BACK

CARTOON VISUAL OPTIONS

A PRIMER

This is a simple set of challenges for you in assessing and sorting visual cliches. Anyone can do it. Think of a witch, a ghost, Lady Godiva. What are the recognisable attributes of the character? What is the basic location? What are the basic rules?

Choose a cartoon. And ask yourself if the cartoonist has added anything new, is there anything revealed about the story that has long been hidden? Is it FUNNY? Is the caption exact, formulaic, or excessive in order to conceal a poverty of thought? It can be a constructive exercise. Much of Saul Steinberg's genius lies in his refashioning of graphic modes and cliches.

If you can see nothing that hasn't been used in the past then you are in the presence of the pictorial cliche (see the Emett drawing beneath). See also Donald McKee's equivalent listing of the dreary formulae of political cartoons - the success of a policy - the beastly behaviour of the enemy - the transition from the Old Year (or policy) to the New.

But don't get too cross. An artist has to earn a living. We are all capable of mediocrity.There may be a puckish spirit at work, if only you looked HARD.Several of the captions have an unusual power, "Why should I damp your Shammy?" being my favourite.

 

 

CHURCH

MONK
MONK
MONK

CHURCH

VICAR
VICAR
VICAR

SPIRITUAL

GHOST
WITCH
FORTUNE TELLING
BELL RINGING
ANGELS
BELL RINGING

 

 

BISHOP
BELL RINGING
BELL RINGING
Why so many monks? What is the difference between a Vicar and a Bishop? Given the relative unimportance of Bell Ringing, why does it feature so regularly in the Funnies? How big need an Angel's wings be? How many types of ghosts can you think of? There are six fundamental types including the Tudor Gent with Head under the Arm. How would you add a new element to the Fortune Teller's tent? Try drawing a Crystal Ball.

 

SHADES OF THE EMPIRE

CANNIBAL
CANNIBAL
CANNIBAL

 

INDIAN ROPE TRICK
INDIAN ROPE TRICK
INDIAN ROPE TRICK

 

 

 

FAKIR
THE HAREM
WITCH DOCTOR
NATIVE BEARER

 

CANNIBAL

 

FLYING CARPET
THE HAREM
DARWIN'S VIEW
 

 

This is by far the most pernicious and offensive category that has lingered long after Fakirs and Cannibals have been forgotten. I thought twice about including this miscellany, but maybe you will need proof one day how enduring are the stereotypical myths of racism within the Imperial Dream. I will check through the New Yorker one day to see if this is only a British phenomenon. Soglow was fond of the Bone through the Nose, and the Cooking Pot.

 

SOLITARY LIVES AND MORALITY

DESERT ISLAND
LIFE RAFT
CANNIBAL

 

LIFE RAFT
DESERT ISLAND
DESERT ISLAND
DESERT ISLAND
DESERT ISLAND
LIGHTHOUSE

 

 

 

LIFE RAFT
LIFE RAFT
DESERT ISLAND
LIFE RAFT

These examples are evidence of the enduring attraction of shipwrecked souls on the desert island, how they had survived the life on a raft and how they will respond to the solitary life without modern amenities. Significantly the survivors are almost unformly pairings of men and women. The reader's imagination is meant to flare with the thought of all moral codes suspended.

The island is for pictorial reasons (and the space allocated on the page) often restricted to a small disk of land with a palm tree growing in the middle. There is much fun to be had drawing ragged trousers and skimpy revealing shifts for the ladies. Faced with such austerities, the horizon is often given the focus as the source of deliverence, or the arrival of horny sailors. The whole concept is one of paring the pictorial propositions down to the minimum, knowing that the discerning audience will not demand verisimilitude. The sexual frisson is usually quite enough to be getting along with. How to draw receptivity?

 

FAMOUS FOLK

LADY GODIVA
ISAAC NEWTON
ISAAC WALTON

FAMOUS FOLK

LADY GODIVA
LADY GODIVA
WILLIAM TELL

FAMOUS FOLK

GEORGE WASHINGTON
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
 
This is rather sad a category, when particular behaviour needs an historical exemplar. If the Monarch of all cliches, the electric lightbulb as idea, is unsurpassed, the apple falling on the head of Newton runs it a close second. I will not expand this but send you to History Sells where Famous Folk are deputed to sell goods and services, Henry VIII. Leonardo and George Washington for example . Lady Godiva features large in the Funnies provding as she does an opportunity to draw the Big Tease. In certain magazines (Men Only and London Opinion for example) they needed no excuse. If drawing hair pleased you, then Lady G was for you.

