Visual Satire Research Articles

Reading the rebus: the reception of seventeenth-century German rebus broadsheets

Rebuses—visual riddles that replace words or syllables by images—were highly popular in early modern Europe. Many broadsheets containing rebus poems were printed in France and Germany in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Although multiple theories on the intended audience and use of these rebuses have been formulated by historians, very little is known about their actual reception, since the extant broadsheets rarely contain any traces of their use by contemporary owners. However, several German rebus riddles have recently come to light that do contain evidence of how they were read and interpreted in early modern times. The broadsheets in question are political in nature: they pertain to the Thirty Years’ War, ridiculing the opponent by means of visual satire. The solutions to these rebus puzzles have been added in early modern hands. These rare traces of the contemporary reception of rebus broadsheets make it possible to follow the thought process of their readers step by step, demonstrating how they tackled the visual riddles and which type of image was most difficult to decipher. In one case, multiple individuals even worked on the solution at different stages, showing how these visual games could be played over and over again. These sources give us a unique insight into early modern visual literacy at work.

Animality, Hybridity, and the Grammar of the Body in Late Eighteenth-Century Visual Satire

Abstract: Late eighteenth-century visual satirists such as Isaac Cruikshank, James Gillray, and Richard Newton loved rendering powerful politicians, world leaders, and nations themselves as hybrid animals to critique abuses of political power through fantasies of bodily violence and humiliation. In the context of revolutionary fear and fervor, these fantasies targeted elites across the political spectrum; at the same time, they derived much of their satiric force from stereotypes of race, sexuality, and class, thus yoking the critique of power to questions about who counts as human and to what degree. In this way, the infusion of animal traits into human subjects puts animality at the center of a complex intertextuality that repeatedly asks where the human ends and the animal begins.

"Gulliver’s Travels" e il conservatorismo sovversivo delle stampe satiriche ottocentesche

The visual quality of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, together with its popular and folkloric ingredients, has greatly contributed to the novel’s immediate transmedial reception and was central to its success during the so-called “golden age” of visual satire in the British Isles. Starting with the end of the eighteenth century, caricaturists transformed Swift’s work into a symbol of society’s mechanisms and structures. Indeed, in its frequent nineteenth-century adaptations into graphic form, Gulliver’s Travels has been exploited to identify social or political identity and otherness, to express suspicion against any form of authority, and to undermine monologic perspectives on current political events.

Interview with Steve Bell

Abstract In this interview, the political cartoonist Steve Bell reflects on his past career and work, seeing it against the wider tradition of British political cartoons, and in relation to the work of other artists whom he admires. He answers questions as to the fundamental nature of visual satire and speculates as to its likely future in an age of media fragmentation, and ideological polarisation and intolerance. Although we now live in turbulent and divisive political times and in an era where it becomes ever harder for satirical artists to find outlets for their work, Bell is by no means pessimistic as he looks to the future. His view is very much that artistic quality and sharp observational wit will continue to find appreciative audiences, whatever the means or media their makers employ.

Visions of Blindness in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Painting

This essay explores the representation of blindness and its metaphorical dimension in scholar painting of Qing China (1644-1911), a period marked by a major increase of these images. Focusing on a 1757 Zhu Yan’s handscroll titled Groups of Blind People, where one hundred blind characters are engaged in comic or incongruous situations such as appreciating antiquities, fighting or grabbing a giant copper coin, it examines the use of humor and visual satire to express moral criticism, with emphasis on identifying and explaining some of the puns or familiar sayings on which these images rely. By casting some light on this and similar works, as well as sorting out other modes in which the blind were depicted in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century China, the article also aims to open the way to further studies of this topic.

ВІЗИТ ТЕОДОРА РУЗВЕЛЬТА ДО ВЕЛИКОЇ БРИТАНІЇ 1910 РОКУ У КАРИКАТУРІ ЧАСОПИСУ «ПАНЧ»

