Political Cartoons are illustrations containing significant symbolism that expresses the artist 's point of view towards a political or social issue. Political cartoons are meant to rouse the viewers to take some sort of action upon the message the artist is trying to give or at least get the viewer to see the where the artist 's viewpoint stands. During the eighteenth century political cartoons started to rise in popularity in America culture, they weren’t exactly what we are used to today in exaggerating a person’s features into a type of caricature image. Examining two political cartoons, one dating back to the eighteenth century by Paul Revere and the other from the twenty first century by Bob Englehart.
Paul Revere political cartoon was
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Is a cartoon of men moving from one building to the next, all dressed in a traditional black and white striped jail uniform. The heading above them says “SIX THOUSAND PRISONERS WILL BE RELEASED FROM FEDERAL PRISON,” noteing that the heading is capitalized signifying the importance of it, as well as the two buildings that are labeled as “JAIL” and “UNEMPLOYMENT.” The building they are coming out from, which is the jail, has bars on the window. Whereas, the building they are heading to has a cracked window. Englehart view upon the release of the 6,000 men, who were to be pardoned by the president of the U.S, Barack Obama, were in a direction to a hard lifestyle of unemployment. The crack window significance the hardship they will be facing in trying to fit back within society; since applying for a job may be difficult for them because the majority of businesses won’t take a person who has a criminal background. Even though, most of the men were arrested for nonviolent offenses for the possession of drugs. Bob Englehart argument, which I also happened to agree with, states that the releasing of the 6,000 prisoners won’t mean much until something is done with the war on drugs. What I feel about this political cartoon is the irony related to the nineteenth century crisis on alcohol. If one looks back to the outlaw of alcohol all it did was increase the criminal activity and the rise of the mafia empire. If anything we should have learn that prohibition does not work when the majority of the population are against
All in all, Kerman’s year sentence in jail opened her eyes to some of the many problems within the federal prison system. She witnessed favoritism, abuse, health violations, etc. that helped her realize that she never wanted to go back to prison, despite all the true friendships she made. Through her use of rhetoric, mainly ethos, Kerman showed her audience a firsthand account of what an actual prison sentence is like. She also explored the idea of how one bad decision can change a person’s life forever.
One claim said that citizens pay around “$30,000 per inmate each year” (Jacoby 197). This grasps the reader’s attention by connecting their life to the problem; it is their money, a lot of their money, being used to imprison these criminals. The rates have increased on inmates since the 1980s by over 250% (Jacoby 1997). Jacoby declares that the prison system is terrible; he uses accurate and persuading evidence. According to Jacoby, flogging is faster, cheaper, and a more effective alternative to prison.
Political cartoons could be defined as illustrations or cartoon strips that contain a social and/or political message in them. Political cartoons are often based on the current events around when they were written.
The United States was a country founded on the basis of freedom. Imagine living in a nation in which The First Amendment did not exist. Where there was not freedom of speech or press where censorship reigned with a king. This picture is that of France for the entirety of the nineteenth century. During this era, Honoré Daumier was a renowned political and social cartoonist. The King and his police persecuted the lithographer Daumier, among numerous other French artists, for his political activism, including jail time and heavy fines. Honoré Daumier was a master of political and social critique. Looking at an overview of his commentaries there appear strong parallels that can be drawn to current American politics. Daumier uses a range of stylistic choices to promote critiques that are multi-dimensional which contain various overt and more subtle satires, meanings, and messages. Learning from and referencing Daumier, I created a political cartoon that mimics his style.
Politics is an ongoing controversial discussion; Everyone has the right to participate and indulge in the political movement. Although chaotic at times, it is extremely important and crucial to our future. With that being said, it is important to note that various cartoon artists take pride in replicating important issue through their art. Artist appeal to their audience by using logical fallacies, ethos, and by emphasizing or pointing out important messages within their artwork. Doug MacGregor, a political cartoon artist, had the honor to form a part of the 2016 elections by displaying his ideas in a political cartoon. The cartoon titled “It Takes Brains to be President” by MacGregor alludes to social media and political knowledge using symbolism.
This article really caught my attention and my eye. This article is very historical and has facts within it that date back to the 1700’s. The article talks about how political cartoons play a part with an election. Specifically the presidential elections and how each and every year cartoonist depicts the candidates as a some sort of superhuman. I believe that this article gives people some background on political cartoons and how they have helped play a part within the U.