 

ENTERTAINMENTS

ACROBATS
ACROBATS
KNIFE THROWING
BALANCING
VENTRILOQUIST'S DUMMY

ARTISTS AND ART

SCULPTOR
IN THE STUDIO
BOHEMIANS

PISSED

DRUNKS
DRUNKS
GREEN ELEPHANTS

ARCHITECTURE

PYRAMIDS
PYRAMIDS
TOWER OF PISA
TOWER OF PISA
TOWER OF PISA
GUGGENHEIM

 

MEDIA

TV sets
 
 

THE LAW

 
POLICEMEN
 

SPORT

BOXING RING
MOUNTAINEERING
MOUNTAINEERING

FUNFAIR

TUNNEL OF LOVE
TUNNEL OF LOVE
TUNNEL OF LOVE
TUNNEL OF LOVE

ENTERTAINMENT

STAGE MAGICIAN

In the Entertainment section are the most recognisable of the pictorial schemata, reassuring even the most nervous reader - that all was right with the world - that knife throwers missed, that the Tower of Pisa still leaned, that drunks held rubber cigarettes and had tousled hair.

In the post-war period, whenever British cartoonists were stumped for an idea, their default was the artist's studio with nude models, or the sculptor's studio with Moore/Hepworth lumps with holes. The Bohemian was so easy to draw - all beard and sweater.

Fairs and Fetes. In terms of familiar sexual imagery, the Tunnel of Love seldom failed, any offending grappling confined to the spaces behind the Tunnel Opening. A variant was of course The Hall of Mirrors. Speak your Weight machines, Ring the Bell machines and Hoopla stalls also feature.

 

ANIMALS

ELEPHANT
OSTRICH
ST BERNARD'S DOG

FUSION

CAVEMAN
CAVEMAN
MERMAID
MERMAID

ANIMALS

PARROT
PARROT
PARROT

ANIMALS

 

BIG GAME
ALIEN
WOODPECKER
WOODPECKER
BIG GAME
BIG GAME

The eager harnessing of dumb creatures to your comic invention seldom produced work of excellence. It served rather to produce easy, quick ideas, particularly in Political cartooning. An example might very well be the Parrot which is given more than its fair share of participation (see Henry Stacy Marks' entire career).

Sexual references are of course oblique, so I have included reference to Mermaids, some of which are positively indecent in their behaviour. Aitchison's drawing above of the Mermaid learning to swim has a number of possible rude interpretations. The depiction of Cavemen gives an instant excuse for the brutish behaviour against women and bone headed refusal to countenance the future.

Given the male readership of many of the humour magazine it is not surprising that the treatment of Big Game Hunting features large, seldom on the Veldt, more but usually among the taxidermic remains.

 

 

MILITARY

GUARDSMAN
GUARDSMAN
MEXICAN
ESKIMO

 

NATIONS

SCOTS
SCOTS
MEXICAN
CHINESE
 
 

PROFESSIONS

DENTISTS
PSYCHIATRIST
PSYCHIATRIST

PROFESSIONS

DOCTOR
DOCTOR
XRAY
XRAY

 

FIREMEN
FIREMEN
FIREMEN

 

FIREMEN
FIREMEN
FIREMEN

 

PROFESSIONS

OCULIST
WINDOW CLEANER
 
 
   

NATIONS

ESKIMO

 

NATIONS

ALIENS

 

Now you have reached the core of it all. I suspect that the eager cartoonist may start his/her day with reflections on the humour of the Professions. or perhaps a cheap slap at our 'Foreign Friends'. All effective pornography must identify the narrative milieu with clear indications of uniforms, which is why chefs, policemen and firemen have sex while retaining their hats. Similarly, the cartoon's humorous proposition must leave nothing to the imagination. The surgery must make it clear whether the dominant force is an MD, a psychiatrist, an optician or a dentist. As Emett has identified, the diploma on the wall tells all, if in a heavy handed way.

