign policy especially during Demokrasi Terpimpin era through political cartoons artwork.

ABSTRACTThis article analyses political cartoons that depict contemporary populist politicians in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden between 2005 and 2015, a period which focuses on the electoral successes of these movements. The hypothesis is that by analyzing cartoons we can explore the underlying moral and normative confrontations linked to current political populism in the Nordic liberal democracies, which arose during the insurgent phase of the domestic right-wing parties. In total, 60 political cartoons are analyzed by means of content categorization and visual semiotics. The most popular caricatures in the cartoons depicted the leaders of the populist parties, while the most common signifiers linked the populism in the cartoons explicitly to fascism, Nazism, nativism, and racism. In this, the cartoons differed from news journalism, reflecting the specific role of cartoons in public opinion discourse and indicating special characteristics that derive from particular political contexts and also the cartoonists’ own perspectives.

The volume provides an introduction to themes and problems central to the phenomenon of newspaper communication. It considers first of all the constitution of the concept 'newspaper' and the history of the emergence of newspaper articles. A central concern is to develop a theory of newspaper communication. Distinctions are made between various types and forms of newspaper in their historical contexts. Central distinctive functions of newspapers are, it transpires, information and publicity, control and criticism, education and instruction, advertising and documentation. Special reference is made to developments in the layout of newspapers and the kind of language employed in them. Further chapters centre on newspaper editors and journalists, newspaper distribution and circulation, and newspaper readers. The volume closes with a round-up in newspaper research, newspaper criticism and a brief history of the newspaper. The volume as a whole sets out to provide both a general overview of the subject and to indicate routes to explore for further research into what is still our most important mass medium.

“A Bird Alive in a Snake's Body”:The New Woman of Evelyn Scott's The Narrow House Pat Tyrer In 1921, with the publication of The Narrow House, the first in her trilogy of the modern woman, Evelyn Scott begins an exploration of the growing separation of the public and private spheres. This break in white, middle-class society into two separate realms came about historically with the appearance of the new woman. Although the new woman's literary equivalent doesn't appear until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, her appearance in political tracts and newspaper editorials is solidly established as early as Margaret Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century in 1845, prior to the Civil War and the appearance in literature of the American Girl. The separation of men and women at the turn of the century relegated women to the home while men worked in factories or businesses. Women who had previously been involved in businesses within the home were at this time removed from those areas simply by the separation of the spheres. Janet Wolff writes that even though different writers viewed modernism as having different characteristics, "what nearly all the accounts have in common is their concern with the public world of work, politics, and city life. And these are areas from which women were excluded, or in which they were practically invisible" (34). This omission of women from the modernist canon is due not only to their neglect by art [End Page 43] historians and biographers, but also to the separation at the turn of the century between the spheres. For women, new subjects arose from the experiences which occurred in the private sphere. Women writers began dealing openly with sexuality, female autonomy, and the investigation of the inner-self. The public sphere was created and controlled by men for men, and the economic, industrialized movement separated men from women. The increase in factories and the move from pastoral to urban further isolated these experiences. Women writers did not react to and therefore did not write about the same stimuli which promoted the production of works by such writers as Fitzgerald, Hemingway, or Faulkner. Ultimately, the portrayals of Daisy Buchanan, Brett Ashley, and Caddy Compson are intriguing representations of the male perspective of the new woman of the early twentieth century. These portrayals provide an exterior view from a male vantage point. However, it is the women writers who first seemed most clearly able to transfer the experience of the private sphere into a literary portrait. Female characters created by writers like Gertrude Stein, Zora Neale Hurston, and Evelyn Scott combine the public image with the private reality. Patricia Raub argues that: the "new woman" who appears . . . in the most popular novels written by women in the Twenties is somewhat different from the heroines featured by Scott Fitzgerald . . . Unlike Daisy Buchanan, who lives for the moment, has become cynical about marriage, and contemplates an affair with Jay Gatsby, the women who most frequently people best-selling novels by female writers are seldom as "liberated" as we might have expected. In novel after novel, the protagonist is a woman who has adopted the veneer of flapperdom: the clothing, hair style, slang of the times; but who remains an old-fashioned girl at heart. (126) The new woman created by the female modernist writers is a woman with the outward demeanor of the times, but with an inward ambivalence. While male modernists wrote of cause and effect, women modernists explored both the external and internal motives of their characters, suggesting no one reason such as industrialization, war, or a rapidly shifting social movement as the ultimate villain. Perhaps Gertrude Stein's epigraph to Three Lives explains the situatedness of novels like The Narrow House when she quotes Jules LaForgue, "Donc je suis un malheureux et ce n'est ni ma faute ni celle de la vie" [Therefore I am unhappy and it is neither my fault nor life's fault]. Evelyn Scott's work most closely intersects with the work of other women writers of the period, [End Page 44] and it is her study of the effect of the rapid shift in...