This article aims to trace Roosevelt’s visit to the UK in 1910 and its representation in Punch magazine; to analyze the features of Roosevelt’s iconology in cartoons and the reception of his figure through the prism of visual satire. The research methodology. The analysis of cartoons as specific visual texts was based on E. Panofsky’s iconological scheme. The interpretation involved reading out their plot, composition, stylistic, and symbolic content, as well as their creation’s political and cultural context. The scientific novelty. The study elucidates the peculiarities of the representation of the former president’s activities in the media and the possibilities of satirical publications to shape the historical narrative of T. Roosevelt. Considering the genre specificity, the analysis of the Punch’s materials allowed us to track the British public’s perception of Roosevelt, which was unrestricted by the formalities and rules inherent in the official press and serious analytical editions. Conclusion. Punch magazine closely followed Roosevelt’s visit to Great Britain. Good interstate relations with the United States and attention to Roosevelt’s opinion as to British rule in Africa encouraged its interest. The Punch cartoonists adopted stereotypical American models of Roosevelt’s representation formed in the 19th century (courage, determination, masculinity, «rough rider» other). The image of Roosevelt as a fearless African hunter has been added to this collection. The positive image of T. Roosevelt in Punch cartoons indicates a high appreciation of him as a statesman and a person. The evaluative effect was achieved by comparing Roosevelt to President Taft; assessments did not favour the last. All of the magazine’s ironic attacks on Roosevelt were benevolent. Even in cartoons dedicated to T. Roosevelt, Punch highlighted the shortcomings of the British social system, which could refer readers to Roosevelt’s reformist activities in US domestic policy.

:Libel and Lampoon: Satire in the Courts, 1670–1792

:<i>Libel and Lampoon: Satire in the Courts, 1670–1792</i>

Going “There”: Black Visual Satire

Going “There”: Black Visual Satire

Caricature and National Character: The United States at War

Caricature and National Character: The United States at War

The Rise of Victorian Caricature, by Ian Haywood

Reviewed by: The Rise of Victorian Caricature by Ian Haywood Dominic Janes (bio) The Rise of Victorian Caricature, by Ian Haywood; pp. vii + 296. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, $99.99, $79.99 ebook. Ian Haywood's The Rise of Victorian Caricature is a book that takes caricature seriously as having played a variety of important cultural and political roles in the 1830s. Historians have paid considerable attention to the lively parodic visual culture of the Georgian period but have tended to neglect what came after. In books such as Vic Gattrell's City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth Century London (2006), we learned that the personal was also political and that laughter was a way of critiquing power, not just a way of relaxing from the tensions of the day. The comparative insignificance of Victorian cartoons is that they, supposedly, were buried in more-or-less worthy periodicals such as Punch (1841–2002) and were designed to politely amuse the sedate reader. Whether that is an accurate assessment of the later Victorian period, however, is a question that this book does not address. What it does achieve is to highlight a wide range of little-read periodicals and sources for political radicalism in the aftermath of the Reform Act of 1832. These contained a huge number of images—the author estimates around 2,000—in publications which, in some cases, reached a substantial public. Figaro in London (1831–38), notably, reached an estimated circulation of around 70,000, thus outstripping other publications in the later 1830s. The book is, in effect, a follow-up to Haywood's Romanticism and Caricature (2013), which focused on close readings of a small number of images produced mainly by well-known artists such as James Gillray and George Cruikshank during and after the Napoleonic Wars. The figures who loom large in this new study, such as Charles Jameson Grant, are not just little known but often unknowable, since the facts of their lives have not been preserved. This is, however, a common problem for those who research the work of minor artists. The book works effectively within these evidential limitations as a useful compliment to Brian Maidment's works, such as Comedy, Caricature and the Social Order, 1820–50 (2013). That book did important work in drawing attention to the cultural and social worlds of visual satire during this period but notably, and perhaps regrettably, excluded the political realm. It is easy to see why art historians have paid little attention to the material explored in Haywood's volume since most of it is derivative and was often poorly executed, although he makes the point that the crudeness of the images was sometimes deliberate. In, for instance, The Two Mothers (1842), difference in execution was used to differentiate the worlds of the privileged from their social inferiors. Haywood's main concerns are not, however, art historical, since he views caricature primarily as source material for the [End Page 131] understanding of the history of radicalism. He persuasively argues for the importance of the periodicals of the late 1830s and early 1840s, asserting that the fact that they "have been all but erased from cultural memory is testimony to the success of Victorian newspaper historians who played down the importance and achievements of the radical-satirical press in their 'respectable' and gradualist narrative of cultural progress and enlightenment" (3). In his quest to correct this narrative, Haywood in turn effectively ignores Punch, which initially displayed some radical qualities that it was, admittedly quite swiftly, to lose. The result is that this book is not so much a full account of the rise of Victorian caricature as a discussion of its preconditions. Nonetheless, Victorianists will undoubtedly benefit from reading his account of the visual culture of Chartism. Haywood highlights the intriguing fact that what he terms the mainstream Chartist media was dominated by reliance on the use of text and apparent disdain for caricatures. The history of cartoons in periodicals was shaped by disdain coming from both sides of the political spectrum for the Bahktinian carnivalesque that caricature, unless constrained by conventions of politeness, threatened to evoke. The world that Haywood brings to...

