Behind the Jester's Mask: Canadian Editorial Cartoons About Dominant and Minority Groups 1960–1979 9781487578534

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To Corinne

Canadian Editorial Cartoons about Dominant and Minority Groups 1960-1979

RAYMONDN. MORRIS UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS TORONTO BUFFALO LONDON

© Univermy of Toronto Press 1989 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada Reprinted in 2018 ISBN

0-8020-5 806-x

ISBN 978-1-4875-7920-3 (paper)

(§

Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Morns, R.N. (Raymond N .), 1936Behmd the Jester's mask Includes mdex. 0-8020-5 806-X

ISBN

ISBN 978-1-4875-7920-3 (paper)

Editorial cartoons - Polmcal aspects - Canada. Canadian wit and humor, Pictorial - Political aspects - Canada. 3. Canada - Poliucs and government - 1957-1963 - Caricatures and cartoons::• 4. Canada - Politics and government - 1963-1968 Caricatures and cartoons.,:- 5. Canada - Polmcs and government - 1968-1979 - Caricatures and cartoons.,,. I. Title. 1.

2.

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanmes Research Council of Canada.

Contents

PREFACE

vii

Introduction 3 1 2

The Fool Show and the Cartoon 7

Literary Theory: Cartoons as Symbolic Action and Satire 30 3 Newspapers: The Context for Cartoons 60 4 The Main Hypotheses and Methods of Analysis 85

5 Regional, Topical, and Ethnic Variations in the French-English Cartoons 104 6 French-English Cartoons as Capitalist Slogans

112

7 Canadian-American Cartoons as Capitalist Slogans 8 Summary and Conclusions

1 59

Appendix A Coding Guide 171 Appendix B French-English Cartoons: Regional, Topical, and Ethnic Differences 181

142

vi / Contents Appendix C Regional and Topical Variations in the Canadian-American Cartoons 201 NOTES 207 REFERENCES 215 INDEX 224

Preface

This book has grown out of a long-standing love of cartoons. My interest in their potential as sociological material was first aroused by Perry Curtis's Apes and Angels, a splendid analysis of Victorian English cartoons about the Irish. Roland Barthes's Mythologies added enormously to my understanding of the messages carried through everyday channels of communication. The insights of Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, in How to Read Donald Duck, have also been an inspiration. In the spirit of their work, this book is a serious study of humorous material. This will no doubt disappoint those who enjoyed Charles Press's witty writing about American cartoons, and those who would like to see the author's hundred favourite cartoons enlivening a text which is bound to seem dull by comparison. They will remark that here is another solemn professor intent on taking the fun out of humour. Dull and puritanical of soul must he be who can carefully and systematically squeeze the enjoyment and laughter out of cartoons, in order to show that a serious pulp remains. They will say that such a spoil-sport belongs in a dungeon with his patron saint, Malvolio. These critics are right, to a certain extent. This is an analysis of cartoon messages, and not the humour in which they are wrapped. It is not a study of what is funny about them, or why. The best editorial cartoonists are not gag-writers who draw to amuse us; they are political commentators who use humour to show us what infuriates them about politics and politicians. While a few offer us gentle satire of ordinary people, most load their pens with acid to ridicule premiers, presidents, and prime ministers. This volume looks at the nature of cartoons in a capitalist democracy. Press's work offers some valuable generalizations relating the cartoonist's work to the political conditions of the day. This book seeks to go further by relating those political conditions to their economic and social base. This research centres on a question which may seem obvious yet does not appear to have been seriously asked. Why pick on politicians? Certainly the

