Sport–war cartoon art

Abstract

In this article, We explore the extent to which political cartoons and comic strips – as mediated public and political visual art, the ‘ninth art’ according to Groensteen’s The System of Comics (2007[1999] – subvert/confirm institutional values of so-called Western democracies during times of war. Our concern, as sociologists of sport, is with the ways dominant sporting sensibilities are (re)presented in cartoon art, and how sport itself is conflated with patriotic ideologies of war as a vehicle for propaganda. In particular, We interrogate how competitive-sporting ideals are aligned with war and conflict, and mobilized by cartoons during periods of Western-asserted conflict. We are intrigued by how some cartoon illustrations have the visual power to misplace, simplify and essentialize – via sporting analogy – the intense and complex emotions surrounding war. The aim of the article is to examine how the visual within popular culture is used to dis-connect and dis-engage a public with the realities of war and human conflict.