The identification of nationality provides us with simple fare, and even simpler jokes, the Mexican's hat, the Australian's deployment of corks, the Scotsman's kilt, the American's stetson. The challenge comes with the depiction of Belgians, New Zealanders and Serbians. Aliens from Outer Space are easily drawn as little chaps with cranial aerials before Roswell, or as sloe eyed whippets threafter. The correspondence between life and art in drawing the Flying Saucer tends to help undermine the credibility of witness sitings. It is clear the slack jawed truck driver had seen in the sky what was first seen in his book of saucy cartoons.

 

 

SEX

NEWLY WEDS
ADAM AND EVE
UNDER THE BED

SEX

GAY MEN
OLD MAN AND FLOOSIE
MIRAGE

SEX

newly weds
PAYING DEBTS
 

 

 
 
 

 

Given the income generating attractions of the smutty cartoon, artists were constantly storing up potential subject matter. There could be little emphasis on the anatomical can be little treament in the mass circulation magazines of the day. Instead the field is dominated by the Mythic (Adam and Eve, Samson and Delilah) and the Situational (Newly Wed, Toff and Tart, Idle Fantasies). There was too much to include so I am trying to be highly selective here - no, really.

 

CRIME

THE CELL
THE CELL
THE CELL
BURGLAR (SEX)
BURGLAR (SEX)

CRIME

BURGLAR
BURGLAR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BURGLAR
DUEL

POLICEMEN
POLICEMEN
 

 

 

 

CRIME

BURGLAR
BURGLAR
BURGLAR

CRIME

BURGLAR (SEX)
BURGLAR
BURGLAR

 

 

 

The attraction of the burglar and his doings to the artist is mystifying. Is it perhaps the flat cap, the Badger style mask and the cloth bag over the shoulder (SWAG) that so clearly identifies his calling. Much has been made of the British fear of threats to property.

The locale might change and involve dealing with stuffy managers in a bank (striped suit, with bristling outrage), entrance into someone else's home (delicate sampling of provisions) or indeed, revelations of the burglar's own home life (see Gilbert and Sullivan, When a Felon's not engaged in his Employment from Pirates of Penzance.

It is indicateive of an artist's dedication to the cult of Easy Viewing that, despite horrific accounts of tuorture in prison, prisoners are still strung up in their cells in the cause of comedy.

 

 

DREAMS AND SLEEP

DREAMS
DREAMS
TRANQUILISED
DREAMS

DREAMS AND SLEEP

FANTASY
FANTASY
DREAMS

This is a fascinating option, with the pictorial challenge of clearly differentiated zones of the sleeping forms, and the dream forms. I include here two standard responses of little consequence that might challenge Goya's The Sleep of Reason Begets Monsters.

see also DREAMS AND FANTASIES

DOMESTIC

GARDENING
WINDOW CLEANER
 

DOMESTIC

WOMEN DRIVERS
SANDWICH BOARD
 

DOMESTIC

SERVANTS
 
 

SHOPPING COUNTER
BUYING A SUIT
BUYING A SUIT

 

I consider this the most depressing and limp of all the catgories because it seems to encompass all the minor prejudices among which I grew up in Watford. My Mother wasn't allowed to drive the Family Car because 'she had too much imagination', a term by which my Father ensured he was the only driver. I didn't encounter the ritual humiliation of Family Servants or their attempts to undermine their employers, but it was part of the values among which I was nurtured. I shall of course expand this section but it is with a heavy heart.

HEAVEN
HEAVEN
HEAVEN

 

MYTH

 

TROJAN HORSE
NARCISSUS

 

 

HIGH SCORING COMBINATIONS

You score extra points for cartoons where several of the options are combined e.g. a vicar on a desert isle playing golf with cannibals. Click the options to see if you have genuinely understood the full significance of the lessons learn above.

1

2

3

4

 

 

 

 

THE CONTEXT

EMETT, THE PALACE OF CULTURE, Punch 1951- a compilation like no other, the knowing iconography of the true professional - every detail is telling.

DONALD MCKEE, CARTOONS TO THE TRADE a brilliant anthology of the tired old formulae.....

see also CLICHE

 

 

BACK