MOHAMMED CARTOON SPURS WORLDWIDE ANTI-TOON SENTIMENT
2-8-06 POST RATED:Mohammed Cartoon Art Political Cartoon Muslim Cartoon Cartoon Mohammed Cartoons Denmark Muslim Islam Satire News Politics
It's amazing to most people when a cartoon, neigh a POORLY EXECUTED CARICATURE, can become a the top news story on the planet, but this Mohammed Political Cartoon just emphasizes the impact cartoons can have.
Political cartoons, and Politically biased posters and ad campaigns have had major impacts in politics, wars, and public perception for hundreds of years. This is nothing new
This story has been heavily tread already by the world's press. Thousands of well executed, researched, thought out rehashing dissertations on the Mohammed cartoon and it's impact are available for all to peruse on the web and in the dailies. I know that this cartoon is hugely offensive to Muslims, and I sympathize with them, but this article isn't going to delve into the political and religious subtexts of this cartoon.
Although I am concerned with the possibility of present and future cartoonists pussifying their art for fear that their freedom of artistic expression might have been hampered by this incident, deterring them because of feared retribution, I'm not going to delve into that right now. I'd like to push all of the political aspects of this drawing aside to further explore Danish Political Cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard's hack execution of the "Bomb For A Hat" iconography. I mean, talk about a dated concept.
"Bomb For A Hat" ( As seen in the Mohammed Cartoon) is one of the oldest, most played out pieces of toon-iconography. It is straight out of Tom and Jerry, or Roadrunner and Coyote. It's 1940s slapstick funny (see also: Anvil on head, Piano on head, flower pot on head, wall safe on head). In modern times it's Hack Cartoonery (See Homer in above image, Mohammed's "Bomb For A Hat" on Homer's head isn't even funny, and Homer is always hilarious. . . OK it's kinda funny- Apologies to Matt Groening).
It's the old stand by, "Bomb For A Hat" is followed by a KABOOM style explosion, resulting 9 out of 10 times in soot covered face, smoking hair, charred clothes, and chirping birds circling the character's head.
The bomb depicted in THE ACTUAL MOHAMMED CARTOON is the generic "this is what a bomb looks like" SPY VS.SPY CIRCULAR BLACK BOMB with lit fuse- ready to be stuffed into a cannon. The kind of bomb that stopped being produced when? Shortly after the first world war? In cartooning the "this is what a bomb looks like" can easily be swapped with a red cylinder with lit wick at one end for the "this is what a stick of dynamite looks like" hack drawing. If either the bomb or the dynamite stick still don't look "enough" like dynamite or a wick bomb, you can scrawl the letters T.N.T on to the side, presto- and boom goes the dynamite.
Crap, Crap, Double-Crap!
Just another day in the life of an Art Juggernaut.
-Cojo
