Hello everyone! Happy Friday! I hope everyone is getting through our research paper without too much trouble. Well this week we read about the language of humor, much having to do with editorial cartoons. The prompt I chose has to do with this subject yet more so the role of editorial cartoons in American culture.
Editorial cartoons are being seen in newspapers less and less. Depending on the newspaper these cartoons may not be seen at all. Though I feel this is due to several different factors, either way the art is dissipating from the pages of newspapers everywhere. In the 1700’s editorial cartoons were largely used in newspapers, and more were political than anything else. Of course this time in our countries history was very unstable as we were not completely separated from Britain and differing views on this were extreme. So cartoons were an outlet to send messages, political propaganda questioning the run of the country. With a time of sheer uncertainty this would help sway the masses. For example, one popular cartoon that was published in Benjamin Franklin's “Pennsylvania Gazette” newspaper. The image is of a snake split into portions labeled with state abbreviations, below the image in large letters says “Join or Die”. This is a perfect and blatant example of political propaganda, good or bad, it is obviously trying to sway the viewer. But thanks to these sort of images America is what it is today. Not only that but it is a prime example of our first amendment rights.
So why have we seen a decline in the use of editorial cartoons? America has issues brewing that citizens are just as passionate about as back when we were founding our politics. Doug Marlette says in his essay, “Freedom of Speech and the Editorial Cartoon” that the downfall of cartoonist is due to big business in the newspaper industry and the “corporate suits” that cut those jobs. Either simply because they don’t want to pay or the cartoonist pushing the boundaries is a sort of liability to readership. To this I would have to disagree. Working with the college paper for almost two years I would like to think I am at least somewhat credible on this subject, especially since I was the opinion editor during my last semester with them. Newspapers are image driven, a reader will be more inclined to read a specific article if the correlating photo seems interesting. Editorial cartoons are highly viewed because its easy to interpret and entertaining (most of the time). I tried to have an editorial cartoon partner a opinion piece in every issue we published. Though a cartoon may push the status quo, this seems to gain readers, not lose them. Plus if the cartoon is based upon the truth anyway readership will not decline regardless of their opinion on the subject.
The way I see it, editorial cartoons are being pushed out of newspapers by technology. That doesn’t say much when newspapers as a whole are being pushed out by technology. Its not that news or political cartoons are unavailable, they have simply moved to a different outlet. The downfall of this does land in the hands of the cartoonist, journalist, photographer and other facets of this changing medium. Making a living from internet based news has become growingly difficult because of the saturation of information the web provides. Yet no matter what people will always have the need for these sorts of talents. I just hope for my sake these don’t become an incredibly rare profession.
Well That’s all I got for tonight! I have 9 min to submit this and my eyelids can hardly stay open any longer. So goodnight and have a happy weekend!!
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You make technology seem like a bad thing when it is in fact more of a blessing to the cartoonist. The internet allows more freedom to the political cartoonist than a newspaper could ever give them. Not only are the artists able to have more time on their hands they make the entire process of making these clips a lot easier. More freedoms mean more options which also mean that many more cartoons in number and higher quality being made.
ReplyDeleteOne of the longest and most popular on going editorial cartoons is one that you see in almost every Sunday funnies section is “Doonesbury”. The funnies section always has some political message in there every week may it be miniscule thing to the current big events going on. Even the amount of censorship that is going on today on kid friendly cartoon shows they always seem to manage to sneak at least some kind of political message in there. I would say political editorial cartoons are only adapting to the times. There are still plenty of debatable cartoons being released if not in this country then there are sure plenty of others being released in other countries. A lot of political/editorial cartoons are also being made for free which can be found all over the internet.
(Honestly, I really don’t know if our censorship is going up or down. I would suppose that the amount of censorship would depend on the subject at hand.)
It has been interesting to see how the newspapers have declined in popularity as technology increases. I did notice that it started with the comics. I remember the best part of Sunday morning was when my mom would get the paper and the “funnies” was a whole section in itself. I feel like now it is just a few pages and that no one ever reads them anymore. It’s sad to see it go because it was such a great part of the paper and now we see that newspapers themselves are becoming thinner and thinner. Since every story can be reported online now just seconds after it’s happened, there seems to be no need for pictures, let alone cartoons. I suppose that it is just time for a new era. They certainly are disappearing. I hope that Ryan is right, that they are adapting to the times because it would be great to see them again. Who knows where technology will take us? It seems that things always tend to drift in and out of popularity, so with all of this political tension getting higher lately, maybe they will make a comeback to help get rid of some of the tension!
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