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| Charlie Hebdo’s refugee cartoon isn’t satirical. It’s inflammatory | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| I hesitate to criticise Charlie Hebdo. A year and a week ago it felt all wrong. Then, after 11 of the French magazine’s staff had been murdered, the only fitting response was sympathy for the families of those slain, and clear, unambiguous denunciation of the men who had sought to silence them with bullets. | I hesitate to criticise Charlie Hebdo. A year and a week ago it felt all wrong. Then, after 11 of the French magazine’s staff had been murdered, the only fitting response was sympathy for the families of those slain, and clear, unambiguous denunciation of the men who had sought to silence them with bullets. |
| But if the goal was to stay Charlie’s drawing hand, the killings failed. The magazine continues to publish its provocative covers and cartoons. This week it ran a drawing that included, first, a depiction of the photograph that went around the world last summer: the drowned body of the toddler and refugee Alan Kurdi, face down on the shore. “What would little Alan have grown up to be?” ran the caption. The answer came below, illustrated by an image of two men, their faces part-monkey, part-pig, arms outstretched, pantingly chasing two women: Alan would have become “an ass groper in Germany”. | But if the goal was to stay Charlie’s drawing hand, the killings failed. The magazine continues to publish its provocative covers and cartoons. This week it ran a drawing that included, first, a depiction of the photograph that went around the world last summer: the drowned body of the toddler and refugee Alan Kurdi, face down on the shore. “What would little Alan have grown up to be?” ran the caption. The answer came below, illustrated by an image of two men, their faces part-monkey, part-pig, arms outstretched, pantingly chasing two women: Alan would have become “an ass groper in Germany”. |
| The cartoon is certainly shocking, using the single most distressing image of the refugee crisis – a dead child – to crack a joke. Naturally, it has caused outrage and been widely condemned, accused of making the racist suggestion that all male refugees from Syria are bound to be sexual predators, that even a child as blameless as Alan was destined to become as brutish as the men who, en masse, harassed and assaulted women on the streets of Cologne on New Year’s Eve. | The cartoon is certainly shocking, using the single most distressing image of the refugee crisis – a dead child – to crack a joke. Naturally, it has caused outrage and been widely condemned, accused of making the racist suggestion that all male refugees from Syria are bound to be sexual predators, that even a child as blameless as Alan was destined to become as brutish as the men who, en masse, harassed and assaulted women on the streets of Cologne on New Year’s Eve. |
| So far Charlie Hebdo’s defenders have fallen into two categories. Some feel able only to make the basic case that freedom of speech is an absolute and indivisible right, which includes the right to produce crude, crass images that are horribly offensive. Martin Rowson, who is chair of the British Cartoonists’ Association, believes the best way to understand Charlie Hebdo is to see it as less Punch and more Viz, delighting in its puerility and determined to breach the line that conventionally separates public from private by cracking out loud the kind of sick jokes that are usually whispered in playgrounds or pubs. “And don’t forget,” Rowson adds, “they’re French. They think Jerry Lewis is funny.” | So far Charlie Hebdo’s defenders have fallen into two categories. Some feel able only to make the basic case that freedom of speech is an absolute and indivisible right, which includes the right to produce crude, crass images that are horribly offensive. Martin Rowson, who is chair of the British Cartoonists’ Association, believes the best way to understand Charlie Hebdo is to see it as less Punch and more Viz, delighting in its puerility and determined to breach the line that conventionally separates public from private by cracking out loud the kind of sick jokes that are usually whispered in playgrounds or pubs. “And don’t forget,” Rowson adds, “they’re French. They think Jerry Lewis is funny.” |