Crystal am nelson. Review of "Going There: Black Visual Satire" by Richard J. Powell.

crystal am nelson. Review of "Going There: Black Visual Satire" by Richard J. Powell.

China’s Image in Russia: Historical Background

Studying the cultural specificity of the neighboring countries is an important research question for philosophical anthropology and philosophy of culture as it gives a perspective of new possibilities of interaction and partnership in various areas. People’s understanding of a different culture originates from a complex interrelation of consciously chosen strategies and unconsciously projected feelings. The resulting image of the Other culture often plays a significant role in policy-making and helps determine the quality and extent of interrelations, including cooperation, both at the governmental and non-governmental levels. There are multiple ways of constructing such an image. Intensified contacts, that include direct interaction, diplomatic and scientific contacts, lead to the increase of knowledge about neighboring countries’ lifestyle, household organization, and traditions. Art is one of the key means of getting to know another culture. The author pays special attention to visual images, namely political caricature, as interesting yet poorly explored ways of forming the image of China in Russian society’s perception. Herein political caricature, i.e. political visual satire, not only translates the atmosphere of those times but also greatly affects the audience and influences public opinion by creating strong and vivid impressions. Both external and internal images of the self-perception of the Chinese played their role in the development of the perception of China. Their comparative analysis proves that these images underwent a certain evolution in Russia: the image of the neighboring state dynamically altered over the years. Emotional and affective evaluations of China several times drastically changed from positive to negative, and back. The paper explores peculiar features of the political caricature of the 20th century and looks into the ways the imagery shows the Chinese in the light of major political events. It is noted that the images represent both Chinese and Russian historical and cultural context of the epoch. During the period under consideration, the Soviet way of thinking about China mainly came from the logical approach of seeing China as the Other. At the same time, this period is characterized by an increased interest in universal human values of freedom and political independence, the unity of the working population, and the positive outlook on the workpeople’s future. The Chinese middle kingdom in the vein of proletarian internationalism appears a leader fighting for the above-mentioned values. This friendly approach towards China and the possibility of a partnership between the countries remains unquestioned till the 1950s.

Nigar Hai Toh Industry Hai: Notes on the Morale and Mortality of Pakistani Film

Combining archival and ethnographic fieldwork, this piece reflects on the scope of film publicity through the author’s conversations with the proprietor-editor of the oldest film magazine in Pakistan, The Nigar Weekly. Offering a larger view from post-colonial Karachi of political and national transitions, Nigar’s brand of film commentary in the 1950s and 60s, reveled in connecting and cohabiting the multiple film centers in South Asia: Karachi, Lahore, Dhaka and Bombay. Foregrounding the muhajir background of its founders and its self-styled relationship with the film industry, the piece draws attention to a distinctive characteristic of the publication: its satirical visual content. The magazine while borrowing select content from a Bombay film magazine in its early years, vividly commented on issues such as film trade with India, censorship and public morality in Pakistan, cross-border film intimacies, film exhibition practices, and local production strategies. The cartoons, while directly connected to the written content, could also exaggerate and provoke as can be expected of visual satire. And it is in this less restrained feature of Nigar that a cautionary critique and a calculated celebration of the Pakistani cinema emerges.

Visual Humour and the Pocket Cartoon: Osbert Lancaster and a Paradigm Shift in the British Press in the Interwar Years

During the interwar years in Britain, titles such as the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, and Daily Express made significant editorial shifts to place themselves within a social paradigm that began to fully embrace ideas of popular culture that were both aspirational and commercially orientated. Taking their lead from the American popular press, these newspapers sought to develop and present a new relationship with their readers that sold an idea of togetherness by working to create strong brands which would engender reader loyalty. Foremost among these innovations was the Daily Express’s introduction of pocket cartoons by Osbert Lancaster in January 1939, a culmination of the changing form and content of visual satire over the previous decade. Technology, along with an increasingly scientific understanding of their target audiences, led Britain’s key popular newspapers to embrace the visual lexicon of news cartoons and include a different level of dialogue with their readers that added a new dynamic to popularization, including the strip cartoon and the joke cartoon. However, it was with the daily news or topical cartoon, and particularly the pocket cartoon, that mass-market newspapers fully embraced the multimodal approach to create the mix of entertainment and information that came to define popular culture in the press from this point.