viii / Preface contrast between their promises and their performance is sometimes so wide that it is difficult to take them seriously. Certainly they have the power and legislative authority to upset us, harm us, and misuse our money. Certainly we enjoy laughing at the mistakes of our leaders and their efforts to inflate their own importance and effectiveness. Yet this is also true of many other occupations; schoolteachers, clergy, business executives, professors, doctors, plumbers, and mechanics all exercise power and are apt to promise miracles. None of them receives continuous lampooning, by highly paid professionals, on the editorial page of almost every daily newspaper. Business, in particular, occupies just as much news space as politics, but is presented in a very different light. There is a major double standard here, between what is expected of public and what is expected of private figures. The book explores this double standard in the context of the press. Caricatures of politicians have been around for several centuries. In earlier generations newspapers were strongly committed to a particular party and their artists concentrated on laughing at that party's opponents. Today most editorial cartoonists are non-partisan; they criticize whichever party is in power. They thus make fun of politics itself and implicitly contrast the disorderly foolishness of politicians of all persuasions with the orderly good sense of business leaders. I have therefore described them as the jesters of the bourgeoisie. There is a risk that cartoonists will be offended by this description. They are rightly proud of their freedom from partisan political ties and of the progress they have made in establishing themselves as independent-minded contributors to the editorial page. Their critique of politics has been a powerful and incisive one which has served the public interest well. They have become specialists in political satire, and have set good priorities within the limits which their employers will tolerate. At a more personal level, they welcomed me warmly as a guest when I attended their convention and spoke with them about their work. Duncan Macpherson and Roy Peterson were particularly helpful. It would be discourteous to return their kindness by portraying them only as willing or unconscious tools of business interests. Some of them, indeed, would justly point out that they struggle valiantly to express a viewpoint which is well to the left of their paper's editorial position. My critique does not refer to their intentions, but to the limitations which are perhaps inherent in their situation. I take the positive features of their work for granted, and have tried in this book to look at their work in the spirit in which they operate. I have studied their art with great care, while not becoming so close to them as

Preface I ix individuals that my independence has been compromised. Just as they are outsiders looking underneath the red carpets of politics, I have tried to offer here an outsider's look under the rugs of their work. I have examined what is lost from view because these penetrating critics' sights are set exclusively on politicians. To point out this nether side is not to disparage what they accomplish. Their work speaks for itself daily across the nation's breakfast tables and in its buses and trains. They have won the admiration of those they caricature. I salute them for their many achievements, and for the countless moments of delight which they have brought to me and so many others. They do not need my praises as a lay person, and I am no expert on the artistic quality of their work. In so far as I can give them anything of value in return, it is a portrait of themselves in the Spirit of Caricature, for it is at Caricature's shrine that we are fellow-worshippers. In preparing this book I have benefited from the help of many people. Alan O'Connor was instrumental in introducing me to the work of Perry Curtis and Ariel Dorfman, and I am deeply grateful to him. Many other graduate students at York have shared their ideas, their insights, or articles they have come across. They are too numerous to mention individually, but together they have contributed a great deal. Charles Press's work has been extremely valuable, and he has been most helpful in sharing personal experiences. A wide range of colleagues have kindly shared their ideas and read sections of the manuscript: David Bell, Paul Bouissac, Northrop Frye, Lesley Harman, Richard Hoffman, Gilles Houle, Linda Hutcheon, Michael Lanphier, Jos Lennards, Thelma McCormack, Greg Nielsen;J ohn O'Neill, Judith Posner, A.H. Richmond, Richard Schneider, Tony Wilden, and Anton Zijderveld. The careful and perceptive comments of the four anonymous reviewers are no less appreciated because I cannot thank them in person. John Fox and Sal Minkin played a major role in helping me to understand and apply loglinear models. I have a special debt to Terry Mosher and Guy Badeaux, who compiled the remarkable collection of cartoons on which this book is based. For a number of years they inspired and cajoled their fellow cartoonists to contribute to a permanent collection of Canada's fin~st political art. Thanks to their untiring work there is now the basis for a Canadian Museum of Caricature. The help of Denis Castonguay and Raymond Vezina, in locating and reproducing material in the Public Archives, was crucial; without their dedication my task would have been much more difficult. The cartoonists who have allowed me to reproduce their work also deserve special thanks

x I Preface

for their generosity. I also wish to thank the Star Syndicate for its cooperation. Peter and Corinne Morris made major contributions to the work. Peter was both a conscientious and efficient coder and a very interested and insightful commentator on the cartoons. Corinne wrote some complex programs which allowed the data analysis to proceed smoothly, for both individual cartoon characters and for whole cartoons, on the family PC. Ruth, Sylvia, Douglas, and Joy Morris each provided important moral support and encouragement. The editorial staff of the University of Toronto Press have been excellent midwives to a manuscript whose birth has been slow and difficult; special thanks are due to R.I.K. Davidson, Virgil Duff, and Diane Mew. While the help of all these people has enriched and improved the book substantially, they are not of course responsible for the limitations which remain; those belong to the author alone. R.N . M.