| There is another way to defend the cartoon. It says that Charlie Hebdo’s target was not little Alan or refugees in general, but the fickleness of the great European public and press, overflowing with tears for a child in August, baring its teeth in anger at the criminals of Cologne in January. In this view, the French magazine is not mocking refugees but mocking us for our wildly oscillating generalisations, casting those fleeing Syria as all saints one minute, all sinners the next. That may be a heroic defence, one that gives Charlie Hebdo too much credit. But let’s say that’s what the artist intended. Even then the cartoon was wrong. For it made a mistake that countless satirists have made before: in seeking to expose a problem, it only made it worse. | There is another way to defend the cartoon. It says that Charlie Hebdo’s target was not little Alan or refugees in general, but the fickleness of the great European public and press, overflowing with tears for a child in August, baring its teeth in anger at the criminals of Cologne in January. In this view, the French magazine is not mocking refugees but mocking us for our wildly oscillating generalisations, casting those fleeing Syria as all saints one minute, all sinners the next. That may be a heroic defence, one that gives Charlie Hebdo too much credit. But let’s say that’s what the artist intended. Even then the cartoon was wrong. For it made a mistake that countless satirists have made before: in seeking to expose a problem, it only made it worse. |
| In 2008, the New Yorker depicted Barack Obama in Muslim garb and Michelle with an Afro, an AK-47 over her shoulder | In 2008, the New Yorker depicted Barack Obama in Muslim garb and Michelle with an Afro, an AK-47 over her shoulder |
| Perhaps the cartoonist wanted to take a stand against the current hardening in attitudes to those seeking refuge. In fact, he simply provided another example of that very shift. His image takes its place alongside the Danish decision this week, apparently echoed by the Swiss, to confiscate valuables from new arrivals – everything except their wedding or engagement rings – and Turkey’s illegal policy of sending refugees back to the Syrian hell they fled. It doesn’t challenge the current mood of fear and loathing, it just adds to it. | Perhaps the cartoonist wanted to take a stand against the current hardening in attitudes to those seeking refuge. In fact, he simply provided another example of that very shift. His image takes its place alongside the Danish decision this week, apparently echoed by the Swiss, to confiscate valuables from new arrivals – everything except their wedding or engagement rings – and Turkey’s illegal policy of sending refugees back to the Syrian hell they fled. It doesn’t challenge the current mood of fear and loathing, it just adds to it. |
| Call it Alf Garnett syndrome. The television writer Johnny Speight always insisted his comic creation was designed to send up the ignorant bigots of Powellite Britain. The trouble was, the ignorant bigots embraced Alf as their spokesman. They memorised his racist rants and parroted them back. Speight may have wanted Till Death Us Do Part to give prejudice a kicking. In fact it gave it a platform. | Call it Alf Garnett syndrome. The television writer Johnny Speight always insisted his comic creation was designed to send up the ignorant bigots of Powellite Britain. The trouble was, the ignorant bigots embraced Alf as their spokesman. They memorised his racist rants and parroted them back. Speight may have wanted Till Death Us Do Part to give prejudice a kicking. In fact it gave it a platform. |
| This kind of misstep can happen at the posh end of the market too. During the 2008 presidential campaign, the New Yorker depicted Barack Obama in Muslim garb and Michelle Obama with an Afro, an AK-47 slung over her shoulder. The couple were doing a fist-bump in the Oval Office, while a portrait of Osama bin Laden looked on and the US flag burned in the fireplace. | This kind of misstep can happen at the posh end of the market too. During the 2008 presidential campaign, the New Yorker depicted Barack Obama in Muslim garb and Michelle Obama with an Afro, an AK-47 slung over her shoulder. The couple were doing a fist-bump in the Oval Office, while a portrait of Osama bin Laden looked on and the US flag burned in the fireplace. |
| The magazine insisted it was “clearly a joke”, sending up all the scare stories about Obama. But despite that noble intention, the cartoon served to hone – more elegantly than any of the candidate’s enemies had done – the rightwing caricature of Obama into a single, memorable image. Up to that point, no opponent had explicitly said Obama was a terrorist-loving Muslim but now they didn’t have to. Now there was an image lodged in the consciousness that did the job for them. | The magazine insisted it was “clearly a joke”, sending up all the scare stories about Obama. But despite that noble intention, the cartoon served to hone – more elegantly than any of the candidate’s enemies had done – the rightwing caricature of Obama into a single, memorable image. Up to that point, no opponent had explicitly said Obama was a terrorist-loving Muslim but now they didn’t have to. Now there was an image lodged in the consciousness that did the job for them. |