The first cartoon, “Recommended by Hoar”, shows Uncle Sam feeding a child in his arms wrapped in a blanket labeled the Philippines and a bowl of soup labeled civilization and education(90). Uncle Sam is taking care of the child while the smaller man named, Hoar, is trying to convince him to give the child to the nurse. The nurse labeled Philippines Independence is riddled with degrading names such as ignorance, theft, piracy, and murder. An observation of Uncle Sam’s height to the height of Hoar presents an example of gender qualities in this print. Also, a man, Uncle Sam has to step in when the woman, Philippines Independence, is not a good influence. Although, the commentary on this cartoon states, “opposition of Massachusetts Senator George Hoar to Philippines Annexation”, this cartoon is stating the need for America to separate Philippines from such societal problems. The second cartoon, “The Anti-Expansion Ticket for 1900”, displays the lack of masculinity of Senator Hoar by characterizing him to be a woman playing a drum(91). Characterizing Senator Hoar as a woman alludes to his lack of patriotism and poor stance on Imperialism. The third cartoon, “The White Man’s Burden”, shows a largely masculine man with large stride carrying an indigenous person up the hill toward a schoolhouse(92). This displays the need for the manly American in the uneducated and
In the political cartoon 5A, the first reaction you have is to laugh without knowing the deeper meaning behind it, and I guess that’s most people reaction if they don’t read the captions. In my opinion this cartoon represent two events of our country’s history, the “Democratic Split” and “The Nomination of Lincoln”. The main characters in this political cartoon are Abraham Lincoln, Douglas, and John C. Breckinridge. The chief symbols in this cartoon is the two rodents that’s split at the tail. Another chief symbol is the way Abraham Lincoln is carrying the two rodents on a stick, like they are very poisonous and the need to be gotten rid of. The split tail rodents represent the Democratic Party and how they are breaking apart and not working together. It represents how the Democratic Party is corrupt. The way the “Old Abe” is carry these two rodents is how anyone in NYC today reacts to the rats in the subway station, ‘They need to get rid of’; and that is what I think the artist of the cartoon was trying to portray, that Abraham Lincoln had to get rid of the pest that’s corrupting our nation.
The first set of political cartoons that will be analyzed are ones from Canada in 1910 and 1912. A common characteristic that these cartoons have is the extreme male dominance that was apparent in politics and how dirty the field had become. To start off, the cartoon “The Door Steadily Opens” from The Grain Grower’s Guide is written from a pro-suffragette perspective. It shows a group of men in a dark, dingy room surrounded by cigar smoke, bags of money between them, and the devil serving alcohol. Some of the men are labeled with bad practices like “Monopoly”, “Drink”, “Graft”, “White Slavery”, “Corrupt Press”, and “Combine”. At the door to the room, a woman is fighting hard to get in with a broom labeled with “Women’s Suffrage”, but is stopped by a heavy defense system labeled with “Special Privilege”. This cartoon shows what men were up to behind the closed doors of offices and the employment levels that women were not allowed to participate in this time period. Some of the influences like...
Geisel, also known as Dr. Seuss, was a popular American writer and cartoonist ironically known for his work with children’s books rather than wartime propaganda. His work was published throughout the wartime era by PM Magazine. As one of the few primary sources, this visual provides a foundation for criticism throughout my paper. The content provides an interesting vantage point, such that focusing more on the details enables the viewer to observe the sly innuendos of racism. Furthermore, the cartoon serves as a foundation in which it can be compared by its content and message to other works, such as the cartoon by Austin.
True, he may not be the inventor of pen and paper and he is certainly not the first to make caricatures. His techniques were fairly common at the time with the brush and ink wash technique. He was inspired by some illustrators like John Tenniel to adopt new styles according to Paine (135-6). In fact, he did not create many of the icons in politics today. All he has done is popularize them in the American culture. The Democratic donkey or Uncle Sam were not created by Nast (Dewey 14-8), but he has made them commonplace. Even though he did not invent some of the caricatures we see today, is it not an achievement to make those icons memorable? Is not the fame of the piece just as important as how the piece actually stands artistically? To turn relatively unnoticed pieces and symbols into the cornerstone of politics is an achievement in itself. Not to imply that fame is in direct correlation to artistic value, but while it is a shame that many artists never come to light, the ones that do change the way one would see the world. The artist has made the public look inside the eyes of the artist. It is a shame to know that one would never see through the eyes of many artists, but one can see through the “Father of the American Cartoon” who created the depictions of the Republican Party and one can also see through the eyes of the forgotten
If you could afford a magazine and could interpret and image, then the images were made to influence you. When it comes to “The Day We Celebrate” published in Harper’s Weekly, a political magazine, most Americans who bought the magazine felt the same resentment towards migrants as expressed by the cartoon. Many thought of the Irish immigrants as wild and rowdy which is exactly how the artist characterizes them. “The Immigrant” was published in Judge, another political magazine, but in this image it shows the more divided feelings Americans had towards migrants. The general public was now becoming more knowledgeable of the benefits and downsides that migrants brought to
Many political cartoons often contain rhetoric device, such as pathos, ethos, and logos. Ethos often is the speaker, pathos is the audience, logos is the subject. In my political cartoon, Barack Obama is holding an image of the Pope and the Pope is smiling, there is a blurb from Obama saying "Thought you might like this!".
Although prisons have the primary objective of rehabilitation, prisoners will likely go through many other troubling emotions before reaching a point of reformation. Being ostracized from society, it is not uncommon to experience despair, depression, and hopelessness. Be that as it may, through reading various prison writings, it can be seen that inmates can find hope in the smallest things. As represented in “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminally Insane”, the author, Etheridge Knight, as well as other black inmates look up to Hard Rock, an inmate who is all but dutiful in a world where white people are placed at the top of the totem pole. However, after Hard Rock goes through a lobotomy-esque procedure, the motif
According to the Oxford Index, “whether called mass incarceration, mass imprisonment, the prison boom, or hyper incarceration, this phenomenon refers to the current American experiment in incarceration, which is defined by comparatively and historically extreme rates of imprisonment and by the concentration of imprisonment among young, African American men living in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage.” It should be noted that there is much ambiguity in the scholarly definition of the newly controversial social welfare issue as well as a specific determination in regards to the causes and consequences to American society. While some pro arguments cry act as a crime prevention technique, especially in the scope of the “war on drugs’.