Introduction

When did you last take a careful look at an editorial cartoon in your favourite newspaper? Did you wrestle to uncover its layers of meaning, as you might struggle with the daily crossword puzzle? These seem silly questions. We have always taken for granted that a good cartoon can be understood at a glance, and we dismiss it as a failure if we need to make an intellectual effort to see its point. A good cartoon is expected to conceal its artfulness by allowing us to identify the characters, incident, setting and commentary within a few seconds. We expect to skim or glance at it, grasp its message, laugh or groan, and move on. This book goes beyond what we take for granted about editorial cartoons, by examining their sources and messages in detail. An editorial cartoon is a professional drawing, usually humorous and political, which appears on the editorial page of a newspaper. This working definition does not include the 'comics' section of the paper, though some of the conclusions might apply to certain comic strips. Nor does it cover 'social cartoons' about the many daily applications of Murphy's Law to family life, leisure, and work relationships. It should also be stressed that this is not a study of humour. While many cartoons have a humorous side, a substantial minority do not. Those which deal with menaces to civilization in general, or to the cartoonist's country in particular, are extremely serious works. Similarly, many strips which appear in the comics section are earnest stories of heroes and villains. Consequently, this book will not apply the many theories of humour to the understanding of cartoons; its purpose is not to show why some drawings make us laugh while others do not. A focus on humour, indeed, distracts one from even raising the question which underlies the present research: why pick on politicians? The question is disarmingly simple, and disconcertingly difficult to answer adequately. To begin the task, we need a theory which highlights the important questions and then disciplines our efforts to find answers. We also

4 / Behind the Jester's Mask require a sample of editorial cartoons from which good generalizations can be made. The theory can then be partially tested. Two broad approaches to a theory of cartooning show promise. The approach of communications theory is to generate questions about three key elements: the sender, the message, and the receiver. Study of the sender involves an inquiry into the operation of the capitalist press and the place of cartooning within it. The work of Charles Press appeared shortly before this research began, and that of Ericson, Baranek, and Chan in 1987, after it was concluded. Press made a thorough study of the technical and economic aspects of cartooning, and compared its products in different settings: under democratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian political regimes, and in times of war and peace. Ericson et al. analysed the contemporary news-gathering work of journalists, the social construction of news stories, and their organization into a daily paper or broadcast. The present research seeks to extend their work, by asking how cartooning relates to journalism, and how newspapers change in response to changes in material conditions and social expectations. One can then see the circumstances in which cartoonists are paid to make fools of certain public figures and policies. The structure and content of reporting can then be compared with the structure and content of cartooning. Questions about the message concern the cartoons themselves: who is satirized and who is spared, from what perspectives are the cartoons drawn, what symbolism is used, and what messages are conveyed about public figures? Questions about the receiver of the cartoons are given relatively little attention here. There have been occasional studies (Perkins and Hagen; Shaffer; Twer) of what viewers see in cartoons, but they are few in number and modest in coverage. In this respect we do not really know under what conditions the message which is received corresponds closely to that which was sent. Most researchers agree that the receiver participates actively in communication and does not merely absorb passively whatever is presented (Eagleton, 1976a; Hutcheon, 1984; Smythe, 1981). At the same time, the effort required is much more intense and sustained in some contexts than in others. The defence offered here for not studying receivers directly is a simple one: since cartoons are designed for very quick reception, their senders cannot afford to engage in subtleties. While there may be hidden messages which most receivers will not consciously notice, the principal message in a successful cartoon needs to be immediately apparent. Much of the artist's skill is devoted to ensuring that the receiver will rapidly recognize the characters, setting, and humorous incongruity. While some may miss the point,

Introduction / 5 the cartoons are designed for quick comprehension by most adults, are more readily grasped than most art forms, and can therefore be studied without serious concern that receivers will regularly and substantially distort their meaning. The theory presented here, then, will focus primarily on understanding the sender and the message. The problem of an appropriate term for the receiver of the cartoon continues to be troublesome, since none seems adequate to describe the particular expectations which accompany the reception of a cartoon. 'Viewer' captures the visual element but ignores the caption and the peculiar rapidity with which one seeks to get the point of the cartoon. 'Reader' applies poorly to a text which is mainly visual, and again ignores the important element of speed. Although they are not altogether satisfactory choices, the terms 'glance' and 'skim' are used interchangeably to describe this type of reception, and the receiver is therefore called the 'glancer' or the 'skimmer.' In their noun form these terms are unusual, but not unique. The implication of this choice is that one receives a cartoon in much the same manner as one receives the photograph and the major headline on page I of the newspaper. The other promising approach to a theory of cartooning begins with a model or metaphor (M. Black; Brown: 77; Ricoeur: 84-90, 24