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Media: Crap from Martin Rowson
Martin Rowson's political cartooning in the Guardian has rarely appealled to me that much. I prefer Steve Bell's. Had the great pleasure to meet him and shake his hand at the Guardian party at Labour Party Conference.
Anyway, Rowson has written a CommentIsFree piece on Hanna-Barbera cartoons. You know, Tom and Jerry classics and then admittedly onwards and downwards to the later TV work. Scooby Doo, Yogi Bear, The Flintstones and all that jazz. Rowson dismisses these as "crap". In fact as "shoddily made crap".
Let's try a counter comment: Barbarism in satirical caricature
Rowson's caricature for the Dave/id Cameroon christmas card of King Herod - who was outsider jewish on his dad's side and arab-gentile on his mum's seems pretty nasty. Is it his caricature jew or his caricature arab? Or just his caricature evil child killer, drawing on the previous stereotypes?
I'm amazed that there has been no outrage around it. Rowson could draw something else and take this down off the site. He could admit it is in his word "crap". But then again - pigs might fly. And I think his piece of work may be worse than that.
UPDATE: Martin has made a comment with alacrity saying this may be crap, is a cheap crack about the boy saviour of the Tories, and is not anti-semitic or even anti-childkiller. Thanks Martin for clearing that up. And happy Christmas to you too.
2 comments:
It may well be crap, but for God's sake, it's obviously just a cheap crack about blithely slaughtering the bouncily boyish Saviour of the Conservative Party, and not even remotely anti-semitic (or even, for that matter, anti-child killer).
Relax a bit and have a Happy Christmas.
best wishes
Martin Rowson
Thanks Martin, I have added a footnote to the blog. I think that graphically these cards are good and uncluttered and perhaps less manic and angry than some of the other work. Which I think is what puts me off sometimes, In this case it is the idea and what to me seems (and if so I completely accept this is not deliberate) a clear Middle East bogey-man stereotype. I'll try to persuade the Blogger pic-bot to improve the picture at some point. I would have let this go without comment ... but then you had to go and attack poor Yogi Bear!
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