Lenin’s Images in Visual Satire and the Collapse of Anti-Bolshevik Propaganda

This article analyses anti-Leninist visual propaganda and examines the reasons for its low effectiveness. The author studies the morphological structure of Lenin’s images as an internal and external enemy, “the other”: a German spy, Judas, Hun, anarchist, or a member of the Black Hundreds. It is demonstrated that the sources of anti-Leninist images were visual political satire of the previous period and mass rumours. In some cases, anti-Leninist images were provoked by the radical statements and actions of Ulyanov himself. Anti-Leniniana was even beneficial to Bolsheviks: Lenin, previously unknown to the general public, became one of the most prominent political antagonists. Widespread public fears and premonitions were reflected in the images, which makes visual satire a mirror of the era. The low effectiveness of anti-Leninist propaganda can be explained by various factors, i. e. the use of propaganda stamps which most people had already gotten tired of during World War I; the inversion of images in the perceptions of different social strata; excessive stigmatisation of the Bolsheviks, who, as they approached October, began to be perceived as victims of the tired regime of A. F. Kerensky; and the counter-propaganda of the Bolsheviks themselves.

Satire and The Cambridge Introduction to Satire

Satire and The Cambridge Introduction to Satire

Freedom of expression in multicultural societies: Political cartooning in Europe in the modern and postmodern eras

Abstract At the intersection of modern cultural and political history, security studies and debates about freedom of expression and international human-rights law, this article aims to contribute to a better understanding of political cartooning and its implications in multicultural societies of Europe, which have shifted in a geographical, cultural, normative, communicational, political and many other respects through the last two centuries. Through comparison of the Serbian cartoons from late nineteenth-century Croatia and the recent Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, the article reveals that both modern and postmodern European cartoons have been centred around equally discriminatory narratives: a 'clash of civilizations' and 'racialization of religion'. Since open racial stereotyping in cartoons became illegal in the postmodern international regulations, traditional discriminatory practices of cartooning have shifted towards subtle, 'liquid' racism. This decodes some of the twelve Danish cartoons as ambiguous strategies of racialization of Muslim immigrants in Europe (as 'terrorists' and 'others') but also as hate speech which is illegal in the European Union, and member states of the Council of Europe. The author concludes that the most current European and international regulations of hate speech, whether concerning offline media or online media, actually protect free speech. While a truly clear-cut regulation of liquid racism might remain problematic in Europe (and the world) due to the lack of a universally accepted definition of hate speech, neither strict legal regulations nor different definitions of hate speech could diminish the role of political cartooning as a viable free speech platform in the multicultural landscape of Europe. Ultimately, what diminishes its viability is the enduring lack of diversity in the creation of visual satire, which could and should reflect the multicultural reality of communities, politics and societies in Europe.

A world inverted: political satire and the proslavery argument

ABSTRACTWilliam Dent’s political satire titled Abolition of the Slave Trade, or the Man the Master has been uniformly categorized as a proslavery cartoon. However, elements of the visual satire invoked by the image invite a critique of the institution of slavery that tacitly endorses some abolitionist arguments. This article more fully situates Dent’s caricature in the specific historical moment of its publication as a response to both the abolitionists opposed to the slave trade and the advocates propounding the great benefits of plantation slavery. Thus, the politics of the cartoon are more complex than the term proslavery implies.

Looking Awry at Georgian Caricature

This article investigates the applicability of certain aspects of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to the study of visual satire and/or caricature. Lacan’s treatment of the phenomenon of visual anamorphosis can provide a fruitful new way of thinking about the art of caricature. The visual exaggerations and distortions central to the art of caricature function as they do, as works of social or political satire, by virtue of the extent to which they expose the psychological emptiness or hollowness (castration) which inheres in all human social or symbolic activity. This argument is then applied to the political circumstances prevailing in late Georgian England: in particular, the visual satirical treatment devoted to the nature and status of the monarchy during this period is examined in the light of foregoing arguments.

Behind the Black Mirror: The Limits of Orwellian Dystopia

This essay offers an aesthetic appraisal of Charlie Brooker's innovative new series Black Mirror – specifically an episode entitled Fifteen Million Merits. The episode provides a darkly satirical vision of a dystopic future in which the state regime numbs people's minds and co-opts their rebellious energies by keeping them occupied with entertainment spectacles in the whole Pop Idol/X Factor vein. Although the episode is compelling and imaginative, this essay will argue it is based – albeit unconsciously – on the type of political sensibility which purports to provide a radical critique of consumerism; the notion that people are more and more blinded to the possibilities of political action by their need for entertainment and consumer commodities. Such a critique is one which is often styled Marxist – advanced by people like Walter Benjamin – but the analysis here will show how, in actual fact, it has a wholly conservative bent which has little in common with Marx's analysis of capitalism.