Cartoons, Humour, and Satire

In response to Saba Mahmood’s lecture I would like to raise a few questions concerning cartoons, humor, and satire. I must admit that when the Danish cartoon controversy was happening I did not pay all that much attention to it. Now I wish I did because I would like to have a visual memory of the cartoons in question. I do remember wondering, and these thoughts resurfaced as I read through Mahmood’s chapter, what the big deal was all about. I remember reading a Far Side cartoon that depicted Muhammad, (I think, but am not sure, that that cartoon appeared in Gary Larson’s The Chickens are Restless) and nobody made a big deal over that one. Why? Is it because Gary Larson makes fun of all sorts of religious figures? (I’ve read some of his cartoons depicting God, Satan, Moses, Adam, Eve, the Egyptian Sun God, Noah and there are many more, I’m sure). Or is it because Gary Larson’s cartoons appeared on the funny pages of newspapers, and not the editorial pages (which is where I imagine the Danish cartoons were). Is it because his cartoons are not categorized as political cartoons? (Certainly, some of his cartoons are distinctly political, but most are not). Why are some cartoons offensive and some cartoons simply humorous? And isn’t humor often derived from offense? Many of today’s comedians seem to draw on this tradition.

Although I have not seen the Danish cartoons, I have read that they depicted a turbaned Muhammad with a ticking bomb inside his turban. Some commentators who defended their publication (according to Mahmood) were said to be defending “freedom of expression, especially satirical expression” (66). So were these cartoons satire? I think this is an important question to ask, since, by definition, satire is a tool of moral critique, and “the rage behind satire is usually attributed to the respect satirists have for the ideals their subjects have violated” (Handbook of Literary Terms 135). This is something that seems to have gone unnoticed in the debate. Were the cartoons meant to spite? Were they indeed a “gleeful display” (68) of blasphemy? Were they propaganda? Or were they meant to mock a human vice or political folly? I think that we need to take a closer look at the cartoons themselves, and try to figure out if the cartoons were meant to hurt and to rally hate, or if they were meant as a tool for critique.