| The Guardian itself is not immune. The conceptual artist Gillian Wearing was once handed control of the cover of the G2 section. She could fill the space with whatever image she liked. She chose to leave it blank, save for three words scrawled, graffiti-like, as if on a wall: Fuck Cilla Black. She wanted to point up the “coarsening” of public discourse. What she achieved was to coarsen it a little more. | The Guardian itself is not immune. The conceptual artist Gillian Wearing was once handed control of the cover of the G2 section. She could fill the space with whatever image she liked. She chose to leave it blank, save for three words scrawled, graffiti-like, as if on a wall: Fuck Cilla Black. She wanted to point up the “coarsening” of public discourse. What she achieved was to coarsen it a little more. |
| In this way the satirist becomes the unwitting ally, rather than scourge, of his or her target. Sometimes that can happen directly. Bruce Springsteen wrote Born in the USA as a stinging attack on the hollow jingoism that wages foreign wars and abandons the usually poor men who fight them: Ronald Reagan liked the chorus so much he tried to adopt it as a campaign theme song. The cartoonist Vicky thought he was lampooning the absurdity of Harold Macmillan’s grandiosity with his Supermac creation but Tories embraced it, thinking it made their man look a hero. The producers of Have I Got News for You invited Boris Johnson on as a guest host to have a laugh at his expense. Only too late did they realise they had provided the launchpad for his mayoral career. Perhaps such things are unavoidable. Satire does not come with an end-user licence, controlling how it will be exploited or misunderstood. And most of the time – if it’s giving a boost, rather than inflicting a blow, on this or that politician – it doesn’t matter. But the current shift in attitude towards refugees is of a different order. The stakes are higher. | In this way the satirist becomes the unwitting ally, rather than scourge, of his or her target. Sometimes that can happen directly. Bruce Springsteen wrote Born in the USA as a stinging attack on the hollow jingoism that wages foreign wars and abandons the usually poor men who fight them: Ronald Reagan liked the chorus so much he tried to adopt it as a campaign theme song. The cartoonist Vicky thought he was lampooning the absurdity of Harold Macmillan’s grandiosity with his Supermac creation but Tories embraced it, thinking it made their man look a hero. The producers of Have I Got News for You invited Boris Johnson on as a guest host to have a laugh at his expense. Only too late did they realise they had provided the launchpad for his mayoral career. Perhaps such things are unavoidable. Satire does not come with an end-user licence, controlling how it will be exploited or misunderstood. And most of the time – if it’s giving a boost, rather than inflicting a blow, on this or that politician – it doesn’t matter. But the current shift in attitude towards refugees is of a different order. The stakes are higher. |
| Maybe a couple of the satirists’ own rules might be helpful. The former Spitting Image writer John O’Farrell says he adheres to the time-honoured maxim that the comic should always be “punching up”, not down. Laughing at the weak is never funny, and there is nobody weaker than a dead child washed up on a beach. As for the second rule, O’Farrell recalls David Attenborough’s advice to the Monty Python team: “Use shock sparingly.” | Maybe a couple of the satirists’ own rules might be helpful. The former Spitting Image writer John O’Farrell says he adheres to the time-honoured maxim that the comic should always be “punching up”, not down. Laughing at the weak is never funny, and there is nobody weaker than a dead child washed up on a beach. As for the second rule, O’Farrell recalls David Attenborough’s advice to the Monty Python team: “Use shock sparingly.” |
| And perhaps there is a third. If you’re aiming a lethal arrow, be sure to shoot straight at the target. Because if you miss, you might not hurt your enemy: you might just help him instead. | And perhaps there is a third. If you’re aiming a lethal arrow, be sure to shoot straight at the target. Because if you miss, you might not hurt your enemy: you might just help him instead. |